ROBERT WISTRICH
Understanding Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt has increasingly been recognized over the past three decades
as one of the more original and significant politicil thinkers of our centu–
ry. A German Jewess from an assimilated background who fled Hitler's
Germany in 1933 (at the age of twenty-seven) and after eight years in
France came to the United States as a refLlgec, Arcndt was among the first
to conceptualize our sense of totalitarianism as
~l
deadly thre;lt to the Illod–
ern world and to provide new insights into the organizcd barbarism of the
concentration camps. Trained in the tradition of Cerman existentialist phi–
losophy, she understood (more clearly than most) its limits as she sought
to
rethink the nature of political action in the light of twentieth century expe–
rience. Indced, the relationship of experience to critica l understanding, as
Lisa Jane ])isch shows in her crisply written study of Arendt's political
writings, was a central focus of her work . According to ])isch, she held that
"storytelling," not explanation, was the work of the political theorist and
insisted on the uniquely public character of action ;lIld of the self that it dis–
closes. Storytelling was her way of dealing with
l'Vt'IltS
and their
consequences in an age when the canons of historiography ,1Ild political
thought could
110
longer put "the past in order."
It
W;IS
the one possible
solution to her skepticislll about any claillls to abstract universal validity in
the hUlllan sciences. Storytelling f()r Arendt was a kind of judging of reali–
ty and experience, a reflection of her non-cOnflJrIllist outlook and
Books discussed in this ess,ly:
HANNAH ARENDT AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY.
By Lisa Jane Disch.
Cornell
University Pres,
l\
1-1-.95.
ARENDT AND HEIDEGGER:THE FATE OF THE POLITICAL. By
Dana Villa.
Princeton University Press $37.5().
HANNAH ARENDT, KARL JASPERS, CORRESPONDENCE
1926-
1969. Edited by Lotte Kohier and Hans Sauer. Translated from the
German by Robert and Rita Kimber.
H,lrcollrt, Br,ICl' ,Inti Jov,lnich
$-1-9.95.
HANNAH ARENDT. ESSAYS IN UNDERSTANDING 1930-1954.
Edited by Jerome Kohn.
Harcourt, Br,Ke ;lJId Co.
S.l,).'):;.
HANNAH ARENDT AND THE JEWISH QUESTION. By Richard
J.
Bernstein.
The
M.IT
Press
SI7.()().
