On Revolution Hannah Arendt

Arendt wrote works on intellectual history as a political theorist, using events and actions to develop insights into contemporary totalitarian movements and the threat to human freedom presented by scientific abstraction and bourgeois morality. Intellectually, she was an independent thinker, a loner, not a "joiner," separating herself from schools of thought or ideology.[214] In addition to her major texts she published anthologies, including Between Past and Future (1961),[215] Men in Dark Times (1968)[216] and Crises of the Republic (1972).[217] She also contributed to many publications, including The New York Review of Books, Commonweal, Dissent and The New Yorker.[29] She is perhaps best known for her accounts of Adolf Eichmann and his trial,[218] because of the intense controversy that it generated.[219]

Political theory and philosophical system

While Arendt never developed a systematic political theory and her writing does not easily lend itself to categorization, the tradition of thought most closely identified with Arendt is that of civic republicanism, from Aristotle to Tocqueville. Her political concept is centered around active citizenship that emphasizes civic engagement and collective deliberation.[5] She believed that no matter how bad, government could never succeed in extinguishing human freedom, despite holding that modern societies frequently retreat from democratic freedom with its inherent disorder for the relative comfort of administrative bureaucracy. Some have claimed her political legacy is her strong defence of freedom in the face of an increasingly less than free world.[29] She does not adhere to a single systematic philosophy, but rather spans a range of subjects covering totalitarianism, revolution, the nature of freedom and the faculties of thought and judgment.[7]

While she is best known for her work on "dark times",[ai] the nature of totalitarianism and evil, she imbued this with a spark of hope and confidence in the nature of mankind:[214]

That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination might well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given to them. Men in Dark Times (1968)[222]

Love and Saint Augustine (1929)

Arendt's doctoral thesis, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin. Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation[79] (Love and Saint Augustine. Towards a philosophical interpretation), was published in 1929 and attracted critical interest, although an English translation did not appear until 1996.[223] In this work she combined approaches of both Heidegger and Jaspers. Arendt's interpretation of love in the work of Augustine deals with three concepts, love as craving or desire (Amor qua appetitus), love in the relationship between man (creatura) and creator (Creator – Creatura), and neighborly love (Dilectio proximi). Love as craving anticipates the future, while love for the Creator deals with the remembered past. Of the three, dilectio proximi or caritas[aj] is perceived as the most fundamental, to which the first two are oriented, which she treats as vita socialis (social life) – the second of the Great Commandments (or Golden Rule) "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" uniting and transcending the former.[ak][88] Augustine's influence (and Jaspers' views on his work) persisted in Arendt's writings for the rest of her life.[225]

Amor mundi  –  warum ist es so schwer, die Welt zu lieben?Love of the world  –  why is it so difficult to love the world?

—Denktagebuch I: 522[226]

Some of the leitmotifs of her canon were apparent, introducing the concept of Natalität (Natality) as a key condition of human existence and its role in the development of the individual,[223][227][228] developing this further in The Human Condition (1958).[187][229] She explained that the construct of natality was implied in her discussion of new beginnings and man's elation to the Creator as nova creatura.[230][231] The centrality of the theme of birth and renewal is apparent in the constant reference to Augustinian thought, and specifically the innovative nature of birth, from this, her first work, to her last, The Life of the Mind.[232]

Love is another connecting theme. In addition to the Augustinian loves expostulated in her dissertation, the phrase amor mundi (love of the world) is one often associated with Arendt and both permeates her work and was an absorbing passion throughout her work.[233][234] She took the phrase from Augustine's homily on the first epistle of St John, "If love of the world dwell in us".[235] Amor mundi was her original title for The Human Condition (1958),[al][237] the subtitle of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's biography (1982),[67] the title of a collection of writing on faith in her work[238] and is the newsletter of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.[239]

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Arendt's first major book, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),[186] examined the roots of Stalinism and Nazism, structured as three essays, "Antisemitism", "Imperialism" and "Totalitarianism". Arendt argues that totalitarianism was a "novel form of government," that "differs essentially from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship"[240] in that it applied terror to subjugate mass populations rather than just political adversaries.[241][242] Arendt also maintained that Jewry was not the operative factor in the Holocaust, but merely a convenient proxy because Nazism was about terror and consistency, not merely eradicating Jews.[242][243] Arendt explained the tyranny using Kant's phrase "radical evil",[244] by which their victims became "superfluous people".[245][246] In later editions she enlarged the text[247] to include her work on "Ideology and Terror: A novel form of government"[241] and the Hungarian Revolution, but then published the latter separately.[248][249][250]

