The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers begins in 1926, when the twenty-year-old Arendt studied philosophy with Jaspers in Heidelberg. It is interrupted by Arendt's emigration and Jasper's 'inner emigration' and resumes in the fall of 1945. From then until Jaspers's death in 1969, the initial teacher-student relationship develops into a close friendship. Three countries figure prominently in the correspondence: Germany, Israel, and the United States. Among the topics are Fascism, the atom bomb and the (...) threat of global destruction, German guilt for the Holocaust, Jewishness, the State of Israel, American politics and American universities, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt and Jaspers discuss people both famous and obscure. They gossip, joke complain, and argue. They commiserate with each other over the illnesses and infirmities of old age. And they converse about the world's great philosophers: Spinoza, Kant, Marx, Max Weber, Heidegger. Here is a fascinating dialogue between a woman and a man, a Jew and a German, a questioner and a visionary, both uncompromising in their examination of our troubled century. (shrink)

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 ...

A unique selection of the most significant interviews given by Hannah Arendt, including the last she gave before her death in 1975. Some are published here in English for the first time. Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism (...) and history, and her own experiences as an emigre. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.". (shrink)

The essence of the correspondence between Arendt and Scholem can be said to lie in three things. Above all it provides an intimate account of how two great intellectuals try to come to terms with being both German and Jewish, and how to think about Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust. They also debate the issue of what it means to be Jewish in the post-Holocaust world whether in New York or in Jerusalem. Finally, the specter of Benjamin (...) haunts the work and in a sense the letters are as much about Benjamin as the other two questions since his life and tragic death epitomize them both. Arendt and Scholem's letters on these weighty questions are lightened by more routine exchanges: on travel itineraries, lunch or dinner parties where important people were present, and so forth. These daily details are woven throughout the correspondence and provide vivid biographical information about Arendt and Scholem that is unavailable in any other source. (shrink)

Em _Origens do Totalitarismo_, Hannah Arendt faz uma caracterização do totalitarismo como uma forma de governo inédita, fincada em duas novas camadas sociais, a ralé e as massas. Sua descrição do totalitarismo é realizada a partir de uma diferenciação com a tirania. Este trabalho buscou observar como o surgimento dos supracitados grupos sociais permitiram o surgimento dessa nova forma de governo. Vimos que a definição dela de povo diferencia-se da tradicional, quando afirma ser o povo diretamente relacionado à (...) busca de um sistema verdadeiramente representativo. Esta diferenciação é realizada em relação a dois grupos sociais, a ralé, que é composta do refugo da sociedade capitalista, dos _declassés_, daqueles que não encontram representação no sistema político, e que é também subproduto da burguesia, não se desligando desta, e as massas, que são formadas pelas pessoas desarticuladas e isoladas, neutras, indiferentes politicamente, atomizadas, supérfluas, resultantes de um mundo destruído. Para a autora, o totalitarismo emerge quando líderes da ralé passam a ser a força motriz das massas. O totalitarismo é mostrado como o criador de um simulacro da realidade, que aproveitou-se do esvaziamento do espaço público, começando a diferenciar-se da tirania pelo terror pós-eliminação da oposição, pelo líder ser parte da engrenagem e instrumento de desresponsabilização, por não se separar da propaganda, por seu amorfismo e pelo fato do campo de concentração ser o espelho e a miniatura da sociedade almejada. (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, (...) outrage, and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We 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 essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, _The Human Condition_ is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then—diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control (...) the consequences of our actions—continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book's argument and examines its present relevance. A classic in political and social theory, _The Human Condition_ is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely. Hannah Arendt was one of the leading social theorists in the United States. Her _Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy_ and _Love and Saint Augustine_ are also published by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice ...

