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

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

Thoughts on Politics and Revolution (Interview)

New York Review of Books 16/7 (22 April 1971): 8-20. 
An interview conducted by Adelbert Reif in the summer of 1970, translated by Denver Lindley; reprinted in Crises of the Republic.

Reflections: Civil Disobedience

The New Yorker, September 12, 1970.
Abstract: Writer discusses the grave threat to our judicial system. For many years now the law-enforcement agencies have been unable to enforce the statues against drug traffic, mugging, and burglary. Considering that the chances that criminal offenders in… More

Distinctions: A letter of reply

New York Review of Books 13 (1 January 1970): 36.  
Letter to the editor by Hannah Arendt, in response to J.M. Cameron’s review of Arendt’s Between Past and Future and Men in Dark Times.

Reflections on Violence

Journal of International Affairs, Winter, 1969, pp. 1-35. 
Reprinted in New York Review of Books 12/4 (27 February 1969): 19-31. Expanded as On Violence and reprinted in Crises of the Republic. Introduction: Violence, being instrumental by nature, is rational to the extent that it is effective in reaching the… More

Walter Benjamin

The New Yorker, October 19, 1968.
Abstract: Essay on Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish writer, who died in 1940 & has achieved posthumous fame. Benjamin’s position was that of a free-lance writer but his publications were infrequent & he felt that his father should give him a… More

He’s All Dwight: Dwight Macdonald’s Politics

New York Review of Books 11/2 (1 August 1968): 31-33.
Introduction: When I was asked to write a brief introduction to the reprint edition of Politics I was tempted to yield to the rather pleasant melancholy of “once upon a time” and to indulge in the nostalgic contemplation that seems to be the appropriate… More

Truth and Politics

The New Yorker, February 25, 1967.
Abstract: An essay on the antithesis of truth and politics. While probably no former time tolerated so many diverse opinions on religious and philosophical matters factual truth, if it happens to oppose a given group’s profit or pleasure, is greeted… More

Bibliography: A letter of reply

New York Review of Books (1 December 1966).
Hannah Arendt follows up on her review of J.P. Nettl’s Rosa Luxemburg.

What Is Permitted to Jove

The New Yorker, November 5, 1966.
Abstract: Profile of Bertolt Brecht, world-famous German playwright & poet. His political biography is a kind of case history of the uncertain relationship bet. poetry & politics. He was a strict adherent to the Communist idealogy all his life. In… More

John XXIII: A letter of reply

The New York Review of Books (16 September 1965).
Hannah Arendt’s reply to a letter regarding her essay, “The Christian Pope.”

The Christian Pope (Review)

New York Review of Books 4/10 (17 June 1965): 5-7. 
A review of Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul. Translated by D. White; included in Men in Dark Times.

Nathalie Sarraute

New York Review of Books 2/2 (5 March 1964): 5-6. 
A review of Nathalie Sarraute, The Golden Fruits. Translated by Maria Jolas. Excerpt: When Nathalie Sarraute published her first novel, Portrait of a Man Unknown, in 1948, Sartre, in an Introduction, placed her with such authors of “entirely negative… More

The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After

New York Review of Books 1/9 (26 December 1963): 10.
Introduction: Was this “the loudest shot since Sarajevo”—as a BBC commentator, stunned by impact of the news, said? Does this shot mean that the brief “moment of comparative calm” and “rising hope,” of which the dead President spoke only two… More

Eichmann in Jerusalem (The New Yorker)

The New Yorker, in five issues: February 16, February 23, March 2, March 9, March 16; 1963.
Summary: Before it was published as a book, Arendt’s report from the trial of Eichmann appeared in five installments in The New Yorker. Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V

Freedom and Politics

In Freedom and Serfdom, pp. 191-217. Springer Netherlands, 1961.
Abstract: To deal with the relationship between freedom and political government in the space of a single, short treatise is not possible. Indeed, a whole book would hardly suffice to deal adequately with the subject. For freedom, which is only very seldom… More

Revolution and Public Happiness

Commentary, November 1960.
Excerpt: The purpose of the following reflections is to rehabilitate the word “revolution.” No other word, except perhaps “freedom,” will be more urgently needed in the years to come, and no other word, without exception, has been more gravely… More

The Modern Concept of History

Review of Politics 20/4 (October 1958): 570-90. 
Reprinted in Between Past and Future. Introduction: Herodotus, who has been rightly called the Father of Western history, tells us in the first sentence of the Persian Wars that the purpose of his enterprise is to preserve that which owes its existence to men… More

Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian revolution

The Journal of Politics 20, no. 01 (1958): 5-43.
Introduction: As I write this, one year has passed since the flames of the Hungarian revolution illuminated the immense landscape of post-war totalitarianism for twelve long days. This was a true event whose stature will not depend upon victory or defeat; its… More

