Returning to Arendt means returning to what politics, truth, and shared life mean.
A medio siglo de su muerte, Buenos Aires convoca el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt no como reliquia académica sino como brújula viva. Del 4 al 7 de septiembre, el Cultural San Martín abre sus puertas gratuitamente para que filósofos, artistas y ciudadanos examinen juntos cómo las ideas de una mujer que vivió el exilio y el totalitarismo iluminan el presente digital, la posverdad y la fragilidad de la vida en común. Es el gesto de una ciudad que reconoce que las preguntas más urgentes ya fueron formuladas, y que lo que falta es el coraje de volver a hacerlas.
- En un momento en que la verdad política se fragmenta y el extremismo avanza, la vigencia de Arendt no es nostálgica sino diagnóstica: sus conceptos sobre el totalitarismo y el mal banal describen dinámicas que siguen operando.
- El festival tensiona la pregunta de a quién pertenece un pensamiento: cuatro fundaciones políticas alemanas de ideologías opuestas reclaman a Arendt como propia, revelando la incomodidad productiva que genera su obra.
- La irrupción de lo tecnológico en el programa —inteligencia artificial, vigilancia digital, WhatsApp como experimento conceptual— convierte el simposio en un laboratorio donde el siglo XX interpela al XXI.
- Una performance bilingüe y binacional, 'Queda la lengua', traduce el pensamiento arendtiano al cuerpo y la voz, apostando a que la filosofía no solo se lee sino que se habita.
- El acceso libre y sin inscripción previa convierte el Cultural San Martín en un espacio público en el sentido más arendtiano: un lugar donde distintos mundos se encuentran sin garantías de acuerdo.
Buenos Aires dedica cuatro días al pensamiento de Hannah Arendt, la filósofa germano-judía que pasó su vida incomodando tanto a las instituciones académicas como a los poderes políticos. Entre el 4 y el 7 de septiembre, el Cultural San Martín ofrece entrada libre para sumergirse en su obra, en conmemoración de los cincuenta años de su muerte y con la convicción de que sus herramientas conceptuales siguen siendo necesarias.
El evento, organizado por el Goethe-Institut y la Cátedra Libre Walter Benjamin (DAAD), lleva por subtítulo 'Del exilio a la posverdad' y combina conferencias, películas, performances, paneles y debates. Entre sus momentos centrales figura la visita de Thomas Meyer, filósofo alemán y autor de una monumental biografía intelectual de Arendt recién publicada en español por Anagrama. Meyer, editor de los doce volúmenes de sus escritos reunidos, dialogará con Héctor Pavón el sábado 6 de septiembre en lo que será su primera visita a la Argentina.
El programa no evita las preguntas incómodas. Una conferencia explora cómo los conceptos arendtianos sobre la condición humana dialogan con la inteligencia artificial y los riesgos de deshumanización global. Otra, con deliberada provocación, pregunta si Arendt habría usado WhatsApp, usando esa imagen para repensar las fronteras entre lo público y lo privado en la era digital. La performance 'Queda la lengua', con una artista argentina y una alemana, lleva su pensamiento al territorio del cuerpo y la voz a través de materiales documentales y fragmentos de texto.
Un panel reúne a representantes de cuatro fundaciones políticas alemanas —de orientaciones tan distintas como la Konrad Adenauer y la Rosa Luxemburgo— para debatir a quién pertenece realmente Arendt, poniendo en evidencia la riqueza y la tensión de una obra que ninguna ideología puede reclamar del todo. La mayoría de las actividades no requieren inscripción previa, en un gesto que convierte al festival en un espacio abierto donde especialistas, estudiantes, artistas y ciudadanos pueden encontrarse para preguntarse, juntos, qué significa vivir en común.
Buenos Aires is hosting a four-day intellectual gathering devoted to Hannah Arendt, the German-Jewish philosopher who spent her life unsettling both academic institutions and political establishments. From September 4 through 7, the Cultural San Martín will open its doors free of charge to anyone wanting to wade into the complicated terrain of her thinking—a commemoration of fifty years since her death in 1975, and a deliberate attempt to show why she still matters now.
