Experimental thought in dark times: Arendt, Benjamin, Kafka

Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley

Freedom is not a condition acquired once and for all, but a collective experience to be continually recreated. Starting from this assumption, Judith Butler reconstructs with acumen and precision the convergences and tensions between the thoughts of Hannah Arendt and those of Walter Benjamin, and reflects on the “tempi oscuri” (the “dark times”) and the fractures of history, on those moments when the continuity of the past is broken and the prospect of a new beginning opens up.
While Benjamin focusses on the lightning strike that invariably shatters historical determinism, Arendt recognises in the space between past and future the emergence of political freedom as a shared action.
Democracy and freedom are thus not definitive conquests, but rather a reality to be constantly renewed whenever people act together in the public space.

La Normale delle Idee, Sala Azzurra | 19 ottobre 2026