Criticism of Origins has often focused on its portrayal of the two movements, Hitlerism and Stalinism, as equally tyrannical.[251]

Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (1957)

Arendt's Habilitationsschrift on Rahel Varnhagen was completed while she was living in exile in Paris in 1938, but not published till 1957, in the United Kingdom by East and West Library, part of the Leo Baeck Institute.[252] This biography of a 19th-century Jewish socialite, formed an important step in her analysis of Jewish history and the subjects of assimilation and emancipation, and introduced her treatment of the Jewish diaspora as either pariah or parvenu. In addition it represents an early version of her concept of history.[253][254] The book is dedicated to Anne Mendelssohn, who first drew her attention to Varnhagen.[83][255][256] Arendt's relation to Varnhagen permeates her subsequent work. Her account of Varnhagen's life was perceived during a time of the destruction of German-Jewish culture. It partially reflects Arendt's own view of herself as a German-Jewish woman driven out of her own culture into a stateless existence,[253] leading to the description "biography as autobiography".[254][257][258]

The Human Condition (1958)

In what is arguably her most influential work, The Human Condition (1958),[187] Arendt differentiates political and social concepts, labor and work, and various forms of actions; she then explores the implications of those distinctions. Her theory of political action, corresponding to the existence of a public realm, is extensively developed in this work. Arendt argues that, while human life always evolves within societies, the social part of human nature, political life, has been intentionally realized in only a few societies as a space for individuals to achieve freedom. Conceptual categories, which attempt to bridge the gap between ontological and sociological structures, are sharply delineated. While Arendt relegates labor and work to the realm of the social, she favors the human condition of action as that which is both existential and aesthetic.[5] Of human actions, Arendt identifies two that she considers essential. These are forgiving past wrong (or unfixing the fixed past) and promising future benefit (or fixing the unfixed future).[259]

Arendt had first introduced the concept of "natality" in her Love and Saint Augustine (1929)[79] and in The Human Condition starts to develop this further. In this, she departs from Heidegger's emphasis on mortality. Arendt's positive message is one of the "miracle of beginning", the continual arrival of the new to create action, that is to alter the state of affairs brought about by previous actions.[260] "Men", she wrote "though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin". She defined her use of "natality" as:[261]

The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, "natural" ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born.

Natality would go on to become a central concept of her political theory, and also what Karin Fry considers its most optimistic one.[229]

Between Past and Future (1954...1968)

Between Past and Future is an anthology of eight essays written between 1954 and 1968, dealing with a variety of different but connected philosophical subjects. These essays share the central idea that humans live between the past and the uncertain future. Man must permanently think to exist, but must learn thinking. Humans have resorted to tradition, but are abandoning respect for this tradition and culture. Arendt tries to find solutions to help humans think again, since modern philosophy has not succeeded in helping humans to live correctly.[215]

On Revolution (1963)

Arendt's book On Revolution[262] presents a comparison of two of the main revolutions of the 18th century, the American and French Revolutions. She goes against a common impression of both Marxist and leftist views when she argues that France, while well-studied and often emulated, was a disaster and that the largely ignored American Revolution was a success. The turning point in the French Revolution occurred when the leaders rejected their goals of freedom in order to focus on compassion for the masses. In the United States, the founders never betray the goal of Constitutio Libertatis. Arendt believes the revolutionary spirit of those men had been lost, however, and advocates a "council system" as an appropriate institution to regain that spirit.[263]

Men in Dark Times (1968)

The anthology of essays Men in Dark Times presents intellectual biographies of some creative and moral figures of the 20th century, such as Walter Benjamin, Karl Jaspers, Rosa Luxemburg, Hermann Broch, Pope John XXIII, and Isak Dinesen.[216]

Crises of the Republic (1972)

Crises of the Republic[217] was the third of Arendt's anthologies, consisting of four essays. These related essays deal with contemporary American politics and the crises it faced in the 1960s and 1970s. "Lying in Politics" looks for an explanation behind the administration's deception regarding the Vietnam War, as revealed in the Pentagon Papers. "Civil Disobedience" examines the opposition movements, while the final "Thoughts on Politics and Revolution" is a commentary, in the form of an interview on the third essay, "On Violence".[217][264] In "On Violence" Arendt substantiates that violence presupposes power which she understands as a property of groups. Thus, she breaks with the predominant conception of power as derived from violence.

