Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Dana Villa

Published by Princeton University Press 2000

Politics, Philosophy, Terror

Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt

Dana Villa

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400823161

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Contents

About this book

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.

Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.

Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century.

Author / Editor information

Dana R. Villa is the author of Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton) and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. He teaches political theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000

In this splendid collection Villa focuses on Arendt's analysis of totalitarian evil and its relationship to the philosophical tradition.

Villa explores the tensions between [Hannah] Arendt's disdain for those who fail to think and her distrust of the contemplative retreat from the world. . . . [A] lucid and illuminating book.---John Plotz, Lingua Franca

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
CHAPTER ONE. Terror and Radical Evil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
CHAPTER TWO. Conscience, the Banality of Evil, and the Idea of a Representative Perpetrator Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER THREE. The Anxiety of Influence: On Arendt’s Relationship to Heidegger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
CHAPTER FOUR. Thinking and Judging Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
CHAPTER FIVE. Democratizing the Agon: Nietzsche, Arendt, and the Agonistic Tendency in Recent Political Theory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
CHAPTER SIX. Theatricality and the Public Realm Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Philosopher versus the Citizen: Arendt, Strauss, and Socrates Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
CHAPTER EIGHT. Totalitarianism, Modernity, and the Tradition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
CHAPTER NINE. Arendt and Socrates Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	204
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261

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