Product Description
Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology of her writings. This volume includes selections from her major works, including The Origins of Totalitarianism, Between Past and Future, Men in Dark Times, The Jew as Pariah, and The Human Condition, as well as many shorter writings and letters. Sections include extracts from her work on fascism, Marxism, and totalitarianism; her treatment of work and labor; her writings on politics and ethics; and a section on truth and the role of the intellectual.

Edited by Peter Baehr.Amazon.com Review
Peter Baehr's anthology is a gem made up of 33 selections supplemented by his highly competent introduction, a chronology covering the major events in Hannah Arendt's life, and a basic bibliography. Arendt's erudition and incisive brilliance are well represented throughout. Passages include lengthy excerpts from her major books (The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, On Revolution, and Eichmann in Jerusalem), shorter excerpts from Rahel Varnhagen and The Life of the Mind, eight essays (four from Between Past and Future, one from Men in Dark Times, and two not previously available in book form), a University of Chicago lecture, her famous television interview with Guenter Gaus, four letters (two to Karl Jaspers, others to Mary McCarthy and Gershom Scholem), and a brief journal entry (on Heidegger "the fox"). Ever sensitive to the limitations of anthologies, particularly for the work of thinkers like Arendt, Baehr has managed to effectively convey the feel of Arendt's conscientious yet combative thinking through his selections and arrangements.

Arendt burst upon the world literary stage in 1951 with The Origins of Totalitarianism and a Saturday Review cover photo. She understood totalitarianism as an unprecedented phenomenon, identifying several elements that fused into it and analyzing totalitarian movements and rule. The success of Origins led to prestigious lectureships and 25 years of fiercely independent writing and teaching. She proved knowledgeable about philosophy as well as history and politics, fluent not only in English and German (her beloved "mother tongue") but also in French, Greek, and Latin. This precocious German Jewess had devoted her college years to studying philosophy, theology, and Greek (with Heidegger, Jaspers, Husserl, and Bultmann!), but the Nazi rise to power compelled Arendt to focus on politics, especially the Jewish question. From the '50s until her death in 1975, Arendt developed and publicly defended controversial views, including her report on the Eichmann trial and her coinage "the banality of evil"; her opposition to integrationist busing and to affirmative action hiring in universities; and her version of (classical) republicanism, rooted in her radical understandings of human action and the dignity of politics. All these views and more find expression in this collection. Of late, Arendt's fame has been rekindled by revelations of her love affair with Heidegger. Now, as we approach her birth centenary (2006), this Portable provides newcomers and faithful admirers alike a marvelous package of Arendt's writings. --Richard Kenney ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An excellent resource for both old and new readers of Arendt
While this volume intends to introduce Arendt to new readers, those familiar with her writings will find some choice morsels scattered among the excerpts from her better-known works. Of these, I particularly enjoyed her analysis of enforced segregation, her starling letter to Gershom Scholem (in which she responds to his criticisms of EICHMAN IN JERUSALEM), and her conception of a wartime (World War Two, that is) Jewish army. After reading these and other pieces, you will, I think, understand why so many hail her as a truly monumental figure. Simply put, this thinker is impossible to pigeonhole: a scholar who was at home in journalism, a critic of totalitarianism who was no leftist, a supporter of Israel who did not hesitate to address its flaws, a political philosopher who balked at that label.

great starting place to read one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century!
i like most of the penguin classics.this book, which includes a sample of her letters, books, articles, and speeches, is very thoughtful.the introduction was, as the previous reviewer suggested, scholarly, respectful yet, at times, engaging.she is, indeed, a political - historian - philosopher, regardless of her own denials.astute observations at times, among the very finest i've ever read.but, then, there are other times in which she just seems to gloss over the premise, analyze the process, and reach fallacious conclusions because, perhaps, the premise never even occurred to her?i don't know.it's not consistent with the rest of her brilliant work.she seemed to start out in germany very strong willed but her tenacity seemed to peter out over the decades.maybe we're all like that, huh?i've never found any of her writings for which i would proffer anyting other than an A+.this work comes highly recommended for anyone with an interest in philosophy, political theory, history, jewish studies.

Superb introduction to a great mind.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.She was equally at home in philosophy, political theory, and history, and blended all three disciplines in her pursuit of integrity in political thought and action.This fine book is perhaps the single best place to begin to get to know her thought and work.The introduction is first-rate -- clear, accessible, yet intellectually rigorous, respectful of Arendt while critical.The choices of readings -- both complete and self-contained essays and extracts from larger books such as ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM, and ON REVOLUTION -- are excellent.The annotations don't get in the way and are of much aid to the reader.The bibliography of works by and about Arendt is excellent.All in all, this is a superb addition to the VIKING PORTABLE series. ... Read more

Product Description
Generally regarded as the definitive work on totalitarianism, this book is an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political movements. Arendt was one of the first to recognize that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were two sides of the same coin rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. "With the Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt emerges as the most original and profound-therefore the most valuable-political theoretician of our times" (New Leader). Index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Do not buy the general books edition!!
I spoke with an Amazon representative today by phone, but I would like to reiterate my issues with this product.Even though I had marked the first few pages, the representative assured me I would receive a full refund. While the refund is important to me, I would urge Amazon.com to discontinue selling this book, or others from this publisher or seller.
I purchased this book about a month ago, intending to use it for one of my classes. I just began reading it, had marked a few pages, and ignored my previous concern with its quality.After much frustration I discontinued using it due to its many errors in transcription.The book does not have a copyright, states that the publisher cannot be held responsible for its numerous errors on the "publication" page, many words are misspelled beyond recognition, and there is incomprehensible digital typeface in the middle of many pages, among numerous other issues with it.
Amazon needs to stop selling this product to its customers.I have bought numerous books and other goods from your website and have had no quality issues with them, until this purchase.I have since purchased a copy of the work from a legitimate publisher in place of this false copy.I would not have written if I were not legitimately concerned with this book. I am not even sure this "publisher" has a right to be printing this book, or others.I urge you to address this issue with whomever can best handle the situation, and if you can, to flip through this product to any page, and you will see the obvious issues with it.
It is unfortunate that I did not open this book sooner, and that I marked a few pages in an attempt to decipher it. I have no issues with Amazon.com and I plan to continue to make purchases on the site.I just hope nobody else has to deal with this publisher's quality control problems in the future.

horrible copy of a wonderful book
This is a digital scan of Arendt's classic work using OCR technology.The text is jumbled and riddled with mistakes.The notes are interspersed with the text with no clear differentiation between the two.Chapters begin and end mid sentence.As a result, a difficult book is made nearly unreadable.I strongly suggest reading this book, but steer clear of the General Books edition.

Avoid www.general-books.net--terrible copy
I ordered two copies of Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, as part of a reading study project. The book that arrived was published "on demand." I support that idea. But the copy received was utterly worthless. To save costs, I suppose, the book was repaginated. Since this book has footnotes, which were meant to be at the bottom of pages, the results in the scanned text were footnotes breaking up the text, with no way of easily distinguishing between footnotes and text. The lines themselves were not just subject to occasional typos, but at times wholly, completely, utterly unreadable. For example, I came across this line at random when I was deciding whether or not to try to use this book or return it, from page 348: "The following analysis follows closely Georg Simmel's "Sociology of Secrecy and? ona' KTr" ' u Z"' '"' " J" - l of Sociology, Vol. XI, No.4, January, r? nsix "hl", ut a'.... You get the idea. On the copyright page, they engage in special pleading, admitting that their books may have typos and missing text, but it's more important to provide the book for a low price than not at all. But this book cost 32 dollars! That's not *that* cheap. And any book with footnotes read with optical scanning would be made unreadable by reshuffling the pages the way they did, regardless of typographic errors. It is a matter of basic common sense that this would be an issue, but no common sense was applied to that issue. The result is a book that is so difficult to read that it is, in effect, not making Arendt's book available at all. At five cents a page, it would have cost me about 38 dollars to photocopy the original book from a library. The result would have been unbound, but at least readable. Instead, I purchased not just the illusion of a book, but an insult of a book--and the only reason that I am not out five times this cost is because three of our group elected to obtain the book from their local library.

Until this publisher takes responsibility for providing books that are at least minimally evaluated for their utility, and thus minimally functional as a book, avoid them for any book with footnotes, and use them with caution for any other kind of book.

good
this book is something all students of power and social control should read.not just jews.arendt is no ellie wiesel, thankfully.

Totalitarianism, Loneliness and Modernity

Today in the United States, the political ideologies of Fascism and communism are conceptualized as antipodal extremes on the classic American right to left political continuum. Stemming from Cold War understandings of the primacy of economic modes of production in defining the political character of a nation-state, Fascist Nazi Germany is deemed a part of the far right from its reliance on the private sector for economic production, while the Soviet Union bookends the far left because of their utilization of a centralized, state controlled economy.Philosopher Hannah Arendt however, argues that Fascism and Stalinist communism are not political antitheses, but are actually two sides to the same coin of a new overarching socio-political development unique to the modern age; totalitarianism.In The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt methodologically deconstructs the historical processes and ideologies which eventually crystallized into the totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler in the interwar period of the twentieth century.Through this process, Arendt pinpoints why seemingly rational human beings were inclined to adhere to irrational ideologies of totalitarian movements to a unique condition inherent in modern societies, the proliferation of loneliness. For loneliness, "the experience of not belonging to the world at all... is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man" (475).The success of totalitarian movements then, depends on their ability to exploit the loneliness and desperation fostering in the modern individual through the destruction of preexisting institutions and ideologies.
Like Foucault, Heidegger, and other existential thinkers, Arendt maintains that individuals are born into the world tabula rasa, without inherent beliefs or rights.Drawing from the ideas of Conservative thinker Edwin Burke, Arendt argues human rights and freedoms "acquire their meaning and function organically only when the citizens belong to and are represented by groups or form a social and political hierarchy" (312).Ideas and concepts without powerful social institutions to insure their validity then, are merely nonbinding words on a page or fancies of the imagination.Historic social institutions, formulated by the sacrifices and relationships made by preceding generations play a vital role for Arendt in giving meaning to the lives of human beings.In the early twentieth century however, many traditional cultural institutions and ideas in European society such as class, political parties, and positivist philosophy began to degenerate as Europeans became increasingly disillusioned with their "unauthentic" lives.This disillusionment with the modern world provided the fertile soil for the seeds of totalitarianism to grow, as twentieth century Europeans became "people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer resist" (474).It is in this loneliness and disillusionment which the radical promises and worldview of totalitarian movements gain power, as human beings no longer possessed traditional social relationships and institutions which maintained a notion of common sense.Without common sense, Europeans willingly listened to the radical myths of hate and progress spewed by totalitarian apologists to give meaning in their lives.
Arendt's use of evidence in her monograph is spectacular in its scope, pulling directly from the writings and speeches of Goebbels, Himmler and Hitler, whom frankly promoted their discourses of hate, thus expanding their reach, power and validity.The one shortfall of Arendt's masterpiece is her uneven emphasis on Nazism viz. Stalinism.Yet, even this discrepancy is excusable, as Soviet records remained classified until the demise of the Soviet Union in the final decade of the twentieth century.
... Read more

