Hannah Arendt And The Uses Of History

Hannah Arendt first argued the continuities between the age of European imperialism and the age of fascism in Europe in 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'. This text uses Arendt's insights as a starting point for further investigations into the ways in which race, imperialism, slavery and genocide are linked.

German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–75) fled from the Nazis to New York in 1941, and during the next thirty years in America she wrote her best-known and most influential works, such as The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and On Revolution. Yet, despite the fact that a substantial portion of her oeuvre was written in America, not Europe, no one has directly considered the influence of America on her thought—until now. In Arendt and America, historian Richard H. King argues that while all of Arendt’s work was haunted by her experience of totalitarianism, it was only in her adopted homeland that she was able to formulate the idea of the modern republic as an alternative to totalitarian rule. Situating Arendt within the context of U.S. intellectual, political, and social history, King reveals how Arendt developed a fascination with the political thought of the Founding Fathers. King also re-creates her intellectual exchanges with American friends and colleagues, such as Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy, and shows how her lively correspondence with sociologist David Riesman helped her understand modern American culture and society. In the last section of Arendt and America, King sets out the context in which the Eichmann controversy took place and follows the debate about “the banality of evil” that has continued ever since. As King shows, Arendt’s work, regardless of focus, was shaped by postwar American thought, culture, and politics, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. For Arendt, the United States was much more than a refuge from Nazi Germany; it was a stimulus to rethink the political, ethical, and historical traditions of human culture. This authoritative combination of intellectual history and biography offers a unique approach for thinking about the influence of America on Arendt’s ideas and also the effect of her ideas on American thought.

"It is impressive to see an edited collection in which such a high intellectual standard is maintained throughout... I learned things from almost every one of these chapters."—Craig Calhoun, author of Critical Social Theory

The controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the Holocaust, from the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism Sparking a flurry of heated debate, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling (and unsettled) issues of the twentieth century.

"How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times, even if they are different and perhaps less dark, and "Origins" raises a set of fundamental questions about how tyranny can arise and the dangerous forms of inhumanity to which it can lead." Jeffrey C. Isaac, The Washington Post Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history 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 totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time--Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia--which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

This book explores the origin and propagation of myths in international relations. The 16 contributions demonstrate how formative historical events are often transformed into handy cliche s which are subsequently drawn on by politicians and journalists who apply these simplistic patterns to current events. Myths discussed include the Spanish Civil War, Yalta, British difference, and the German Sonderweg. The book focuses on the relationship of these myths to current policy-making. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A biographical account of two major thinkers of the twentieth century, a relationship marked as much by estrangement and distance as reunion and friendship. How could Hannah Arendt, a German Jew who fled Germany in 1931, have reconciled with Martin Heidegger, whom she knew had joined and actively participated in the Nazi Party? In this remarkable biography, Antonia Grunenberg tells how the relationship between Arendt and Heidegger embraced both love and thought and made their passions inseparable, both philosophically and romantically. Grunenberg recounts how the history between Arendt and Heidegger is entwined with the history of the twentieth century with its breaks, catastrophes, and crises. Against the violent backdrop of the last century, she details their complicated and often fissured relationship as well as their intense commitments to thinking. “Focuses on a relationship that began when Arendt was a student in the 1920s, was broken between 1933 and 45, and resumed after the war.” —The Chronicle of Higher Education