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

This paper argues that those critics of Hannah Arendt's thought who have protested at her disavowal of ‘moral standards’ as being appropriate in the judgment of political action have, in fact, misjudged the structure of her thought. My argument is, however, a constructive one: the paper seeks to demonstrate how Arendt arrives at her sweeping rejection of conventional standards of moral judgment, and what solution she proposes. I do this in three stages. First, I address Arendt's (...) understanding of self as opposed to world: especially how the moral absolutes which may be claimed by the former may threaten the very structure of the latter. Second, I draw upon her model of action to discover the idea of a worldly ethics, one of principle. And third, I consider the fate of our goals when we act into the world, paying particular attention to the idea of responsibility and the on-going responsiveness to the world that belongs to action under a principle. (shrink)

The current global wave of nationalism threatens the process of shared critical reflection, driving many of us back to reading Hannah Arendt. These “dark times” are especially challenging from a Deweyan pragmatist perspective because critical and cooperative inquiry requires a free community of thinkers. Having lived in a near-fascist religious group for fifteen years, this essay brings personal experiences to the questions of how we think as well as create spaces for diverse yet shared realities to think and (...) act in freedom. Drawing on Arendt as well as Dewey, Addams, and Minnich, this essay explores three necessities for integrity in dark times: Radical honesty and reflection which requires facing up to reality and being mindful about events in our world; Building communities: creating shared reality and public spaces to appear, Developing the skills of engaged thinking and the capacity for deep reflection as a foundation for action together. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt was born in Germany in 1906 and lived in America from 1941 until her death in 1975. Thus her life spanned the tumultuous years of the twentieth century, as did her thought. She did not consider herself a philosopher, though she studied and maintained close relationships with two great philosophers—Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger—throughout their lives. She was a thinker, in search not of metaphysical truth but of the meaning of appearances and events. She was a (...) questioner rather than an answerer, and she wrote what she thought, principally to encourage others to think for themselves. Fearless of the consequences of thinking, Arendt found courage woven in each and every strand of human freedom. In 1951 she published The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1958 The Human Condition, in 1961 Between Past and Future, in 1963 On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem, in 1968 Men in Dark Times, in 1970 On Violence, in 1972 Crises of the Republic, and in 1978, posthumously, The Life of the Mind. Starting at the turn of the twenty-first century, Schocken Books has published a series of collections of Arendt’s unpublished and uncollected writings, of which Thinking Without a Banister is the fifth volume. The title refers to Arendt’s description of her experience of thinking, an activity she indulged without any of the traditional religious, moral, political, or philosophic pillars of support. The book’s contents are varied: the essays, lectures, reviews, interviews, speeches, and editorials, taken together, manifest the relentless activity of her mind as well as her character, acquainting the reader with the person Arendt was, and who has hardly yet been appreciated or understood. (Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn). (shrink)

Arendt's penetrating observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute a major contribution to political philosophy. In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Seit den fruhen achtziger Jahren ist bekannt, dass es zwischen Martin Heidegger und Hannah Arendt - uber die Lehrer-Schuler- und spatere professionelle Verbindung hinaus - eine Liebes- und Freundschaftsbeziehung gegeben hat. Die Dokumente, die das Verhaltnis belegen und in den Nachlassen Arendt und Heidegger im Deutschen Literaturarchiv Marbach lagern, waren bislang nicht zuganglich. In diesem Band werden sie erstmals veroffentlicht. Dieser Publikation mit ihrem grossen Fundus an Materialien kommt erhebliche biographische und werkgeschichtliche Bedeutung zu. Die Ausgabe enthalt (...) zusatzlich zu den aus den Handschriften ubertragenen Texten einen Anmerkungsteil mit kommentierenden Hinweisen, ein erlauterndes Nachwort sowie Register. (shrink)

Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents.

Que valent les formes de pensée traditionnelles face à l'apparition des régimes totalitaires? La démocratie a-t-elle présenté des lacunes favorisant l'émergence en son sein de tels régimes? Que devient l'idéal de progrès, de bonheur et de liberté des citoyens? Leo Strauss et Hannah Arendt ont tous deux affronté ce dilemme et posé la question de la portée de la philosophie politique. C'est leur démarche, strictement parallèle mais radicalement opposée, que Carole Widmaier confronte dans une étude stimulante : du (...) constat de la crise à leur parcours dans l'histoire de la pensée et à leur rapport respectif à la tradition et à la modernité. Tandis que Strauss invite à réhabiliter l'idée classique d'une nature humaine, Arendt montre la nécessité d'abandonner cette idée pour approcher l'existence humaine et ses différentes modalités. D'une part la défense d'un mode de vie philosophique retiré, la recherche de la vérité, de l'autre le « souci du monde » et l'attention à l'événement. Une réflexion salutaire pour affronter les maux de la modernité et s'ouvrir au changement politique. (shrink)

The Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust has granted permission to Social Research to publish for the first time a lecture given by Arendt in 1953, the provenance of which is her so-called Marx manuscripts. The lecture here entitled "The Great Tradition" has been divided into two parts, the first of which, subtitled "Law and Power," appears in the current issue, and the second, subtitled "Ruling and Being Ruled," will appear in the next issue. The Marx manuscripts, as (...) they go on, have less and less to do with Karl Marx, but even when, as here, he is not named or his thought directly addressed, he remains, in one important respect, in the background. In the first part of "The Great Tradition" the relation between law and power, and in the second part the conception of government as ruling and being ruled, are analyzed by Arendt as fundamental elements in the tradition of political thought; what the reader needs to be aware of , is that the lasting importance of Marx to Arendt is his having brought the tradition to its end by returning it to its beginning. The tradition began when Plato replaced action with philosophy, and ended when Marx transformed philosophy into action. In both its beginning and its end—and this is why Marx himself remains within the tradition—the pre-philosophic and perhaps antiphilosophic experience of freedom in action, Arendt's primary political concern, is missing. (shrink)

Este trabajo explora una línea posible del diálogo entre Walter Benjamin y Hannah Arendt mediante la presentación de algunas intermitencias entre dos figuras relevantes de su pensamiento sobre la historia, la figura que Benjamin determina en su abordaje del Angelus Novus pintado por Paul Klee, y la figura de Er en los términos en que Arendt la elabora a partir de una parábola kafkiana. Retomamos ambas figuras con el objetivo de mostrar en ellas el intento filosófico de (...) organizar un pensamiento crítico que resista la esclerosis del concepto moderno y progresivo de historia: en un contexto en que el pasado pareciera diluirse en la impotencia de su presencia y el futuro se presenta como reproducción apocalíptica del desastre, sostenemos que Benjamin y Arendt convocan al Angelus Novus y al Er kafkiano como imágenes capaces de dislocar el anquilosamiento de la crítica y el flujo epistemológico implicado en la crisis moderna de la experiencia. (shrink)

Despite Hannah Arendt’s scepticism about psychoanalysis, this essay shows the relevance of Freud’s psychoanalytic notions of love and sublimation for Arendt. In her rejection of a political relevance of love, Arendt does not take into consideration the libidinal aspects of collective bonds, nor does she give an account of the passionate aspect of being together despite the crucial role of amor mundi in her work. Following Freud, I demonstrate that love and sublimation are fundamental to worldliness, (...) central to our understanding of forgiveness and the making of promises, all of which is pivotal to understanding Hannah Arendt's political thought. In Freud’s writing love and sublimation expand knowledge and creativity and enable community building. By negotiating between Arendt’s and Freud’s writings on love and politics, this article demonstrates that sublimated love mediates between the private and public spheres. The ultimate question I ask concerns the relation between love of the world and its negation by radical evil. (shrink)

