Thinking Without a Banister

Essays in Understanding, 1953-1975

By Hannah Arendt

2006

First Published

4.19

Average Rating

576

Number of Pages

17H35M

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From one of the most significant political theorists of the twentieth century—a collection of essays, lectures, speeches, reviews, and interviews published in the last twenty years of her life, but never, until now, compiled in book form. Beginning in 1951 with the publication of Origins of Totalitarianism, until her death in 1975, Hannah Arendt wrote all of her seminal works, including The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Revolution, and The Life of the Mind. At the same time, she was contributing essays, reviews, and editorials to numerous publications and participating in recorded conversations, interviews, and public discussions. Now, for the first time, these various shorter texts—all of them published within her lifetime—are gathered together in a single volume that makes clear the remarkable range of her preoccupations and passions. EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEROME KOHN

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Author

Hannah Arendt

Author · 65 books

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).