HannahArendt.net (E-Journal)

Carvalho, José Sérgio F. de

German

Pedagogical Discourse and the Vanishing of an Ethical-Political Meaning of Education

Förster, Jürgen

Das Recht auf Rechte und das Engagement für eine gemeinsame Welt -- Hannah Arendts Reflexionen über die Menschenrechte

Worauf gründet sich die „Allgemeine Erklärung der Menschenrechte“ von 1948, was ist die Menschenwürde, was ist politische Verantwortung, inwieweit gibt es heute das Recht, Rechte zu haben

Heuer, Wolfgang

Rosenmüller, Stefanie

"Es gibt nur ein einziges Menschenrecht".

Vaz, Celso

Ausgabe 1, Band 5 – November 2009
Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of 
Pará, Brazil
The Research Group Hannah Arendt was founded in 1996 at the Federal University of 
Pará. It began its activities with the research and education project “Tradition and 
Modernity in the Political Thought of Hannah Arendt”, which was coordinated by 
Professor Celso Antônio Coelho Vaz. The project was designed to train graduate students 
for research in and the teaching of political theory. Over a period of two years, eight 
undergraduate students studied the works of Hannah Arendt, the result of which was 
several articles and monographs as well as various internal and public seminars.
In 1999, Professor Vaz presented his thesis “Une Première Approche de la Morale 
Politique chez Hannah Arendt” and in 2004, his dissertation on the topic of “L'Hybris 
Moderne: Secularisation, Nihilisme et Esseulement. La Critique Religieuse de l'Âge 
Moderne par Hannah Arendt”. He was awarded a doctorate in political studies by the 
Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron, École des Hautes Études en Sciences 
Sociales, EHESS, Paris, France. Back at the Federal University of Pará, Professor Vaz 
continued his research from 2004 to 2006 with the project “The Modern Hybris: 
Religious Criticism of the Modern Age by Hannah Arendt”.
In 2004, research and reflection on the political thought of Hannah Arendt at the 
Federal University of Pará underwent a change. From isolated activities carried out by 
Professor Vaz, the group opened up to participation by graduate and postgraduate 
students. On 5–9 December 2005, it organized the “International Colloquium Hannah 
Arendt: Reflections on Modern and Contemporary Political and Moral Issues”. A 
collection of lectures given by both Brazilian and international scholars on the thought of 
Hannah Arendt was published in the volume Uma Obra no mundo: diálogos com 
Hannah Arendt (Ed. Celso Antônio Coelho Vaz / Sivana Winckler orgs.) (A Work in the 
World: Conversations with Hannah Arendt). 
Since 2008, the research activities of the group have become part of the research focus 
on political theory in the master’s degree course in political science at the Federal 
University of Pará. Three dissertations dealing with the political thought of Hannah 
Arendt are currently in progress.
The “First Forum Paraense Hannah Arendt”, which took place on 22 May 2009, was 
attended by researchers at the Federal University of Pará as well as by Prof. Wolfgang 
Heuer (Free University of Berlin) and Prof. Silvana Winkler (UNICHAPECÓ/Brazil). As 
one element of the inauguration activities of the “Chair Curt Nimuendaju”,  the First 
Forum also launched the activities of the “Forum Hannah Arendt”. Both are based at the 
“Casa de Estudos Germânicos” (House of Germanic Studies) at the Federal University of 
Pará.
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Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
Bibliografia do Grupo de Pesquisa
Artigos de Iniciação Científica 
(Estes artigos também foram apresentados no Seminário: A Propósito do Pensamento 
Político de Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA/Departamento de Ciência Política e 
Departamento de Metodologia, 1997)
1996
1- ARAÚJO, Jucirene A Relação dos Judeus com a Sociedade: a Concepção 
Arendtiana em as " Origens do Totalitarismo". Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1996.
2- CONCEIÇÃO, Antônio Tavares. Minorias, População Supérflua e Ralé na  
Concepção Arendtiana. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1996. 
3- FEIO, Heloisa. Desenvolvimento e Crise do Estado Nação na Perspectiva 
Arendtiana. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1996.  
