E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 5, 2020

“Attitude toward the Past” and its Role in the Succession andRenewal of “the World”:
The Temporality of Hannah Arendt’s Critique of Modern Education
Tomoki TANAKA
Rikkyo University
Abstract
Arendt suggests that the purpose of education is to renew “the world,” which is, otherwise, inevitably
ruined without the coming of the new and young. However, as she acutely points out, education today
faces a crisis. According to Arendt, this crisis takes place against the following backdrop: although
education cannot forgo either authority or tradition, it must proceed in a world that is neither structured
by authority nor held together by tradition. The question now arises, how can we deal with the past
without a tradition that is able to explain it? Arendt’s interpretation of Walter Benjamin in Men in Dark
Times may be helpful in answering this question―she regards Benjamin as a master who has
discovered new ways of dealing with the past. To borrow Arendt’s phrase, he did his thinking withouta banister. This article consists of three attempts; first, to examine the difficulty and possibility ofeducation she indicates in her educational criticism. As the second, to clarify the meaning of “anattitude toward the past” in terms of the unique tense at the base of her argument. As the third and last,
to present the significance in education, as well as in politics, of such attitude.
Keywords
Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Critique of Modern Education, Temporality

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1. Introduction
1.1. The purpose of this paper
Is it possible for past events and memories to be passed on? To begin with, what
would the workings of this succession of past events and memories be? Such questions
have been addressed in a variety of discussions, which are at the roots of our communal
activities. Take for instance questions of ethics in the sense of response and responsibility
to others or issues of politics pertaining to who the people to be remembered in various
cases are. These points of interest also appear in pedagogy. However, when discussed inrelation to education, there is one indispensable aspect—the matter of inheritance acrossgenerations. In the field of pedagogy, there has been much discussion about how much
attempts to pass on past events and memories relate to character building and community
formation, as well as what roles the teachers play in those efforts [Shirokane 2003,
Kodama 2001, Yano 2000]. These discussions have severely criticized “past events” (assubjects in modern education) for solely focusing on presenting a singular narrative that
supports the nation-state and suggested the need for reconstructing semantic spaces byretelling various narratives as well as the possibilities for this as an approach to education.
Nevertheless, contrary to the aforementioned theoretical attempts, there has also
been a growing movement that seeks a single “correct history”; this is an outcome of the
return of nationalism amidst globalization. This trend cannot be overlooked. Under thesecircumstances, it is important to address the questions on the state of education that
contributed to the unification of communities by converging past events into a single
narrative. In other words, more in-depth consideration is necessary for dealing withquestions regarding how education can enable the conveyance of past events andmemories without tying them together as a single story and whether we can ensure
cooperation across generations. Additionally, this examination needs to be based on athorough criticism of modern education, as modern education itself is inextricably linked
to the formation of the nation-state.
Regarding the matters mentioned, this paper will seek to make a consistent responseby beginning with Hannah Arendt’s (1906-1975) critique of modern education;
furthermore, it will seek to clarify how she believed succession and renewal of “the world”
could be achieved through the “attitude toward the past.” Arendt was a political thinker,
who also became widely known in pedagogy for her acute criticisms of modern
education based on her unique perspective. She centrally addressed these critiques in her