Product Description
Hannah Arendt’s authoritative report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann includes further factual material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

"Moral collapse of respectable European society"--Courageous book!
I understand the controversies this book must have caused to the sensitivity of the sufferings of the Jews, but I can't help but being amazed by the courage of the author and her indefatigable power of analytical intellect.My understanding is that no matter how sensitive the issue was, the author had to bring out what could be one of the most unfavorable aspects of the trial on this individual, which is the political manipulation by the Ben Gurion government used to justify the state of Israel. Perhaps by vilifying and punishing one individual, the world may lose the perspectives of the moral collapse of the entire European society, and the implication that no one is exempt from the potential of evil, either by active participation or passive condonation/compromise, or simple indifference.She is sharp in her criticism of discrepancies and hypocrisies in the laws, trials, and media coverage.Although she does not present any solutions or potential alternatives, her perspectives are broad, and very very insightful, particularly in retropect of the last 50 years since the report--Genocides in Africa, oppression of women in Muslim countries and what has been going on in Israel occupied Palestine, and lack of united mechanism to handle these crimes in the international politics.

A selection for TheGreat Books Foundation.
The book is beautifully written!It made for a lively discussion.The subject I would not have chosen on my own, but
found it to be one I thought aboutfor awhileafter reading it.Penguin is a publisher I choose to read frequently.

"Some of my best friends are anti-Semites"
I apologise for the flippant tone of my title, but this phrase of Arendt's seems to sum up the entire, absurd and sickening conundrum presented by Eichmann. Arendt is not, by and large, a humorous or entertaining writer, but she is a clear and thoughtful one, and such flippancy is not the norm. What she seems to have established, and the paradox is so absurd as to defy belief, is that Eichmann, a senior figure in the realisation of the Final Solution, was not an anti-Semite at all but a "Mitläufer". He accepted his association with anti-Semites in the tone indicated, but seemed not to think much of them and to have some respect for Jews. The image that emerges appears to be not that of a pack of ringleaders but that of a herd of murderous but rather dim sheep, where even the shepherd bleats and runs off the cliff.

This starts as an absurdity when you first encounter it, and then as you proceed through the book the sheer terror of the possibility that it is true soaks into your bones. The possibility must occur to the sceptical reader that Eichmann was merely trying to present a positive face to the court that was sure to hang him. Eichmann, frankly, doesn't sound that bright. In fact, he sounds like a fool. Arendt asserts, and I think convinces, that Eichmann simply lacks the intellectual gifts to dissemble effectively. When he is not remembering something that impinges on his own career advancement - apparently his central obsession - his memory appears to be confused and his errors not consistently tending to his own exoneration.

I accept Arendt's account, partly because she is so convincing a thinker but partly because it tends to resolve a paradox that I have been dealing with for years - that the most advanced civilisation in Europe could have bent its hand to the Shoah and annihilated one of its own most advanced and civilised minorities. Eichmann was not a monster, so a nation of monsters is apparently not necessary. Eichmann was normal, "Or at least, more normal than I am after examining him," according to one psychologist. He seems to have been a good boss, and kind to his subordinates. He loved his family. He had enough self-knowledge to doubt his own role and accept his own arrest and execution, going to the gallows with dignity. His moral responses to the violence of the Holocaust started off normal - and remained that way for about six weeks.

After that - and here's the resolution - the normal became inverted. Proper organisation of death transports, the observance of orders and the tidy identification and packaging of Jews became the "good" thing to do, and in the atmosphere of a totalitarian state and the conformance of all around one I am not sure that many of us would do otherwise. Hence my terror. Being a good guy is no defense. The banal become evil when the law itself is morally "illegal"; even the good become evil. This could happen anywhere, at any time. Staggeringly, the urge to conform and be a "good German" even seems to have extended to prominent Jews, who played a role in the "Judenräte" which facilitated the orderly deportation and murder of their fellows. This observation, however - and again I accept Arendt's case - seems to have got her into hot water with US Jews, who largely responded with a storm of vitriol and in effect excommunicated her. I hope that this generation sees her and this book more kindly, because I think she is correct and this book is important.

A few other oddities evaporate when one sees things Arendt's way, such as that the methodology of the Final Solution was designed to reduce distress for its perpetrators and that even the victims quietly cooperated.

Arendt deals with the character of Eichmann, the nature of evil, the paradox of the cooperation of Germans and (German) Jews alike, the possible irregularities of the trial - Eichmann broke no law that existed in his nation at the time, had been kidnapped and could legitimately have been demanded by German courts, which have according to Arendt been depressingly "understanding" when dealing with Holocaust figures - and the course of the Shoah in Germany and outside. Her account of the course of the Holocaust elsewhere throws a more positive light on parts of Europe than I have tended to see in the past. There is real hope in her accounts of Bulgaria, Italy, Holland and especially Denmark, where even German officers exposed to moral normality began to sabotage orders and most of the Jews made it to Sweden alive. On the other hand, there is that depressing banality of evil and a clear signature of European, Christian anti-Semitism which confirms my impression that Nazism merely extended and exploited a traditional Christian agenda, changing it from theological to racial. In Romania, spontaneous pogroms of such brutality took place that - further absurdity on the way - the SS intervened to save Jews from butchery. (Gassing being presumably more humane. How can one read this and remain normal?)

Another conundrum that arises is how to deal with a genocidaire who is only giving orders. Eichmann basically just transported people. His hand was on no trigger. In fact, quite often the disposal procedure was run by the very victims themselves, so the only hands on triggers were those of the dead. Who, in such a case, do you prosecute? (My answer to this is deplorably anti-intellectual - "Eichmann". The Israelis and more widely the the Nürnberg trials arrived at the correct and the only conceivable resolution.)

Another reason for controversy over this book may be that Arendt undermined Ben-Gurion's narrative of the Shoah as merely the culmination of millennia of anti-Semitism predating Christianity itself. If it did, I am not sure that I agree; anti-Semitism was quite definitely behind the Shoah. It could hardly be otherwise. What Arendt establishes is that it did not suffice, and that its absence was no defense.

A generation and more has passed since this book's publication. I hope that it will now be viewed more coolly and more positively, as it is a work of unique historical and philosophical value. Tens of thousands of pages of transcripts from the trial are held in Israeli national archives, providing a record of this rare captive specimen of a genocidaire, but Arendt's is a unique intellectual voice, speaking in the accent of a German Jew but not bending to the nationalist narrative of the Israel of her day. She speaks coolly, and I think correctly.

The evil are not remarkable. The evil are you and I in another place and time.

Worth Reading Twice
I am a bit surprised that this book was so controversial when it was first published. Most of her observations--unique in 1963--are common knowledge today. Arendt analyzes and discusses Eichmann from her perch in the audience during his Israeli trial which occurred after the Mossad's glorious black ops abduction. Eichmann proved to be much more a mailman personality wise than Fuehrer. As a mind he was a disappointment to those who believed that a malevolent virtuoso lurked behind his acts. While he was a true believer, he was not able to justify his crimes to even himself on the stand. My favorite quote from the text is "Despite all the efforts of the prosecution everybody could see that this man was not a `monster,' but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown." As a native German speaker Arendt's perspective was invaluable as she recorded his daily wrestling with language which was both pitiable and humorous. Eichmann would have been a nothing had it not been for Nazism and he ended his life with the ignominy he deserved.

landmark book in 20th century
This book should be required reading for everyone concerned with the state of the modern soul. I agree with the reviewer who countermands the relativist notion that we are all potential Eichmann's.In fact, Arendt is one of the most forceful advocates for the call to moral responsibility that is our one effective resistance to tyranny and genocide. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (17)

Neither Marx nor Rand...............
............ever came close to explaining the workings of man as a political and social animal nearly as well as HA. Since her speculations are grounded in a metaphysics of reality her psychology is sound and policy makers of the right and left both would do well to look at her model before pursuing their dreams of "perfect" worlds.

Debunking Hannah Arendt on Science
The last chapter of the first ed of "The Human Condition" is a thinly-veiled Heideggerian attack on science including capitalized "Being" and one falsehood or false dichotomy or simple fallacy after another.Some of the nonsense is hard to track since the Rockefeller Fnd. did not require the publication to have a bibliography or an adequate index.In the 1st Ed there is no footnote to Heidegger - but his views on "handling" and "instruments" and "disclosure" and "world" are everywhere.

The worst is her grasp of science: she appears not to have read some of the books she quotes (her letters to Heidegger reveal that she only read Merleau-Ponty in 1972; Jaspers reveals in more than one place that he was in the habit of speed reading.)

In 1957 for view of "geophysics" is seriously out of date.
In 1957 she still fails to grasp that neither the STR nor the GTR entail moral relativism ( the the theories might have been called the theories of Invariance ).

She fails to distinguish evolution of the earth from evolution of nature (?) from evolution of man and lumps all 3 in the same sentence into the same glib pronouncement.This book remains popular with closet-Christian philosophers and closet-Heideggerians as well as openly Christian and Heideggerian philosophers.

See Hilary Putnam debunking Gruenbaum; see John Earman on determinism
Note the "index" has no entry for "cause", "causal" or "causality" but discusses ends, entelechy and related.
Note the index has no entry for ideas or Eidos or related all they are there.

Is the index adequate in the 2nd Ed?Does the 2nd Ed. have a biography?Why buy such a book new?

Saddest his her ignorance of the work of Emmy Noether on groups and symmetries - and almost as sad her ignorance of the work of female mathematicians such as Kovalevsky.

Arendt appears not to have understood that two bodies are said to rotate about their common center of mass; Arendt appears not to have understood the difference between velocity and acceleration even prior to Einstein; she shows a failure to understand the difference between Mach and three other viewpoints: non-geocentric, Archimedean and "fixed point".At various points it is clear that she means fixed point and at others Mach's no-privileged point.

