Hannah Arendt
A Life of the Mind
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Hannah Arendt
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About this listen
Drawing on newly discovered archival materials and previously overlooked documents—from both Germany, where Hannah Arendt was born to a Jewish family in 1906, and the United States, where she was a citizen from 1950—Thomas Meyer tells the story of an intellectual icon whose character and ideas continue to captivate and challenge us to this day. Tracing anew Arendt’s journey from Königsberg to Paris, where she fled after being imprisoned in 1933, and finally to New York in 1941, Meyer illuminates her formative years and the development of her radical and brilliant books, as well as her lifelong philosophical debate with Martin Heidegger, whose Nazism was a permanent challenge for her. Meyer’s account centers on two pivotal phases—Arendt’s years in Paris after fleeing Nazi Germany and her time in the United States leading up to the landmark publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1955—providing not only a meticulous reconstruction of her life but also a compelling invitation to rethink her legacy for our times.
At a time of acute political polarization, with liberalism in crisis and urgent debates about freedom, responsibility, and truth unfolding all around, Arendt’s writings and ideas resonate more powerfully than ever. Meyer’s account of her extraordinary life is groundbreaking and sensational, not just for his illuminating and peerless research, but also for his incisive exploration of what Arendt’s work has meant over the decades—and continues to mean for us today.
Critic Reviews
International Praise:
“The publications on Arendt seem truly countless, and yet Thomas Meyer manages to view her life from a new perspective. Meyer completely changes the viewpoint on Arendt, not looking at her from today's perspective, but attempting to reconstruct her life using contemporary documents and reports.” —nd. The day online
“Meyer wants to portray Arendt ‘in her time’. And so this first genuine biography, based on primary sources, is not only a stroke of luck and a pleasure to read 40 years after Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s last attempt at an approximation, because of its wealth of material, but also because a new picture of Arendt’s theory can be drawn based on new or previously overlooked documents from her Paris years.” —Time Literature
“At this point, Meyer's biography is not only historically but also politically important, because it brings together new source findings to prove that Arendt was not only a Zionist, but also an 'activist' for the emigration of German Jews to Palestine in the prehistory of the Jewish state.” —Welt am Sonntag
“What makes the book by Munich philosophy professor Thomas Meyer so worth reading are the insights from previously unused sources.” —Southwest Press
“The form, which tends to be formless, nevertheless follows a certain methodological rigor. For, as Walter Benjamin envisioned for his Arcades Project, Meyer primarily lets the documents themselves speak. Drawing on a seemingly endless wealth of knowledge, he comments, traces cross-connections with detective-like genius, and assembles them.” —Süddeutsche Zeitung
“The publications on Arendt seem truly countless, and yet Thomas Meyer manages to view her life from a new perspective. Meyer completely changes the viewpoint on Arendt, not looking at her from today's perspective, but attempting to reconstruct her life using contemporary documents and reports.” —nd. The day online
“Meyer wants to portray Arendt ‘in her time’. And so this first genuine biography, based on primary sources, is not only a stroke of luck and a pleasure to read 40 years after Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s last attempt at an approximation, because of its wealth of material, but also because a new picture of Arendt’s theory can be drawn based on new or previously overlooked documents from her Paris years.” —Time Literature
“At this point, Meyer's biography is not only historically but also politically important, because it brings together new source findings to prove that Arendt was not only a Zionist, but also an 'activist' for the emigration of German Jews to Palestine in the prehistory of the Jewish state.” —Welt am Sonntag
“What makes the book by Munich philosophy professor Thomas Meyer so worth reading are the insights from previously unused sources.” —Southwest Press
“The form, which tends to be formless, nevertheless follows a certain methodological rigor. For, as Walter Benjamin envisioned for his Arcades Project, Meyer primarily lets the documents themselves speak. Drawing on a seemingly endless wealth of knowledge, he comments, traces cross-connections with detective-like genius, and assembles them.” —Süddeutsche Zeitung
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