Hannah Arendt (1906 鈥� 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).
It is difficult to write a good review of a collection of articles and essays which do not have a common theme, some of which, frankly, are pieces written for specific occasions which may well have otherwise not found Arendt's close attention. But the quality of the writing and the interest of the content of most of the essays in this book are generally so high that I feel I must draw this book to your attention.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), originally trained as a philosopher by no less than Martin Heidegger, preferred to be called a political theorist, and, certainly, she had good reasons to want to carefully analyze political ideas and behavior. A German Jew briefly held by the Nazis in 1933 who then fled to France with alacrity, Arendt's German citizenship was revoked in 1937, and, when the Nazis invaded France in 1939, she was held by the Vichy authorities for 5 weeks before she and a few others escaped from the Gurs internment camp. She was one of the lucky few who succeeded in escaping to the USA via Portugal.(*)
Better known for books like The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), in 1968 she published Men In Dark Times, a collection of eleven occasional essays and articles she had published in the previous decades, some written in English and some in German (translated here). With the exception of the opening essay which used her acceptance of the Lessing Prize as an occasion to give a sober talk about ethics over the ages with a particular emphasis on the thought of Gotthold Lessing, the essays occupy themselves with men and women who rose to some prominence in the 20th century.
If one searches for a unifying theme in this collection, the only candidate is the question: How does one behave in dark times? Does one engage and struggle or does one withdraw and use one's limited time and energies for other matters? But, in point of fact, no theme is common to all of the essays. Some, like the last two on Randall Jarrell and Waldemar Gurian, are prose elegies that briefly and evocatively resurrect close friends of Arendt. Many are essay/reviews that appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and therefore in the well known manner take the occasion of a book review to expand upon a closely related subject at some length.
Though her side remarks about Lessing in the Lessing Prize acceptance address have started me anew reading his works, the articles which made the greatest impression on me were those on Rosa Luxemburg, Hermann Broch, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht. These essays are anything but occasional reviews written with a studious sense of obligation to fulfill a commission. Arendt appears to know all the works of these authors and all the secondary literature; in some of the cases she knew the individual personally. These persons evidently occupied Arendt's attention for many years. Each of these essays teems with the kind of information and insight I read with gratitude.
Let's take the 50 page study of the life, personality and work of Benjamin as an example. Haunted by misfortune and wrong choices, largely unknown and unappreciated, Benjamin was a unicum in ways that were not completely clear to me when I read some of his books. Though he was associated with Horkheimer and Adorno's Institute for Social Research, dialectical thought was quite foreign to him. He sought for the small phenomena, the apparent trivialities, which somehow contained the essence of the large matters he was trying to understand. As Arendt mentions, Benjamin was enthralled when he found in a museum two tiny grains of wheat on which some obsessive person had inscribed in some impossibly small script the complete Shema Israel. For him the size of an object was in an inverse ratio to its significance. And this passion, far from being a whim, derived directly from the only world view that ever had a decisive influence on him, from Goethe's conviction of the factual existence of an Urph盲nomen, an archetypal phenomenon, a concrete thing to be discovered in the world of appearances in which "significance" (Bedeutung, the most Goethean of words, keeps recurring in Benjamin's writings) and appearance, word and thing, idea and experience, would coincide. ... In other words, what always profoundly fascinated Benjamin from the beginning was never an idea, it was always a phenomenon.
Benjamin was really a poet who wrote with metaphors, who tried to discover what Baudelaire called correspondances to reveal deep connections one would not ordinarily observe. Another aspect unknown to me: Benjamin dreamed of the perfect book that would consist only of sublimely selected quotes. When he wrote a Habilitationsschrift necessary for becoming a professor at a German university, he let it become all too close to his dream; the professors on the evaluation committee were baffled by the eccentric text they had to read. They did not accept it, for how could they possibly hope to understand what Benjamin was doing, that he (without indicating his intentions to the poor readers) "placed the greatest emphasis on the six mottoes that preceded the study?" Arendt cites from one of Benjamin's letters: No one...could gather any rarer or more precious ones. (!) Clearly, Benjamin thought in ways unfamiliar to most of us. Hence, every single one of his texts is sui generis.