The Life of the Mind (1978)

Arendt's last major work, The Life of the Mind[265] remained incomplete at the time of her death in 1975, but marked a return to moral philosophy. The outline of the book was based on her graduate level political philosophy class, Philosophy of the Mind, and her Gifford Lectures in Scotland.[266] She conceived of the work as a trilogy based on the mental activities of thinking, willing, and judging. Her most recent work had focused on the first two, but went beyond this in terms of vita activa. Her discussion of thinking was based on Socrates and his notion of thinking as a solitary dialogue between oneself, leading her to novel concepts of conscience.[267]

Arendt died suddenly five days after completing the second part, with the first page of Judging still in her typewriter, and McCarthy then edited the first two parts and provided some indication of the direction of the third.[268][269] Arendt's exact intentions for the third part are unknown but she left several manuscripts (such as Thinking and Moral Considerations, Some Questions on Moral Philosophy and Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy) relating to her thoughts on the mental faculty of Judging. These have since been published separately.[270][271]

Collected works

After Arendt's death in 1975, her essays and notes have continued to be collected, edited and published posthumously by friends and colleagues, mainly under the editorship of Jerome Kohn, including those that give some insight into the unfinished third part of The Life of the Mind.[180] Some dealt with her Jewish identity. The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age (1978),[272] is a collection of 15 essays and letters from the period 1943–1966 on the situation of Jews in modern times, to try and throw some light on her views on the Jewish world, following the backlash to Eichmann, but proved to be equally polarizing.[273][274] A further collection of her writings on being Jewish was published as The Jewish Writings (2007).[275][276] Her work on moral philosophy appeared as Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (1982) and Responsibility and Judgment (2003), and her literary works as Reflections on Literature and Culture (2007).[180]

Other work includes the collection of forty, largely fugitive,[am] essays, addresses, and reviews covering the period 1930–1954, entitled Essays in Understanding 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism (1994).[277] These presaged her monumental The Origins of Totalitarianism,[186] in particular On the Nature of Totalitarianism (1953) and The Concern with Politics in Contemporary European Philosophical Thought (1954).[278] However these attracted little attention. However after a new version of Origins of Totalitarianism appeared in 2004 followed by The Promise of Politics in 2005 there appeared a new interest in Arendtiana. This led to a second series of her remaining essays, Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975, published in 2018.[279] Her notebooks which form a series of memoirs, were published as Denktagebuch in 2002.[280][281][282]

Correspondence

Some further insight into her thinking is provided in the continuing posthumous publication of her correspondence with many of the important figures in her life, including Karl Jaspers (1992),[80] Mary McCarthy (1995),[190] Heinrich Blücher (1996),[283] Martin Heidegger (2004),[an][72] Alfred Kazin (2005),[284] Walter Benjamin (2006),[285] Gershom Scholem (2011)[286] and Günther Stern (2016).[287] Other correspondences that have been published include those with women friends such as Hilde Fränkel and Anne Mendelsohn Weil (see Relationships).[288][285]

Arendt and the Eichmann trial (1961–1963)

In 1960, on hearing of Adolf Eichmann's capture and plans for his trial, Hannah Arendt contacted The New Yorker and offered to travel to Israel to cover it when it opened on 11 April 1961.[289] Arendt was anxious to test her theories, developed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, and see how justice would be administered to the sort of man she had written about. Also she had witnessed "little of the Nazi regime directly"[ao][290] and this was an opportunity to witness an agent of totalitarianism first hand.[246] The offer was accepted and she attended six weeks of the five-month trial with her young Israeli cousin, Edna Brocke.[289] On arrival she was treated as a celebrity, meeting with the trial chief judge, Moshe Landau, and the foreign minister, Golda Meir.[291] In her subsequent 1963 report,[292] based on her observations and transcripts,[289] and which evolved into the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,[218] Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the Eichmann phenomenon. She, like others,[293] was struck by his very ordinariness and the demeanor he exhibited of a small, slightly balding, bland bureaucrat, in contrast to the horrific crimes he stood accused of.[294] He was, she wrote, "terribly and terrifyingly normal."[295] She examined the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions. Arendt's argument was that Eichmann was not a monster, contrasting the immensity of his actions with the very ordinariness of the man himself. Eichmann, she stated, not only called himself a Zionist, having initially opposed the Jewish persecution, but also expected his captors to understand him. She pointed out that his actions were not driven by malice, but rather blind dedication to the regime and his need to belong, to be a "joiner."