Her view of Descartes is grossly biased (it is the Heideggerian view).

Her view of experimental physics is a mix of operationalism and instrumentalism.

She fails repeatedly to distinguish mathematical physics from experimental physics; there is no mention of Gamow and Hoyle or Hubble: she stops at Eddington.

She wisely ignores the issue of the orbit of Mercury.

She focuses on the telescope but then shows that she is utterly ignorant of the issues faced by the "makers" of telescopes about whom she glibly babbles.

She repeats Heidegger's view that no one now understands electromagnetic radiation without commenting on what Maxwell achieved in elegance and simplification ( see Heidegger's television broadcast.)

She fails to understand what Einstein received his Nobel proze for in here silly remarks about matter and energy.

Her remarks about radiation make it claear that she was unaware of what Madame Curie had done - the actions - in a book about makers, doers and vita activa (see Peirre and Marie work with Pitchblende).

She appears not to realize that uranium occurs naturally.

She confuses in vitro fertilization with eugenics.

She shows no understanding of what differential geometry had achieved.

She is wrong about Galileo's own views (she repeats views of Heidegger and Husserl.)

Is the 2nd Edition in improved in anyway?

As someone devoted to phenomenology, poetry and astronomy I can only say that her book is appalling as scholarship.Much of her assertions are mere journalism expressing "fears" and "worries" about the "modern".

I have some work on phenomenology and astronomy started at [...] and on annotating Heidegger texts at [...]

Some annotated texts are now appearing at [...]

Odd note: the 1st Ed had no credit for the cover image

What it is that We are Doing
Arendt begins her opus magnum with a proposal: she states that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 (similar to Vaclav Havel's proposal of the moon landing) has hearkened in a new age of humanity. Following this proposal is one of the most mysterious but rewarding books of the 20th century, in my humble opinion.
I first encountered "The Human Condition" in an undergraduate class regarding the post-modern community. To this day, I still have not completely digested this work. Her objective, in her own words, is to determine "... what it is that we are doing", and her choice of a goal is challenging considering what is to follow. Situating herself between a Greek model of society and a Marxist interpretation of labor, Arendt calls into question our ideas of progress, technology, and even forgiveness, and aims a withering critique at the subjective personality of the post-modern world.
I won't go into a broad summary of her points to convince you to read it, but instead implore the reader of this review to see for themselves what Arendt is doing. Some will give up on this book after a few pages, calling it semantical nonsense. Yet for those who forge a path through Arendt's intelligent interpretation of history will come out on the other side with a new appreciation for the way in which they live their lives, participate in this thing we call "work", and interact with the human community. I can't stress enough how much this book means to me.

The Color Purple
To judge this book by it's cover, I would say that it's red violet. I hope the content covers the spectrum of the human condition. Enjoy your lunch.

Unbelievably verbose and difficult to read
I should forewarn those who are about to the buy this book that you ought to first be well read in ancient Greek Culture: philosophy, political city-state as well as Greek mythology.Arendt uses a lot of Greek terminology which can make it incredibly difficult for the average Liberal Arts student or international student, for that matter, who are unfamiliar with these these terms.

No doubt the concepts she spoke of in the mid-50s are more than applicable to todays society.She was clearly a woman ahead of her time, but much too brainyfor her own good.Chapter 2 on the "Public and Private Realm" is a 50+ page drag, emphasis on the word DRAG.I'm barely scraping through this chapter.

Had Arendt chosen to write in a taut, less opulent but fluid fashion, she could have easily connected to average readers and would have been an instant bestseller.If she did in fact become one...then more power to her.

Two cents worth from a frustrated liberal arts student. ... Read more

Product Description
Tracing the gradual evolution of revolutions since the American and French examples, Arendt predicts the changing relationship between war and revolution and the crucial role such combustive movements will play in the future of international relations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Dense but well worth the effort
On Revolution is a philosphical examination of revolution which focuses on the U.S. and French revolutions of the 18th century as the model.What surprised me in this work was just how little Arendt focused on the U.S. revolution, and her conclusion that the U.S. example was not a pure example of a revolution as the French version.As it stood I understand her reasoning but I was still somewhat taken aback.Her examination of the currents that propelled both events forward was enlightening, and showed the stark contrasts between the two events.It was a fascinating exploration to see the areas of similarities along with the aspects of difference, and the author's ability to set forth the social aspects which were the main departures for both revolutions really went a long way in furthering my understanding of both events.

This book is a vital piece to understanding these revolutions.This philospohical examination has greatly enriched my understanding of these historical events along with giving me a greater appreciation for the differences between actual revolutions and rebellions and other revolts.The author's discussion and distinguishing between power, authority and violence gives the reader a greater understanding of the relationship between these three, and shows how each relate to the political sphere.

This author's erudition is invaluable, and her take on these phenomena will further anyones understanding of revolutions.Of course the reader should be prepared for a dense work that requires some base knowledge from the reader.The book is not a lazy weekend read, but is instead a work that requires full attention.This book will reward those who do put forth the effort though.It is an amazing book that should be read.

_
This Arendt's classical work speaks for itself. It's a fundamental book for any studious of the processes linked to any structural rupture on the basis of organized societies.

On "On Revolution"
On Revolution by Hannah Arendt is a philosophical study of the nature of revolutions, mainly focusing on the French and American revolutions.A big portion of her analysis involves the "Social Question" involved in revolutions.How do revolutions start?Even though her writing style can be convoluted and overly verbose at times, eventually the reader will acclimate to her not so accessible prose.This is not a light read.If you want a book to stimulate internal dialogue, however, this is the book to buy.

Brilliant
This book is yet another deep, original and controversial contribution of Hannah Arendtto twentieth century political theory. In this book, Arendt analyzes the phenomenon of revolution by focusing almost exclusively on thegreat XVIIIth century revolutions, the American and the French. Arendt'sdeep insights allow her to compare, both on a theoretical and a practicallevel, the similarities and differences between the two and on how and whythe American Revolution allowed the foundation of freedom while the Frenchfailed miserably in this attempt almost from the beginning. The greatthemes in this book are the social question (necessity) in its relation topolitics (the realm of freedom) and the ever-present distinction betweenliberation and freedom properly speaking. Thus, constitutions and theirsignificance, the problem of secular law in relation to its need for anAbsolute with which to provide a foundation for it, the problem ofhypocrisy and Robespierre's Terror, and insightful interpretations of someof the Founding Fathers' political thought (though in my opinion a bit toofar reaching in her inferences thereof), are all issues with which shedeals with in this book and which are rounded up in a great closingchapter. Deep, powerful, perceptive, intense: like most of Arendt'swritings, a must read for anyone interested in political thought andtheory. ... Read more

Product Description
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) first argued that there were continuities between the age of European imperialism and the age of fascism in Europe in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). She claimed that theories of race, notions of racial and cultural superiority, and the right of superior races to expand territorially were themes that connected the white settler colonies, the other imperial possessions, and the fascist ideologies of post-Great War Europe. These claims have rarely been taken up by historians. Only in recent years has the work of scholars such as Jürgen Zimmerer and A. Dirk Moses begun to show in some detail that Arendt was correct.

This collection does not seek merely to expound Arendt s opinions on these subjects; rather, it seeks to use her insights as the jumping-off point for further investigations including ones critical of Arendt into the ways in which race, imperialism, slavery and genocide are linked, and the ways in which these terms have affected the United States, Europe, and the colonised world. ... Read more

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The author?s final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man?s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging. Edited by Mary McCarthy; Indices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A refuge of delight for the thoughtful reader
I came to this book still quite skeptical of Arendt's writing style and intellectual caliber; several years earlier I had attempted to read her book 'The Human Condition' and it underwhelmed me with its stilted writing style. But I was pleasantly surprised and even delighted almost from the first few pages of this work. This book was a complete intellectual delight, relatively easy to digest, but extremely well written, without a trace of arrogance or stylistic awkwardness. This is no doubt due to the expert assistance given Arendt by her editor Mary McCarthy.

While Arendt had originally planned to write a three-part work, on Thinking, Willing, and Judging, she only lived to complete the first two sections. But since she associates Thinking with the past and Willing with the future, it seems fitting to limit the book to these two concepts. (There is a short appendix containing lecture notes from a series she had given on Kant's Critique of Judgment, but I don't recommend it; it's very rough and hard to read.)

A large part of the first section on Thinking is devoted to Greek philosophy. She throws around a fair amount of Greek that, for the most part, is translated or understandable from the context. The second section is heavy on medieval philosophy with healthy doses of Latin all over the place. This was the more interesting section from my point of view, for there are lengthy discussions of Augustine and Duns Scotus. Towards the end of the second section she deals with Nietzsche and Heidegger. Heidegger (as you might expect) is given a full and sympathetic treatment.

Reading this book has been an experience that I won't soon forget. In fact, I am suffering withdrawal symptoms from it as I write this review. The book was a one-of-a-kind intellectual home to me. I will also add, once you get to the end of the Willing section, you may as well stop reading. Editor Mary McCarthy's Postface is rather self-centered and repetitious, not really worth one's time. And the final unedited lectures of Arendt on Kant's Critique of Judgment are rough, sketchy, and very unlike the polished prose of the earlier part of this great book.

If you are looking for a sophisticated work that will engage your mind but will not overwhelm your intellect, then this is the book. It will easily become a refuge of delight for any thoughtful reader.

A great Testament to Arendt's genius
`Life of the Mind,' while incomplete, nevertheless serves as a phenomenal exegesis of Western thought from one of the leading political and metaphysical thinkers of our era. Arendt breezes through an exorbitant quantity of philosophy with remarkable clarity and grace in this two-volume work. In it she provides a critical review of classical thought, including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Dons Scotus, leading all the way up to Kant and Rousseau. She also explicates the notion of the Will in Nietzsche, and then Heidegger's `Will-Not-to-Will' in his later thought. It is possible that Arendt will remain among the greats in Western philosophy, political theory, and journalism more broadly. Her depth of knowledge and insight and capacity to read a text with fresh eyes will astonish you. Also included in the second volume of the text is one of the most cogent explications of Heidegger's Being and Time you are ever likely to find.

