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The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Wednesday, 19 November 2025, 19:00Venue: Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
John McCloy Transatlantic Forum
Lecture series: »Umkämpftes Vermächtnis. ›Die ›Declaration of Independence‹ als lebendige Tradition, 1776 – 2026«
Karen Feldman (UC Berkeley; Fall 2025 Fellow, American Academy Berlin)
»Public Freedom and Private Happiness: Hannah Arendt and the American Revolution«
About the lecture
The Declaration of Independence famously proclaims the existence of an inalienable human right to the pursuit of happiness. For Hannah Arendt, however, the phrase »pursuit of happiness« carries a dual meaning. On the one hand, she argues, for Thomas Jefferson the pursuit of happiness refers to »public happiness«, namely, the happiness of taking part in »the public business«, public affairs, and politics. On the other hand, it may instead appear to refer to »private happiness«, i.e., to one’s own individual happiness, as it pertains to personal life, property, and what makes me happy. Arendt therefore defines »private happiness« in terms of liberty, understood as the absence of restrictions, in contrast to the »public happiness« that is associated with genuine freedom, which Arendt defines as the act of speaking and acting together in public about matters of concern to all. This tension between »public happiness«, which embodies the freedom to engage in politics, and »private happiness«, which concerns individual interests and property, continues to play out in conflicts in the USA about the purpose of government and the nature of democracy.
About the speaker
Karen Feldman is Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MA and a PhD in Philosophy from DePaul University. Feldman’s research lies at the intersection of philosophy and literary theory, reflecting a philosophical and literary-critical approach to classic texts of the German literary and philosophical canon, with a strong emphasis in Critical Theory. She is author of Arts of Connection: Poetry, History, Epochality (De Gruyter, 2019) and Binding Words: Conscience and Rhetoric in Hobbes, Hegel, and Heidegger (Northwestern, 2008), and co-editor of Freud and Monotheism: Moses and the Violent Origins of Religion (Fordham, 2018) and Continental Philosophy: An Anthology (Blackwell, 1998).
Über die Reihe
Im Jahr 2026 jährt sich die amerikanische Unabhängigkeitserklärung vom 4. Juli 1776 zum 250. Mal. Das John McCloy Transatlantic Forum am Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften nimmt dies zum Anlass, um sich – gerade auch vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen Entwicklungen in den USA – in einer interdisziplinären Vortragsreihe mit der Wirkungsgeschichte und Aktualität der »Declaration of Independence« zu befassen.
Die Reihe wird in Kooperation mit der Hessischen Landeszentrale für politische Bildung und der Stiftung Orte der deutschen Demokratiegeschichte veranstaltet.
Registration
Please register by November 17 via email:
anmeldung@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de.
You will receive a confirmation of registration.