On this, Arendt would later state "Going along with the rest and wanting to say 'we' were quite enough to make the greatest of all crimes possible".[ap][296] What Arendt observed during the trial was a bourgeois sales clerk who found a meaningful role for himself and a sense of importance in the Nazi movement. She noted that his addiction to clichés and use of bureaucratic morality clouded his ability to question his actions, "to think". This led her to set out her most debated dictum: "the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us – the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."[29][292] By stating that Eichmann did not think, she did not imply lack of conscious awareness of his actions, but by "thinking" she implied reflective rationality, that was lacking.

Arendt was critical of the way the trial was conducted by the Israelis as a "show trial" with ulterior motives other than simply trying evidence and administering justice.[297][291] Arendt was also critical of the way Israel depicted Eichmann's crimes as crimes against a nation state, rather than against humanity itself.[298] She objected to the idea that a strong Israel was necessary to protect world Jewry being again placed where "they'll let themselves be slaughtered like sheep," recalling the biblical phrase.[aq][299] She portrayed the prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, as employing hyperbolic rhetoric in the pursuit of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's political agenda.[300] Arendt, who believed she could maintain her focus on moral principles in the face of outrage, became increasingly frustrated with Hausner, describing his parade of survivors as having "no apparent bearing on the case".[ar][302] She was particularly concerned that Hausner repeatedly asked "why did you not rebel?"[303] rather than question the role of the Jewish leaders.[301] On this point, Arendt argued that during the Holocaust some of them cooperated with Eichmann "almost without exception" in the destruction of their own people. These leaders, notably M. C. Rumkowski, constituted the Jewish Councils (Judenräte).[304] She had expressed concerns on this point prior to the trial.[as][305] She described this as a moral catastrophe. While her argument was not to allocate blame, rather she mourned what she considered a moral failure of compromising the imperative that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. She describes the cooperation of the Jewish leaders in terms of a disintegration of Jewish morality: "This role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter in the whole dark story". Widely misunderstood, this caused an even greater controversy and particularly animosity toward her in the Jewish community and in Israel.[29] For Arendt, the Eichmann trial marked a turning point in her thinking in the final decade of her life, becoming increasingly preoccupied with moral philosophy.[306]

Reception

Arendt's five-part series "Eichmann in Jerusalem" appeared in The New Yorker in February 1963[292] some nine months after Eichmann was hanged on 31 May 1962. By this time his trial was largely forgotten in the popular mind, superseded by intervening world events.[307] However, no other account of either Eichmann or National Socialism has aroused so much controversy.[308] Prior to its publication, Arendt was considered a brilliant humanistic original political thinker.[309] Her mentor, Karl Jaspers, however, had warned her about a possible adverse outcome, "The Eichmann trial will be no pleasure for you. I'm afraid it cannot go well".[at][246] On publication, three controversies immediately occupied public attention: the concept of Eichmann as banal, her criticism of the role of Israel and her description of the role played by the Jewish people themselves.[311]

Arendt was profoundly shocked by the response, writing to Karl Jaspers "People are resorting to any means to destroy my reputation ... They have spent weeks trying to find something in my past that they can hang on me". Now she was being called arrogant, heartless and ill-informed. She was accused of being duped by Eichmann, of being a "self-hating Jewess", and even an enemy of Israel.[53][309][312] Her critics included The Anti-Defamation League and many other Jewish groups, editors of publications she was a contributor to, faculty at the universities she taught at and friends from all parts of her life.[309] Her friend Gershom Scholem, a major scholar of Jewish mysticism, broke off relations with her, publishing their correspondence without her permission.[313] Arendt was criticized by many Jewish public figures, who charged her with coldness and lack of sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust. Because of this lingering criticism neither this book nor any of her other works were translated into Hebrew until 1999.[314] Arendt responded to the controversies in the book's Postscript.