Arendt summarizes Benjamin's mature process/point of view in the following beautiful manner: And this thinking, fed by the present, works with the 鈥渢hought fragments鈥� it can wrest from the past and gather about itself. Like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it to light but to pry loose the rich and the strange, the pearls and the coral in the depths, and to carry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the depths of the past - but not in order to resuscitate it the way it was and to contribute to the renewal of extinct ages. What guides this thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of the time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depth of the sea, into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things 鈥渟uffer a sea-change鈥� and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the living as 鈥渢hought fragments,鈥� as something 鈥渞ich and strange,鈥� and perhaps even as everlasting Urph盲nomene.
I have mentioned only a few of the many remarkable matters Arendt raises in this essay. And Hermann Broch is almost as curious a man and thinker as Benjamin is.
In each of the essays, and not just the four I liked the most, Arendt manifests a noteworthy talent to recognize and describe the manner in which her subjects think and act, and to set them in an intellectual and historical context. Quite impressive.
(*) Walter Benjamin, for example, tried, failed and committed suicide. Not to mention the millions of Jews who weren't intellectuals or artists and never had a chance of being accepted by the American immigration authorities, even if they had had the money and connections to get themselves to Portugal.
We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.
This was a splendid book to tackle on a holiday. I had read the section on Walter Benjamin before and it was a treat t confront it again. The sections on Rosa Luxemburg and Bertolt Brecht were my favorites, though the piece on the poet Randall Jarrell was unexpectedly moving. Each of these portraits illuminate or fuel Arendt's notion of the public; the limits of this thought become uneasily befogged in practice where one must consider the point Brecht made: it is more important to do good, to make the world a better place than to simply be a good person. The anecdote is related that once Brecht was dining with Sidney Hooks and when asked about the Moscow Show Trial Brecht responded that if they were innocent of the charges then of course they should die. Ponder that, will you.
"El 26 de septiembre de 1940, Walter Benjamin se quit贸 la vida... 驴C贸mo iba a vivir sin su biblioteca, c贸mo iba a ganarse la vida sin la extensa colecci贸n de citas y fragmentos que se encontraban entre sus manuscritos? Adem谩s, nada lo atra铆a en Norteam茅rica donde la gente, tal como sab铆a decir, no hallar铆a para 茅l otro uso que el de ser mostrado de un extremo a otro del pa铆s como el -煤ltimo exponente europeo-."
脡 bom ter por perto algu茅m que trata do seu objeto de estudo com seriedade e respeito; n茫o s贸 ao objeto, mas ao mundo como um todo. Sempre agrad谩vel estar perto de Hannah Arendt.
Karl Jaspers hizo el gran descubrimiento hist贸rico que se convirti贸 en la piedra angular de su filosof铆a de la historia, su origen y su objetivo. La noci贸n b铆blica de que todos los hombres descienden de Ad谩n y comparten el mismo origen y de que todos viajan hacia el mismo objetivo de la salvaci贸n y el juicio final est谩 m谩s all谩 de todo conocimiento y de toda prueba. La filosof铆a cristiana de la historia, desde Agust铆n hasta Hegel, vio en la aparici贸n de Cristo el momento crucial y el centro de la historia mundial. Como tal, s贸lo es v谩lido para los creyentes cristianos; y si sostiene su autoridad sobre todos, lo hace en la forma de una unidad de humanidad como cualquier otro mito que puede ense帽ar una pluralidad de comienzos y fines. Contra esto y otras filosof铆as de la historia similares que elaboran un concepto de una historia mundial sobre la base de la experiencia hist贸rica de un pueblo o de una parte en particular del mundo, Jaspers ha descubierto un eje hist贸rico emp铆rico que otorga a todas las naciones "un marco com煤n de autocomprensi贸n hist贸rica". El eje de la historia mundial parece pasar a trav茅s del siglo V a.C., en medio del proceso espiritual entre 800 y 200 a.C., Confucio y Lao-Ts茅 en China, los Upanishads y Buda en India, Zaratustra en Persia, los profetas de Palestina, Homero, los fil贸sofos, las tragedias griegas. Una caracter铆stica de los hechos que tuvieron lugar en esta era es que estaban totalmente desconectados, que se convirtieron en los