4- RIBEIRO, Abélcio Santos. A Burguesia Imperialista sob a Perspectiva Arendtiana. 
Belém-Pará: UFPA, 1996.
5-SANTOS, Osvaldina. O Humanismo em Hannah Arendt. Belém- Pará: UFPA,  1996. 
6-RIBEIRO, Abélcio Santos. A Burguesia Imperialista sob a Perspectiva Arendtiana. 
Belém-Pará: UFPA, 1996.
1997
7-ARAÚJO, Jucirene. A Flexibilidade da Conduta Social Judia no Século XIX. Belém-
Pará: Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
8-________; A Origem das Ideologias Raciais e sua Contribuição para o  
Imperialismo. Belém-Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
9-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. Imperialismo: a expansão por amor a expansão. 
Belém: Belém-Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
10-_________, Celso Antônio. Os judeus e a sociedade na concepção arendtiana. 
Belém-Pará: UFPA, 1997.
11- CONCEIÇÃO, Antônio Tavares. Anti-semitismo: Alguns Procedimentos Factuais  
da Conduta dos Judeus na Europa Central e Ocidental. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
12-__________, Imperialismo: Minorias, População Supérflua e Ralé na Concepção  
Arendtiana. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
13- FEIO, Heloisa. A Relação dos Judeus com o Anti-semitismo. Belém-Pará: Belém- 
Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
14-_______ Força: Fundamento da Ideologia Imperialista. Belém-Pará: Belém- 
Pará: UFPA, 1997.
15-________ Imperialismo: Minorias, População Supérflua e Ralé na Concepção 
Arendtiana. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
 2 
Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
16-RIBEIRO, Abélcio Santos.  A Burguesia na Época Imperialista sob a Ótica de 
Hannah Arendt. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997.
17-________ O Caso Dreyfuss: Um Caso de Insulto aos Judeus da França. Belém-
Pará: Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
18- SANTIAGO, Gilmar. As Contradições do Estado Nacional Expressas na Análise de  
Hannah Arendt. Belém- Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
19-________. Os Judeus e o Estado Nação e a Origem do Anti-semitismo. Belém- 
Pará: UFPA, 1997. 
20-SILVA, Antônio Arão da. O Anti-Semitismo como Ofensa ao Bom Senso. Belém- 
Pará: UFPA, 1997.
1999
21-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. Pensée et Morale chez  Hannah Arendt. Paris: Centre 
de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 
1999. 
22-___________. Individu et Societé dans la Pensée de Hannah Arendt. Paris: 
Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: École des Hautes Études en Sciences 
Sociales, 1999. (seminário).
23-__________. Idées, Théories et Conceptions sur le Bien. Paris: Centre de 
Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 
1999. (seminário).
Monografias de Conclusão de Curso (Graduação)
1998
24-FEIO, Heloisa. O Estado Nação no Pensamento de Hannah Arendt. COELHO VAZ, 
Celso Antônio (orientador). Belém-Pará: UFPA/Colegiado de Graduação em Filosofia,  
 1998. 
2007
25-ASSUNÇÃO, Luiseane Rocha; CAPELO, Verônica de Araújo (orientadora); SOUZA 
JÚNIOR, Nelson José; COELHO VAZ, (avaliadores). A dignidade da política no mundo 
contemporâneo: A perspectiva arendtiana. Belém-Pará: UFPA/Colegiado de Graduação 
em Filosofia, 2007. 
26- MARINHO, Andreza Kelly; CAPELO, Verônica de Araújo (orientadora); SOUZA 
JÚNIOR, Nelson José; COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio (avaliadores). A educação na 
perspectiva de Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA/Colegiado de Graduação em 
Filosofia, 2007. 
 3 
Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
2008
27-QUARESMA, Antonio Marcos Ferreira; CAPELO, Verônica de Araújo (orientadora); 
SOUZA JÚNIOR, Nelson José; COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio (avaliadores). O Sentido da 
Política na Filosofia da Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA/Colegiado de Graduação em 
Filosofia, 2008.
28-SOUZA, Denize Rodrigues; COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio (orientador);  CAPELO, 
Verônica de Araújo, SILVA Édison (avaliadores). A política como razão de ser do  
pensamento de Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA/Colegiado de Graduação em 
Filosofia, 2008. 
