Hannah Arendt : The Promise of Education

This book gathers some of Hannah Arendts core themes and focuses them on the question, What is education for?
For Arendt, as for Aristotle, education is the means whereby we achieve personal autonomy through the exercise of independent judgement, attain adulthood through the recognition of others as equal but different, gain a sense of citizenship through the assumption of our civic rights and responsibilities, and realize our full potential as sentient beings with the capacity for human flourishing and happiness (eudaimonia). In order to appreciate the pivotal role that education plays in Arendts analysis of the human condition, we have to understand the emphasis she placed on thoughtfulness, as the measure of our humanity and on thoughtlessness, as the measure of our inhumanity. Education sustains and develops the human capacity: to think together (phronesis), to think for oneself (what Arendt called the two-in-one of thinking), and to think from the point of view of others (what she termed representative thinking).
From the developing constellation of ideas embedded in her vast and varied body of work, the author infers a notion of education as a necessary preparation for personal fulfillment, social engagement, and civic participation.