Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics

Published by Fordham University Press 2010

Thinking in Dark Times

Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics

Edited by: Roger Berkowitz , Jeffrey Katz and Thomas Keenan

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823293377

Overview
Contents

About this book

Hannah Arendt is one of the most important political theorists of the twentieth century. In her works, she grappled with the dark events of that century, probing the nature of power, authority, and evil, and seeking to confront totalitarian horrors on their own terms. This book focuses on how, against the professionalized discourses of theory, Arendt insists on the greater political importance of the ordinary activity of thinking. Indeed, she argues that the activity of thinking is the only reliable protection against the horrors that buffeted the last century. Its essays explore and enact that activity, which Arendt calls the habit of erecting obstacles to oversimplifications, compromises, and conventions. Most of the essays were written for a conference at Bard College celebrating the 100th anniversary of Arendt’s birth. Arendt left her personal library and literary effects to Bard, and she is buried in the Bard College cemetery. Material from the Bard archive—such as a postcard to Arendt from Walter Benjamin or her annotation in her copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince—and images from her life are interspersed with the essays in this volume. The volume will offer provocations and insights to Arendt scholars, students discovering Arendt’s work, and general readers attracted to Arendt’s vision of the importance of thinking in our own dark times.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Editors’ Note Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: Thinking in Dark Times Roger Berkowitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. Politics
Reflections on Antisemitism Christopher Hitchens Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Fiction as Poison George Kateb Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
A Discriminating Politics Uday Mehta Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
Hannah Arendt’s Political Engagements Seyla Benhabib Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
What Does It Mean to Think About Politics? Mark Antaki Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
Part II. Lying and Politics
A Lying World Order: Political Deception and the Threat of Totalitarianism Peg Birmingham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Lying and History Cathy Caruth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
Part III.Citizenship
The Experience of Action Patchen Markell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
Dissent in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Civil Disobedience and Constitutional Patriotism Verity Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Promising and Civil Disobedience: Arendt’s Political Modernism J. M. Bernstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Part IV. Evil and Eichmann in Jerusalem
Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question Richard J Bernstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
Banality and Cleverness: Eichmann in Jerusalem Revisited Peter Baehr Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Judging the Events of Our Time Jennifer L. Culbert Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Arendt’s Banality of Evil Thesis and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Yaron Ezrahi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Part V. Judaism and Cosmopolitanism
Liberating the Pariah: Politics, the Jews, and Hannah Arendt Leon Botstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Hannah Arendt’s Jewish Experience: Thinking, Acting, Judging Jerome Kohn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
The Pariah as Rebel: Hannah Arendt’s Jewish Writings Ron H Feldman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Hannah Arendt’s Jewish Identity Elisabeth Young-Bruehl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Jewish to the Core Suzanne Vromen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Part VI. Thinking in Dark Times
Thinking Big in Dark Times Drucilla Cornell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Crimes of Action, Crimes of Thought: Arendt on Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Judgment Shai Lavi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Solitude and the Activity of Thinking Roger Berkowitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Part VII. Sites of Memory
Exile Readings: Hannah Arendt’s Library Reinhard Laube Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Remembering Hannah: An Interview with Jack Blum Roger Berkowitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
My Hannah Arendt Project Shy Abady Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 312

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9780823293377