I am often critical of aspects of Arendt's thought but this reminded me of why I was first drawn to her works in undergrad. In particular, the exclusion of the public from political participation is such a crucial and basic cause of democratic decline. Thanks for recording! Look forward to part 2!
Thanks for the rich overview of the first half of Arendt’s life, focusing as it does on the lead-up to 1951, the year she published The Origins of Totalitarianism and finally became an American citizen.
I just checked: as you imply, no movie has been released based on Arendt’s life yet. Documentaries, yes, but nothing like the shot at a blockbuster that, in Hollywood terms, her life deserves. Three escapes (counting, as you relate one writer as suggesting, the one from Heidegger), the chance meet-up with her husband after her escape from the French internment camp. Even her expulsion from school for leading an unsuccessful coup against her teacher.
One moment I’d love to see is the impromptu discussion group that Arendt and her husband lead during their last days in Europe. Her biographer Young-Bruehl captures it: “While they waited for their ship in Lisbon, the Blüchers read [Walter] Benjamin’s [Theses on the Philosophy of History] aloud to each other and to the refugees who gathered around them. They discussed and debated the meaning of his moment-to moment messianic hope.” Benjamin had slipped her a copy a few months before his death, and she of course edited a book that anthologized an English translation of Theses decades later. I’d stage the discussion on the dock with the steamer approaching and maybe with an empty chair for the one Benjamin would have occupied.
Even to be part of that “book club” would require the kind of experience and witness you highlight so well in this episode. (All philosophy is biography. Every thought is an afterthought. Yes!)
I learned a great deal from the context in which you frame much of her life and thought, including the thought of Jaspers and Heidegger. Can’t wait for part 2!
I am often critical of aspects of Arendt's thought but this reminded me of why I was first drawn to her works in undergrad. In particular, the exclusion of the public from political participation is such a crucial and basic cause of democratic decline. Thanks for recording! Look forward to part 2!
Thanks for the rich overview of the first half of Arendt’s life, focusing as it does on the lead-up to 1951, the year she published The Origins of Totalitarianism and finally became an American citizen.
I just checked: as you imply, no movie has been released based on Arendt’s life yet. Documentaries, yes, but nothing like the shot at a blockbuster that, in Hollywood terms, her life deserves. Three escapes (counting, as you relate one writer as suggesting, the one from Heidegger), the chance meet-up with her husband after her escape from the French internment camp. Even her expulsion from school for leading an unsuccessful coup against her teacher.
One moment I’d love to see is the impromptu discussion group that Arendt and her husband lead during their last days in Europe. Her biographer Young-Bruehl captures it: “While they waited for their ship in Lisbon, the Blüchers read [Walter] Benjamin’s [Theses on the Philosophy of History] aloud to each other and to the refugees who gathered around them. They discussed and debated the meaning of his moment-to moment messianic hope.” Benjamin had slipped her a copy a few months before his death, and she of course edited a book that anthologized an English translation of Theses decades later. I’d stage the discussion on the dock with the steamer approaching and maybe with an empty chair for the one Benjamin would have occupied.
Even to be part of that “book club” would require the kind of experience and witness you highlight so well in this episode. (All philosophy is biography. Every thought is an afterthought. Yes!)
I learned a great deal from the context in which you frame much of her life and thought, including the thought of Jaspers and Heidegger. Can’t wait for part 2!