Hannah Arendt was a German political philosopher who lived from 1906 - 1975. A Jew, she was forced to escape from Europe in 1941. She had been stripped of German citizenship in 1937 and when France was invaded in 1940, she was detained by French authorities as an alien. I don't know a great deal about her writing, but in my various political science courses at university, her name came up fairly often.

Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is a collection of 4 interviews by various people of Arendt that took place between 1964 & 1973. They covered a variety of themes; her life as a political philosopher, the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, thoughts on politics and revolution & her last interview by Roger Errera. Reading the various interviews reminded me of why I originally took Political Science and also why I switched to English after my 2nd year.. LOL.

I was very excited when I originally decided on a PolSci degree, but also it became evident that I was sick of school after 2nd year and wanted to take courses that maybe were less thought provoking (not that English courses weren't, just that I often struggled with Political philosophy). At any rate, I'm glad that I have begun to read more books on history and politics this past few years as 'the more you know'.. There were many topics of discussion with Arendt that struck a chord with me about the current political situation in the US and even around the world; the rise of tyranny and fanaticism, especially.

Arendt especially discusses this in line with Hitler's Germany; adminstration mandated murder (Eichmann's trial defense) and political criminals (in reference to Watergate and Nixon & also Hitler, but.. ). She quotes Berthold Brecht; 'The great political criminals must be exposed and exposed to laughter. They are not great political criminals, but people who who permitted great political crimes, which is something entirely different. The failure of his enterprises doe not indicate that Hitler was an idiot." Another quote that struck home about the state of the GOP. "If the ruling classes permit a small crook to become a great crook, he is not entitled to a privileged position in our view of history. That is, the fact that that he becomes a great crook and that what he did has great consequences does not add to his stature."

Just one of the many interesting discussions she is involved with in this book. The Last Interviews were an ongoing theme, involving varied people. I have the one with Ursula K. Le Guin on my bookshelf and another with Kurt Vonnegut on order. Worth checking out, just to read the thoughts of one of the great political philosophers of the early to mid-1900's. (4 stars) ( )

I just ranted about my discomfort with Arendt in my review of her Eichmann in Jerusalem, and won't repeat it here.* This collection of interviews is a nice, clear read. I don't know if there's enough meat for it to act as a good introduction, but there are very nice moments in all the interviews here.

"When the person who hasn't done anything, who has only seen and gone away, says, 'we're all guilty,' he thereby is covering up for the man who actually carried it through--this is what happened in Germany. And so we must not generalize this guilt, since that is only covering up for the guilty." [A good point; I'm very convinced that we're all guilty, and this is a good reminder that my position can 'cover up' the differences between those who are really guilty, e.g., the police officer who shot Michael Brown, and those who are less guilty, e.g., other white people. On the other hand, there are degrees and kinds of guilt, and one can be guilty of something (benefiting from police violence) without being guilty of the means required to provide that benefit (actual police violence)].

She quotes Socrates: "It is better to be in disunity with the whole world than with oneself, since I am a unity." [This is all well and good when you are a German living in Nazi Germany and the world you are disunified from is morally repulsive. But what about our contemporaries, who could use precisely this reasoning to avoid paying taxes? Arendt's hyper-individualism is never softened by an understanding of humans as social animals; that makes sense as a stance against totalitarianism, but seems very dangerous when elevated to the position of self-standing philosophical truth.]

At other moments she's more nuanced:

"Whether anti-Bolshevists announce that the East is the Devil, or Bolshevists maintain that America is the Devil, as far as their habits of thought go it amounts to the same thing. The mentality is still the same. It sees only black and white. In reality there is no such thing. If one does not know the whole spectrum of political colors of an epoch, cannot distinguish between the basic conditions of the different countries, the various stages of development, traditions, kinds and grades in production, technology, mentality and so on, then one simply does not know how to move and take one's bearings in this field. One can do nothing but smash the world to bits in order to finally to have before one's eyes one thing: plain black."

And sometimes she just makes me feel warm and fuzzy:

"To think always means to think critically. And to think critically is always to be hostile. Every thought actually undermines whatever there is of rigid rules, general convictions etc. Everything which happens in thinking is subject to a critical examination of whatever there is... thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise... nonthinking is even more dangerous."

And she quotes Brecht, which sometimes backfires, but I enjoyed:

"One may state that tragedy deals with the sufferings of mankind in a less serious way than comedy."

Absolutely.




* https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1128656061?book_show_action=false ( )

¿Qué queda? Queda la lengua materna
Eichman era escandalosamente necio
Pensamientos sobre política y revolución
La última entrevista
Información biográfica