Vol.13, No. 19, Oct 10, 1991

‘Heavenly Cities’, Daniel Aaron

Daniel Aaron reviews The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of the Cities by Richard Sennett. ‘She [Hannah Arendt] was oblivious, he thinks, to the weight of ‘social customs and circumstances’ and conflated sympathy and softness. In contrast, JB attained ‘natality’ (Arendt’s term for the ‘birth of the will to make oneself over again as an adult’) through the power of empathy. The Fire Next Time, according to Sennett, enacts a process in the course of which a black militant, without muting his rage, distances himself from it and merges almost imperceptibly with kindred ‘exiles’ and ‘foreigners’ …’