Although Arendt complained that she was being criticized for telling the truth – "what a risky business to tell the truth on a factual level without theoretical and scholarly embroidery"[au][315] – the criticism was largely directed to her theorizing on the nature of mankind and evil and that ordinary people were driven to commit the inexplicable not so much by hatred and ideology as ambition, and inability to empathize. Equally problematic was the suggestion that the victims deceived themselves and complied in their own destruction.[316] Prior to Arendt's depiction of Eichmann, his popular image had been, as The New York Times put it "the most evil monster of humanity"[317] and as a representative of "an atrocious crime, unparalleled in history", "the extermination of European Jews".[297] As it turned out Arendt and others were correct in pointing out that Eichmann's characterization by the prosecution as the architect and chief technician of the Holocaust was not entirely credible.[318]

While much has been made of Arendt's treatment of Eichmann, Ada Ushpiz, in her 2015 documentary Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt,[319] placed it in a much broader context of the use of rationality to explain seemingly irrational historical events.[av][294]

Kein Mensch hat das Recht zu gehorchen

In an interview with Joachim Fest in 1964,[296] Arendt was asked about Eichmann's defense that he had made Kant's principle of the duty of obedience his guiding principle all his life. Arendt replied that that was outrageous and that Eichmann was misusing Kant, by not considering the element of judgement required in assessing one's own actions – "Kein Mensch hat bei Kant das Recht zu gehorchen" (No man has, according to Kant, the right to obey), she stated, paraphrasing Kant. The reference was to Kant's Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason 1793) in which he states:[320]

Der Satz 'man muß Gott mehr gehorchen, als den Menschen' bedeutet nur, daß, wenn die letzten etwas gebieten, was an sich böse (dem Sittengesetz unmittelbar zuwider) ist, ihnen nicht gehorcht werden darf und soll[321] (The saying, "We must hearken to God, rather than to man," signifies no more than this, viz. that should any earthly legislation enjoin something immediately contradictory of the moral law, obedience is not to be rendered)

Kant clearly defines a higher moral duty than rendering merely unto Caesar. Arendt herself had written in her book "This was outrageous, on the face of it, and also incomprehensible, since Kant's moral philosophy is so closely bound up with man's faculty of judgment, which rules out blind obedience."[322] Arendt's reply to Fest was subsequently corrupted to read Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen (No one has the right to obey), which has been widely reproduced, although it does encapsulate an aspect of her moral philosophy.[180][323]

The phrase Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen has become one of her iconic images, appearing on the wall of the house in which she was born (see Commemorations), among other places.[324] A fascist bas-relief on the Palazzo degli Uffici Finanziari (1942), in the Piazza del Tribunale,[aw] Bolzano, Italy celebrating Mussolini, read Credere, Obbedire, Combattere (Believe, Obey, Combat).[325] In 2017 it was altered to read Hannah Arendt's original words on obedience in the three official languages of the region.[ax][325][326]

The phrase has been appearing in other artistic work featuring political messages, such as the 2015 installation by Wilfried Gerstel, which has evoked the concept of resistance to dictatorship, as expressed in her essay "Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship" (1964).[133][327]

List of selected publications

Bibliographies

• Heller, Anne C (23 July 2005). "Selected Bibliography: A Life in Dark Times". Archived from the original on 18 August 2018. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
• Kohn, Jerome (2018). "Bibliographical Works". The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. Archived from the original on 1 July 2018., in HAC Bard (2018)
• Yanase, Yosuke (3 May 2008). "Hannah Arendt's major works". Philosophical Investigations for Applied Linguistics. Archived from the original on 26 July 2018. Retrieved 26 July 2018.
• "Arendt works". Thinking and Judging with Hannah Arendt: Political theory class. University of Helsinki. 2010–2012. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2018.