Textos para Qualificação de Dissertações
2007
29-FARIAS, Klelton Mamed de; MAROJA, Angela (orientadora); COELHO VAZ, Celso 
Antônio SOUZA JÚNIOR, Nelson José (avaliadores). A Fundamentação dos Direitos  
Humanos em Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA: Programa de Pós-Graduação em 
Direito, 2007. 
2009
30-OLIVEIRA, André Silva de; COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio (orientador); 
CAMPAGNOLO, Maria da Graça de M. B; SOUZA JÚNIOR, Nelson José (avaliadores). A 
Democracia representativa versus democracia participativa - Convergências e conflitos  
na busca da Nova Ágora. Belém-Pará: UFPA: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência 
Política, 2009. 
2010
31-PEQUENO JUNIOR, José Eronides De Sousa. COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio 
(orientador); CAMPAGNOLO, Maria da Graça de M. B; SOUZA JÚNIOR, Nelson José 
(avaliadores). A Revelação da Ação e a Singularidade no Pensamento de Hannah 
Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência Política, 2010. 
Dissertações
1999
32-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. MANENT, Pierre (orientador) CANTO-SPERBER, 
Monique (avaliadora). Une première approche de la morale politique chez Hannah  
Arendt. Paris: Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: École des Hautes Études 
en Sciences Sociales, 1999.
2008
33-FARIAS, Klelton Mamed de; MAROJA, Angela (orientadora); PINZANI, Alexandre; 
COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio (Avaliadores).. Ação e Lei: Um Estudo Preliminar sobre os 
 4 
Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
Direitos Humanos como Categoria Política em Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: UFPA: 
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito, 2008. 
Teses
2004
34-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. MANENT, Pierre (orientador) CANTO-SPERBER, 
Monique; D’ALLONES, Myriam Revault, LEGROS, Robert (avaliadores).  L'hibrys 
moderne: sécularisation, nihilisme et esseulement. La critique religieuse de l'âge  
moderne par Hannah Arendt. Paris: Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: 
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2004.
Publicações
2006
35-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. A Hybris da Filosofia da Existência e a Condição 
Humana do indivíduo Secular. In: Adriano Correia. (Org.). Hannah Arendt e a Condição 
Humana. 1ª ed. Salvador: Quarteto, 2006, v. 1, p. 175-210.
2007
36- __________. O Pensamento Racial, o Romantismo e o Iluminismo. In: Sônia 
Maria da Silva Araújo. (Org.). José Veríssimo: Raça, Cultura e Educação. 1ª ed. Belém: 
EDUFPA, 2007, v 1, p. 71-98.
37- ____________. Os Limites da Sociologia: a Visão crítica de Hannah Arendt  
sobre a Ideologia e a Utopia em Karl Mannheim. Humanitas (Belém-Pará), v. 22, p. 47-
64, 2006.
2009
38- ___________. A Secularização da Política pelo Desaparecimento do Medo do  
Inferno. In: Celso Antônio Coelho Vaz; Silvana Winckler. (Org.). Uma obra no Mundo: 
Diálogos com Hannah Arendt. 1ª ed. Chapecó: Argos, 2009, v. 01, p. 67-90.
39-__________.(Org.); WINCKLER, SIlvana. (Org.). Uma Obra no Mundo: 
Diálogos com Hannah Arendt. 1. ed. Chapecó: Argos, 2009. v. 01. 184 p.
Organização de eventos 
1997
40-Seminário: A Propósito do Pensamento Político de Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará: 
UFPA/Departamento de Ciência Política e Departamento de Metodologia, 1997. 
2005
41-Colóquio Internacional Hannah Arendt.  Belém-Pará:UFPA, 2005
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Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
2009
42-Primeiro Colóquio Paraense Hannah Arendt.  Belém-Pará: UFPA, 2009. 
Autores e seus temas
43-AROUCK, João Henrique Vasconcelos. A Compaixão Revolucionária e a Questão  
Social. 
44-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. As Criaturas do Leviatã: O Imperialismo, o 
Racismo e o Niilismo.
45-MAMED, Klelton de Farias O Conceito de Lei de Hannah Arendt.
46-OLIVEIRA, André Silva de O Conceito de Igualdade em Hannah Arendt.
PEQUENO JÚNIOR, José Eronides de Souza. Moralidade como Interesse 
eIinautenticidade do Político na Modernidade.
Apresentação de Trabalhos em Eventos
1999
47-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. Individu et Societé dans la Pensée de Hannah 