Authority in the Twentieth Century

The Review of Politics 18, no. 04 (1956): 403-417.
Abstract: The rise of fascist, communist and totalitarian movements and the development of the two totalitarian regimes, Stalin’s after 1929 and Hitler’s after 1938, took place against a background of a more or less general, more or less dramatic… More

The Personality of Waldemar Gurian

Review of Politics 17/1 (January 1955): 33-42. 
Reprinted in Men in Dark Times. Abstract: He was a man of many friends and a friend to all of them, men and women, priests and laymen, people in many countries and from practically all walks of life. Friendship was what made him at home in this world and he… More

Dream and Nightmare

Commonweal, September 10, 1954, pp. 551-554.
Excerpt: WHAT image does Europe have of America? Whatever it may be, it is a reflection of actual conditions in this country, it contains an evaluation of America’s role in international politics, and it expresses the attitude of the nation concerned… More

The Great Tradition

Social Research: An International Quarterly 74, no. 3 (2007): 713-726. Written in 1953.
Abstract: 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… More

Understanding and Politics

Partisan Review, vol. 20, no. 4 (July–August 1953): 377–92.
Reprinted in Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954.

Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government

Review of Politics 15/3 (July 1953): 303-27.
Included in the 1958 edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism. A German version appeared in Offener Horizont: Fetschrift für Karl Jaspers. Munich: Piper, 1953. Introduction: The following considerations have grown out of a study of the origins, the… More

The History of the Great Crime (Review)

Commentary, March 1952.
Excerpt: Léon Poliakov’s excellent book on the Third Reich and the Jews is the first to describe the last phases of the Nazi regime on the basis, strictly, of primary source material. This consists chiefly of documents presented at the Nuremberg Trials and… More

The Road to the Dreyfus Affair (Review)

Commentary 11 (February 1951): 201-03.
A review of Robert F. Byrnes, Anti-Semitism in Modern France. Excerpt: Anti-Semitism is a deplorably neglected area of modern history, and every contribution that does more than simply add another title to the formidable library of apologetics,… More

The Imperialist Character

Review of Politics 12/3 (July 1950): 303-20.
Used in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 2. Abstract: Of the two main political devices of imperialist rule, race was discovered in South Africa and bureaucracy in Algeria, Egypt and India; the former was originally the hardly conscious reaction to tribes… More

Peace or Armistice in the Near East?

Review of Politics 12/1 (January 1950): 56-82.
Abstract: Peace in the Near East is essential to the State of Israel, to the Arab people and to the Western world. Peace, as distinguished from an armistice, cannot be imposed from the outside, it can only be the result of negotiations, of mutual compromise… More

Single Track to Zion (Review)

Saturday Review of Literature 32 (5 February 1949): 22-23.
A review of Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizman.

Totalitarian Terror

Review of Politics 11/1 (January 1949): 112-15.
Review of David J. Dallin and Boris I. Nicolaevsky: Forced Labor in Soviet Russia.

No Longer and Not Yet (Review)

Nation, 14 September 1946, pp. 300-302.
A review of Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil. Translated by J.S. Untermeyer.

The Image of Hell (Review)

Commentary 2/3 (September 1946): 291-95.
Review of The Black Book: The Nazi Crime Against the Jewish People; and Hitler’s Professors, by Max Weinreich.

The Jewish State: Fifty Years After

Commentary 1 (May 1946): 1-8.
Introduction: Rereading Herzl’s The Jewish State today is a peculiar experience. One becomes aware that those things in it that Herzl’s own contemporaries would have called utopian now actually determine the ideology and policies of the Zionist… More

French Existentialism

Nation, 23 February 1946m pp. 226-28.
Also in One Hundred Years of the Nation.

Imperialism: Road to Suicide

Commentary 1 (February 1946): 27-35.  
Introduction: Imperialism, which first entered the scene toward the end of the last century, has today become the dominant political phenomenon. A war fought on an apocalyptic scale has revealed the suicidal tendencies inherent in every consistently… More

Proof Positive

Nation, 5 January 1946, p. 22.
A brief review of Victor Lange, Modern German Literature.

Privileged Jews

Jewish Social Studies 8/1 (January 1946): 3-30.
Reprinted in Duker and Ben-Horin, Emancipation and Counteremancipation. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1947.

Race-Thinking Before Racism

The Review of Politics 6, no. 01 (1944): 36-73.
Abstract: If race-thinking were a German invention, as it is now sometimes asserted, then “German thinking” (whatever that may be) was victorious in many parts of the spiritual world long before the Nazis started their illfated attempt at world conquest.… More

We Refugees

Menorah Journal 31, no. 1 (1943): 69-77.

The Hannah Arendt Papers

– The Library of Congress.
“The papers of the author, educator, and political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) are one of the principal sources for the study of modern intellectual life. Located in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, they constitute a large… More