Appearances and Being
Arendt's premise - assuming that Chapter 1 is the place to start and the book is not a suspense novel, that "Being and Appearing coincide," and that nothing exists that does not presume a spectator, made it difficult for me to continue the book.She maintains, up front, that Being and Appearance are prominent (she refers to them as part of the "two-world theory") philosophical fallacies.What a place too begin?! And so dogmatically!She goes on to use the internal organs of a man as an example of "behind the appearances" (my quote marks), then spins off additional abstractions (as if philospophy needs them) such as semblance and authentic appearance and process.Later, she pronounces "thought without speech is inconceivable"; oh boy.

I found her discussion of truth and meaning incomplete and confusing, if not, in places, just plain incorrect. Arendt assumes "meaning" conveys how something arrives at being (using Kant's texts), and contrasts it (meaning) with truth, writing that there can be only factual truths, disposing of propositional (logical) truths and mathematical truths, seemingly declaring that these a priori artifacts of reasonng can only be evaluated meaningful or meaningless.

While obviously a scholar, Arendt is neither clear nor convincing in this book.She does make her points at places: describing the futility of adopting solipsism - and Wittgenstein's role in promoting it interesting enough.

Her use of the senses and the superficial appearances of the world as the foundation of a book on thinking is itself superficial.Her writing is not however; it is althogether hard-headed.

A must read
If you are interested in philosophy or religion, then you must read this book. I think book 2 on the will is the more important of the two books. The central issue is the movement of time, if time is linear then the will is central in creating reality, if time is circular then the will is an illusion.

Philosophically speaking, this is Arendt at her best.
In her typical straight-to-the-point style of writing, Arendt explores some of the most philosophically important questions asked since antiquity. She guides us through the ages of development on topics such as freewill, time, and Being. She is one of the most important thinkers, not of the 20th century, but of all "time". This is Arendt for the philosopher/thinker, not the political scientist. From Heraclitus to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Arendt leaves no great thinker's stone unturned. I've read a lot of books, and this is probably one of the most important. Does she give us any answers to these important questions? NO. However, she shows that there are no answers to these questions, only better questions to be asked. ... Read more

Product Description
This highly acclaimed, prize-winning biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book’s 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject’s life and achievement.

Praise for the earlier edition:

“Both a personal and an intellectual biography . . . It represents biography at its best.”—Peter Berger, front page, The New York Times Book Review

“A story of surprising drama . . . . At last, we can see Arendt whole.”—Jim Miller, Newsweek

“Indispensable to anyone interested in the life, the thought, or . . . the example of Hannah Arendt.”—Mark Feeney, Boston Globe

“An adventure story that moves from pre-Nazi Germany to fame in the United States, and . . . a study of the influences that shaped a sharp political awareness.”—Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch

•Winner of the 1983 Alfred Harcourt Prize Award for Biography and Memoirs
•Winner of the Fourth Annual Kenneth B. Smilen/Present Tense Literary Award for Biography
•Winner of the 1983 Yale Governor’s Prize
•Nominated for the 1983 National Jewish Book Award in History

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who now practices as a psychoanalyst in New York City, is on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Simply one of the best biographies I have ever read.
I simply want to add a few points to the fine reviews by Freedman and Horner.
The original edition of this biography was published in 1983 and undoubtably contributed to the upsurge in Arendt studies that we have seen in the subsequent years. This newest edition includes a preface that situates the biography within that subsequent work.
The first point I want to make is one of agreement with the other two reviewers. This is a superb biography written by someone who obviously has great affection and respect for Hannah Arendt. As Horner mentions, Young-Bruehl knew Ms. Arendt. More importantly, she studied with her. The results of that training show in her ability to explain the development of Arendt's thought. Young-Bruehl is very clear, for example, on how Arendt's concept of evil changed from The Origins of Totalitarianism to her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.
I also learned much from Young-Bruehl's discussion on Arendt's hope for the council system as a means to effect radical and democratic change that is not controlled from above. Apparently Arendt saw some continuity between what happened in the early stages of the American Revolution and what happened in the 1848, the Sparticist Rebellion and the Hungarian revolt in 1956. If I understand correctly, Arendt had hopes that these were all variations on a new (post-Enlightenment) way to found a government. The idea is that revolutionary situations generate massive small attempts to organize locally that can be then used to create larger governmental entities without losing that mass democratic participation.
Finally, Young-Bruehl is good at showing how Arendt's various political concerns kept driving back at certain times to more philosophical work, e.g., how the follow-up work on The Origins of Totalitarianism eventually lead to The Human Condition.
Reading Young-Breuhl's excellent discussion of the Arendt's various books made obvious to me many points I should have caught earlier. And she makes me want to read some of Arendt's books all over again. And all this is being done within a well-written and moving narrative of Arendt's life.
This really is an impressive achievement. If you have any interest in Hannah Arendt's work, Young-Bruehl biography is an absolutely essential read.

Greatness of mind
FOR LOVE OF THE WORLD

This work is an outstanding intellectual biography,detailed consideration of both the life and work of one of the twentieth- century's great political figures. I learned much from it, and it was a great pleasure to read it.
Among the revelations of the work to me was the depth of Arendt's involvement in Jewish communal work during her six years in Paris in the late thirties, and during her first years in America. The knowledge of her dedication and courage in this work makes even more painful one of the central episodes of this work and her life, the controversy that her `Eichmann in Jerusalem' book created. Here despite Young- Bruehl's careful defense of Arendt it seems to me that she committed a major error. This does not in my opinion relate so much to her much misinterpreted concept of the ` banality of evil' but rather through her tone and manner of writing about the victims. Arendt whose central value in life was friendship and loyalty to those friends without intention `betrayed' according to their feeling the `victims' and again without intending to seemed to implicate in the evil that they suffered.
This chapter of her life came after she had already published her monumental work ,"The Origins of Totalitarianism'. In this biography we learn how Arendt prepared for this work, for understanding the connection between the totalitarian terror of the Nazis and that of the Soviets. Here a central part was played by her second husband Heinrich Blucher her instructor in radical revolutionary thought. We learn how this work grew out of her classical philosophical training and her constant concern with the meaning of political action.
In fact I found the first half of this biography which tells us about her life and work leading up to the `Origins of Totalitarianism' to be more engaging than the second half. In the first half we learn more about her personal story, of the central role her mother widowed when Hannah was seven played in her life. We see the development of her strong , independent personality. We follow her in the world of studies with Heidegger, and Jaspers and in the story of her romantic liasons ( including the one with Heidegger) and two marriages.Weare made to understand too the general climate of the time of Germany in the twenties and early thirties.
Again one of Arendt's greatest gifts was for friendship. And her life is filled with encounters with and friendships with remarkable people, a number of whose stories are told in one of her best books, " Men in Dark Times".
If I were to find fault with this biographywhich contains so much more than I have indicated in this brief review is that it does not it seems to me analyze critically the basic relationships of Arendt's life. For there are problematic sides morally to the friendship with Heidegger, who had a Nazi period- questionable areas in her relation to her second husband, however intellectually strong their connection was. I too think that for one who so valued the faculty of Judgment, Arendt's numerous political errors in judgment should have been considered here. As one who came from the world of catastrophe she was too ready to see America on the verge of , or going into catastrophe. And to my mind her late books `On Violence' and ` On Revolution' are the weakest of her offerings.
However it is necessary to stress that this biography really brings Arendt, and her inner life to life. It does this especially by bringing examples of her poetry, the record of her inward life. As I understand it this poetry has not appeared in a volume of its own and it seems to me that a dual German- English language edition of her complete poems , annotated properly would be a great contribution to our understanding of her and her work.
There are many `moving and great moments in this work and in Arendt's life. Among those moments are the description of her participating in a seder at the house of Louis Finklestein in the last year of her life. Here, she who had become a bit of a pariah in the Jewish world was as it were welcomed back home, and she joined in the singing of the traditional Passover songs. Another such great moment was her meeting with Blucher after her period in an interment camp at Gurs, when he too was a fugitive. This reunion set them on their way to America.
This book does a very good job of analyzing Arendt's standing as a scholar , her evaluation in the eyes of her colleagues, the great appreciation had for her by many at the highest level of human thought.
I think that if there was a chapter on her in `Men in Dark Times' it should certainly have the word ` Greatness' in it.
This book is a gift to all those who love the life of the mind. I cannot recommend it more highly.

a fascinating ,well written and judicious biography
This book has become something of a classic. It unearths a mass of detail about Arendt's life - the pages on her upbringing and experiences before her flight from Europe are particularly memorable. However, the main focusis kept firmly on the way Arendt's thought developed during her life. Theauthor [who knew Arendt in her later years] is well versed in philosophyand political thought and so her account becomes a useful companion tostudies of Arendt's many contributions to modern thought:'totalitarianism', 'the banality of evil', the loss of public space in thecontemporary west and much more. Thisbook is not the kind of simpleminded attempt to reduce thought to biography that we see all too often.While it is no hagiography [Arendt comes in for some serious criticism onoccasion], itends with a sense of celebration for a life well lived, oneof passionate thinking motivatedby 'love of the world' ... Read more

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A collection of studies in which Arendt, from the standpoint of a political philosopher, views the crises of the 1960s and early 1970s as challenges to the american form of government. Index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

utterly brilliant!!!
i never heard of hannah arendt in college.however, as i read more and more, i found that her work was often cited.although she passed away some decades ago now, she made an indelible impression upon the moral and political philosophy of the world in the mid-twentieth century and it endures today.she is a brilliant person whom i would have loved to know.with this kind of perception of the author by this reviewer, i must admit that the rest of my review, that is, of her work, "crises of the republic" may be biased.

in crises of the republic, arendt identifies the underlying foundation and need for political stability while introducing measured change.she discusses the political upheaval seen in the USA in the late 60s + .a time of great turmoil, she was able to see the need for political stability clashing with the need for systemic change for the people.

if you have any interest in political and moral philosophy, crises of the republic is a must read.her writing can be dry at times.she doesn't seek to entertain the reader.she informs us and, most of all, makes us think.i read this slowly, pausing to think and take notes.

An Honest View vs. Political Lying
This reviewer considers Hannah Arendt as a "Renaissance Woman."She was learned individual who wrote profoundly on philosophy, history, political thought, etc.Her book CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC again demonstrates her knowledge, profound thought, and ability to write.THE CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC is a book that clearly diagnoses political problems in the United States which she states undermine both civil liberties and government honesty.

