Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt

by Edited by Seyla Benhabib

• ISBN13: 9780521127226
• ISBN10: 052112722X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This outstanding collection of essays explores Hannah Arendt's thought against the background of recent world-political events unfolding since September 11, 2001, and engages in a contentious dialogue with one of the greatest political thinkers of the past century, with the conviction that she remains one of our contemporaries. Themes such as moral and political equality, action, judgment and freedom are re-evaluated with fresh insights by a group of thinkers who are themselves well known for their original contributions to political thought. Other essays focus on novel and little-discussed themes in the literature by highlighting Arendt's views of sovereignty, international law and genocide, nuclear weapons and revolutions, imperialism and Eurocentrism, and her contrasting images of Europe and America. Each essay displays not only superb Arendt scholarship but also stylistic flair and analytical tenacity.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Freedom, Equality, and Responsibility
Arendt on the Foundations of Equality	p. 17
Arendt's Augustine	p. 39
The Rule of the People: Arendt, Archê, and Democracy	p. 58
Genealogies of Catastrophe: Arendt on the Logic and Legacy of Imperialism	p. 83
On Race and Culture: Hannah Arendt and Her Contemporaries	p. 113
Sovereignty, the Nation-State, and the Rule of Law
Banishing the Sovereign? Internal and External Sovereignty in Arendt	p. 137
The Decline of Order: Hannah Arendt and the Paradoxes of the Nation-State	p. 172
The Eichmann Trial and the Legacy of Jurisdiction	p. 198
International Law and Human Plurality in the Shadow of Totalitarianism: Hannah Arendt and Raphael Lemkin	p. 219
Politics in Dark Times
In Search of a Miracle: Hannah Arendt and the Atomic Bomb	p. 247
Hannah Arendt between Europe and America: Optimism in Dark Times	p. 259
Keeping the Republic: Reading Arendt's On Revolution after the Fall of the Berlin Wall	p. 277
Judging Evil
Are Arendt's Reflections on Evil Still Relevant?	p. 293
Banality Reconsidered	p. 305
The Elusiveness of Arendtian Judgment	p. 316
Existential Values in Arendt's Treatment of Evil and Morality	p. 342
Index	p. 375
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