The event, organized by the Goethe-Institut and the Walter Benjamin Free Chair (DAAD), arrives at a moment when Arendt's core preoccupations feel urgent again. She wrote about totalitarianism, exile, the banality of evil, human condition, and moral judgment. These are not historical curiosities. The festival's subtitle—"From Exile to Post-Truth"—signals the organizers' conviction that Arendt's tools for thinking remain sharp. The program includes lectures, films, performances, panel discussions, and debates. It also marks two hundred years of diplomatic friendship between Germany and Argentina, and carries the backing of Revista Ñ.
One of the festival's centerpieces is a public conversation with Thomas Meyer, a German philosopher and author of a monumental intellectual biography of Arendt recently published in Spanish by Anagrama. Meyer will appear on Saturday, September 6, interviewed by Héctor Pavón. He has edited the twelve volumes of Arendt's collected writings and written a prologue for a new edition of her book on Palestine. This is his first visit to Argentina, and the organizers are positioning it as a rare chance to hear from one of the most authoritative voices on her work.
The festival does not shy away from the strange questions Arendt's thought provokes when applied to the present. One lecture asks how to rethink human condition in the age of artificial intelligence—how Arendt's concepts speak to technical systems, the commodification of humanity, and the risks of global dehumanization. Another, titled with deliberate provocation, asks whether Arendt would have used WhatsApp. By exploring her ideas about public and private spheres through the lens of a messaging app, the speaker uses a thought experiment to show how Arendt remains a critical tool for debating the boundaries of exposure, intimacy, and digital communication.
A commissioned performance piece called "Queda la lengua" ("Language Remains") will run twice—Friday and Sunday evenings—featuring an Argentine artist and a German artist working with documentary materials, text fragments, and symbolic translation to bring Arendt's thinking into bodily and vocal form. Another panel brings together representatives from four German political foundations—Konrad Adenauer, Friedrich Ebert, Rosa Luxemburgo, and Friedrich Naumann—to debate a deceptively simple question: To whom does Hannah Arendt belong? The panel explores how the same body of work can be claimed by ideologically different actors, and what that says about the richness and complexity of her political thought.
The festival positions itself as a space for reflection, disciplinary crossing, and encounter among diverse publics: specialists and students, artists and citizens trying to make sense of the present. Most activities require no advance registration, though some performances and screenings distribute free tickets two hours before showtime at the box office. In an era marked by confusion, relativism, and extreme rhetoric, the organizers suggest, returning to Arendt means returning to fundamental questions about the meaning of politics, the nature of truth, and what it means to live together.
Citações Notáveis
The event proposes immersing oneself in Arendt's complex universe to discover her impact on thought, culture, and art, and to try new ways of transforming our troubling present.— Festival organizers
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does a philosopher who died fifty years ago suddenly feel so necessary right now?
Because Arendt was writing about power, truth, and how ordinary people become complicit in extraordinary cruelty. She wasn't offering solutions—she was teaching us how to ask better questions. When algorithms decide what we see, when exile is a global condition, when truth itself becomes negotiable, her tools become sharper, not duller.
The festival asks if she would have used WhatsApp. That sounds almost silly.
It's not silly at all. It's a way of asking: what happens to the distinction between public and private when everyone is always visible? Arendt cared deeply about those boundaries. She believed we need both. WhatsApp collapses them. The question forces us to think about what we've lost.
There's a panel about different political foundations all claiming her. Can she really belong to everyone?
That's the point of the panel. Her work is so rigorous, so uncompromising, that it resists easy capture. A conservative foundation and a socialist foundation can both find something true in her. That's not weakness—it's a sign of depth. It means she was thinking about something real, something that transcends ideology.
What does "the banality of evil" mean to someone scrolling through their phone in 2025?
It means that the worst things often happen not through grand villainy but through thoughtlessness, through people doing their jobs, following orders, not asking questions. In a digital age, that becomes even more insidious. You're not a villain when you use an app—but the systems behind it might be doing harm you never see.
Why hold this festival in Buenos Aires specifically?
Argentina knows something about exile, about totalitarianism, about the aftermath of political violence. The country has lived through what Arendt theorized. There's a conversation waiting to happen here that wouldn't happen the same way elsewhere.