This book was first published in 1969 in the midst of the controversy over the Vietnam War.An import section of this book deals with the China Series documents and correspondence between Mao tse Tung who approached American diplomats to extend diplomat overtures because of Chinese leaders fears of Soviet power and influence.These efforts were ignored and only came to light in 1969 which was 16 years after the conclusion of the Korean War which involved the Chinese Communists vs. the Americans.Miss Arendt also reveals documents that showed that that Ho Chi Minh appealed American policy makers to extend U.S. control over Vietnam to avoid re-occupation by the French who had Vietnam as a colony prior to World War II.These efforts were refused and kept secret from Americans so that a Cold War mentality could be maintained at the expense of truth and then the lives of American kids who suffered and died in the Korean and Vietnam wars.In other words, Miss Arendt reveals that documents demonstrate that neither of these wars were necessary. What happened and is happening is that political and bureaucratic blundering have been substituted for truth and honesty.

Part of American political history in the late 1960s included dissent and civil disobedience.Those in powerclaimed that public demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the draft were part of a secret conspiracy.Miss Arendt demolishes this conclusion by writing that a public demonstraion by its very nature is not a secret conspiracy.Otherwise it is not public.She also warns that radicalism on campuses had a dangerous tendency to impose ideology rather than achieve goals and inform "public opinion."

The latter sections of the book are informative regarding the status of those in power on the other side of the Iron curtain.An interesting point that Miss Arendt makes is that for all the communist propaganda about the Capitialisic West, the gulf between rich and poor behind the iron curtain was much greater.She comments that the communist authorities had devolved from socialist ideals to entrenched bureaucrats who tried to protect their "turf" from economic and political realities.Events since the late 1980s have vindicated Miss Arendt with the collapse of Big Communism.

Hannah Arendt shows her vast knowledge and profound thought in one of her last books.CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC is timely and well written.She makes remarks that should alert Americans about blundering into quagmire wars and creating enemies to insure that useless bureaucrats maintain their positions by lying about supposed enemies who in reality do not exist.This has been expensive in terms of treasure and blood. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (8)

Twentieth Century Violence
Arendt's book begins by commenting on the paradoxical nature of violence during the Cold War.She says, "The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict."She is, of course, referring to the advent of the atomic age.In an age, then, when the victory of one party of another means the virtual annihilation of both, what political and ideological redress does one have?

The first part of "On Violence" argues that the United States is no longer a country which can feel the sharp throes of political populism; she argues that individual action has been deadened by an institutionalized bureaucracy, aided by brain trusters in the illustrious think tanks whose hypotheses eventually turn into "facts," which in turn beget other "facts," and whose magical thinking has a way of hypnotizing us.The most common countervailing force to this phenomenon was the group of student protests in the 1960s whose use of violent resistance was often Marxian or Leninist in orientation.These were often set off in the name of "participatory democracy."Yet what makes this a bit of bittersweet irony is that neither Marx nor Lenin advocated any such like a participatory democracy.Especially in Leninism, the socialist utopia would have been run by a one-party, top-down system which would have rendered both political participation and democracy superfluous.

In the second part, Arendt adduces some very interesting, if semantically peculiar, distinctions that I would agree are fundamental to understanding the politics of the twentieth century.She differentiates between "power," "force," "strength," "authority," and "violence," which she says are often - mistakably - used interchangeably.Here is a short apercu of some of her definitions.Power applies uniquely to the ability to act not alone, but in concert with others; it can only be maintained by a group, and as soon as the group dissolves (physically or ideologically), so does the power.Strength is what the individual has, and applies only to a single person.Authority is most frequently abused, and "can be vested in persons - there is such a thing as personal authority, as, for instance, between teacher and pupil - or it can be vested in offices, as, for instance, in the Roman senate, or in the hierarchical offices of the Church (a priest can grant valid absolution even though he is drunk.)"Finally, violence is characterized by its instrumental character, i.e., that we use an object to commit violence other than the physical force of the individual or the group.

Most interestingly, Arendt intimates that while using radical tactics and espousing antiestablishment means, the student protesters of the 1960s had bourgeois, Enlightenment, technocratic ideas of "progress" and "betterment" in mind.That the means and the ends of these protests were out of synch, for Arendt, posts one of the most interesting questions of twentieth-century American protest politics.

Barrigada, Guam




The book still has not arrived!! it is well beyond the expected ETA!

Somewhat Abstract, Yet Excellent and Important
Arendt's long essay/short book "On Violence" notes that war has become unglamorous and ineffective as a political force, yet it remains because we have not found an adequate replacement for this.This is perhaps understood as a more politically-minded equivalent of William James's idea 60 years earlier that we need to find a "moral equivalent of war" that will harness the cooperation and personal altruism that war can elicit, but without the horrific consequences that far outweigh the benefits.

Among the many useful concepts in Arendt's book are the definitions of power, violence, strength, force, and authority as distinct entities, despite our tendency to conflate them, or use them as synonyms.Most important is the difference between power and violence, which Arendt suggests are often found together but are in fact opposite in many ways.Specifically, while violence can undo power, it cannot build it.Violence is not simply power expressed in its most brutish fashion.

Also important is the final third of the book, in which Arendt takes apart the notion that political violence is somehow "natural" or part of the human condition.

In the end, it is this idea that is at the center of the book: violence is routinely accepted as inevitable--as a given in human society.Arendt asks us to acknowledge the much more troubling truth: violence is conscious human action.It should not be natrualized or taken for granted or romanticized, but carefully examined.

The book is well-written, yet dense and often casually drops historical and philosophical references without much explanation for the uninitiated reader. Despite that, it is readable despite its often abstract nature.It doesn't leave you with a clear call to specific action, but by openly questioning longstanding myths about violence and its alleged utility in solving political problems, it does a great service.

A destroyer of common sense myths about violence and its related concepts
Professor Arendt has again turned the commonplace on its head with her wit and piercing logic, and has used her unfiltered and unadulterated thinking to milk additional meanings and understandings from the accepted conventional wisdom. Her clean thinking and careful analysis has become a force to be reckoned with, and as a result, has acquired a life of its own.

After reaching the end of this sharply focused essay, I discovered it is best read in reverse, beginning with section III and working backwards.

It is a tutorial on the origins, use and misuse of violence, and its associated concepts of power, strength, authority, and terror, and to a much lesser extent also, influence, control, obedience, and command.

It is section III that deals with the origins of violence in both human and animal. And as is true with the other sections, existing common sense and settled sociological theology are reopened and challenged. Both Konrad Lorentz and B.F. Skinner's theories, for instance are placed anew under the microscope, in light of human, rather than just anthropomorphized animal experience, with surprisingly new understandings emerging.

Section II deals with the definitional slipperiness of these concepts as they have been used and misused -- again with surprisingly new interpretations. And again, the standard understandings are reopened for further analysis and the old authorities are challenged to redefine their often ossified and misleading meanings and interpretations.

Section I begins with the existing experience at the time the book was first written (1957) and includes analyses of violence at both the international and the national level, but not at the interpersonal level. Although these examples are anything but fresh, this in no way affects the freshness of the analysis. I was especially impressed with the way the author ripped the so-called revolutionary movements of the 60s, including the black power movement and Third World revolutionary movements in general. As she puts it so trenchantly: "The Third World is not a reality but an ideology." The section on terror however, left me cold: in light of the likes of Osama bin Laden, the role and effects of terror, could certainly use some updating.

My only other complaint is that the analysis is almost too abstract and almost too removed from the meat of contemporary experience, in the sense that the moral dimension is never brought directly into the picture. This omission makes the analyses seem almost synthetic, sterile and wholly academic, although I am sure with the author's background this could not have been her intent.

Still, even if one has to imagine how to factor her analyses back into contemporary situations, the wisdom contained in this short volume and the intellectual skill with which it is done, are priceless. Five stars

Castration and Power
The irony of viewing the natural need of men (and increasingly, women) to view power as dominance over rather than as a part of a coooperative spirit toward mutual goals is the foundation of this articulate and simple philosophy where violence becomes a part of the political and economic landscape. Arendt stopped short of asking to what extent men will sacrifice to acquire the power through violence that is supposedly the motive underlying the methods used. When males sacrifice both their honor and their natural masculinity for power, one wonders what limit, if any, is man willing to condone in himself to "win" the power or money he fervently and diligently pursues. Although supposedly, man comes equipped with the height of survival instinct, it is remarkable how willing he is to castrate himself in pursuit of essentially man made goals that symbolize success, often crippling many others in the process without hesitation, too often, in violation of the religious teachings of compassion and brotherhood. Given this rather historically well documented pattern of acceptance in mankind, it appears the decision to request increasingly more of man's sacrifice for that pursuit tilts the seesaw in the other direction. What man hath wrought, man will deliver in the finest mode of free market principles, leaving us to question whether indeed there are limits to what man ought to be asking other men to do, i.e., to what extent moral and logical principles are allowed to become the modifying influence that limits the scope of that pursuit and the credible measure by which such decisions are made. ... Read more

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In the final volume, Arendt focuses on the two genuine forms of the totalitarian state in history-the dictatorships of Bolshevism after 1930 and of National Socialism after 1938. Index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

It can happen again.
Well thought out and documented book.Its most important insight: given the right conditions totalitarianism can happen again.

Way Too Much Zen
This book was written at a time when the great power of the world were well on the way to becoming so openly nukers that little corners of the world, and individuals, especially, might be disregarded with impunity by whatever powers wanted to destroy them for their own purposes.What is truly frightening about this situation is the realization that any excuse, race, use of illegal drugs, possession of weapons, sleeping in the Chinese embassy on the night of May 7, 1999, having a sinful Messiah for a minister, putting kids in daycare in a federal building, etc., might end up being considered a deadly mistake if those who have high-powered explosives are working in a system which will allow them to blame one of their enemies for the tragedy which will be the subject of the news.

I happened to be reading a book on the KGB before I started reading this, and the situation at the time of the death of Stalin, then Beria, seems to fall in the sense of how this book claims that individuals don't matter to the system.Once Stalin was dead, having served Stalin was of no benefit to Beria.When Stalin was ruler, it was dangerous for anyone to get more votes than Stalin, as Kirov did shortly before his death.The denunciations of Stalin which followed Stalin's death did not end the practices which Stalin had been denounced for engaging in, any more than the attempt to impeach an America president in 1999 prevented any American from lying about his private life under oath forever after.

Long after this book was written, the political system in the Soviet Union started to allow a broader selection of candidates, and Sakharov was the most popular politician in the Soviet Union at the time of his death from a heart attack.Sakharov had been an inventor of a sandwich design hydrogen bomb, which was first successfuly tested by dropping it from an airplane on November 22, 1955, a mere 8 years before an American president died under more suspicious circumstances, possibly related to his support for a ban on such tests.