Books

• Arendt, Hannah (1929). Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation [On the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine: Attempt at a philosophical interpretation] (PDF) (Doctoral thesis, Department of Philosophy, University of Heidelberg) (in German). Berlin: Springer. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 September 2015., reprinted as
  • — (2006). Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation (in German). Georg Olms Verlag. ISBN 978-3-487-13262-4. Full text on Internet Archive
  • Also available in English as: — (1996). Scott, Joanna Vecchiarelli; Stark, Judith Chelius (eds.). Love and Saint Augustine. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-02596-4. Full text on Internet Archive
• — (1997) [1938, published 1957]. Weissberg, Liliane (ed.). Rahel Varnhagen: Lebensgeschichte einer deutschen Jüdin aus der Romantik [Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess] (Habilitation thesis). Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5587-0. 400 pages. (see Rahel Varnhagen)
  • Azria, Régine (1987). "Review of Rahel Varnhagen. La vie d'une juive allemande à l'époque du romantisme". Archives de sciences sociales des religions (Review). 32 (64.2): 233. ISSN 0335-5985. JSTOR 30129073.
    • Weissberg, Liliane; Elon, Amos (10 June 1999). "Hannah Arendt's Integrity". The New York Review of Books (Editorial letters). Archived from the original on 31 August 2018. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
  • Zohn, Harry (1960). "Review of Rahel Varnhagen. The Life of a Jewess". Jewish Social Studies (Review). 22 (3): 180–81. ISSN 0021-6704. JSTOR 4465809.
• — (1976) [1951, New York: Schocken]. The Origins of Totalitarianism [Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft] (revised ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-547-54315-4., (see also The Origins of Totalitarianism and Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism) Full text (1979 edition) on Internet Archive
  • Riesman, David (1 April 1951). "The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt". Commentary (Review). Archived from the original on 2 July 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  • Nisbet, Robert (1992). "Arendt on Totalitarianism". The National Interest (Review) (27): 85–91. JSTOR 42896812.
• — (2013) [1958]. The Human Condition (Second ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-92457-1. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 21 July 2018. (see also The Human Condition)
• — (1958). Die ungarische Revolution und der totalitäre Imperialismus (in German). München: R. Piper & Co Verlag. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
• — (2006) [1961, New York: Viking]. Between Past and Future. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-66265-6. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 22 July 2018. (see also Between Past and Future)
• — (2006b) [1963, New York: Viking]. On Revolution. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-66264-9. (see also On Revolution) Full text on Internet Archive
• — (2006a) [1963, Viking Press, revised 1968]. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-00716-7. Full text: 1964 edition Archived 23 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine (see also Eichmann in Jerusalem)
• — (1968). Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-15-658890-4.
• — (1972). Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-15-623200-5.[ay] "Lying in Politics" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 April 2020. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  • Nott, Kathleen (1 August 1972). "Crises of the Republic, by Hannah Arendt". Commentary (Review). Archived from the original on 24 July 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2018.

Articles and essays

• —; Stern, Günther (1930). "Rilkes Duineser Elegien". Neue Schweizer Rundschau. 23: 855–871. doi:10.5169/seals-760191. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 20 September 2018. (English translation in Arendt & Stern (2007m, pp. 1–23))
• — (12 April 1930a). "Augustin und Protestantismus" [Augustine and Protestanism]. Frankfurter Zeitung. No. 902. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. p. 1. (reprinted in Arendt (2011, pp. 24–27))
• — (1930b). "Philosophie und Soziologie. Anläßlich Karl Mannheims Ideologie und Utopie" [Philosophy and Sociology]. Die Gesellschaft. 7 (1). Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber: 163–176. (reprinted in Arendt (2011, pp. 28–43))
• — (1931). "Rezension von: Hans Weil: Die Entstehung des Deutschen Bildungsprinzips" [On the emancipation of women]. Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Review). 66. Translated by Elisabeh Young-Bruehl: 200–05.
• — (1932). "Aufklärung und Judenfrage" [The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question]. Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (in German). 4 (2/3): 65–77. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 22 September 2018. (reprinted in Arendt-Stern (2009m, pp. 3–18))
• — (1932a). "Rezension über Alice Rühle-Gerstel: Das Frauenproblem in der Gegenwart. Eine psychologische Bilanz". Die Gesellschaft (in German). 10 (2): 177–179. (reprinted in Arendt (2011, pp. 66–68))
• — (13–17 September 1932b). "Adam-Müller-Renaissance?". Kölnische Zeitung (in German). No. 501, 510. (English translation in Arendt (2007n, pp. 38–45))
• — (July 1942). "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today". Jewish Social Studies. 4 (3): 195–240. JSTOR 4615201.
• — (31 January 1943). "We refugees" (PDF). Menorah Journal. 31 (1): 69–77. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 10 September 2018., reprinted in Arendt (1978a, pp. 55–67) and Robinson (1996, pp. 110–19)
• — (1944). "The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition". Jewish Social Studies. 6 (2): 99–122. JSTOR 4464588. (reprinted in Arendt (2009n, pp. 275–297))
• — (1958). "Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution". The Journal of Politics. 20 (1): 5–43. doi:10.2307/2127387. JSTOR 2127387. S2CID 154428972.
• — (Winter 1959). "Reflections on Little Rock" (PDF). Dissent. Vol. 6, no. 6. pp. 45–56. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 September 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
• — (Spring 1959). "A reply to critics". Dissent. Vol. 6, no. 7. pp. 179–81. Archived from the original on 4 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
• — (February–March 1963). "Eichmann in Jerusalem. 5 parts". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 11 August 2018. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
• — (21 October 1971). "Martin Heidegger at Eighty". New York Review of Books. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. p. 51. Archived from the original on 11 May 2020. Retrieved 15 December 2018.

