Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt

This outstanding collection of essays explores Hannah Arendt's thought against the background of recent world-political events unfolding since September 11, 2001, and engages in a contentious dialogue with one of the greatest political thinkers of the past century, with the conviction that she remains one of our contemporaries. Themes such as moral and political equality, action and natality, and judgment and freedom are reevaluated with fresh insights by a group of thinkers who are themselves well known for their original contributions to political thought. Other essays focus on novel and little-discussed themes in the literature by highlighting Arendt's views of sovereignty, international law and genocide, nuclear weapons and revolutions, imperialism and Eurocentrism, and her contrasting images of Europe and America. Each essay displays not only superb Arendt scholarship but also stylistic flair and analytical tenacity.

Author: Seyla Benhabib
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 12/23/2010
Pages: 408
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.29lbs
Size: 9.19h x 6.44w x 0.86d
ISBN: 9780521127226

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2011

About the Author
Benhabib, Seyla: - Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University. She is the author of Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory; Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics; Feminism as Critique (coauthored with Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, and Nancy Fraser); The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt; The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era; The Rights of Others: Aliens, Citizens and Residents; and Another Cosmopolitanism: Hospitality, Sovereignty and Democratic Iterations. Her work has been translated into 14 languages, and she was the recipient of the 2009 Ernst Bloch Prize.