I haven't forgotten that someone posted a message after I had reviewed a book which didn't discuss any nuclear weapons whatever.This shows what kind of thing can happen when a person who reads a lot gets involved with those whose totalitarianism expects more respect than I happen to believe that any media deserve at the moment.Not everything that I have written has been posted, and it might be easiest for me to complain about family values totalitarianism.No one would think that the things which are done are limited to those acts which could be printed in a family newspaper, but the media can use family values as an excuse to ignore the most upsetting stories.Reviews of books are not supposed to get too personal, but sometimes the subject matter of the account makes any attempt to comprehend what is in the book offensive.In my own case, I tried to review a book by Gennifer Flowers called PASSION AND BETRAYAL in which the personal is covered by a little black nightie, but not for long.This might be personally embarrassing for the author and a friend of hers, but the danger that some form of totalianism might be criticized in that book would hardly occur to anyone who did not know about the episode when her neighbor with the video camera was getting beat up by guys who kept asking, "Where's the tape?"

A rationale that explains the horrors of totalitarianism.
Hannah Arendt describes totalitarianism as a system of total domination based on a combination of propaganda and terror.She bases it primarily on a policy of keeping the population off balance by systematically arresting and executing members that it decides are "objectively guilty" because of their religion, their economic status, or other arbitrarily selected criteria.She draws a distinction between merely authoritarian and totalitariam regimes based on the arbitrariness of the selection process of its victims.The victims in totalitarian regimes bear no relationship to concerns of security; rather they are based upon some such ideological foundation as race or social status. ... Read more

Product Description
Hannah Arendt is one of the most important political theorists of the twentieth century. In her works, she grappled with the dark events of that century, probing the nature of power, authority, and evil, and seeking to confront totalitarian horrors on their own terms. This book focuses on how, against the professionalized discourses of theory, Arendt insists on the greater political importance of the ordinary activity of thinking. Indeed, she argues that the activity of thinking is the only reliable protection against the horrors that buffeted the last century. Its essays explore and enact that activity, which Arendt calls the habit of erecting obstacles to oversimplifications, compromises, and conventions.Most of the essays were written for a conference at Bard College celebrating the 100th anniversary of Arendt's birth. Arendt left her personal library and literary effects to Bard, and she is buried in the Bard College cemetery. Material from the Bard archive--such as a postcard to Arendt from Walter Benjamin or her annotation in her copy of Machiavelli's The Prince--and images from her life are interspersed with the essays in this volume.The volume will offer provocations and insights to Arendt scholars, students discovering Arendt's work, and general readers attracted to Arendt's vision of the importance of thinking in our own dark times. ... Read more

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Arendt describes the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill once more the vital essence of these concepts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Usable for lower and upper division philosophy and education courses
I have used both this book and _The Human Condition_ in both lower and upper-division philosophy courses.This book has the benefit of compressing Arendt's insights (especially insights into natality, power, and forgiveness) into a much more accessible prose than _The Human Condition_.I would therefore prefer to assign this selection of her work in most classes, especially classes in which one's guiding theme is the philosophy of education or the notion of a participatory democracy.

What I find most interesting in _Between Past and Future_ is the way that Arendt's individual sections on Authority, Freedom, and Education work together.Arendt's critique of authority and tradition--she claims both have ended with totalitarianism, at least in the political realm--is powerful.Her insistence that authority and tradition remain within the home and within education, however, must be read, understood, appreciated and criticized.

Basically, Arendt ties educational authority to a consciously accepted responsibility for the whole world, for the whole institution that one bears within one's stance as educator.

This is a difficult stance for most teachers to take--particularly those of us who teach regularly in college-level service courses.We can feel the stirrings of resentment, and we can sometimes wish to have our say and go home, without a further thought.However, Arendt's position is clear and demands a response: in order to become a full-fledged citizen of a democracy, it is absolutely necessary for students to have had the chance to see teachers and professors as authorities who bear this global responsibility, who teach as if democracy depended on them.

I might interpret her position thus: A college teacher who teaches as if research alone were success in her field is commiting herself (in the future) to something akin to tyranny.A high school or grade school teacher who leaves the children to their own devices, who substitutes doing for learning, who believes pedagogy is a method divorced from the content that is to be taught, encourages children to grow like weeds, without a view of the whole and without a clear sense of having had sufficient room made for their voices, insights, and participation.

I believe (and hope) that for Arendt to teach is not to pour content into heads.It is not to lob books from the outside into the mob.It is to acknowledge the difficulty and multiplicity of interpretations of history, literature, philosophy, etc.--so that one day those sitting before the teacher in the classroom can develop and reinterpret the past in unforeseen ways.Teaching is leaving open the possibility for greater integration, for greater humanity.

Deep Thinking and a Better World
Hannah Arendt was the kind of deep thinker who is sorely needed in our world.

Santayana's quote that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" has long been one of my favorites. Arendt's book is worth reading as provocative food for thought about relating past to future.

The problem with political theory, politics and government is that deep thinking alone is not enough.There also has to be policy development and good execution which yield two large real-world disconnects--between thought and policy and policy and results.

Arendt's work offers important starting points.

Jim Namaste
[...]

The intellectual situation is not improving; is a comic response art?
I was reading a book by Hannah Arendt at the beginning of July, when I went to a Bo Diddley concert in which his song "Shut Up, Woman" ended with "You know I love you, and I would love you twice as much if you put that razor away."I was primarily interested in what Arendt could say about Nietzsche, but her observations also included Marx and Kierkegaard.Arendt was a member of the last generation that was well-read.Since then reading has become an individual hobby for some, but books are no longer a context within which meaning advances, and her observations shaved off the B.C. comic suggestion for males proving their superiority over females by scratching them with our beards.

Do we all remember this comic?
We're going to catch the women and prove the innate superiority of men over women.
Curls:How do you plan to do that?
Peter:We'll scratch them with our beards.

Hannah Arendt might be a good example of how modern exercises in political thought think very much like Nietzsche, but use Nietzsche as the philosopher most responsible for ending the authority which thought itself, as a superfluous product of human mental aspiration, assumes in her book, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE.Its index of names does not include George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-80, dead now these 125 years), an English author that Nietzsche heard about from his friend, Helene Druscowicz, and mentioned in section 5 of the "Expeditions of an Untimely Man" in Nietzsche's book TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS with the disavowal, "let us not blame it on little bluestockings a la Eliot.In England, in response to every little emancipation from theology one has to reassert one's position in a fear-inspiring manner as a moral fanatic."People being what they are, morals ought to assume an awe-inspiring place in the expression of anyone's individuality.For Nietzsche to assume that "it possesses truth only if God is truth - it stands or falls with the belief in God" applies religious presumptions to a matter that holds no water, "For the Englishman morality is not yet a problem . . ."I tried to find something about Marx in Nietzsche's books, and instead I found an English novelist who might be familiar to anyone who reads.

To let Hannah Arendt state the matter in her own way:

"Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche remained Hegelians insofar as they saw the history of past philosophy as one dialectically developed whole; their great merit was that they radicalized this new approach toward the past in the only way it could still be further developed, namely, in questioning the conceptual hierarchy which had ruled Western philosophy since Plato and which Hegel had still taken for granted."

George Eliot did not get mentioned when Hannah Arendt considered the way in which modern society functions:

"Values are social commodities that have no significance of their own but, like other commodities, exist only in the ever-changing relativity of social linkages and commerce.Through this relativization both the things which man produces for his use and the standards according to which he lives undergo a decisive change:they become entities of exchange, and the bearer of their `value' is society and not man, who produces and uses and judges."

Considering the common element of self-defeat in Nietzsche, Marx, and Kierkegaard, Arendt suggests, "In complete independence of one another--none of them ever knew of the others' existence--they arrive at the conclusion that this enterprise in terms of the tradition can be achieved only through a mental operation best described in the images and similes of leaps, inversions, and turning concepts upside down:Kierkegaard speaks of his leap from doubt into belief; Marx turns Hegel, or rather `Plato and the whole Platonic tradition' (Sidney Hook), `right side up again,' leaping `from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom'; and Nietzsche understands his philosophy as `inverted Platonism' and `transformation of all values.'"

Freedom is a neat theme because it allows everyone to participate as liberators.Even the CIA is still looking for a slam dunk way to make it happen, but the future is never a cakewalk.Education has been trying to produce people who can reach some consensus on things that have to be done, but the methods which lead in that direction are incredibly boring to anyone who has access to the feelings of those who produce and perform art.As Bo Diddley would say, "Sit down and shut up."

One of her best
This along with ' Men in Dark Times' and ' The Human Condition' is my favorite Arendt work. Her analysis of fundamental concepts such as Authority, Truth, Freedom, Action are fundamental in that they go to the root morning of the term and trace the concepts transformations in reality. Her narratives are generally narratives of decline and loss, of concepts and experiences that somehow lose their meanings in the transformation of time. And this while she is always searching for some kind of redefinition of fundamental political activity and reality that will bring a new dignity to the human condition. Her writing is profound, and whether one agrees with her or not her analyses always ' educate' and make ' the life of the mind ' seem especially meaningful.
This is one of the best works of one of the great political thinkers of the modern world.

Between truth and genius
Very few political theorists have the reach and thought of Hannah Arendt.I read her works first by requirement, then with joy.Between Past and Future articulates and solidifies my own thoughts on politics, particularly the observations in "What is Freedom?" on courage and action.A must read for anyone seriously thinking about political theory or a career in civil service. ... Read more

Product Description
Two titans of twentieth-century thought: their lives, loves, ideas, and politics.Shaking up the content and method by which generations of students had studied Western philosophy, Martin Heidegger sought to ennoble man’s existence in relation to death. Yet in a time of crisis, he sought personal advancement, becoming the most prominent German intellectual to join the Nazis.

Hannah Arendt, his brilliant, beautiful student and young lover, sought to enable a decent society of human beings in relation to one other. She was courageous in the time of crisis. Years later, she was even able to meet Heidegger once again on common ground and to find in his past behavior an insight into Nazism that would influence her reflections on “the banality of evil”—a concept that remains bitterly controversial and profoundly influential to this day.

But how could Arendt have renewed her friendship with Heidegger? And how has this relationship affected her reputation as a cultural critic? In Stranger from Abroad, Daniel Maier-Katkin offers a compassionate portrait that provides much-needed insight into this relationship.

