The Portable Hannah Arendt

Introduction by Peter Baehr
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A collection of writings by a groundbreaking political thinker, including excerpts from The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem

She was a Jew born in Germany in the early twentieth century, and she studied with the greatest German minds of her day—Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers among them. After the rise of the Nazis, she emigrated to America where she proceeded to write some of the most searching, hard-hitting reflections on the agonizing issues of the time: totalitarianism in both Nazi and Stalinist garb; Zionism and the legacy of the Holocaust; federally mandated school desegregation and civil rights in the United States; and the nature of evil.
 
The Portable Hannah Arendt offers substantial excerpts from the three works that ensured her international and enduring stature: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Additionally, this volume includes several other provocative essays, as well as her correspondence with other influential figures.
© Courtesy of the Author
HANNAH ARENDT was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, fled to Paris in 1933, and came to the United States after the outbreak of World War II. She was the editorial director of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948. She taught at Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and The New School for Social Research. Among her other books are The Human Condition, On Revolution, and The Life of the Mind. She died in 1975. View titles by Hannah Arendt
The Portable Hannah ArendtEditor's Introduction
Principal Dates
Bibliographical Notes
Acknowledgments
I. Overview: What Remains?
What Remains? The Language Remains: A Conversation with Günter Gaus
II. Stateless Persons
That "Infinitely Complex Red-tape Exixtence"
From a Letter to Karl Jaspers
The Perplexities of the RIghts of Man
The Jewish Army-The Beginning of a Jewish Politics?
Jewess and Shlemihl (1771-1795)
Writing Rahel Varnhagen. From a Letter to Karl Jaspers
III. Totalitarianism
The Jews and Society
Expansion
Total Domination
Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility
A Reply to Eric Voegelin
IV. The Vita Activa
Labor, Work, Action
The Public and the Private Realm
Reflections on Little Rock
The Social Question
The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern
V. Banality and Conscience: The Eichmann Trial and its Implications
From Eichmann in Jerusalem
An Expert on the Jewish Question
The Final Solution: Killing
The Wannasee Conference, or Pontious Pilate
Execusion
Epilogue
Postscript

Holes of Oblivion: The Eichmann Trial and Totalitarianism. From a Letter to Mary McCarthy
A Daughter of Out People
A Response to Gershom Scholem
From The Life of the Mind (volume 1)
The Answer of Socrates
The Two-in-One

VI. Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)
What Is Freedom?
What Is Authority?
The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure
VII. Of Truth and Traps
Heidegger the Fox
Truth and Politics
Permissions

About

A collection of writings by a groundbreaking political thinker, including excerpts from The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem

She was a Jew born in Germany in the early twentieth century, and she studied with the greatest German minds of her day—Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers among them. After the rise of the Nazis, she emigrated to America where she proceeded to write some of the most searching, hard-hitting reflections on the agonizing issues of the time: totalitarianism in both Nazi and Stalinist garb; Zionism and the legacy of the Holocaust; federally mandated school desegregation and civil rights in the United States; and the nature of evil.
 
The Portable Hannah Arendt offers substantial excerpts from the three works that ensured her international and enduring stature: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem. Additionally, this volume includes several other provocative essays, as well as her correspondence with other influential figures.

Author

© Courtesy of the Author
HANNAH ARENDT was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, fled to Paris in 1933, and came to the United States after the outbreak of World War II. She was the editorial director of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948. She taught at Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and The New School for Social Research. Among her other books are The Human Condition, On Revolution, and The Life of the Mind. She died in 1975. View titles by Hannah Arendt

Table of Contents

The Portable Hannah ArendtEditor's Introduction
Principal Dates
Bibliographical Notes
Acknowledgments
I. Overview: What Remains?
What Remains? The Language Remains: A Conversation with Günter Gaus
II. Stateless Persons
That "Infinitely Complex Red-tape Exixtence"
From a Letter to Karl Jaspers
The Perplexities of the RIghts of Man
The Jewish Army-The Beginning of a Jewish Politics?
Jewess and Shlemihl (1771-1795)
Writing Rahel Varnhagen. From a Letter to Karl Jaspers
III. Totalitarianism
The Jews and Society
Expansion
Total Domination
Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility
A Reply to Eric Voegelin
IV. The Vita Activa
Labor, Work, Action
The Public and the Private Realm
Reflections on Little Rock
The Social Question
The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern
V. Banality and Conscience: The Eichmann Trial and its Implications
From Eichmann in Jerusalem
An Expert on the Jewish Question
The Final Solution: Killing
The Wannasee Conference, or Pontious Pilate
Execusion
Epilogue
Postscript

Holes of Oblivion: The Eichmann Trial and Totalitarianism. From a Letter to Mary McCarthy
A Daughter of Out People
A Response to Gershom Scholem
From The Life of the Mind (volume 1)
The Answer of Socrates
The Two-in-One

VI. Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)
What Is Freedom?
What Is Authority?
The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure
VII. Of Truth and Traps
Heidegger the Fox
Truth and Politics
Permissions