Correspondence

• Arendt, Hannah; Jaspers, Karl (1992). Köhler, Lotte; Saner, Hans (eds.). Hannah Correspondence, 1926–1969. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-15-107887-5.
• Arendt, Hannah; Kazin, Alfred (February 2005). Mahrdt, Helgard (ed.). "The correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Alfred Kazin". Samtiden. No. 1. pp. 107–54. Archived from the original on 15 November 2021. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
• Arendt, Hannah; McCarthy, Mary (1995). Brightman, Carol (ed.). Between friends: the correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949–1975. Harcourt Brace. ISBN 978-0-15-100112-5.
• Arendt, Hannah; Blücher, Heinrich (2000) [1996]. Kohler, Lotte (ed.). Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, 1936–1968. Translated by Peter Constantine. Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-100303-7.
• Arendt, Hannah; Heidegger, Martin (2004) [1999 Klostermann]. Ludz, Ursula (ed.). Briefe 1925 bis 1975 und andere Zeugnisse [Letters, 1925–1975]. Translated by Andrew Shields. New York: Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-100525-3. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  • Heidegger, Martin (24 April 1925). "This Day in Letters: Letter to Hannah Arendt". The American Reader. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  • Lilla, Mark (18 November 1999). "Ménage à Trois". The New York Review of Books (review). Archived from the original on 3 March 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  • Brightman, Carol (20 May 2004). "The Metaphysical Couple". The Nation (Review). Archived from the original on 3 April 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
• Arendt, Hannah; Benjamin, Walter (2006). Schöttker, Detlev; Wizisla, Erdmut (eds.). Arendt und Benjamin: Texte, Briefe, Dokumente (in German). Suhrkamp. ISBN 978-3-518-29395-9. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
• Arendt, Hannah; Anders, Günther (2016). Putz, Kerstin (ed.). Schreib doch mal 'hard facts' über dich: Briefe 1939 bis 1975 (in German). C.H.Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-69911-5. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 12 September 2018. (excerpts Archived 8 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine)
  • Magenau, Jörg (9 October 2016). "Die Geschiedenen: Die Frage ist, wie man überlebt: Der Briefwechsel zwischen Hannah Arendt und Günther Anders". Süddeutsche Zeitung (Review) (in German). Archived from the original on 12 September 2018. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
• Arendt, Hannah (2017). Ludz, Ursula; Nordmann, Ingeborg (eds.). Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, mag ich mir nicht vorstellen: Briefwechsel mit den Freundinnen Charlotte Beradt, Rose Feitelson, Hilde Fränkel, Anne Weil-Mendelsohn und Helen Wolff (I do not like to imagine how I should live without you: correspondence with my friends) (in German). Piper ebooks. ISBN 978-3-492-97837-8. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
• Arendt, Hannah; Scholem, Gershom (2017) [2011]. Knott, Marie Louise (ed.). The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Translated by Anthony David. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-92451-9. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2018.
  • Aschheim, Steven E. (Winter 2011). "Between New York and Jerusalem". Jewish Review of Books (Review). Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2018.

