Why Read Hannah Arendt Now?
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Recently there has been an extraordinary international revival of interest in Hannah Arendt. She was extremely perceptive about the dark tendencies in contemporary life that continue to plague us. She developed a concept of politics and public freedom that serves as a critical standard for judging what is wrong with politics today.
Richard J. Bernstein argues that Arendt should be read today because her penetrating insights help us to think about both the darkness of our times and the sources of illumination. He explores her thinking about statelessness and refugees; the right to have rights; her critique of Zionism; the meaning of the banality of evil; the complex relations between truth, lying, power, and violence; the tradition of the revolutionary spirit; and the urgent need for each of us to assume responsibility for our political lives.
This short and very readable book will be of great interest to anyone who wants to understand the forces that are shaping our world today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bernstein comes up short in his attempt to convince readers unfamiliar with famed political theorist Hannah Arendt to seek out her writing now; while this short volume represents a mostly accessible introduction to her thinking, it fails to make the case for her relevance to contemporary politics. Bernstein notes that Arendt's experiences as a German-Jewish refugee from the Nazis, who had to flee France as well before making her way to America, shaped her views on how countries should treat those escaping political persecution but his assertion that she presciently warned that refugees "would be the most symptomatic group of contemporary politics" is difficult to understand, and fails to explain why other marginalized groups don't merit that label. Similarly, he doesn't convince while defending Arendt's advocacy of a Jewish homeland rather than a Jewish state, claiming that the continued lack of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement proves that she was right, without demonstrating her plan would have guaranteed peace. Bernstein doesn't gloss over Arendt's ill-judged essay opposing the compulsory desegregation of public schools after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, but his explanation of how she misstepped doesn't help his case. One of Arendt's classic works, such as The Origins of Totalitarianism or Eichmann in Jerusalem, would better demonstrate her continuing relevance.