Arendt. Paris: Centre de Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: École des Hautes Études 
en Sciences Sociales, 1999. (seminário).
48-____________, Idées, Théories et Conceptions sur le Bien. Paris: Centre de 
Recherches Politiques Raymond Aron: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 
1999. (seminário).
2004
49-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio. A Hybris moderna: Secularização, Niilismo e 
Isolamento. A Crítica Religiosa da Idade Moderna por Hannah Arendt. Belém- Pará: 
UFPA/Núcleo de Altos Estudos Amazônicos, 2004. (Seminário). 
50-____________. Secularização, Niilismo e Isolamento e a Condição Humana do 
Indivíduo Secular. A Crítica a Filosofia da Existência por Hannah Arendt. Salvador: 
Bahia: UFBA, Colóquio Hannah Arendt e a Condição Humana, 2004. (Simpósio). 
2005
51-_______. A Hybris Moderna: Secularização, Niilismo e Isolamento. A Crítica  
Religiosa da Idade Moderna por Hannah Arendt. Belém-Pará UFPA/ Programa de Pós-
Graduação em Ciências Sociais. 2005. (Seminário). 
52-_________. A Crítica de Hannah Arendt sobre a Contribuição do Romantismo e  
do Iluminismo para a Constituição da Cultura e do Gênero Humano Secular Moderno.  
Belém-Pará: Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Sociais-ANPOCS, XII 
Encontro de Ciências Sociais Norte e Nordeste-XII CISO. 2005. (Encontro). 
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Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
2006
53-_________. A Procura de Um Lugar no Mundo. A Crítica da Hannah Arendt da 
Assimilação dos Judeus ao Romantismo. Brasília:UNB, Simpósio Internacional A Vida 
como Amor Mundi. Hannah Arendt entre a Filosofia e a Política, 2006. (Simpósio). 
54-_________. Hannah Arendt e a Violência.  Belém-Pará: UFPA, Programa de Pós-
Graduação em Ciências Sociais, 2006. (palestra).
2007
55-________. O Conceito de Senso Comum em Gramsci e Hannah Arendt. Belém-
Pará: UFPA.Colóquio Internacional Gramsci: Setenta Anos de Pensamento Vivo na 
Amazônia. 2007. (colóquio). 
56-________. O contexto histórico-filosófico do final do século;  XIX e primeiras 
décadas do século XX - raça, etnocentrismo e educação. Belém-Pará:UFPA, CNPq, 
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação. Colóquio José Veríssimo: Cultura, Educação  
e Preconceito. 2007. (colóquio). 
2008
57-________.(debatedor) Colóquio de Biopolítica. A política ocidental é co-
originalmente biopolítica?: Giorgio Agamben frente a Hannah Arendt e Michel Foucault. 
Belém-Pará: UFPA, Faculdade de Filosofia, 2008. (colóquio). 
2009
58-________. As Criaturas do Leviatã: O Imperialismo, o Racismo e o Niilismo. 
Primeiro Colóquio Paraense Hannah Arendt 2009. Belém-Pará:UFPA, 2009 (Colóquio). 
59-________. Hannah Arendt e a Compreensão da realidade. Belém-Pará: UFPA, 
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, 2009. (palestra)
60-PEQUENO JUNIOR, José Eronides de Sousa.O Espaço da Aparência e a 
Construção de uma Ética Pública em Hannah Arendt. In: I Fórum Brasileiro de Pós-
Graduação em Ciência Política, 2009, Belo Horizonte. Anais do I Fórum Brasileiro de 
Pós-Graduação em Ciência Política, 2009.
Pareceres em Artigos para publicação em Revistas
2006
61-COELHO VAZ, Celso Antônio.  Parecer sobre o artigo: Considerações a Respeito da 
Atualidade do Conceito de Totalitarismo em Hannah Arendt. Artigo para ser publicado na 
Revista Teoria & Sociedade (UFMG), 2006.
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Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
2008
62-________. Parecer sobre o artigo: As Origens da República no Brasil: Uma 
Crítica a partir de Paradigmas Arendtianos. Artigo para ser publicado na RevistaTRÊS 
Pontod/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais . 2008. 
63-________. Parecer sobre o artigo: A Violência e a Responsabilização nos Regimes 
Ditatoriais. Artigo para ser publicado na Revista Revista Digital Democracia, Violência e 
Direitos Humanos/USP: Núcleo de Estudo da Violência , 2008.
2009
64-_________. Parecer sobre o artigo: A Burocracia do Nazismo: Um Estudo sobre 
as Obras de Hannah Arendt e Max Weber. 2009. Artigo para ser publicado na Revista 
Habitus/Revista de Ciências Sociais da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
 8 