Resumo: Este texto se empenha em entender sobre o universo da fabricação de bens duráveis que compõem o mundo. Esse espaço de produção é o grande responsável por produzir produtos para o ser humano, mesmo que isso custe a destruição da natureza. Segundo Hannah Arendt, entretanto, com a modernidade houve uma mudança significativa do processo de fabricar esses artefatos. Isso desencadeou não só uma invasão do consumo, bem como deixou o mundo e seus utensílios ainda mais descartáveis. Portanto, (...) representando uma transformação da essência da técnica e de seu processo de conhecimento, como aponta Martin Heidegger. A conclusão busca desvelar a perda da distinção entre meios e fins ao colocar o ser humano como o protagonista do mundo. A consequência é, como alertava os gregos, a desvalorização da natureza e do agente político, pois é o humano, enquanto consumidor e usuário de produtos, o eleito como referência para o mundo. Palavras-chave: Fabricação; Humano; Mundo; Natureza; Modernidade. The changing manufacturing process and responsibility for the world from Hannah Arendt's perspective Abstract: This text tries to understand the universe of durable goods manufacturing that make up the world. This production space is largely responsible for producing products for human beings, even if it costs the destruction of nature. According to Hannah Arendt, however, with modernity there was a significant change in the process of manufacturing these artifacts. This has brought about not only an invasion of consumption, but has also made the world and its utensils even more throwable. Therefore, representing a transformation of the essence of technique and its knowledge process, as Martin Heidegger points out. The conclusion aims to unveil the loss of the distinction between means and ends by placing the human being as the protagonist of the world. The consequence is, as the Greeks warned, the devaluation of nature and of the political agent, since it is the human being, as consumer and user of products, who is elected as the reference for the world. Key-words: Fabrication; Human; World; Nature; Modernity. Der veränderte Produktionsprozess und die Verantwortung für die Welt aus der Perspektive von Hannah Arendt Zusammenfassend: Dieser Text versucht, das Universum der Herstellung langlebiger Güter zu verstehen, das die Welt ausmacht. Dieser Produktionsraum ist weitgehend für die Herstellung von Produkten für den Menschen verantwortlich, auch wenn dies die Zerstörung der Natur kostet. Nach Hannah Arendt gab es jedoch mit der Moderne eine bedeutende Veränderung im Prozess der Herstellung dieser Artefakte. Dies hat nicht nur zu einer Invasion des Konsums geführt, sondern auch dazu, dass die Welt und ihre Utensilien noch wegwerfbarer geworden sind. Es handelt sich also um eine Transformation des Wesens der Technik und ihres Erkenntnisprozesses, wie Martin Heidegger hervorhebt. Die Schlussfolgerung zielt darauf ab, den Verlust der Unterscheidung zwischen Mitteln und Zwecken aufzuzeigen, indem der Mensch zum Protagonisten der Welt gemacht wird. Die Folge ist, wie die Griechen warnten, die Abwertung der Natur und des politischen Akteurs, da der Mensch als Konsument und Nutzer von Produkten zum Bezugspunkt der Welt gewählt wird. Schlüsselwörter: Fabrikation; Mensch; Welt; Natur; Modernität. Data de registro: 15/03/2022 Data de aceite: 26/10/2022. (shrink)

This is the first volume in any language that collects Hannah Arendt's remarkable series of essays and notes on literary figures and cultural questions.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt diagnosed three symptoms for the post-revolutionary, post-Enlightenment age ending in totalitarianism: 1) the obliteration of the possibility for action, i.e. for freedom; 2) the destruction of experience; and 3) the annihilation of the meaning of death. This essay tries to draw out what such Zeitdiagnose implies. I argue that for Arendt, it is not only the genuinely political that suffers irredeemably at the political as well as the societal levels of (...) totalitarianism, but as an internal correlate, the genuinely historical as well. By analyzing how the shapes of the historical metamorphosed for Arendt from Greco-Roman antiquity to Christianity, through Kant, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, I want to show that 1) the political modernism of Hannah Arendt carries within it a “historical modernism” and 2) such historical modernism re-embeds the present age within the Age of History by virtue of a critical distancing and a tiger’s leap into the past. (shrink)

Para além do fato de comungarem as suspeitas contra os desenvolvimentos modernos da técnica e os riscos que eles representam para o mundo humano, Hans Jonas e Hannah Arendt se distanciam quanto às condições que permitiriam preservar um tal mundo. O primeiro nos convida a desenvolver uma ética da responsabilidade para com a vida enquanto a segunda desenha uma política da ação humana que escapa do ciclo vital. A constatação dessa divergência serve, no entanto, de pretexto para pensarmos (...) uma complementaridade: a natalidade arendtiana pode receber uma justificação bioontológica e a ética jonasiana pode encontrar um modo de encarnação política na filosofia de Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

