Rethinking Political Crisis and Collapse: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil

Responses, both critical and constructive, to changing realities in modern politics and society.

In gathering these essays, Antonio Calcagno and Mark Yenson have chosen the conceptual lens of crisis and collapse, not in the spirit of lamenting or decrying the death of a once-enjoyed, but now lost, state of affairs. Rather, they seek to understand what the concepts of crisis and collapse mean, how they are deployed in various situations, and how they are used to explain shifts in politics and society. The contributing scholars featured in this volume demonstrate how two important political thinkers imagined new worlds and social orders that could arise from significant change brought on by forms of crisis and collapse. Through their work, Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil offer new generative visions of what it is to be human in a time when our very understanding of humanity is changing.

Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College, Western University, in London, Ontario. He currently serves as Executive Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

Mark Yenson is Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Religious Studies/Catholic Studies at King’s University College, Western University, in London, Ontario.