or铆genes de las grandes civilizaciones hist贸ricas del mundo y que estos or铆genes, en su misma diferenciaci贸n, tenian algo en com煤n. Esta peculiar igualdad puede estudiarse y definirse de varias maneras: es la 茅poca cuando se utilizaban o descartaban mitolog铆as para la base de las grandes religiones del mundo con su concepto de Un Dios trascendente; cuando la filosof铆a hace su aparici贸n en todas partes: el hombre descubre al Ser como un todo y a s铆 mismo como b谩sicamente diferente de todos los dem谩s seres; cuando por primera vez, el hombre se torna en un enigma para s铆 mismo, se vuelve consciente de la conciencia, empieza a pensar sobre el pensamiento; cuando en todas partes aparecen grandes personalidades que no aceptar谩n m谩s o ser谩n aceptadas como meros miembros de sus respectivas comunidades sino que se consideran individuos y dise帽an nuevos modos individuales de vida: la vida del hombre inteligente, la vida del profeta, la vida del ermita帽o que se aparta de la sociedad y se interna en una nueva espiritualidad e intimidad. Todas las categor铆as b谩sicas de nuestro pensamiento y todos los principios b谩sicos de nuestras creencias fueron creados durante este per铆odo. Fue la 茅poca en que la humanidad descubri贸 por primera vez la condici贸n humana en la Tierra, de modo que a partir de entonces, la mera secuencia cronol贸gica de sucesos pod铆a convertirse en un relato y los relatos ser transformados en historia, un importante objeto de reflexi贸n y de entendimiento. El eje hist贸rico de la humanidad es entonces " una era aproximadamente a mediados del 煤ltimo milenio a.C., para lo cual, todo aquello que lo precedi贸 parece haber sido una preparaci贸n y con lo cual se relaciona todo lo subsecuente. La historia mundial de la humanidad deriva su estructura de este per铆odo. No es un eje del cual podamos afirmar un car谩cter permanente, absoluto y 煤nico. Pero es el eje de la breve historia mundial que ha tenido lugar hasta la actualidad, aquella que, en la conciencia de todos los hombres, podr铆a representar la base de la unidad hist贸rica que reconocen en la solidaridad. El eje real ser铆a entonces la encarnaci贸n de un eje ideal, alrededor del cual se ve atra铆do el movimiento de la humanidad".
HANNA ARENDT, Hombres en tiempos de oscuridad. Ed. Gedisa, 1990.
This is a hard book to star, and I cannot help but feel that two stars is unkind and unfair of me. Perhaps my problem was that, living as I am through dark times in Venezuela, I expected a more coherent or uplifting collection or at at least something which would leave me with a deeper understanding of what it is to live through difficult times, something in short closer to Origins of Totalitarianism.
Given my expectations, it is probably not surprising that the essays I liked most were on Bertolt Brecht, Karl Jaspers and Rosa Luxemburg even in spite of the fact that I don't read German and that many of the Brecht verse quotations are left in German. I had to skip a lot of the extremely long and no doubt worthy and very painstaking essay on Walter Benjamin, and was quite disappointed by the essays on Isak Dinesen and Hermann Broch. Two very personal eulogies end the book, of which the most interesting one is on Randall Jarrell, an American poet who was unknown to me. The opening essay on Lessing is quite unlike anything else in the book and does not seem to me to fit in very well with the rest and the chapter on John XXIII, while a surprising and interesting choice for Arendt seemed rather shallow.
For me the key test for this kind of essays on figures I know little or nothing about is whether or not, they encourage me to find out more about them or their work. In this case, Arendt's book certainly made me make mental notes to look up and read Brecht, Jaspers, and -surprisingly, Jarrell. However, I do not have plans to reread Men in Dark Times in the future -maybe this will change if I ever get around to reading the subjects of the essays....
This collection of profiles, many of which originally appeared in "The New York Review of Books" or "The New Yorker," conveys an unrelenting enthusiasm that's quite contagious, whether the subject is a poet (Randall Jarrell), a pope (John XXIII) or one of many philosophers (Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Jaspers...). Arendt's well-considered musings reignited my interest in Isak Dinesen and Bertolt Brecht and spawned a newfound curiosity about Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. If the pieces on Walter Benjamin and Herman Broch excited me less, that's through no fault of Arendt whose powers of persuasion are formidable.