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work “The Crisis in Education” (first published in 1958) and expanded upon them in“Reflections on Little Rock” (first published in 1959), as she built upon criticisms of theUnited States' inclusive education policy. However, exploring the totality of her theory ofeducation or providing thoughts on specific educational phenomena based on it is beyond
the objectives of this paper. Rather, this article will focus on the issues suggested in
Arendt's critique of modern education, including those not explicitly discussed.
The detailed discussions presented in this paper show that education requires an“attitude toward the past” based on Arendt’s argument about education’s responsibility inaiding the succession and renewal of “the world.” However, regarding the meaning of
the term “attitude toward the past,” she provided no further explanation in her theory ofeducation. Still, her work does offer some clues, though fragmentary. For instance, “TheCrisis in Education” appears as an essay in the book Between Past and Future, where, inthe preface, Arendt emphasizes that the aim of each essay in the collection is “to gain
experience in how to think” [BPF: 14, emphasis from the original text] in the gap between
the past and the future.
From the above reference, we can see that how to handle the past is an underlying
theme in her theory of education. Even more precisely, at the root of Arendt's
contemplation, there is a concern as to the kind of attitude we are to take between the pastand the future, and it may be best to say that she derived her theory of education fromsuch concerns. This paper therefore begins with Arendt’s theory of education and also
extends some consideration to the multiple texts in which she moved beyond the theoryof education itself and addressed question regarding the “past.”
1.2. The Subjects in this Paper
Several research studies focusing on Arendt have been undertaken based on myriad
concerns involving pedagogy, and they offer a certain amount of theoretical accumulation
and active discussion of new reading possibilities. Among these prior research studies,some are deeply related to the subjects of this paper. We will point out discussions that
rely on Arendt’s theory of education while looking at the succession of “the world” andthe bridging of the gap between generations. Focusing on Arendt’s key concepts of“natality” and “the world,” the reconstruction of political semantic spaces througheducation and the reinterpretation of children as political actors are used to address theteacher's positionality within that context [Biesta 2013, Levinson 1997, Kodama 2013,
Tanaka 2016, Park 2006]. Such discussions are not necessarily monoliths under close
examination; many contain a number of important issues. Among at least a few, there is

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a shared perspective that Arendt’s theory of education is inextricably linked to herpolitical thought with relation to the concern of ensuring that “the world” is a stage forfree speech and activity. This paper also shares this perspective and focuses on the“attitude toward the past” as essential for the succession and renewal of “the world”, as
Arendt does.
However, previous studies have not addressed Arendt’s “attitude toward the past”
as a central subject. This is because her references to it have been extremely limited andfragmented. Meanwhile, H. Gordon presented one of the few studies that touch upon thispoint. Supporting Arendt’s strict delineation between the public and the educational
realms, he stated that teachers who aim to provide an education for promoting democracy
cannot create a public realm in the classroom but can encourage the thinking ofchildren[Gordon, H: 55]. In keeping with working toward encouraging children to think,
the importance of an "attitude toward the past" in education from Arendt’s theory is
acknowledged. Issues including how thinking and an “attitude toward the past” overlap
and how the encouragement of thinking contributes to the succession and renewal of “theworld” have not been discussed even in the writings of H. Gordon.
M. Gordon’s research also poses a similar problem. His essay evaluates theimportance Arendt placed on the “attitude toward the past” in education in the affirmative.
He extended Arendt’s views regarding “attitude toward the past” to the practice ofteaching classical works and discussed the significance of doing so. In contrast to theconservatives, represented by A. Bloom, who expected classical works to complement
traditional moral norms, Arendt’s theory of education focused on children’s “newness”
and highly valued “attitude toward the past” as an agent, specifically with regard to using
it to create new things[Gordon, M: 57]. However, some questions remain in the wake of
M. Gordon’s observations: whether Arendt’s suggestion of an “attitude toward the past”
should involve teaching classical works in the first place, and even if there is somethingthat can be transferred over, how learning from classical works can lead to the creation of
new things.
As has been mentioned, previous studies have shown that Arendt’s “attitude toward
the past” has certain pedagogical implications. Nevertheless, the fundamental question
regarding the “attitude toward the past” relates to the creation of new things, and as aresult, the succession and renewal of “the world” has remained unexplored. Additionally,
this issue is not limited to Arendt’s theory of education. How can we address the past in
a way that does not base itself on “tradition” or a single narrative? Arendt explores thisthrough her own experiences of thinking. Through her thinking experiences, Arendt
discovered the concepts of past, present, and future different from continuous time.
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Therefore, to interpret Arendt’s suggestion regarding an “attitude toward the past,” wemust begin by clarifying what kind of consciousness of time she is referencing as apremise for the “attitude toward the past.”
Considering the above, by the existing research, the implications of her “attitude
toward the past” being important in the educational effort for succession and renewal of“the world” have not been sufficiently covered. Therefore, this study attempted to clarify
the nature of the “attitude toward the past” that Arendt seeks in education by going backand examining the underlying temporality of her critique of modern education.
First, when we traverse Arendt’s critique of modern education, it is important torecognize why so much significance is accorded to the “attitude toward the past.” In thisstudy, the focus of this consideration will be her work “The Crisis in Education,” where
it is treated as a central topic.
Second, we will consider what the “attitude toward the past” as suggested by Arendt
is and try to clarify the matter of what sort of consciousness of time it is based upon. Here,we will consider Arendt’s interpretation of an approach to the past as suggested in thefables of W. Benjamin and F. Kafka.
Third, it is important to examine the “attitude toward the past” revealed by the
aforementioned sources for any political or pedagogical significance. This section will
reveal the “attitude toward the past” sought by Arendt as well as the possibilities it holdswith regard to facing the past—especially with regard to attempting to construct an
education for the succession and renewal of “the world.”