Maier-Katkin creates a detailed and riveting portrait of Arendt’s rich intellectual and emotional life, shedding light on the unique bond she shared with her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, and on her friendships with Mary McCarthy, W. H. Auden, Karl Jaspers, and Randall Jarrell—all fascinating figures in their own right. An elegant, accessible introduction to Arendt’s life and work, Stranger from Abroad makes a powerful and hopeful case for the lasting relevance of Arendt’s thought. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

mentions the epicenter of evil
It is unusual for any book to be clear on matters that created tremendous disagreements among intellectuals. I have been openly unprofessional long enough to realize how rarely scholars dare to write what only a fool would admit. That the major political struggles of the twentieth century produced a mixture of justifications for sides that thinkers ended up on rarely reached a point that
makes clear how the interest of governments in punishing those who frighten their victims by getting away with crimes by the millions and organizations of victims that speak of their love for a group of people in conducting trials so that certain people can be considered monsters, as Eichmann's trial did in Jerusalem, produces such perverse brilliance when a book by Hannah Arendt revealed the awful truth about most people letting things slide until the millions of people in prisons can be confined with money launderers who thought breaking the law was the wave of the future. The complexity of modern society makes it unlikely that law will be able to criminalize the meaning of money completely, but creepy activities that can easily be blamed on the monetary mulch of America will probably slide right by most juries in the present state of confusion.

It is possible to thoroughly understand the contents of this book. Most books are published with that in mind. When Hannah Arendt was writing, she ultimately trusted her personal feelings to communicate what she meant to people who were not subject to the common cultivations of stupidity formally recognized as the sociology of knowledge, and this book is clear in explaining how an individual with ethics could have the friendships that never come close to being peas in a pod. I am quite familiar with major characters in this book, and it is a joy to see them understood so well. It only mentions Walter Kaufmann once, on going to visit Martin Heidegger when translating something so Americans could learn about philosophy. I tried to read The Way Back Into the Ground of Metaphysics by Heidegger in the 1956 translation that had Heidegger's full approval without going over the entire text.

The absurd results of social systems in a superpower with global ambitions ought to be understood by people who are concerned about what nature society will have when none of the schemes employed by people in this book match the activities of a nation of shoppers trying to grab money that has already been spent. As much as I like the book, my fear is how odd I am in all aspects of my understanding of its themes.

Zeitgeist and Atmosphere
I picked up this book without having any real depth of knowledge or undestanding of either Heidegger or Arendt.I do, however, have an interest in modern European history--particularly the years encompassing the World Wars.

If you are similarly inclined, there is a very good sense of zeitgeist and atmosphere projected here, along with some relatively obscure historical facts and insights which are well worth perusing.Some intriguing parallels to current events and moral quandries in the Middle East are also evident.

However, be forewarned that you will have to wade through (or skim over) extended treatments of abstract philosophical concepts (ie. the nature of "Being" and "Existence") for which I had little patience.The absence of photographs is also disappointing in a biographichal treatise of this type.

Amazing book
I ordered this book without knowing it was a new book in the market. I read a biography of Hanna Arendt in portuguese, my language, and was a bit suspicious if this book would bring me something new and what a surprise! Not only two biographies for the price of one - Arendt and Heidegger are very well described as persons and thinkers in their time, together and apart, with their respectives works and thoughts - but a great lesson of philosophy! I could finally understand the origins of phenomenology within a historical context. Congratulations to the author that made a beautiful, poetic and intelligent book. I deeply recommend.

Stranger among her people.
Stranger From Abroad by Daniel Maier-Katkin is a biography of Hannah Arendt - one of the twentieth century's sharpest minds. A political philosopher and renowned lecturer, she gained prominence for her erudite, but today obsolete, works The Origins of Totalitarianism, Human Condition, and by the report Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Assessing Arendt thirty five years after her death, it appears that while her legacy in political sciences fades away, two stories in her life continue to draw attention. Her lifelong relationship with German philosopher Martin Heidegger, her teacher and lover (and member of Nazi party), is a story of friendship and forgiveness, particularly fascinating in the face of his duplicity and his lifelong arrogance toward her. The other story is of Arendt's insensitive to the victims of Holocaust reporting on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, summarized by a catchy, but bizarre phrase - the Banality of Evil.
Daniel Maier-Katkin, who's own political views appear to resonate with that of Arendt', has selected the story of friendship and forgiveness, dosing her biography with excessive amount of liberal political saccharine and grafting his own post-Zionist views onto her legacy. But what is glossed over in his book is not less important then what is praised. Politically and culturally a product of the Weimar republic, Hannah Arendt associated herself, after the Nazi victory, with German Zionism. It was a cultural movement of little practical consequence, whose main weapon was a pen, a speech, a political campaign, in contrast to East European Zionism - a liberation movement which did not shy away from a pickaxe, a shovel and, later, a rifle. Hannah Arendt identified herself with Martin Buber and Yehuda Magnes, German-Jewish luminaries she had sympathy for. The legendary David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weitzman, Vladimir Zhabotinsky were the Russian-Jewish Zionist leaders Hanna Arendt never spoke kindly of. Conciliatory in nature and not able to handle the heat of the military solution to the Arab-Jewish clash in Palestine, she broke off with Zionism after the establishment of Israel and grumbled about Zionist politics ever since.
That brings us to the reason why she gained notoriety for her reporting on the trial of Adolph Eichmann. The trial, which took place in Jerusalem in 1961, drew the attention of the world to the Holocaust - something the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 failed to do. Published in 1963 as the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, her reporting contained, among other things, a highly contested thesis summarized by famous catch phrase - "The Banality of Evil". Eichmann, according to her thesis, was not acting out of radical malevolence toward the Jews, but was merely carrying orders without consideration of their effects on the victims. The reports also pronounced the Jewish councils (Judenrat) culpable in cooperation with Nazi authorities. Adding insult to injury, Arendt criticized the Israeli PM Ben-Gurion for conveying a show trial in Jerusalem, instead of transferring Eichmann to the UN in order to be tried in International court. Her report caused deep consternation in Jewish circles, hurting the feelings of her old friends. Gershom Sholem, the world renown student of Kabbala, famously reproached her for the flippant tone of the report and lack of Ahavat Israel - love for her people.
Justly or not, Hannah Arendt is remembered more today by her catchy phrase than by her legacy in political science. Stanger from Abroad is an attempt to revive the other Hannah Arendt, the philosopher, the political scientist, the woman capable of love, friendship and forgiveness. Whether that attempt is successful is for the reader to judge.

The Personal and the Philosophical
Dan Maier-Katkin's new book on the relationship between Hannah Arendt, whose life experience was altered fundamentally by what took place in Nazi Germany, and philosopher Martin Heidegger, who banally participated in the regime, very effectively combines biography, philosophy and cultural history into a hybrid form that makes for quite fascinating reading. As a graduate student at the New School for Social Research in the mid-1970s, one frequently talked to students who were in Hannah Arendt's classes. Though she passed away before I arrived there, I have found several of her works quite useful in teaching aspects of criminology ( particularly The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem). Maier-Katkin's book helps fill in many of the gaps in my understanding of Arendt's attitude toward life and learning. By combining the personal and the philosophical, without allowing either to become the dominant story, the author has created an highly readable account of how the two are fundamentally related. At the core of the book is the story of how the relationship between these two great thinkers survived one of the major cataclysms of the 20th century. ... Read more

Product Description
Although Hannah Arendt is not primarily known as a Jewish thinker, she probably wrote more about Jewish issues than any other topic. As a young adult in Germany, she wrote about German Jewish history.After moving to France in 1933, she helped Jewish youth immigrate to Palestine.During her years in Paris, her principle concern was the transformation of antinomianism from prejudice to policy, which would culminate in the Nazi "final solution." After France fell, Arendt escaped from an internment camp and made her way to America.There she wrote articles calling for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis.After the war, she supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in a binational (Arab-Jewish) state of Israel.

Arendt's original conception of political freedom cannot be fully grasped apart from her experience as a Jew.In 1961 she attended Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem.Her report, Eichmann in Jerusalem, provoked an immense controversy, which culminated in her virtual excommunication from the worldwide Jewish community.Today that controversy is the subject of serious re-evaluation, especially among younger people in the United States, Europe, and Israel.

The publication of The Jewish Writings–much of which has never appeared before–traces Arendt’s life and thought as a Jew.It will put an end to any doubts about the centrality, from beginning to end, of Arendt’s Jewish experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential documents for understanding a central political thinker
Hannah Arendt is known today primarily as the political thinker who provided a fundamental understanding of 'Totalitarianism'. Her work explores the meaning of the human condition. And her thought often involves a profound exploration of the etymology of basic concepts of thought and experience.
In this comprehensive collection of her writings on Jewish - related subjects we come to better understand how her experience as a Jew played a formative role in her thinking. In his illuminating introduction Jerome Kohn tells of how Arendt as a schoolchild when taunted by Anti- Semitic remarks by other pupils, did not flinch and run, but rather followed her mother's instruction, stood proudly and answered back. This 'fighting spirit' no doubt also played a central role in her urging during the Second World War the creation of an independent Jewish fighting force which would give shape and meaning to Jewish political identity.
Kohn sees Arendt as having gone through a number of stages in her relation to her Jewish identity. In the first phase in which she wrote 'Rahel Varnhagen' she was very much concerned with the effect of the Enlightentment on Jewish identity. In a second phase when Anti- Semitism began to threaten the very existence of German Jewry she was forced to confront the rejection of herself as German national. When the war clouds thundered and the threat to European Jewry became more palpable she escaped to France. There she entered the world of action, the world central to the political meaning of her thought. She worked for Youth Aliyah helping young people make their way to the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine. In one of the most moving documents in the work she urges a young person, distressed at the thought that his parents will not be able to go with him, to think not only of his own future but of that of the larger Jewish community.
After her internment at Gurs and her escape she made her way to the United States. Here was ushered in her most active period of Jewish writing. Writing for the German- Jewish 'Aufbau' she urged the creation of a Jewish military force. She saw in the inability of the Jews to defend themselves, not only a physical danger but a threat to their communal integrity.
After the war when she began to become more widely known as a political thinker. (The 'Origins of Totalitarianism' her breakthrough book was published in 1951.) she wrote less about Jewish issues. However when Eichmann was captured she requested from the 'New Yorker' to be its correspondent at the trial. The result was her most controversial work 'Eichmann in Jerusalem ' in which she spoke of the 'banality of evil' and in also indicting the Jewish communal leadership caused a sharp break between herself and much of the Jewish world. My own personal take on this story is that this was Arendt's 'worst moment' and her moment of failure. Despite Kohn 's defense of her, and despite the fact that a number of Israeli scholars have risen to her defense any close and clear- minded reader of this book can she that she displayed in it a somewhat aloof, arrogant and cold tone towards the victims. No less than Gershom Scholem who had once been a friend and defender disassociated himself from her because of this coldness.
Clearly Arendt's relationship to her Jewishness is a central and complex theme in her story. This present work gives the evidential base upon which to judge her words if not all her deeds. It is an important work which will enable scholars and thinkers to further probe her life and thought.
I myself prefer to think of her primarily as the woman of action who in the hour of the Jewish people's greatest need did work to rescue young people and send them to what would become the state of Israel. ... Read more

Product Description
Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.

