DOES THIS MEAN I HAVE TO ADD HANNAH ARENDT TO THE READING LIST??: From Oxblog: “The present is the position in which the individual uses the materials of the past to shape his own future. This is exactly what Arendt means to convey in the Preface to Between Past and Future when she uses the Kafka parable to talk about man as standing in a discontinuity, with an antagonist from behind (the past) pushing him forward and an antagonist in front (the future) blocking his way. For Heidegger, the way out was through anxiety — i.e., through a coming to terms with the groundlessness of human existence, and thereby becoming the creator of meaning for yourself (this is where the influence of Nietzsche is clearest in Heidegger’s Being and Time). But the Arendtian turn is this: we battle against the past through our faculty of forgiveness (which allows us to overcome the facticity of the past by freeing ourselves from its causal web), and we battle against the future through our faculty of making and keeping promises (which allows us to bring some certainty to the indeterminacy — Arendt’s discussion of promise-making and -keeping also owes a great deal to Nietzsche). That is, unlike Heidegger, for whom freedom in the present necessitates a withdrawal into the authentic self, for Arendt, freedom in the present (which is, of course, the only place freedom could be located) means interacting with others on a political level.”