Twenty-five years after her death, we are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing the life and work of this seminal twentieth-century philosopher, Julia Kristeva provides us with an elegant, sophisticated biography brimming with historical and philosophical insight. Centering on the theme of female genius, _Hannah Arendt_ emphasizes three features of the philosopher's work. First, by exploring Arendt's critique of Saint Augustine and her biographical essay on Rahel Varnhagen, Kristeva accentuates Arendt's commitment to recounting lives (...) and narration. Second, Kristeva reflects on Arendt's perspective on Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the "banality of evil." Finally, the biography assesses Arendt's intellectual journey, placing her enthusiasm for observing both social phenomena and political events in the context of her personal life. Drawing on fragments of Arendt's most intimate correspondence with her longtime lover Martin Heidegger and her husband Heinrich Blucher, excerpts from her mother's "Unser Kind" (a diary tracking Hannah's formative years), and passages from Arendt's philosophical writings, Kristeva presents a luminous story. With a thorough thematic index and bibliographical references, _Hannah Arendt_ is a major breakthrough in the understanding of an essential thinker. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme of (...) a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

"Bernstein argues that many themes that emerged in the course of Arendt's attempts tounderstand specifically Jewish issues shaped her thinking about politics in general and the life ofthe mind.

Karl Marx, as distinguished from the true and not the imagined sources of the Nazi ideology of racism, clearly belongs to the tradition of Western political thought. As an ideology Marxism is doubtless the only link that binds the totalitarian form of government directly to that tradition; apart from it any attempt to deduce totalitarianism directly from a strand of occidental thought would lack even the semblance of plausibility.

The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt rereads Arendt's political philosophy in light of newly gained insights into the historico-cultural background of her work.

In this highly innovative book Robert Fine compares three great studies of modern political life: Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Marx's Capital and Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, and argues that they are all profoundly radical texts, which jointly contribute to our understanding of the modern world. Fine maintains that these works are far more revealing when read together than in opposition, and draws a direct parallel between Hegel's critique of social forms of right and Marx's critique of (...) social forms of value. Fine shows how fruitfully their work can and should be combined. Hannah Arendt was in turn critical of what she saw as the historicism of both Hegel and Marx, but Fine argues that her study of the origins of totalitarianism directly picks up on their insights into the modern potential for fanaticism and destructiveness. Arendt never disavowed any of the nineteenth century thinkers who prefigured the catastrophes to come, but Fine shows her indebtedness to Hegel and Marx. This fascinating book offers a re-reading of these texts as three pivotal moments in the construction of a critical humanist tradition. (shrink)