Responsibility and Judgment is an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Slow
They definitely took their time with mailing this book out...this arrived almost a week after everything else did, and I ordered them on the same day!

astute observations!
I'd imagine that every political philosopher knows of Hannah Arendt.Born in Germany in 1906, she moved to France and eventually the USA after Hitler's rise to power.She has written numerous books over 3 1/2 decades and she has taught at places like Princeton, Chicago, and Berkeley.She struggles with and argues ultimately against responsibility of many of the common German people who went with the flow or just followed orders.Responsibility must be focused upon those who had authority and committed atrocities - the so called desk top murderers, like Eichmann and Himmler.She questions how we can set ourselves up to place judgment upon these individuals responsible, in part, for such horrific crimes.Included in this text is her presentation on American responsibility for Vietnam and the uprising of individuals against a war of questionable justice ultimately.She's a brilliant speaker and writer, very heavily influenced by the Kantian school.While the vast majority of this text is very readable, there are a few passages that I had to re-read - "did she really say that?" or "what ...".Since Theory of Justice was published, it sort of makes these books obsolete, but, they are, nevertheless, worth while reading for background.I give this text a solid A.It comes highly recommended.

Outstanding Work on Responsibility
What would you do under a dictatorship?Arendt poses this question for all of us in her collection of essays dealing with the relationship between the individual and the state--in particular, what can the individual do in a system that is evil.Similar to a number of writers in circumstances not unlike her own (Remarque, Silone, Bonhoeffer) she argues that we each have the capability to retain our own sense of goodness and avoid the "banality of evil" she found with Eichmann.

Excellent
A necessary companion to 'Eichmann in Jerusalem.' I concur to an extent with the reviewer below regarding Jerome Kohn's introduction. One should definitely start with the first chapter, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship," before reading Kohn's piece, as it clarifies some of the confusing aspects of Kohn's argument.

Great book, lousy introduction
Hannah Arendt has always been one of my favourite writers. This volume collecting her works does not disappoint.

However, do not expect the same incisive and indepth look into the pressing ethical issues here. This is not the fault of Hannah Arendt. This is afterall a collection of bits and pieces of her works, put together not necessarily in a coherent way.

Nonetheless, this book is worth a read, particularly as it condenses and crystalises some of the thoughts contained in her other, longer, and more difficult to read books. Next to her "Men in Dark Times", I would recommend this book as a good place for those unfamiliar with Hannah Arendt to begin.

However, do ignore the introduction by Jerome Kohn, which is rather a rather incoherent, bitter, and ranting little piece of work, attributing to Hannah Arendt thoughts and opinions that might or might not have been hers. It is better for the reader to judge for himself or herself as to what Hannah Arendt meant to say, and not left a lesser mind to colour the reader's perceptions. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Nice considerations of when these people should sound off
I have found CORRESPONDENCE 1926 - 1969 of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers to be enormously entertaining, easy to read, and surprisingly foreboding about problems in the book trade caused by foreign indebtedness.Politically, each date brings chilling summaries.For Hannah Arendt in America, on June 3, 1949, "At the moment, the general political atmosphere is dismal here, particularly at the universities and colleges (with the exception of the very eminent ones)."(pp. 136-137).This letter 90 has several notes on pages 714-715 which give details that are sure to be humorous now for anyone who has ever heard of Aspen, where the leaves all turn at the same time because the roots are interconnected, as perjury suspect Libby Scooter informed New York Times reporter Judy Miller in a letter urging her to end her days in prison and testify in 2005 so an investigation of White House activities relating to the identity of CIA WMD analyst Plame could be resolved quickly.According to this book, Hutchins, the president of Chicago University, was the nominal organizer of a two-week conference and Goethe celebration in July 1949 in Aspen, Colorado, attended by José Ortega y Gasset, Albert Schweitzer, Ernst Simon, Stephen Spender, and Thornton Wilder.Letter 90 was a response to articles that had been written by the "Bonn Romanticist Ernst Robert Curtius, 1886-1956," (p. 714) who would also be at the conference:

"The real power behind it is a German-American, a real-estate dealer, who recently bought up a ghost town and then had the commercially brilliant idea of tying Goethe into his business.His sole motive is to exploit Goethe to make this town world famous, so he can then make a bundle of money from tourists.The whole thing is really quite marvelous.The second backer, however, is a less amusing figure:Do you remember Bergstrasser from Heidelberg?After he had successfully accommodated himself to the regime, it was shown that he had a whole string of Jewish ancestors.He is the real moving force behind this program."(p. 136).

Curtius had published a polemic in Germany on April 2, 1949 which accused Jaspers of making "our collective guilt so plain to us that we can continue to live only with a guilty conscience.A Wilhelm von Humboldt of our time, he laid out guidelines for German universities, until he turned his back on them. ... He is crowning these national pedagogical efforts with a `campaign in Switzerland' that is directed against Goethe.Habemus Papam!"(pp. 714-715).In response to the comments of some Heidelberg professors, Curtius replied on May 17, 1949, and finally on July 2, 1949, with a title, "Goethe, Jaspers, Curtius."(p. 715).`Die Zeit' might be to blame for that title, which reeks of arrogance.

In any event, books in those days were considered significant enough that the move by Jaspers to Switzerland, as advised by Hannah Arendt on June 30, 1947, (when Jaspers was giving guest lectures in Basel), "we would do best not to settle down too permanently anywhere, not really to depend on any nation, for it can change overnight into a mob and a blind instrument of ruin" (p. 91), which made publication of books by Jaspers much easier, was resented by Germans who had already spent the money those books would earn.America was a great place for books by Jaspers to make money, and Hannah Arendt did her part to make sure that the translators selected by the publishers were able to express what Jaspers was saying in some form of English that readers could understand.Sounding like an American, Jaspers wrote on July 20, 1947:

"We are living in paradise here.My wife is already cutting back at table for fear of putting on weight."(p. 93)

Heartwarming and Intellectually Engaging
Jaspers and Arendt cover everything and everyone: Sartre, Heidegger, Marx, Goethe, Camus; post-WWII Germany, "the infinitely complex red-tape existence of stateless persons," the Cold War, the "senile" Eisenhower administration, Eichmann, totalitarianism, the atom bomb, local democracy--it's all there. So too is a life-long, extremely close friendship between people who weathered a war from different sides of the globe, who faced cold war terror in radically different ways, who loved their spouses intensely but felt somehow separated by differences in world-view tracable to ethnicity(Gertrude was ethnically Jewish and Heinrich was ethnically Christian). Her admiration of him, her intellectual debt to him, her love for him; his seeming amazement at her vivacity, his admiration of her intellect, his cold, German form of love--and the walls cracking, and his sentiment sometimes pouring through.

It's a warm book up until the very last entry, Arendt's address at Jaspers' funeral. That's enough to send a shiver up your spine--but only if you read it in the context of everything else.

More Than a Correspondence - A Dialogue
In 1926 Hannah Arendt was a student of Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg University. What began as the questions of a student to her teacher in 1926 blossomed into a friendly correspondence that ended with Arendt's forced emigration from Nazi Germany to the United States, with a stopover in France in the 30s, and then resumed in the Postwar years completely transformed into a rich, detailed dialogue between colleagues and friends, taking on a father-daughter feeling in many of the letters.

It was during the years after 1945 that the two examined everything about their world and themselves. Of particular importance were the dual issues of German guilt for the war and, for Jaspers, what it meant to be a Jew, for not only was Arendt and her husband Jewish, but also Jaspers's wife. This issue becomes intertwined in their conversations about the future of West Germany, the Suez War of 1956, and Arendt's trip to Jerusalem to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann. When they shift the political into the personal, Martin Heidegger, a colleague of Jaspers and a teacher of Arendt, is there for taking. The passages concerning Heidegger are quite gossipy at times and lend the reader a voyeuristic look into the private worlds of Arendt and Jaspers. It's almost as if when things get dull and weighty, a little dirt about Heidegger adds just the spice to make the letter memorable.

The other strong point of this book is the portrait Arendt paints of politics in 1950s America, succinctly analyzing the Eisenhower (and later Kennedy) Administrations, describing the collapse of the cities in the 60s, and the "pointless" war in Vietnam. It's almost as if a mirror were held up to history, as insights about those turbelent times pour forth from every letter dispatched.

An invaluable book, not only for those interested in the scholarly events of the times, but for anyone interested in the history of the times. ... Read more

Product Description
Hannah Arendt was one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her particular interests have made her one of the most frequently cited thinkers of our time. This volume examines the primary themes of her multi-faceted work, from her theory of totalitarianism and her controversial idea of the "banality of evil" to her classic studies of political action and her final reflections on judgment and the life of the mind. Each essay examines the political, philosophical, and historical concerns that shaped Arendt's thought. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Comprehensive, Clear, Clever
If Hannah Arendt has always intrigued you, but you never managed to read one of her books all the way through (or you wish you had read Arendt), this is the book for you.McGowan tells the story of her intellectual life, her passions, her ethics, her principles--in clear and readable prose that makes Arendt and her era come alive.I think it's the best little book ever written about Hannah Arendt. ... Read more

Product Description
Hannah Arendt’s most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the "right to have rights." In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Peg Birmingham explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt’s philosophy on human rights. Devoting special consideration to questions and issues surrounding Arendt’s ideas of common humanity, human responsibility, and natality, Birmingham formulates a more complex view of how these basic concepts support Arendt’s theory of human rights. Birmingham considers Arendt’s key philosophical works along with her literary writings, especially those on Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, to reveal the extent of Arendt’s commitment to humanity even as violence, horror, and pessimism overtook Europe during World War II and its aftermath. This current and lively book makes a significant contribution to philosophy, political science, and European intellectual history. ... Read more