Books
The Jewish Writings
– Edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007.Summary: 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… More
The Promise of Politics
– Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2005.Summary: In The Promise of Politics, Hannah Arendt examines the conflict between philosophy and politics. In particular, she shows how the tradition of Western political thought, which extends from Plato and Aristotle to its culmination in Marx, failed to… More
Responsibility and Judgment
– Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2003.Summary: Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral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… More
Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954
– Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994.Summary: Few thinkers have addressed the political horrors and ethical complexities of the twentieth century with the insight and passionate intellectual integrity of Hannah Arendt. She was irresistible drawn to the activity of understanding, in an effort to… More
Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy
– Edited and with an interpretive essay by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.Summary: Hannah Arendt’s last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, Thinking and Willing. Of the third, Judging, only the title page,… More
The Jew as Pariah
– Edited and with an introduction by Ron H. Feldman. New York: Grove Press, 1978.Summary: A collection of Arendt’s essays and letters on: The Destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, The Relationship of World Jewry to the State of Israel, Israel and the Arabs, The Historical Position of Jews within Modern Western Society.
The Life of the Mind
– New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.Summary: Arendt’s final, unfinished, work. A rich, challenging analysis of man’s mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.
Crises of the Republic
– New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.Summary: 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. Table of Contents: Civil Disobedience On Violence Thoughts on… More
On Violence
– New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.Summary: An analysis of the nature, causes, and significance of violence in the second half of the twentieth century. Arendt also reexamines the relationship between war, politics, violence, and power.
Men in Dark Times
– New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.Summary: “Dark times” is Brecht’s phrase, and Hannah Arendt uses it not to suggest that those she writes about are “mouthpieces of the Zeitgeist” (none in fact fit such roles), but, rather, that the routine repetitive horrors of… More
Essays
Labor, Work, Action
– In Amor Mundi, pp. 29-42. Springer Netherlands, 1987.Abstract: For this short hour, I should like to raise an apparently odd question. My question is: What does an active life consist of? What do we do when we are active? In asking this question, I shall assume that the age-old distinction between two ways of… More
Collective Responsibility
– In Amor Mundi, pp. 43-50. Springer Netherlands, 1987.Abstract: Although I agree with what I think are the two main statements of Mr. Feinberg’s paper, I must admit that I had some difficulty with it. My agreement concerns his firm distinction between guilt and responsibility. “Collective responsibility,”… More
Thinking – Part III
– The New Yorker, December 5, 1977.Abstract: Reflections about thinking. Writer gives the answer of Greek thinkers to the question: “What makes us think?” They felt that philosophizing transforms mortals into godlike creatures. In pre-philosophic Greece men strove for immortality by… More
Thinking – Part II
– The New Yorker, November 28, 1977.Abstract: Reflections about thinking. Thinking, willing, and judgment are the three basic mental activities; they cannot be derived from each other and they cannot be reduced to a common denominator. To the question “What makes us think?” there is… More
Thinking – Part I
– The New Yorker, November 21, 1977.Abstract: Reflections about thinking. Writer gives the reasons why she is preoccupied with mental activities: 1) The thoughtlessness of evil as demonstrated by the Nazi Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem; 2) What are we doing when we do nothing but… More
Home to Roost: A Bicentennial Address
– New York Review of Books, 26 June 1975, pp. 3-6.(Reprinted in S.B. Warner, The American Experiment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1976, pp. 61-77, with Arendt’s comments.) Introduction: The crises of the Republic, of this form of government and its institutions of liberty, could be detected for… More
Remembering Wystan H. Auden, Who Died In the Night Of the Twenty-Eighth Of September, 1973
– The New Yorker, January 20, 1975.Summary: Reflections about memories of the poet Wystan Auden, who died Sept. 28, 1973. Quotes from several of his poems; gives comments of some who wrote about him; discusses his personality & work. Writer met Auden in 1958 and they were good friends.
Washington’s ‘Problem-Solvers’: Where They Went Wrong
– New York Times, 5 April 1972, Op-Ed page.Lying in Politics: Reflections on The Pentagon Papers
– New York Review of Books 17/8 (18 November 1971): 30-39.Reprinted in Crises of the Republic. Introduction: The Pentagon Papers, like so much else in history, tell different stories, teach different lessons to different readers. Some claim they have only now understood that Vietnam was the “logical” outcome of… More
Martin Heidegger at Eighty
– New York Review of Books 17/6 (21 October 1971): 50-54. Translated by Albert Hofstadter.(Originally in German, Merkur 10 [1969]: 893-902. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Reprinted in English in Michael Murray, ed., Heidegger and Modern Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.) Introduction: Martin Heidegger’s eightieth birthday… More
Multimedia
Hannah Arendt: The Woman Behind the Film
– Panel discussion, Deutsches Haus at New York University, May 28, 2013.Penguin Classics and Zeitgeist Films, in collaboration with Deutsches Haus at NYU present “Hannah Arendt: The Woman Behind the Film: A panel discussion featuring the cast and crew of the new motion picture, Hannah Arendt.” Panelists include… More
Edna Brocke on Hannah Arendt
– Edna Brocke, Hannah Arendt Center (Vimeo), April 2012.Edna Brocke, Hannah Arendt’s niece and heir, speaks about her aunt and the continuing controversies over her legacy.
Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichmann, and How Evil Isn’t Banal
– Yaacov Lozowick, Yad Vashem, April 15, 2011.Historian Dr. Yaacov Lozowick, former Director of the Yad Vashem Archives, discusses Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichmann, and How Evil Isn’t Banal. The video is part of the series “Insights and Perspectives from Holocaust Researchers and… More
Hannah Arendt, Ethics, and Responsibility
– Judith Butler, European Graduate School, September 30, 2009.Judith Butler speaking about Hannah Arendts study of Adolph Eichmann and lecturing about genocide, plurality, Kant and the categorical imperative, juridical law, performativity, and the formation of Israel in a lecture entitled Hannah Arendt, Ethics, and… More