Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays

✍ Scribed by Lewis P. Hinchman; Sandra K. Hinchman; Kewis P. Hinchman

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 438
• Edition: Paperback
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This work presents both the range of Arendt's political thought and the patterns of controversy it has elicited. The essays are arranged in six parts around important themes in Arendt's work: totalitarianism and evil; narrative and history; the public world and personal identity; action and power; justice, equality, and democracy; and thinking and judging. Despite such thematic diversity, virtually all the contributors have made an effort to build bridges between interest-driven politics and Arendt's Hellenic/existential politics. Although some are quite critical of the way Arendt develops her theory, most sympathize with her project of rescuing politics from both the foreshortening glance of the philosopher and its assimilation to social and biological processes. This volume treats Arendt's work as an imperfect, somewhat time-bound but still invaluable resource for challenging some of our most tenacious prejudices about what politics is and how to study it.

The following eminent Arendt scholars have contributed chapters to this book: Ronald Beiner, Margaret Canovan, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Seyla Benhabib, Jurgen Habermas, Hanna Pitkin, and Sheldon Wolin.

✦ Table of Contents

Is totalitarianism a new phenomenon? : reflections on Hannah Arendt's Origins of totalitarianism / John L. Stanley --
Hannah Arendt and the politics of evil / Berel Lang --
Thinking and moral considerations : Socrates and Arendt's Eichmann / Joseph Beatty --
Explaining dark times : Hannah Arendt's theory of theory / David Luban --
Hannah Arendt and the redemptive power of narrative / Seyla Benhabib --
Existentialism politicized : Arendt's debt to Jaspers / Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman --
Politics as culture : Hannah Arendt and the public realm / Margaret Canovan --
Hannah Arendt's communications concept of power / Jürgen Habermas --
Hannah Arendt and feminist politics / Mary G. Dietz --
Justice : on relating private and public / Hanna Fenichel Pitkin --
Hannah Arnedt : democracy and the political / Sheldon S. Wolin --
Hannah Arendt's argument for council democracy / John F. Sitton. Reflections on Hannah Arendt's The life of the mind / Elisabeth Young-Bruehl --
Judging in a world of appearances : a commentary on Hannah Arendt's unwritten finale / Ronald Beiner.