Harold Jantz Memorial Lecture welcomes Dr. Eric Santner ’77, Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies, University of Chicago.

Santner will address Hannah Arendt’s account of Rainer Maria Rilke's declaration, in the seventh of his Duino Elegies, about the disappearance of the outer world: “And the external / shrinks into less and less.” Santner will focus on Arendt’s essay on the Elegies, coauthored with Günther Stern, as well as on the final chapter of The Human Condition on the “Vita Activa and the Modern Age," in which Arendt engages deeply with Martin Heidegger’s writings on science and technology.