Research Group Hannah Arendt, Federal University of Pará, Brazil

Kurelić, Zoran

Telos of the Camp

Knott, Marie Luise

Ausgabe 1, Band 4 – Mai 2008 
Benno v. Wiese: Briefwechsel Hannah Arendt - Benno 
von Wiese in Auszügen erschienen 
Marie Luise Knott
Klaus Dieter Rossade, „Dem Zeitgeist erlegen. Benno von Wiese 
und der Nationalsozialismus“, Heidelberg 2007.
Am 17. 10. 1953 schreibt Benno von Wiese an Hannah Arendt: „Ich weiß zwar durch Hugo 
Friedrich, dass Du von mir nicht mehr viel wissen willst, aber ich schreibe Dir trotzdem, 
da ich finde, Du solltest Dich mit mir wieder aussöhnen, wie es auch Richard Alewyn 
inzwischen vollkommen getan hat. [...] willst Du wirklich jede mögliche ‚Kommunikation’ 
zwischen uns für immer unterbinden?“ Als P.S. fügt er hinzu: „Findest Du, dass es 
Heidegger mehr verdient hat, mit Dir wieder zusammenzutreffen als ich?“ Hannah 
Arendt antwortet, die ehemaligen Freunde und Studienkollegen  treffen sich, als von 
Wiese Mitte der 1950er Jahre in Amerika unterrichtet, Briefe wechseln hin und her. 
Dann, 1964, im Rahmen der ersten größeren bundesdeutschen Kontroverse um die 
Rolle der Wissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus, gerät auch die NS-Vergangenheit der 
Germanistik ins Gespräch – nicht zuletzt durch zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen in der 
„Zeit“, wie Rossade ausführlich berichtet und dokumentiert. In diesem Zusammenhang 
steht auch die  (von Rossade minutiös recherchierte) NS-Vergangenheit Benno von 
Wieses zur Debatte, der seit Anfang der 1960er Jahre im Germanistenverband aktiv tätig 
ist und 1965 dessen Vorsitzender wird. Von Wiese war seit 1933 Parteimitglied der 
NSDAP, ab 1936 Extraordinarius, während des Krieges lange Zeit uk (unabkömmlich) 
gestellt. Nach seiner „Entnazifizierung“ hatte er seine Laufbahn als Germanist fortsetzen 
können. In seinem Artikel „Bemerkungen zur ‚unbewältigten Vergangenheit’“, der am 25. 
Dezember 1964 in „Die Zeit“ erschien, übergeht er seine eigene konkrete Geschichte und 
äußert allgemeine Schuld und Verteidigungssätze („Niemand gibt gern zu, dass er einmal 
falsch gedacht oder sogar falsch gehandelt hat. [...] Die Vergangenheit erinnern [...] kann 
doch wohl  nicht heißen, dass eine ganze Generation, die inzwischen seit Jahrzehnten 
öffentlich tätig ist, nunmehr an den Pranger gestellt werden soll.“) 
Aufgrund dieses Textes, auf den von Wiese Hannah Arendt hatte hinweisen lassen, 
entspinnt sich eine kurze heftige Kontroverse (drei Briefe), die mitsamt des Zeit-Essays in 
obigem Band abgedruckt ist. Am 3. Februar 1965 wendet sich Arendt an von Wiese. Dabei 
reagiert sie vor allem auf seine Bemerkung, er sei  1933 „dem Einfluss eines 
verhängnisvollen Zeitgeistes [...] erlegen“.  Ihre Antwort konzentriert sich auf eine ganz 
konkrete Tat (oder besser Untat) - nicht auf seinen Parteieintritt im April 1933, sondern 
auf seine öffentliche Forderung nach der „Entfernung des fremden Blutes“ von den 
Universitäten (gleichfalls 1933). Dies zu fordern - ein ganz konkreter antisemitischer 
1 
Marie Luise Knott | Benno v. Wiese | http://www.hannaharendt.net 
Angriff! – hatte 1933 nichts damit zu tun, wie sie argumentiert, dass er „dem Zeitgeist“ 
erlegen war, sondern, wie sie unumwunden mutmaßt, der Angst um seine Karriere. Sie 
fordert ihn deshalb nachdrücklich auf, er solle sich schon um der nachfolgenden 
Generationen Willen wahrhaftiger mit der eigenen Geschichte beschäftigen, statt in 
pauschale Sätze auszuweichen. Von Wiese interpretiert Arendts Kritik in seiner 
brieflichen Antwort als „Missdeutungen“. 
Im zweiten Brief, geschrieben am 19. Februar 1965, lacht Arendt darüber, dass sich 
Benno von Wiese über ihre Reaktion entsetzt: „Wenn Du schreibst, Wir sind dem 
Zeitgeist erlegen, so klingt das sehr schön, wenn man vergisst, dass Hitler, der wie ein 
Heiratsschwindler aussah und nicht wie Napoleon, den Zeitgeist verkörperte.“
Der Briefwechsel dokumentiert auf seine Weise sowohl die damals verbreitete 
Unfähigkeit zu reden, als auch die Möglichkeit eines unabhängigen Urteilens. Am Titel 
erkennt man, dass Klaus Dieter Rossade dieser Auseinandersetzung zwischen Hannah 
Arendt und Benno von Wiese eine Schlüsselrolle zuweist. Sie ist es, die in seinem Buch 
die Aspekte der ganzen Geschichte zu bündeln vermag. 
Die Briefe von Hannah Arendt und Benno von Wiese befinden sich im Hannah Arendt 
Nachlass in der  Library of Congress in Washington( Container 15). Die in dem genannten 
Band abgedruckten Briefe sind auch online verfügbar: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/query/P?mharendt:1:./temp/~ammem_nECe::
2 


Benno v. Wiese, Briefwechsel Hannah Arendt - Benno von Wiese in Auszügen erschienen

Correa, Bernardo

Arendt und das poetische Denken 

I am interested in exploring why some judges rhetorically portray themselves as tragic heroes who are bound by the law when others, both dissenting judges and respected legal observers, argue that the law is unsettled