I'm not one for abstract and theoretical philosophizing, which takes up a good portion of this book. (In fact I skipped the second half of the Broch essay for that reason.) But in the essays which Arendt roots in discussion of literature and authors' lives--Brecht, Dinesen, Randall Jarrell--the book is quite interesting.
I look to Hannah Arendt for moral bearings, and this is one of her most accessible books, biographical essays of Rosa Luxemburg, Berthold Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Isak Dinesen, among others.
Conjunto de ensayos sobre distintas personalidades de la primera parte del siglo XX. An谩lisis inteligente y penetrante de la vida y obra de destacados protagonistas de esos a帽os oscuros, destacar铆a las p谩ginas dedicadas a una personalidad tan compleja como la de Walter Benjamin, la rese帽a 肠谤铆迟颈肠补 que hace de una 产颈辞驳谤补蹿铆补 de Rosa Luxemburgo o el an谩lisis, a la vez duro y compasivo, de la vida y obra de Brecht. No tiene desperdicio en los tiempos que corren la advertencia sobre las consecuencias de un posible Gobierno Mundial al comienzo del ensayo dedicado a Karl Jaspers. La parte dedicada a Hermann Broch es bastante dura, por la dificultad de los conceptos y la condensaci贸n de su pensamiento, y no ayudan precisamente los errores tipogr谩ficos y posiblemente de traducci贸n que la acompa帽an. Esta edici贸n de Gedisa, de hace casi 30 a帽os, est谩 incompleta, faltan entre otros el Papa Juan XXIII al que se hace referencia en la contraportada (!).
I was disappointed yet unsurprised to find that despite this being written during a tremendously difficult phase of Arendt鈥檚 life, she still refused to reveal her private emotional life. Most of 鈥淢en in Dark Times鈥� was stifling literary criticism, with the exception of her analysis of Karl Jaspers and Bertolt Brecht. Karl Jaspers was her mentor and (confusingly) one of Arendt鈥檚 most influentials thinkers that she wrote of briefly in all of her books but never in depth until this one. With Bertolt Brecht she wrote about compassion, how not to be good, and the role of the poet in politics. I鈥檒l be left thinking about her chapter on Brecht for a long, long time. I love you Arendt.
I picked this up for the essay on Karl Jaspers cited in another book. That one was a heavy lift and I didn鈥檛 finish it after getting the reference I needed. Biographical essays on Rosa Luxemburg, Pope John XXIII, Bertolt Brecht, and Randall Jarrell were better.
I most particularly liked her essay on Karl Jaspers, it made me want to read more of his writings. I also liked parts of her essays on Isak Dinesen, Rosa Luxembourg, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht.
Her introduction from 1968 reminds us that "Dark times are not only not new, they are no rarity in history..." We are living through one of those dark times now...
Esse livro 茅 uma reuni茫o de textos escritos por Arendt na d茅cada de 1960 sobre algumas personalidades significativas do s茅culo XX, nos quais a fil贸sofa se aproxima de alguns dos temas mais importantes do seu pensamento, como a vida p煤blica, a via revolucion谩ria, e a amizade. Por serem textos de um per铆odo tardio, eles s茫o capazes de condensar, pelo prisma das vidas de figuras como Rosa Luxemburgo e Isak Dinesen, as ideias fulgurantes da autora e as experi锚ncias decisivas de uma 茅poca. Os destaques s茫o os dois longos ensaios sobre a vida e a obra de Walter Benjamin e Bertold Brecht, que podem servir, um, como introdu莽茫o, e o outro, como ju铆zo cr铆tico, do que esses dois pensaram e fizeram.
Al茅m dessa dimens茫o, digamos, intelectual, h谩 tamb茅m um car谩ter para n贸s mais urgente, que 茅 a capacidade que esses textos t锚m de nos lembrar de e contextualizar as cat谩strofes do s茅culo XX, de modo a nos fazer enxergar o que elas t锚m em comum com nosso pr贸prio tempo. Desse jeito, podemos olhar para o presente como que 脿 dist芒ncia, e entend锚-lo sob uma luz que a mera aten莽茫o para o "desenrolar dos fatos" n茫o permite.