Posthumous

• Arendt, Hannah (1981) [1978]. McCarthy, Mary (ed.). The Life of the Mind: The Groundbreaking Investigation on How We Think. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 978-0-15-651992-2. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 24 July 2018. Online text at Pensar el Espacio Público Archived 13 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Mckenna, George (November 1978). "The Life of the Mind". The Journal of Politics (Review). 40 (4): 1086–88. doi:10.2307/2129914. JSTOR 2129914.
• — (1978). Feldman, Ron H (ed.). The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age. Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-394-17042-8. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
  • — (1978a) [1943]. We refugees (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  • Botstein, Leon (1983). "The Jew as Pariah: Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy". Dialectical Anthropology (Review). 8 (1/2): 47–73. doi:10.1007/bf00249042. JSTOR 29790091. S2CID 169475999.
  • Dannhauser, Werner J. (1 January 1979). "The Jew as Pariah, by Hannah Arendt, edited by Ron H. Feldman". Commentary (Review). Archived from the original on 25 February 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
• — (1992) [1982]. Beiner, Ronald (ed.). Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-23178-5. Archived from the original on 3 December 2023. Retrieved 25 July 2018. Online text Archived 14 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine; text at the Internet Archive
• — (2002a). Ludz, Ursula; Nordmann, Ingeborg (eds.). Denktagebuch: 1950 bis 1973 (in German). Vol. 1. Piper. ISBN 978-3-492-04429-5.
• — (2002b). Ludz, Ursula; Nordmann, Ingeborg (eds.). Denktagebuch: 1950 bis 1973 (in German). Vol. 2. Piper. ISBN 978-3-492-04429-5.
• — (January 2000). Baehr, Peter (ed.). The Portable Hannah Arendt. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-026974-1. Full text on Internet Archive
• — (2011) [1994 Harcourt Brace & Company]. Kohn, Jerome (ed.). Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-78703-3.
  • —; Gaus, Günter [in German] (2011a) [28 October 1964]. Was bleibt? Es bleibt die Muttersprache. Günter Gaus im Gespräch mit Hannah Arendt ["What remains? The Language remains": An interview with Günter Gaus]. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. pp. 1–23.
    • "Was bleibt? Es bleibt die Muttersprache". rbb fernsehen (in German). Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg. 28 October 1964. Archived from the original on 15 February 2020. Retrieved 1 October 2018. (original German transcription)
  • Teichman, Jenny (April 1994). "Understanding Arendt". The New Criterion (Review).
• — (2005). Ludz, Ursula (ed.). Ich will verstehen: Selbstauskünfte zu Leben und Werk; mit einer vollständigen Bibliographie (in German). Piper. ISBN 978-3-492-24591-3.
  • —; Stern, Günther (2007m) [1930]. "Rilkes Duineser Elegien". Translated by Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb. pp. 1–23.
  • — (2007n) [1932]. "Adam-Müller-Renaissance?". pp. 38–45.
• — (2009b) [2003, Schocken]. Kohn, Jerome (ed.). Responsibility and Judgment. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-54405-6.
  • — (1964), Personal responsibility under dictatorship (PDF), pp. 17–48, archived (PDF) from the original on 23 August 2018
• — (2009a) [2007 Schocken Books]. Kohn, Jerome; Feldman, Ron H (eds.). The Jewish Writings. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-49628-7. at Pensar el Espacio Público Archived 13 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • — (2009m) [1932]. The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question. Translated by John E. Woods. pp. 3–18.
  • — (2009n) [1944]. The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition. pp. 275–297.
  • Butler, Judith (10 May 2007). "'I merely belong to them': The Jewish Writings by Hannah Arendt, edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron Feldman 2007". London Review of Books (Review). Vol. 29, no. 9. pp. 26–28. ISSN 0260-9592. Archived from the original on 22 July 2018. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
• — (2018). Kohn, Jerome (ed.). Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-101-87030-3.

Collections

• "The Hannah Arendt Papers". Library of Congress. 2001. Archived from the original on 15 August 2018. Retrieved 14 August 2018.
• "Hannah Arendt-Archiv" (in German). Institut für Philosophie: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg. 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
• "Hannah Arendt (publications)". Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 October 2018.

Miscellaneous

• Arendt, Hannah (2007b). Fischer-Defoy, Christine (ed.). Hannah Arendt: das private Adressbuch 1951–1975 (in German). Koehler & Amelang. ISBN 978-3-7338-0357-5.
  • Ludz, Ursula (May 2008b). "Gut gestaltet, unterhaltsam, aber nicht zuverlässig – das kürzlich erschienene Arendt-Adressbuch". HannahArendt.net (Review) (in German). 4 (1). doi:10.57773/hanet.v4i1.143. Archived from the original on 26 August 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
  • —; Fest, Joachim (9 November 1964). "Eichmann war von empörender Dummheit: Hannah Arendt im Gespräch mit Joachim Fest" [Eichmann was outrageously stupid: Hannah Arendt in conversation with Joachim Fest]. HannahArendt.net (in German and English). 3 (1). Translated by Andrew Brown. Germany: SWR TV. doi:10.57773/hanet.v3i1.114. Archived from the original on 18 February 2020. Retrieved 3 December 2018. (Original video) Archived 15 February 2020 at the Wayback Machine
• — (18 April 1975a). "Sonning Prize acceptance speech". Miscellaneous Material. Copenhagen. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2018., reprinted as the Prologue in Arendt (2009b, pp. 3–16)
• — (15 February – 10 March 1950). "Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Field Reports, 1948–1951, No. 18". Key Documents of German-Jewish History. Hamburg: Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden (IGdJ), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). doi:10.23691/jgo:source-126.en.v1. Archived from the original on 15 April 2019. Retrieved 7 March 2019.