Berkowitz, Roger

The Judge as Tragic Hero: An Arendtian Critique of Judging

Topolski, Anna

Ausgabe 1, Band 4 – Mai 2008 
In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity: 
Between Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas and the 
Judaic
Anna Topolski
My dissertation explores the possibility of an approach to the political that is rooted in 
intersubjectivity and by this means creates a space for an ethics that arises from within 
the polis. It arose in response to the contemporary lack of interest (and general disdain) 
in the political among citizens in developed nations, especially among those of my 
generation as well as in response to the post-Shoah call Never Again. These concerns led 
me to seek an approach to the political that was inspirational, that could motivate 
individuals to participate, as well as one that approached the ‘other’ in positive rather 
than negative terms. The first, as I hope to make clear in part one, is certainly to be found 
in the thought of Hannah Arendt and the second in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. 
After considering both authors, I was struck by several resonances (and many 
discordances) in their different projects. It is these resonances that also pointed the way 
towards the Judaic. It is this goal that led me to ask whether an intersubjective approach 
to the political may help to revitalise this realm of human interaction. Intersubjectivity, it 
seemed to me, is the bridge between Arendt’s notion of the political as rooted in plurality 
and Levinas’ ethics of alterity, a bridge that may also be a response to the hope that 
humanity will never again experience its inhumanity. My hypothesis is that because of the 
tendency, partially determined by history, to view the political in terms of singularity, are 
flection on what is in fact central to the political – the relations between people – has 
been overlooked.
***
Before turning to their thought, I would like to begin by presenting snippets of their life 
stories, exemplary of many Jewish intellectuals in the twentieth century. Born in 1906 in 
central Europe,both studied, for different periods of time, in Germany. More particularly 
both studied in Heidelberg with Heidegger whose words and deeds forever left its mark. 
Arendt and Levinas did in fact share the same classroom in the 20’s and yet it was for 
different courses. Confronted by the rising antisemitism, both Arendt and Levinas were 
forced to dramatically re-orient the course of their lives. interestingly while both sought 
refuge in Paris in the 30’s, travelling in the same philosophical, cultural and Jewish 
circles, there is no sign that they met. Soon after the war broke out in Europe, Levinas 
found himself in a POW camp at the same time as Arendt was being held in an 
internment camp. Against all odds, both survived the war – which is more than one can 
say for most of their friends and families. After the war Levinas returned to France while 
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Anya Topolski | In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity | http://www.hannaharendt.net
Arendt became an American citizen. Both quickly returned to the only means they had to 
make sense of what had happened – by thinking and writing. In addition, it was after the 
war that both re-dedicated themselves with vigour to Judaism, although in very different 
ways. While it seems that their paths diverged from this point on, Arendt defining herself 
as a political thinker and Levinas as an ethical thinker, there were those –such as Jean 
Wahl, who saw the resonance in their thought as early as 1947 and chose to include both 
their writings in his journal. Thus while their ideas crossed paths in the 40’s, it was not 
until a quarter-century later that they themselves met. By this time both had found fame, 
of sorts. Levinas had finally been welcomed into the French academic circles and had 
even become a sort of ethical celebrity while Arendt, no stranger to controversy, had 
become a household name in America, albeit not always an appreciated one. For this 
reason, in 1970, the Jesuit University of Loyola chose to honour both of these Jewish 
thinkers with doctorates and it was thus on stage, in Chicago, that they met … and from 
all accounts neither was too impressed.
While they were not impressed with each other, I have been profoundly impressed by 
both their lives and writings. It is for this reason that I chose to engage them in an 
intellectual dialogue. Given their shared personal, philosophical, and historical back-
grounds, one would have thought that a close analysis of the resonances in their 
respective projects had already been undertaken. To add to this dialogue between Arendt 
and Levinas, I have also decided to question the predominant reading of Arendt as both a 
Greek and unethical thinker. In addition, again in relation to Jewish thought, I thought it 
important to challenge the predominant mode of reading Levinas’ so-called confessional 
writings and his so-called philosophical writings separately. Aware of the difficulty of 
engaging Jewish thought in philosophical terms, and more specifically political terms, I 
hope to have shown that such an approach to Levinas is a fruitful one. 
Yet, and let me be clear, my goal in this dialogue is not reconcile or compare their 
thought; this would be both an impossible and uninteresting endeavour. Rather, my goal 
is to explore the possibility of an approach to the political that is rooted in intersubjecti-
vity and by this means to create a space for an ethics to arise from within the polis. For 
this I rely on the innovative and intriguing notions of the political, ethics and inter-
subjectivity put forward by Arendt, Levinas and the Judaic respectively. 
By defining the political in Arendtian terms, I begin with a space of inter-action defined 
by plurality. Yet, as Arendt’s notion of the political lacks a ‘methodical’ reflection on the 
‘principles’ of action, I turn to Levinas to shed some light on this lacuna by means of his 
ethics of alterity. To further develop this connection between alterity and plurality, I 
develop the notion of relationality, inspired by the Judaic, connecting it to a 