2. Arendt’s Critique of Modern Education
2.1. “Loss of Tradition” and the Education Crisis
Why did Arendt, who was renowned as a political thinker, discuss the subject ofeducation? Her reasoning can be inferred in various ways, but she offers at least two
specific points. First, she asserts that education is indispensable in bringing persistence to“the world.” As stated before, the concept of “the world” is central to Arendt's thinking
and forms a key concept. Although we will not discuss the concept of “the world” in too
much detail here, the central tenets are as follows. For Arendt, “the world” refers to thespace of free speech and action, or in her own vocabulary, “the public realm.” This space
is important because it is where each of us can appear individually as unique entities.
However, “the world” is lost if no people are present there through actions and speech.

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Arendt viewed education as a means of countering such a crisis and stated her views asfollows.
And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not
to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strikefrom their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseenby us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common
world.[BPF:193]
As clearly shown here, Arendt’s motive for discussing education is with regard to
the concern of supporting her whole ideology; in other words, it is rooted in what shecalls “love for the world.” To put it differently, Arendt’s interest in education stems fromthe roots of her thinking.
This interest alone does not make it clear why she came to discuss the “crisis” ofeducation. Arendt stuck her neck out as an amateur in the field, having almost no
knowledge from experts because such a “crisis situation” provided an opportunity toidentify the nature of the problems that become exposed [BPF: 171].
That being the case, what is this “crisis situation,” which is being described here?
Arendt locates it in the “loss of tradition” [BPF: 191]. According to Arendt, the educator
bears authority, and the bridge that can join the past and the future should rely on being
rooted in epic origins; in Western history, this principle is exemplified in the founding ofRome. However, with the advent of modernity, that tradition was lost. Arendt described
it as follows: “politically speaking, it was the decline and downfall of the nation state;socially, it was the transforma-tion of a class system into a mass society; and spiritually it
was the rise of nihilism” [MDT: 228].
This notion, which views tradition as an origin to return to, was thus lost. Until then,it had been the bridge between the past and the future in education. As a result, thefundamental mission of education—that is, aiding the succession and renewal of “theworld”—has become elusive. Arendt believed that this situation caused numerous
distortions in education. Now, “we have lost the thread (the Ariadne’s thread) whichsafely guided us through the vast realms of the past;” [BPF: 94, addition by the quoter] it
can no longer be relied upon, and now generations cannot be linked using the same origin.
This is how a crisis was already created in the establishment of modern education, andthe history of modern education became a history of responding to a crisis situation
because of the “loss of tradition.” Thus, the essay “The Crisis in Education” not only
points out that modern education has faced the crisis of losing tradition since its inception,
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but it also includes the criticism that the responses to that crisis had amplified it in a certain
direction.
2.2. Critique of Progressive Education
How has modern education handled the crisis of the “loss of tradition?” According
to Arendt’s insights, in place of the lost tradition, what supported education was anillusion arising from the pathos of the new [BPF: 174]. This illusion extends from theblind belief in the absolute newness of children and points to seeing this newness as anestablished fact. This originated in Rousseau's educational philosophy, which came underthe banner of progressive education and spread through educational circles. Arendt
criticized these educational movements because they regarded the newness of children
as an established fact and believed that, as long as “the world” were left to children, it
would progress and develop naturally; they abandoned education’s responsibility withregard to the succession and renewal of “the world.” Therefore, Arendt suggested thatchildren were not led to “the world” where they ought to be, and that the absolute newnessof each individual was being overlooked; simultaneously, they would only be driven
toward new things.
Let us now organize our thoughts based on the discussion in the previous section;
modern education responded to the crisis of the “loss of tradition” by avoiding—insteadof seeking—the “story origin” (tradition) of the shared principles that the community
relied on. The principles that one was to rely on were replaced by the “story of progress.”
In the past, the succession of “the world” over generations was fulfilled by a shared origin(tradition). Now, it is the narrative of progress that links generation to generation.
However, the “narrative of progress” is an illusion that does not tie to a real image, andpeople only share the spirit of seeking something newer. Therefore, in progressive
education, sharing “the world” is no longer the purpose. Through the loss of tradition,
education confronted difficulties regarding the succession and renewal of “the world,”
but modern education’s response to this challenge was to abandon the original purpose.
Arendt provided this harsh critique of modern education in a passage that closes the
essay “The Crisis in Education”: “Education is the point at which we decide whether welove the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it fromthat ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would
be inevitable” [BPF 193]. How can we take on the responsibility for the succession andrenewal of “the world” at such a fork in the road? Arendt does not explicitly explain how
this can be done. However, she seems to have left some indications of possibilities in the

