The Portable Hannah Arendt

by Arendt, Hannah

• ISBN13: 9780142437568
• ISBN10: 0142437565
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-07-29
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

The essential collection of a fearless thinker who argued for justice and hope in an anguished century. She was a Jew born in Germany in the early twentieth century, and she studied with the greatest German minds of her day-Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers among them. After the rise of the Nazis, she emigrated to America where she proceeded to write some of the most searching, hard-hitting reflections on the agonizing issues of the time: totalitarianism in both Nazi and Stalinist garb; Zionism and the legacy of the Holocaust; federally mandated school desegregation and civil rights in the United States; and the nature of evil. The Portable Hannah Arendt offers substantial excerpts from the three works that ensured her international and enduring stature: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Additionally, this volume includes several other provocative essays, as well as her correspondence with other influential figures.

Author Biography

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was born in Hanover, Germany, and came to the United States as a refugee from the Nazis in 1940. A philosopher and political theorist, she held several academic posts, most notably at the New School for Social Research beginning in 1967.

Peter Baehr teaches in the department of politics and sociology at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction
Principal Dates
Bibliographical Notes
Acknowledgments
Overview: What Remains?
"What Remains? The Language Remains": A Conversation with Gunter Gaus	p. 3
Stateless Persons
That "Infinitely Complex Red-tape Existence": From a Letter to Karl Jaspers	p. 25
The Perplexities of the Rights of Man	p. 31
The Jewish Army - the Beginning of a Jewish Politics?	p. 46
Jewess and Shlemihl (1771-1795)	p. 49
Writing Rahel Varnhagen. From a Letter to Karl Jaspers	p. 68
Totalitarianism
The Jews and Society	p. 75
Expansion	p. 104
Total Domination	p. 119
Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility	p. 146
A Reply to Eric Voegelin	p. 157
The Vita Activa
Labor, Work, Action	p. 167
The Public and the Private Realm	p. 182
Reflections on Little Rock	p. 231
The Social Question	p. 247
The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern	p. 278
Banality and Conscience: The Eichmann Trial and Its Implications
From Eichmann in Jerusalem	p. 313
An Expert on the Jewish Question	p. 313
The Final Solution: Killing	p. 329
The Wannsee Conference, or Pontius Pilate	p. 344
Execution	p. 362
Epilogue	p. 365
Postscript	p. 375
"Holes of Oblivion": The Eichmann Trial and Totalitarianism. From a Letter to Mary McCarthy	p. 389
A "Daughter of Our People": A Response to Gershom Scholem	p. 391
From The Life of the Mind (volume 1)	p. 397
The Answer of Socrates	p. 397
The Two-in-One	p. 408
Revolution and Preservation
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)	p. 419
What Is Freedom?	p. 438
What Is Authority?	p. 462
The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure	p. 508
Of Truth and Traps
Heidegger the Fox	p. 543
Truth and Politics	p. 545
Permissions	p. 576
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