phenomenological notion of intersubjectivity. 
I take intersubjectivity to be a political principle rooted in hope and an appreciation for 
the enriching effects of alterity, of the stranger rather than the friend or neighbour. 
Intersubjectivity thus does not presuppose that one appreciates others because of their 
similarities to the self but that one comes to understand that difference and responsibility 
is elevating and humanising. Concretely what this entails is an understanding of the 
interconnectedness of every human being. Lastly, intersubjectivity is a means to remind 
us that even without roots one remains rooted in the world by being connected to others. 
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Anya Topolski | In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity | http://www.hannaharendt.net
My hypothesis is that because of the tendency to view the political in terms of 
singularity, a perspective greatly determined by the priority of ontology in Western 
thought, a reflection on what is in fact central to the political – the relations between 
people – has been overlooked. 
Methodologically, my thesis combines three approaches. 
First, in each part, I dedicate myself to a close textual readings of my three sources in 
order to put forward my interpretations of their thought and to bring to light what I take 
to be the import of their work for my project. 
Second, I argue for the need for a novel principle for the political – one that embraces 
plurality and alterity by means of intersubjectivity. Rather than take the route of a 
normative approach to the political, I have chosen to develop and deepen Arendt’s notion 
of the plurality of the political by means of Levinas’ ethics of alterity. While I by no means 
which to conflate ethics and politics, as the gap between them is fundamentally necessary, 
I do believe that both need to be challenged and a dialogue re-opened between these 
distinct realms. While there is clearly a danger, in contemporary liberalism, of treating 
politics as the means to apply to certain ethical principles, it is my claim that a greater 
danger for modern society, one exposed by totalitarianism, is of a complete divorce 
between the political and the people and that a political landscape devoid of all ethics can 
lead to both self and world alienation.
Thirdly, in the conclusion, I go beyond Arendt, Levinas and the Judaic taking what I see 
to be best from each in order to lay the post-foundational ‘foundation’ for my own project 
– a political ethics of intersubjectivity. 
Now, I’d like to explore each of these three parts more closely.
In part 1, I begin by presenting what I take to be central, and valuable, to Arendt’s 
conception of the political developed in response to her original analysis of totalitari-
anism. By deconstructing the Nazis’ ‘method’, Arendt identifies the horizontal and vertical 
aspects of the human realm that were systematically eliminated and highlights the 
importance of four distinct, yet intertwined, realms: the legal, political, ethical and 
personal. Her choice to focus on the political arises from the fact that it is the political 
realm that is, for her, the realm in which humanity can recover its inhumanity. For 
Arendt, the political is a horizontal space of intersubjective inter-action and is thus much 
more fragile than the legal, for example, which has a vertical dimension. 
I then focus on Arendt’s concept of action, in its relation to freedom and power, which I 
argue are the basis for her understanding of plurality, interpreted as the between which 
arises from agonistic dialogue. What I am most intrigued by in her interpretation of the 
political is this notion of intersubjectivity, as the basis for the creation of a shared reality, 
a creation that requires a plurality of distinct persons and perspectives. I then narrow my 
reading of Arendt to the relationship between the political and morality by focusing on 
her writings dealing with judgement and responsibility, both of which also arise from an 
intersubjective dialogue based on dissensus. Here I argue that dissensus –rooted in the 
alterity of the other, as opposed to consensus, must underline our understanding of the 
political. Specifically in the case of Arendt, conflict has the ability to disclose a shared 
world to those in dialogue yet I do not think this is a sufficient for a political realm 
characterised by uncertainty and ambiguity. 
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Anya Topolski | In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity | http://www.hannaharendt.net
Next, as part of the untold Arendtian story is of the importance of the Judaic in her 
thought. While she was certainly not a practicing Jew, her life and writings are dedicated 
to Jewish themes. In addition she worked for Jewish organisations for over 25 years. 
What I take to be a fundamental argument for exploring the Judaic in her thought is the 
importance of her call for Jews to recognise the importance of the public and political 
realm and, in addition, her appreciation for the need to be seen in this realm by those, like 
the Jews, who have historically been excluded and often persecuted.It is this fundamental 
connection between the experience of the Jewish people during the Shoah, which 
philosophical can be expressed by means of the Judaic, and the importance of the notion 
of humanity for the polis that I seek to bring out. 
I conclude part 1 by bringing to light the ethical cleft in Arendt’s thought and its 
potential dangers. Simply put, I use Levinas’ ethics as a means to critique Arendt. While I 
argue that ethics and the political must be respected as two distinct domains, each with 
their own ‘rules’, I do believe that it is important for a realm of praxis to embrace certain 
values regarding the interactions between individuals, power-relations and responsibility. 
It is in search of such praxis oriented principles that I turn to the thought of Emmanuel 
Levinas in part 2. It is also important here to make clear that for Levinas ethics is first and 
foremost horizontal, there is transcendence in the face-to-face relation. Ethics, as 
opposed to morality, is thus understood not as another competing conception of the Good 