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her statements.
Arendt pointed out that the loss of tradition was at the root of modern problems andelaborated this notion in the following way: “Thus the undeniable loss of tradition in themodern world does not at all entail a loss of the past”[BPF: 93]. Indeed, Arendt states thattradition was the thread that guided us through the realm of the past, but at the same time,“this thread was also the chain fettering each successive generation to a predetermined
aspect of the past”[BPF: 93-94]. Therefore, the loss of tradition also signifies liberation
because one is released from this “chain.” Thus, Arendt states that the loss of tradition
does not only cause negative consequences. The loss of tradition does not mean that “theworld” itself is incapable of being passed on; it shows that a singular narrative that can be
identified as “tradition” will not be inherited. As a result, we must ponder the question of
how we can share “the world” with people in a way that does not tie to the single narrativethat is tradition. When Arendt states that “learning inevitably turns toward the past, nomatter how much living will spend itself in the present” [BPF: 192], it is not representing
a kind of nostalgia—something she is often criticized for. Rather, instead of returning totradition, this means reconstructing “the world” in a way that does not destroy the pastand betting on education for the succession and renewal of “the world” across generations.

3. An “Attitude toward the Past” from Arendt
3.1. A New Way to Discuss the Past
As the previous section showed, the loss of “tradition” noted by Arendt may notnecessarily have only negative consequences. What is lost is simply the continuity of past
events. That being said, how should we handle the past? While this question is being
thrown at us, from the content of Between Past and Future, this is clearly an issue thatArendt herself pondered upon frequently.
It should be noted here that Arendt took important clues from W. Benjamin’s wayof thinking. She dedicated a chapter from Men in Dark Times to Benjamin’s theories andnoted that he became a master of handling the past via new methods [MDT: 193],
describing it more fully as follows. “Walter Benjamin knew that the break in tradition andthe loss of authority which occurred in his lifetime, were irreparable, and he concluded
that he had to discover new ways of dealing with the past” [MDT: 193]. This method of
Benjamin resulted in his manuscript Theses on the Philosophy of History, but oddly
enough, the draft was entrusted to Arendt, who rushed to get it published following his

