Arendt and America
German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) fled from the Nazis to New York in 1941, and during the next thirty years in America she wrote her best-known and most influential works, such as "The Human Condition", "The Origins of Totalitarianism", and "On Revolution". Yet, despite the fact that a substantial portion of her oeuvre was written in America, not Europe, no one has directly considered the influence of America on her thought – until now. In Arendt and America, historian Richard H. King argues that while all of Arendt's work was haunted by her experience of totalitarianism, it was only in her adopted homeland that she was able to formulate the idea of the modern republic as an alternative to totalitarian rule. Situating Arendt within the context of U. S. intellectual, political, and social history, King reveals how Arendt developed a fascination with the political thought of the Founding Fathers. King also re-creates her intellectual exchanges with American friends and colleagues, such as Dwight Macdonald and Mary McCarthy, and shows how her lively correspondence with sociologist David Riesman helped her understand modern American culture and society. In the last section of "Arendt and America", King sets out the context in which the Eichmann controversy took place and follows the debate about "the banality of evil" that has continued ever since. As King shows, Arendt's work, regardless of focus, was shaped by postwar American thought, culture, and politics, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. For Arendt, the United States was much more than a refuge from Nazi Germany; it was a stimulus to rethink the political, ethical, and historical traditions of human culture. This authoritative combination of intellectual history and biography offers a unique approach for thinking about the influence of America on Arendt's ideas and also the effect of her ideas on American thought.
Contents:
Introduction: Hannah Arendt's World
1. Guilt and Responsibility
2. The Origins of Totalitarianism in America
3. Rediscovering the World
4. Arendt, Tocqueville, and Cold War America
5. Arendt, Riesman, and America as Mass Society
6. Arendt and Postwar American Thought
7. Reflections/Refractions of Race, 1945–1955
8. Arendt, the Schools, and Civil Rights
9. The Eichmann Case
10. Against the Liberal Grain
11. The Revolutionary Traditions
12. The Crises of Arendt's Republic
Conclusion – Once More: The Film, Eichmann, and Evil
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
Richard H. King is professor emeritus of U. S. intellectual history at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the editor of "Obama and Race: History, Culture, Politics", co-editor of "Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Race, Nation, Genocide", and the author of "Race, Culture and the Intellectuals, 1940-1970", among other books.
Reviews
"A major work of scholarship and a truly original and pathbreaking way of looking at Arendt and her work. King situates Arendt in an American context in which she is rarely considered, and he draws on his deep knowledge of U. S. intellectual, political, and social history as well as German philosophy to create a book that is one of the most original and important works on Arendt to have been written in many years" – Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London
"This remarkably erudite and elegantly written book explains what happened when Hannah met America. King ushers us into the cultural and intellectual milieu of post-WWII New York and invites us to listen in on conversations between some of the leading intellectuals of the time. Arendt – uncompromising, relentlessly thoughtful, and downright difficult to the last – comes across as one of the great interpreters of modernity in all its tragic complexity. Forty years after her death, her thinking continues to enlighten the dark corners of our human condition" – Jon Nixon, author of "Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship"