Demorei tempo demais pra ler, o que costuma me fazer perder o ritmo, obviamente, e o interesse. Tirando isso, e analisando friamente, 茅 um livro muito bom, mas n茫o t茫o bom quanto eu imaginava, principalmente pelo fato da Hannah colocar ju铆zo de valor demais no meio do texto.
Eu gosto do tom de intimidade e pessoalidade que ela d谩 ao livro, mas algumas vezes me pareceu demais. As rasga莽玫es de seda constantes tamb茅m me irritaram, mas ela 茅 t茫o brilhante que n茫o consigo me chatear por conta disso.
Por fim, o conte煤do do livro 茅 sim pesado, e eu tenho que reler daqui uns anos e com uma bagagem intelectual mais consistente, porque n茫o 茅 t茫o f谩cil assim e eu n茫o gosto de passar batida por tanta informa莽茫o/conhecimento.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
A series of essays about Arendt's friends. More insight into Arendt, what she admired in people, what she respected about people. Beginning with Rosa Luxembourg, Arendt's mother's favorite, she moves on to other "friends" in her life, Jaspers, Benjamin, Brecht. Good book will refer to it as I read more of Benjamin and Brecht.
Arendt is always a gem to read. Definitely the first essay is the best. The next couple are worthy too, it does decline after that... but insightful always.
The acuity of Hannah Arendt in judging people, politics and places of conflict is evinced in just one line of this collection of biographical sketches: "Hitler and Stalin, two non-persons, are not worthy of a definitive biography". More facts does not equal better understanding, and Arendt confines these two titanic figures of the Twentieth century to a footnote! She prefers to focus on also-rans and, at the time of writing, more obscure figures who shaped the politics and polemics that still occupy us today. Of Rosa Luxemburg: "She, born a Polish Jewess, was more German than her German Communist comrades. Perhaps that is why she could not see eye to eye with Lenin on national self-determination". From her sketch of Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish Marxist cultural critic: "He was the oddest thinker produced by Marxism, that odd movement". (In Fact, Benjamin's essay, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is more relevant today in the time of the internet and fake news than when he took his own life in 1940.) Hannah has wisely chosen to include a biography of Karl Jaspers, her fellow philosopher back in pre-Hitler German and frequent correspondent, rather than the more influential Martin Heidegger, her mentor and lover at university. Speaking of Marx, Arendt wrote to Jaspers, "This is what happens when you let Jews do history." Yet all of these figures met tragic ends, either death or exile. One notable exception is a brief appreciation of Pope John XXIII; perhaps the only modern pope with a sense of humor: Reporter: "How many people work at the Vatican? John: About half." The times covered here, roughly 1955-1968, were indeed dark, but not hopeless, so long as we has such a sharp observer as Arendt with a sharp tongue to wield.
Livro maravilhoso, onde Arendt fala de grandes mentes que conheceu, ora de modo te贸rico, ora de modo intimista. Me interesso sobretudo por seu texto acerca de Hermann Broch , um homem compreendido por poucos. A partir de Arendt, vemos Broch n茫o apenas como um te贸rico do "esp铆rito de 茅poca" decadente, mas algu茅m que elevou sua concep莽茫o 茅tica para o seu modo de vida, colocando a primazia da vida acima de sua miss茫o liter谩ria, posto que 鈥渟empre que um conhecido - n茫o s贸 um amigo, o que manteria as coisas dentro de limites razo谩veis, mas qualquer conhecido - estava em dificuldades, doente, sem dinheiro ou 脿 morte, era Broch quem cuidava de tudo鈥� (ARENDT, 2018, p. 123), sendo que "a miss茫o era o imperativo 茅tico, e a tarefa 脿 qual se podia escapar era o pedido de aux铆lio dos homens鈥� (ARENDT, 2018, p. 164). Enfim, h谩 observa莽玫es valiosas para quem se interessa por uma dessas mentes nos "tempos sombrios" que envolvem a Primeira e a Segunda Guerra.
... Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may 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 them on earth鈥攖his conviction is the inarticulate background against which these profiles were drawn. Eyes so used to darkness as ours will hardly be able to tell whether their light was the light of a candle or that of a blazing sun. But such objective evaluation seems to me a matter of secondary importance which can be safely left to posterity.
Safe to say that it was the light of a blazing sun.