Love and Saint Augustine

Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin. Berlin: Julius Springer Verlag, 1929. Translation as Love and Saint Augustine, with an interpretive essay by Joanna V. Scott and Judith C. Stark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Summary: Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine’s concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt… More

The Origins of Totalitarianism

New York, Schocken Books: 1951. Revised ed., 2004. (Includes all the prefaces and additions from the 1958, 1968, and 1972 editions.)

Summary: The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of… More

Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess

Revised edition translated into English by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. Critical edition edited by Liliane Weissberg. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Summary: She was, Hannah Arendt wrote, “my closest friend, though she has been dead for some hundred years.” Born in Berlin in 1771 as the daughter of a Jewish merchant, Rahel Varnhagen would come to host one of the most prominent salons of the late eighteenth and early… More

The Human Condition

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Summary: 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… More

Between Past and Future

New York: Viking Press, 1961. Revised edition, 1968.

Summary: Arendt describes the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill once more the vital essence of these concepts. Table of Contents: The Gap between… More

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

New York: Penguin, 1963.

Summary: Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the… More

On Revolution

Arendt, Hannah. New York: Viking Press, 1963. Revised second edition, 1965.

Summary: Hannah Arendt’s penetrating observations on the modern world have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape, both its history and its future. Published in the years between Arendt’s seminal texts The Origins of Totalitarianism  and Eichmann in… More

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 our century form the substance… 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.  

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 Politics and Revolution

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.

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.

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, with epigraphs from Cato and… 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 endow historic, political, and… 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 profound ethical… 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 account for human action. The… More

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 youth immigrate to Palestine.… More