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9death. From this, we can also see that they deeply shared circumstances, areas of concern
and interest, and thinking.1 Furthermore, the confluent relationship between the two was
not isolated with biographical truths2. This paper will not provide a detailed considerationof the ideological relationship between the two; however, as far as the “attitude toward
the past” is concerned, the following three points demonstrate their shared ideologicalaffinity in general terms.
First, Arendt and Benjamin shared an awareness regarding the times surrounding
the crisis. Second, during the crisis, they rejected leaning toward “progressivism” as well
as returning to tradition (in Benjamin’s terms, “historicism”), and thus shared the same
critical perspectives. Third, through these critiques, they shared in the ideologicalchallenge of trying to reframe how time itself is captured. Let us now look at Benjamin’s
theory, which is presented in Men in Dark Times.
Arendt likens Benjamin to a “Pearl Diver,” and discusses his “new ways of dealing
with the past” as follows. According to Arendt, Benjamin’s thinking is like that of “a pearl
diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it tolight but to pry loose the rich and the strange, the pearls and the coral in the depths and tocarry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the depths of the past” [MDT: 205206]. Here, the “pearl” is compared to a fragment of the past or a “thought fragment.”
Unshared fragments of the past are destined to decay on the seabed, but Benjamin reaches
for those fragments, uses thinking to snatch them from their fate of decay, and gathers
them up into stories that have not yet been told [MDT: 205-206]. When he does this, hemay take the fragment and “resuscitate it the way it was,” but not in order “to contributeto the renewal of extinct ages” [MDT: 205-206]. Rather, his objective is to use thesecrystallized fragments of the past to dismantle the constancy of the obvious story shared
as “history” until then. Only by breaking the chain of already-told events can fragmentsof the past of as yet untold stories be carried to the surface. Arendt points out that the“Theses on the Philosophy of History” represents Benjamin’s clearest statement
regarding his thinking in this way. In the ninth section of the “Theses on the Philosophyof History”, the “Angelus Novus,” while looking to face the past, does not perceive a“chain of events,” but “one single catastrophe.”
1Starting from 1934 or 1935, Benjamin and Arendt exchanged their thoughts each other and came to holddiscussions regularly after they defected to Paris [Bruehl: 122]. The days of their friendship coincided with the period
Benjamin wrote “Thesis on Philosophy of History”. The hand-written draft of it was entrusted to Arendt at their last
meeting with Benjamin in Marseilles. After she flew to the United States, seeking refuge, she made every effort topublish the manuscript left by the deceased [Bruehl: 166-168].
2[Kodama 2001] and [Morikawa 2010] indicate the influence of the thought of Benjamin on Arendt’s idea of“natality.”
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A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he isabout to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are
staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angelof history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events,
he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of
his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has
been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his
wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm
irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile ofdebris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.[Benjamin:249]
In this “Theses”, the attitude of the “Novus Angelus” toward the past is in
opposition to the two views of history Benjamin himself was critical of. In other words,
it goes against “historicism” and the progressive view of history. From the perspective of“historicism,” past events are understood as part of a continuity or constancy. Benjaminbelieved that this was the story of rulers, which was built up for forgetting losers and thedead. This “chain of events” does not reach the eyes of the “angelus” (angel). The “angel”
observes debris that piles up from the story of the ruler. However, there is a power greaterthan the “angel,” and that power is “progress,” which sweeps the angel into the future.
The storm of progress, while giving rise to successive sacrifices, propels the “angel” away
as the “pile of debris before him grows skyward.”
On reflection, for Benjamin, talking about the past, both in terms of “historicism”
and progressive history, refers to the history of those who are fated to be forgotten.
Additionally, what is told there cannot be recovered as a continuous history, and in thatsense, it must always be treated as being fragmentary. Nevertheless, in the daily
temporality of everyday life, these fragments may also be recovered as a singularnarrative of history that is connected as a “chain of events.” Therefore, when the past is
told as fragments, it is fundamentally thought to be a consciousness of time that differsfrom the continuous sequence of time. Based on these suggestions, Arendt moves torecapture temporality itself.
3.2. The Clash of TimeWith the past not in continuity, when a newness emerges from the disruption of

