Why Arendt Matters (Why X Matters)

241 Pages·2006·0.72 MB·English

by  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

why arendt matters
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Elisabeth
Young-Bruehl
Why Arendt
Matters
yale university press new haven & london
Copyright © 2006 Frontispiece: Hannah Arendt, photographed by
by Elisabeth Young- Jill Krementz, from Portraits: Series ofPhotographs in
Arendt’s Apartment, May 1,1972.Courtesy the Hannah
Bruehl. All rights
Arendt Blücher Literary Trust.
reserved. This book
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Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth.
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Why Arendt matters / Elisabeth Young-Bruehl.
copying permitted p. cm.—(Why X matters)
by Sections 107and Includes bibliographical references and index.
108ofthe U.S. isbn-13:978-0-300-12044-8(alk. paper)
isbn-10:0-300-12044-3(alk. paper)
Copyright Law and
1. Arendt, Hannah—Political and social views. 2. Political
except by reviewers science—Philosophy. 3. Totalitarianism. I. Title.
for the public press), JC251.A74Y69 2006
without written 320.5092—dc22 2006018235
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
Freedom and Karl Jaspers’s Philosophy
Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World
Vigil(a novel)
Anna Freud: A Biography
Mind and the Body Politic: Essays, 1975‒1987
Freud on Women(editor)
Global Cultures(editor)
The Anatomy of Prejudices
Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism,
and Writing Women’s Lives
Cherishment: A Psychology of the Heart(with
Faith Bethelard)
Where Do We Fall When We Fall in Love?

contents
1
Introduction
one The Origins of Totalitarianism
31
and the Twenty-first Century
two The Human Condition
77
and Actions That Matter
three Thinking About The Life
157
of the Mind
211
Notes
219
Works by Hannah Arendt
221
Acknowledgments
223
Index

introduction
“The banality of evil.” That is the sound bite by which Hannah
Arendt has become popularly known. A political theorist and
philosopher who before her death in 1975had written more than
a dozen dense volumes, several of them masterpieces of political
analysis, and who since her death has been the subject of hun-
dreds of books and articles, lives on in newspeak through just
four words. In and of itself, or even sitting in the subtitle of her
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality ofEvil,the phrase
is full of suggestion and portent, but without interpretation it
signifies nothing.
What do people make of it when, every time some especially
appalling, hard-to-fathom mass crime takes place, “the banality
of evil” turns up in their morning papers or jumps out of the
mouths of TV pundits? Recently, the New York Times Week in
Review ran front-page pictures of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann at
his 1961 trial and Saddam Hussein at his current trial under the
caption “From Banality to Audacity.” In the accompanying story,