The Portable Hannah Arendt

Peter Baehr's anthology is made up of 33 selections supplemented by his highly competent introduction, a chronology covering the major events in Hannah Arendt's life, and a basic bibliography. Arendt's erudition and incisive brilliance are well represented throughout. Passages include lengthy excerpts from her major books (The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, On Revolution, and Eichmann in Jerusalem), shorter excerpts from Rahel Varnhagen and The Life of the Mind, eight essays (four from Between Past and Future, one from Men in Dark Times, and two not previously available in book form), a University of Chicago lecture, her famous television interview with Guenter Gaus, four letters (two to Karl Jaspers, others to Mary show more McCarthy and Gershom Scholem), and a brief journal entry (on Heidegger "the fox"). Ever sensitive to the limitations of anthologies, particularly for the work of thinkers like Arendt, Baehr has managed to effectively convey the feel of Arendt's conscientious yet combative thinking through his selections and arrangements.

‘You know the left think that I am conservative,’ Hannah Arendt once said, ‘and the conservatives think I am left or I am a maverick or God knows what. And I must say that I couldn’t care less. I don’t think the real questions of this century get any kind of illumination by this kind of thing.’ show less

I loved reading it, although it was a challenging read for me. Spread throughout the book are true parcels of insight. But there's also a lot of text that's hard to understand. I don't know if it's Hannah Arendt or the consequence of being a selection of writings, but sometimes the argument seems to start in mid-air en seems to lead nowhere in particular. It feels like listening in awe to one of the most individual and intelligent thinkers of the previous century while she's talking to one of her fellow intellectuals over a cup of thee and slice of cake, or coffee with a brownie, of beer with pretzel or cappuccino with croissant (I don't know which habit she would have had because she's lived everywhere I believe). Intead of reading a show more well structured treatise. Of course that isn't true, not even a bit. Her lists of used literature are enormous.returnI really enjoyed her explanations of Greek, Latin and modern history writing. I still try to grasp her distinction between labour, work and action. Which in my opinion is very usefull. But most of all I like here ability to change her mind and her stubborn own way of thinking. I will most certainly return to this book and see if I will understand more than I did in this first sitting.; 0 show less

This is a valuable compendium of selections from the work of Hannah Arendt. Excerpts from The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem are included with other selections.