Hannah Arendt
Publisher
:
Fayard
Parution date
:
1999
EAN
:
9782213603889
Description
Twenty-five years after her death, we are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing the life and work of this seminal twentieth-century philosopher, Julia Kristeva provides us with an elegant, sophisticated critique replete with historical and philosophical insight. Centering upon the theme of female genius, Hannah Arendt emphasizes three features of the philosopher's work. First, by exploring Arendt's critique of Saint Augustine and her biographical essay on Rahel Varnhagen, Kristeva accentuates Arendt's commitment to recounting lives and to narration. Second, Kristeva reflects on Arendt's perspecitve on Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the "banality of evil." Finally, Kristeva's critique brings together Arendt's intellectual itinerary, placing her enthusiasm for observing both social phenomena and political events in the context of her personal life. Drawing on fragments of Arendt's most intimate correspondence with her longtime lover Martin Heidegger and her husband Heinrich Blucher, excerpts from her mother's "Unser Kind" (a diary tracking Hannah's formative years), and passages from Arendt's philosophical writings, Kristeva weaves a luminous story. With a thorough thematic index and bibliographical references, Hannah Arendt offers a major breakthrough in the understanding of an essential thinker.
Author
Julia Kristeva : Linguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers of our time. Her writings have broken new ground in the study of the self, the mind, and the ways in which we communicate through language. Her work is unique in that it skillfully brings together psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, literature, linguistic, and philosophy.
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