Hannah Arendt was very much a public intellectual. She was willing to speak and be interviewed on radio and TV and in public settings. The interviews collected in this book are from the last decade of her life.
The first interview occurred on October 28, 1964, with the German TV personality Gunter Gaus. World War II and the Holocaust ended with German Surrender just 19 years before the interview. Twelve years before that, Hannah Arendt fled to France when persecution of Jews began with Hitler's rise to power.
The interview covers Arendt's life in Germany, life as a refugee, and as an American scholar. Arendt and Gaus also talk about the Eichmann trial and Arendt's very controversial reporting on the trial.
On the rise of Hitler to power she said,
People often think today that German Jews were shocked in 1933 because Hitler assumed power. As far as I and the people of my generation are concerned, I can say that is a curious misunderstanding. Naturally, Hitler's rise to power was very bad. But it was political. It wasn't personal. We didn't need Hitler's assumption of power to know the Nazis were our enemies! That had been completely evident for at least four years to anyone who wasn't feebleminded. We also knew a large number of the German people were behind them. That could not shock or surprise us in 1933.
Gaus then asks,
You mean that the shock in 1933 came from the fact that events went from the generally political to the personal?
Arendt responds,
Not even that. Or that too. First of all, the generally political became a personal fate when one emigrated. Second...friends "coordinated" or got in line. The problem, the personal problem was not what our enemies did but what our friends did.
Arendt describes an "empty space" that formed around her and other Jews as "friends" followed the Nazi Party and abandoned her and other Jews.
In an interview in October 1973, shortly before Arendt's death in 1975, she was interviewed by Roger Errera or ORTF TV, France. In the interview, which covered many topics and was filmed over several sessions, Errera made a comment that Arendt answered and I could see why I was so taken with Arendt's thinking and felt compelled to read all of her major works.
Errera:
Our century seems to me dominated by a mode of thinking based on historical determinism.
Arendt:
We don't know the future, everybody acts into the future, and nobody knows what he is doing, because the future is being done. ... Action is a "we" not an I...Now this makes it look as though what actually happens is entirely contingent, and contingency is indeed one of the biggest factors in all of history. Nobody knows what is going to happen simply because so much depends upon an enormous amount of variables; in other words on simple hasard. On the other hand, if you look back through history retrospectively, then you can--even though all this was contingent--you can tell the story makes sense. How is that possible? How is it possible in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn't have happened otherwise? All the variables have disappeared, and reality has such an overwhelming impact upon us that we cannot be bothered with what is actually an infinite variety of possibilities.
There is much more in these interviews. If you have already read one or more of her books, these interviews will give you more perspective.
I first read Hannah Arendt after I returned from deployment to Iraq in 2010. A new friend Sara Rouhi who was studying philosophy said, "You have to read Arendt." I did. Became obsessed and read all of her major works. Sara was one of the people I was thinking about when I recommended making friends of all ages.
I wrote about her here.
Books 8 and 20 in the list below are by Arendt.
I brought up Arendt at a conference I attended in June on the subject of claiming territory in space.
Just before COVID, I went to my first conference at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.
First 25 books of 2022:
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss.
Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins
Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay
First Principles by Thomas Ricks
Political Tribes by Amy Chua
Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen
A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson
1776 by David McCullough
The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt
Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Marie Curie by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche
Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen
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