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| Why Arendt Matters
ISBN: 9780300134568
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Yale University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Arendt Hannah -- Political and social views; Political science -- Philosophy; Totalitarianism;
Studying the two regimes that troubled her the most Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union Arendt argued that totalitarianism results when a government prohibits politics or debate about key issues in public spaces. Like Arendt's important work regarding evil in the absence of thought, or "the banality of evil," the word "totalitarianism" has become "a clich?, for many who use it," Young-Bruehl points out. But in this useful overview of Arendt's life, major ideas and works, Young-Bruehl brings Arendt's concepts back into focus, by synthesizing them and applying them to recent and current events, such as the war on terrorism and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Young-Bruehl (Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World) succeeds best when illustrating the application of Arendt's work and undermines her mission when she assumes Arendt's pen: "Arendt, had she been alive in 2001, would have gone straight to her writing table to protest that the World Trade Center was not Pearl Harbor and that `war on terror' was a meaningless phrase." Still, Young-Bruehl is more responsible with Arendt's work than others have been, and makes it clear by the end that Arendt should matter. Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Arendt's birth, the book is the first in a new series of books from Yale on people and ideas. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl was born in Elkton, Maryland on March 3, 1946. She received bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in philosophy from the New School for Social Research in New York. She later trained as a psychoanalyst. She taught for many years at Wesleyan University and Haverford College. She wrote numerous books including Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, Anna Freud: A Biography, Mind and the Body Politic, Why Arendt Matters, The Anatomy of Prejudices, and Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children. She died of pulmonary embolism on December 1, 2011 at the age of 65. (Bowker Author Biography) |