En este artículo se quiere reflexionar acerca del papel de la tradición, la memoria y la revolución desde la obra de Benjamin y de Arendt. Para ello se aborda para empezar el posicionamiento del primero, en diálogo con Marx y otros revolucionarios del siglo XIX con el fin de ahondar en la importancia de la memoria para el presente y el futuro. Luego se analiza el pensamiento de Arendt para reflexionar sobre la tradición revolucionaria, sobre el uso revolucionario (...) de la tradición clásica durante la Revolución americana y sobre la olvidada república de consejos en la tradición revolucionaria. Ambos pensadores se proponen incorporar las cuestiones de la tradición y de la memoria en el presente, pero de tal modo que no se caiga en actitudes tradicionalistas o fetichistas. (shrink)

Following tropes of light and dark in Amanda Gorman’s poem ‘The Hill We Climb’, the article explores, from a feminist perspective, who counts as a truth-teller. Against the backdrop of Hannah Arendt’s and Michel Foucault’s works on truth-telling, the article theorizes feminist modes of truth-telling. It scrutinizes truth-making in politics while unearthing the andro-centrism in truth-telling. Under the impression of post-truth rhetoric in recent populist landscapes, the article argues for a feminist and intersectional articulation of truth-telling to disclose (...) the gendered and racialized power relations in contemporary masculinist populism. (shrink)

For the inaugural issue of the Journal of Continental Philosophy the editors have republished this decisive text in the arc of Hannah Arendt’s thought. In this text she orients us towards the totalitarian impulses inherent to modernity as such. Her text is presented in its various iterations, reprinted with permission from The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Fragmente eines Buches (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018), volume VI of the Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Hannah Arendt.

En el marco del debate humanista del siglo XX, el pensamiento político de Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) se constituye como una de las voces críticas y testimoniales que buscaron reflexionar sobre lo acontecido en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. A partir de su propia experiencia como judía en la Alemania de las primeras décadas de su siglo y como intelectual exiliada, concentró sus esfuerzos en comprender el significado filosófico y político de lo ocurrido. Sin pretender afirmar o definir la naturaleza (...) humana sin más, de forma deshistorizada y significada desde una filosofía omnisciente de la historia, orientó su responsabilidad a soportar la carga del siglo, enfrentar los hechos y habilitar otros vínculos con el pasado, con la herencia, con las tradiciones, con lo aún no del futuro y los múltiples modos de proyectarlo en espacios políticos (nacionales e internacionales) cruzados por conflictos y contradicciones. En la lucha entre la omnipotencia y la impotencia humanas como experiencias vitales, la acción aparece como constitutiva de la condición humana y se inscribe en el tiempo como iniciativa, como posibilidad de un futuro diferente. El trabajo explora dimensiones éticas, políticas e históricas de un humanismo que pretende dialogar con su presente. In the debate of the twentieth century humanist, the political thought of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was established as one of the critics and testimony that sought to reflect on what happened in the Second World War. From his own experience as a Jew in Germany in the early decades of the century and as an intellectual in exile, she concentrated his efforts on understanding the philosophical and political significance of what happened. Without attempting to confirm and to define the human nature without so dehistoricized and meaning from an omniscient philosophy of history, turned her responsibility to bear the burden of the century, face the facts and enable other links with the past, the inheritance, traditions, yet with the future and project it into multiple modes of political space (national and international) crossed by conflicts and contradictions. In the struggle between the omnipotence and the human powerlessness and life experiences, the action appears to constitute the human condition and fits the time and initiative, as the possibility of a different future. The paper explores ethical, political and historical humanism that seeks dialogue with its present. (shrink)

Esta comunicación busca rastrear de la mano de M. Abensour, dos posturas que tienen entre sí diferencias: el paradigma de lo político en Hannah Arendt y, el paradigma de la dominación como forma de lo político, planteado por Adorno y Horkheimer (E.de.F). La importancia está en comprender las diferencias y las implicaciones de cada postura respecto de la otra, en términos del objetivo final: la concepción de lo político desde una postura filosófica crítica.