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11stories that have been told before, in what temporality can we find this newness? Here,
what Arendt puts forth for discussion is temporality experienced in thinking. This isbecause, according to her, handling fragments of the past as fragments originally is onlyin thought, and time experienced through the “thinking ego” differs entirely from thelinear time that we experience in daily life [LMT: 212].
According to Arendt, the time experienced in “thinking” is caught in the gap
between the past and the future. Seeking to express this temporality, Arendt cites a
passage from Franz Kafka’s collection of aphorisms titled “He.”He has two antagonist: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The
second blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports
him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same
way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him
antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really unguarded
moment―and this world require a night darker than any night has ever been
yet―he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his
experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fightwith each other.[BPF: 7]
Here, “he” stands between the two antagonists—who are no-longer of the past andnot-yet of the future—who crash onto the present “Now.” “His” battle, on the one hand,
involves “the fear of a future (whose only certainty is death), driving him backward
toward 'the quiet of the past' with nostalgia for and remembrance of the only reality hecan be sure of” [LMT: 205]. Nevertheless, “he” must withstand the force of the “past.”“This past, moreover, reaching all the way back into the origin takes him and “presses
forward” [BPF: 10]. The force of the “past” seeks to push him to origins as “not-yet”
things. If “he” remains thinking in the “now,” “he” must remain locked in the battle
between these two antagonists.
However, according to Arendt, this parable is not enough to fully understand thetemporality of thought. Here, the issue she raises is about “his” dream of jumping out of
the fighting line and taking the position of an “umpire.” “He” dreams that, by escaping
from the battle, “he” can observe the world and free himself from any interests in it or
any real engagement with it [LMT: 207]. However, if “he” were to jump out of this the“world,” the two antagonists would vanish at the same time, and only the circular
movements of the universe, an indifferent flow, would remain. This lacks a humanperspective and indicates that only the natural circulation will remain. Arendt points out
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that, despite this, “his” being trapped in a dream of escaping from the battle results from
Kafka himself adhering to the traditional image of linear time. “Obviously what is
missing in Kafka’s description of a thought-event is spatial dimension where thinking
could exert itself without being forced to jump out of human time altogether”[BPF: 11].
Thus, using this new perspective,
Arendt reconceptualizes this not as a clash
between the past and the future but in a waythat is similar to what physicists call a“parallelogram of forces.” In this image,“he” originates in the present, whileadvancing “his thoughts along a diagonalline composed of the force pushing into the
future and the force pushing back into thepast. This diagonal extends into infinity, but[LMT: 208]
the starting point is always the present.
Arendt declares that the good thing about this image is that “the region of thought would
no longer have to be situated beyond and above the world and human time” [LMT: 208].
Thinking here does not mean a complete departure from “the world.” “The fighter would
no longer have to jump out of the fighting line in order to find the quiet and the stillness
necessary for thinking” [LMT: 208]. This is rooted in “the world”; while going a distancefrom the association of system and meaning in “the world,” amidst the clash between thepast and the future, new events are always being discovered and thinking directed toward
this continues to be stimulated.
Here, let us organize Arendt’s newly shown sense of time. Regarding the time
continuity that extends from the past to the present and then to the future, she offers thecriticism that the unrecoverable fragments of the past from that cumulatively developed
story could be doomed to oblivion. Turning from this critique, she directs us toward a
way to think of time by using new methods to discuss the past. While doing this, a gap inthinking formed by the clash between the past and the future is discovered. Within thisconsciousness of time, neither the past nor the future is privileged, and while constantly
maintaining a distance from both, a position can be found that allows for events to beunderstood in myriad ways.
The consciousness of time this is now revealed was discovered embodied in thefoundation of Benjamin’s work on thinking. However, Arendt states that, at last, theexperience of time has ceased to be the exclusive property of those who have the special
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the thread of tradition finally broke, the gap between past and future ceased to be a
condition peculiar only to the activity of thought and restricted as an experience to those
few who made thinking their primary business,” and “it became a tangible reality andperplexity for all” [BPF: 14]. As has already been observed, the loss of tradition puts
educational efforts in a position where the past and the future collide. If so, the “attitude
toward the past” Arendt mentions in discussing her theory of education would be implied
to originate from first assuming a consciousness of time built from a clash between pastand future.

4. An “Attitude toward the Past” from Arendt
4.1. The Politics of the “Attitude toward the Past”
The preceding section showed that Arendt conceived a new way of thinking about
the past based on Benjamin’s thoughts. When past events are related, they are always
expressed as a singular narratives with a beginning and an end. They are spoken of as achain of events that can be incorporated into a single time continuity. Therefore, in the
background of a story that has already been told, countless past events remain
unincorporated into the chain that remains. These unspoken fragments of the past are
exposed to being forgotten. The “attitude toward the past” that Arendt found from
Benjamin is directed toward saving these yet unrevealed events from being forgotten.
Let us return to the questions posed by this paper. To begin with, Arendt’s search
for new ways to face the past with the loss of tradition came from an interest in protecting“the world” that is the stage of politics. Taking this context into account, we must
determine how the “attitude toward the past,” which was clarified in this paper’s
examination, is aligned with Arendt’s interest.
Arendt concludes The Life of the Mind “Part 1: Thinking” referring to historian andsays that they are those who inquire and make judgments about the past. However, shealso states that “History” is a pseudo-divinity of the modern age. That is to say that in themodern age, “History” itself acts as the ultimate judge, and by forgetting events thatcannot be restored to its intended chain of events, it raises itself to the position of theultimate. In this, “History” functions as a mechanism to make the existing politicalframework absolute. By criticizing the “History” of the modern age in this way, Arendt
insists that the ability to relate history should be reclaimed by people[LMT: 216].
Based on the considerations raised by this paper, what this “ability to relate history”

