The New Voices Talk Series continues this winter with a lecture dedicated to Hannah Arendt and is organized by Samantha Fazekas (Trinity College Dublin) & Maria Robaszkiewicz (Paderborn University).
Upcoming Talk: Speaking Others into the World by Magnus Ferguson (University of Chicago)
Date: 07. November 2025; 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Abstract:
In certain contexts unreciprocated speech can be an important form of care for persons who would otherwise find it difficult to retain their place in shared worlds of linguistic meaning, such as those who lose capacities for linguistic expression due to illness. Philosophers and political theorists often underscore the importance of reciprocated speech for sharing in a human world. Hannah Arendt makes this point especially forcefully in The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, in which she suggests that ‘speechless’ persons are excluded from the linguistic ‘web of relationships’—they are, she writes, ‘literally dead to the world.’ I reconstruct several of Arendt’s analyses of speech and speechlessness, and argue that they are prima facie exclusionary to nonspeaking persons. I also identify resources in Arendt’s corpus for theorizing unreciprocated speech as a mode of care that can offer listeners footholds in the linguistic spheres of meaning around them.
About the speaker:
Magnus Ferguson (Ph.D.) is a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and a Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the University of Chicago Society of Fellows. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College (2023) and his B.A. in Religion from Columbia University (2014).
Everyone is welcome to attend. You will get the Zoom-Link here or at maria.robaszkiewicz@upb.de.
More about the New Voices Winter Talk Series 25/26:
https://historyofwomenphilosophers.org/new-voices-talk-series/
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