At the conference taking place on 15–16 January, international scholars and experts of Hannah Arendt thought will gather in Vilnius, at the Imperial Hotel, to reflect on the challenges facing twenty-first-century Europe through the lens of her political philosophy.
The end of the Second World War and, above all, the collapse of the Soviet Empire gave rise to the idea of the so-called “end of history”: the belief that the world was destined for inevitable political and moral progress. This vision ushered in a new phase of politics, marked by the elevation of procedural and administrative governance at the expense of political will, individual responsibility, and genuine political action.
Hannah Arendt warned against these developments, foreseeing the risk of reducing the state to an administrative machine, one capable of resolving conflicts through bureaucracy rather than political deliberation—a process that, according to Arendt, would not lead to the end of politics, but to the emergence of a new form of despotism on a massive scale.
Today, the reemergence of the use of force and the return of conflict to the European continent has exposed the limits of a worldview that sought to depoliticize public life.
In the face of these challenges, it is necessary to think about crucial questions: does politics, grounded in individual responsibility and action, still hold meaning?
What might serve as a positive foundation for political life in an age increasingly marked by fear, polarization, and violence?