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refers to seems to overlap with the new way Arendt seeks to talk about the past. In thewake of the loss of tradition, Arendt does not seek the pseudo-divinity “History” of themodern age. This is because “History” tries to replace “tradition” by removing events andactions that do not contribute to the process, and because it is a thing that excludes
different people, it is something that renders the succession and renewal of “the world”
inert. To resist this “History,” this lie must be exposed; in other words, it is necessary tosave the as yet untold events and otherwise possible stories. In this context, the “attitude
toward the past” has a very political meaning. Arendt concludes The Life of the Mind
“Part 1: Thinking” by quoting the following phrase from Cato, as a basis forunderstanding. “The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one pleases Cato”[LMT: 216]3.
As mentioned above, “attitude toward the past” is particularly political in resisting
the “correct history” that supports the existing political system by saving events that have
not yet been told. Finally, based on the politics of this “attitude toward the past,” we must
consider what is the suggested form education itself should take, considering Arendt’s
request for an “attitude toward the past” in education.
4.2. The Topos for Those Who Are Coming
Arendt’s critique of modern education revealed that it had lost the absolute story of“tradition” in its formation, but the “story of progress” became an alternate story; however,this could not fulfill the responsibility toward succession and renewal of “the world.”
Although, this is not to say that “the world” cannot be inherited. The “attitude
toward the past” explored by Arendt is indeed an attempt to seek out a method of
succession and renewal of “the world.” She showed that, by seeking yet unshared past
events, the existing chain of events could be questioned, and therein lies a new story that
could be brought out. As examined in this article, the relationship between past and future
cannot be captured either as a straight line moving toward the future or as a circle
representing the origin of traditions. The past and the future are in a relationship where
they clash at a gap. This gap between the past and the future is the topos of education.
This being the case, education is not aimed at closing this “gap” with a convenient story;
rather it aims to discover fragments of the past in this rift and think about its various
possibilities of new stories.

3

Although Arendt wrote this sentence was the word by Cato the Elder in her book, Cato referred in the phrase
means, in fact, Cato the Younger the great-grandson of Cato the Elder [Komori: 141].
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5. Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to explore H. Arendt’s critique of modern education
while clarifying how she perceived an “attitude toward the past” aimed at the succession
and renewal of “the world” that could stretch over generations. Through this, it was
confirmed that Arendt’s criticisms concerning contemporary education were based on her
own theory of time, and the succession and renewal of “the world” were not to beachieved in a continuous sense of time. Furthermore, the mission of education, that is the
succession and renewal of “the world,” was shown to be fulfilled in the gap between pastand future. From this, it became clear that the “attitude toward the past” could beunderstood as an attempt to explore and think about past events not yet spoken.
However, a new issue emerged in the course of this analysis. While this paper
revealed the feature of the “attitude toward the past” and its significance, it did notconsider the possibilities of discovering past events that have not yet given a story.
Dealing with this matter will necessarily involve examining the issues surrounded bymedia in education. In particular, given Arendt’s discussions surrounding world
alienation and in light of it being pointed out that artifacts that leave a trace of people’s
activities lose durability, these issues should be discussed within the framework of her
theory of world alienation and theory of education.

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LMT: The Life of the Mind, Harcourt, 1978.
MDT: Men in Dark Times , Harcourt Brace & Company,1968.
RL: “Reflections on Little Rock”, Dissent, Vol.16, No.1, 1959.
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This work was supported by KAKENHI JP17K13976.

The 5th Research Promotion Award Article (2019)