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Books

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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,… More

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… More

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,… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

Essays

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… More

We Refugees

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

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… More

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.

Proof Positive

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

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… More

French Existentialism

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

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… More

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.

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.

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.

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.

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… 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… 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… 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.… More

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… More

Understanding and Politics

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

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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… 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

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”… More

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… More

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.

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.”

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.… 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.

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… 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… 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… More

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… 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: 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,… 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.

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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… 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… More

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… More

Commentary

The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt

– Villa, Dana, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
From the Publisher: “Hannah Arendt was one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her particular interests have made her one of the most frequently cited… More

Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World

– Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. Yale University Press, 2004.
From the Publisher: “An in-depth biography of political philosopher Hannah Arendt traces her life from her childhood in Germany to her years in America, discussing the events and… More

Eichmann: The Simplicity of Evil

– Halkin, Hillel. Commentary (2005): 57-61.
Excerpt: The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, writes the American scholar Alan Mintz, was “pivotal” in turning the Holocaust from “a topic barely spoken of in public discourse” into… More

Hannah Arendt

– Swift, Simon. Hannah Arendt. Routledge, 2008.
From the Publisher: “Hannah Arendt’s work offers a powerful critical engagement with the cultural and philosophical crises of mid-twentieth-century Europe. Her idea of the… More

Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences

– Baehr, Peter. Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Social Sciences. Stanford University Press, 2010.
From the Publisher: “This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It focuses on Hannah Arendt’s claim… More

Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt

– Honig, Bonnie, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Penn State Press, 2010.
From the Publisher: “Consisting almost entirely of new essays specially prepared for this volume, Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt illuminates the diversity of contemporary… More

Hannah Arendt: Radical Conservative

– Horowitz, Irving Louis. Hannah Arendt: Radical Conservative. Transaction Publishers, 2012.
From the Publisher: Hannah Arendt: Radical Conservative paints a broad picture of the personal traits and professional achievements in the work of an extremely complex iconographic figure… More

Hannah Arendt: A Critical Introduction

– Rothman, Barbara Katz. "Hannah Arendt: A Critical Introduction." Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 41, no. 3 (2012): 319-320.
From the Publisher: “Hannah Arendt is one of the most famous political theorists of the twentieth century, yet in the social sciences her work has rarely been given the attention it… More

The Lies of “Hannah Arendt”

– Stern, Sol. Commentary. 136, no. 2 (2013): 43-48.
Excerpt: This year marks the 50th anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In the history of American publishing, there has never been… More

Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought

– Canovan, Margaret. Hannah Arendt: A reinterpretation of her political thought. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
From the Publisher: Margaret Canovan argues in this book that much of the published work on Arendt has been flawed by serious misunderstandings, arising from a failure to see her work in… More

Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question

– Bernstein, Richard J. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
From the Publisher: Hannah Arendt (1906-­1975) was one of the most original and interesting political thinkers of the twentieth century. In this new interpretation of her career,… More

Unlearning with Hannah Arendt

– Knott, Marie Luise. Unlearning with Hannah Arendt. Other Press, LLC, 2014.
From the Publisher: “After observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt articulated her controversial concept of the “banality of evil,” thereby posing one of the most… More

The Banality of Evil: The Demise of a Legend

– Wolin, Richard. Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2014.
Introduction: There have been few phrases that have proved as controversial as the famous subtitle Hannah Arendt chose to sum up her account of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann. From the… More

Multimedia

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… 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: 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… More