In 1951, a monumental book by a relatively unknown German-Jewish émigré addressed the terrifying new mode of political organization underlying the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism. Herself a refugee from Nazi persecution, Hannah Arendt sought, from her exile in New York City, to answer the unfathomable questions raised by the Soviet gulag and the Holocaust: How could there be such barbarism in the midst of civilization? How had governments exerted such absolute control over citizens, terrorizing them and enlisting them to commit atrocities on their behalf?
Arendt’s historical and cultural analyses extend to a thorough examination of nineteenth-century antisemitism in Europe, including a trenchant account of the Dreyfus Affair in France and brilliant insights into imperialism, racism, and their role in totalitarianism’s rise in the 1920s and 1930s. Arendt contends that totalitarianism, as a political system, is now embedded in contemporary life and is, as she would later remark, “the central event of our world.”
Her clear-eyed warning that totalitarianism is not merely a historical episode but is rather a permanent feature of modernity and beyond—a danger never to be fully eradicated, and a continual temptation for anti-democratic demagogues—makes Arendt, a half-century after her death, a preeminent thinker and political philosopher for the twenty-first century.
The Library of America edition of this indispensable and influential work, based on the final version she revised in her lifetime, also restores to print Arendt’s “Concluding Remarks” to the 1951 first American edition and a chapter on the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt of 1956, both of which were cut from later editions. The first annotated edition of Origins, the volume contains concise and thorough glosses on Arendt’s many historical and cultural references, and its Chronology provides a detailed portrait of her remarkable life.
Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft: Antisemitismus, Imperialismus, totale Herrschaft
About Author:
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was University Professor of political philosophy in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, a visiting professor at several universities including California, Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago, a research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations, the chief editor of Schocken Books, and the executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in New York City. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, and an Arts and Letters Grant of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954. She is also the author of On Revolution and Between Past and Future, which are available from Penguin Classics along with The Portable Hannah Arendt. Amos Elon (1926–2009) was born in Vienna, Austria, and spent most of his adult life in Jerusalem. A frequent essayist, lecture, and critic who was well known for his articles in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, he is the author of such bestselling works as The Israelis, Flight into Egypt, Founder, Herzel, and The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch.
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درباره نویسنده:هانا آرنت، زاده ی 14 اکتبر 1906 و درگذشته ی 4 دسامبر 1975، فیلسوف و تاریخ نگار آلمانی-آمریکایی بود.آرنت در لیندن واقع در نزدیکی هانوفر و در یک خانواده ی مرفه یهودی به دنیا آمد. او پس از پایان دوره ی دبیرستان، در 18 سالگی وارد دانشگاه ماربورگ شد و تحصیل خود را در رشته های فلسفه، ادبیات یونان و الهیات مسیحی آغاز کرد ولی پس از مدتی، درس و تحصیل را رها کرد و به دانشگاه هایدلبرگ رفت. آرنت که از دوران تحصیل در دانشگاه هایدلبرگ به بعد به یکی از بانفوذترین و خوش فکرترین رهبران چپ آلمان بدل شده بود، از مخالفان سرسخت نازی ها و از مدافعان شوراهای انقلابی چپ بود. او در سال 1929 به برلین رفت و نخستین کتاب خود را منتشر کرد.آرنت سال ها در دانشگاه های ایالات متحده در رشته ی تئوری سیاسی تدریس کرد و از چندین کشور، ده ها دکترای افتخاری گرفت. او همچنین، جایزه ی آلمانی زبان لسینگ و فروید را نیز از آن خود کرد.