but rather a means to discover the goodness that exists in humanity through our relations 
to the other, relations based, as Levinas argues, on responsibility. Although I respect 
Levinas’, and many of his readers, choice to maintain a distinction between his so-called 
philosophical writings and his so-called confessional writings, part of the novelty of my 
project is that I show how these enrich each other and ought not to be read separately 
even though this raises many problems, which my project cannot avoid, about the role of 
religion in the political and the role of the Judaic in philosophy. 
I first consider Levinas’ unique approach to ethics that embraces what Arendt sees as 
central to the political, its condition of plurality, a plurality based in alterity and its 
prioritization of the intersubjective relationship that is not defined by the same (that is 
consensus). What Levinas offers is a penetrating analysis of the intersubjective 
relationship, in ethical terms, which could possibly ‘ground’ Arendt’s political notion of 
plurality and enrich the ethical potential of the polis. Given the complexity of Levinas’ 
thought, I dedicate two chapters to a consideration of his critique of Heidegger, to his 
notion of ethics as first philosophy and the development of his ethics of alterity in relation 
to the notions of responsibility and justice. 
Having considered the ‘theoretical’ framework with which Levinas is working, I turn to 
his writings on the political focusing on his writings on Israel, human rights, and the 
state. One of the claims I put forward in this chapter is that Levinas’ notion of justice, 
inspired by his ethics, shares several critical Arendtian resonances. One noteworthy 
example is that of human rights. Both Arendt and Levinas recognise the importance of 
human rights but criticise their foundation in an abstract quality and both promote the 
importance of responsibility in dialogue with rights. Lastly, I challenge Levinas’ account 
of the politics which is too closely linked to his ethics. It thus fails to maintain a proper 
appreciation of the distinction between the sphere of the political and the ethical. In this 
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Anya Topolski | In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity | http://www.hannaharendt.net
sense, I now use Arendt to critique Levinas. I also address a rather difficult question 
regarding the type of response that was needed to totalitarianism. While Levinas sees this 
as being ethical, in line with the Judaic, Arendt – a maverick in this manner – understood 
and argued for the need for the Jews to discover the public realm and to act in it. In other 
words, while his phenomenology of the face-to-face justifies the commandment thou shall 
not kill, in its ethical form it cannot appear in the political realm - the realm from which 
totalitarianism arose. By reducing the Shoah to its ethical failure, Levinas – along with 
many other Jews of his generation – fails to appreciate the importance of the polis for 
precisely for people such as the Jews who have throughout history been excluded from it. 
It is however worth noting that it is also because of this exclusion that the Judaic can 
confront the Western political tradition.
Part 3 is dedicated to the Judaic. In short, I define the Judaic by differentiating it from 
Judaism, the religion, and from being Jewish, as an ‘identity’. The Judaic is thus 
restricted to the ‘philosophical’ tradition within Judaism. I further limit my use of this 
term to the period of modernity when Jews were confronted, for the first time, with the 
meaning of the choice to believe in the ideals and principles of the Judaic. It is also 
because of my definition of the term Judaic that I differentiate the Judaic from either a 
Judeo-Christian approach or a Christian approach. While the former seeks to reconcile 
the differences between these philosophical and religious traditions, my emphasis is on 
those differences that may be fruitful for a dialogue with Western politics that has 
certainly had a closer association with Christianity than with Judaism. 
It is for this reason that in my final chapter, I follow a different approach by exploring 
four elements central to the Judaic that I argue are of political importance for a political 
ethics of intersubjectivity. These are: hope, relationality, responsibility and education. A 
central aspect of this claim is on the level of a Judaic philosophical anthropology which is 
grounded in hope and a notion of transcendence that is horizontal rather than vertical. 
With hope, rather than fear which I suggest has been a dominant voice in the political 
since Hobbes and certainly in the aftermath of totalitarianism, I argue that it is possible to 
conceive of the political as a space for creation and interaction rather than security and 
protection. It is my claim that the other, while a stranger, need not be interpreted asa 
threat to the self. In brief, I suggest that hope, may be an appropriate principle with which 
to inspire the political. Secondly, I develop the importance of relationality, which has ties 
to the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, as the ‘foundation’ for the political rather than 
singularity. Thirdly, I consider the importance of prioritising a discourse of responsibility, 
in addition to that of rights, if either are to have any real political import. Lastly, I develop 
the central role education has played in creating a virtual Jewish public space.
In the conclusion, I return to consider what can be learned from an intersubjective 
approach to political ethics. While this does not, to be sure, amount to a comprehensive or 
normative political doctrine, I hope that it offers a contribution to the political in the form 
of a distinctive mode or orientation with regard to both thought and action, a contribution 
that can: 1) create a critical distance from which to consider the political, 2) challenge the 
assumption that our understanding of the political must arise from either the individual, 
the citizen, or the group, and 3) point towards a new perspective on the political in light of 
an intersubjective understanding of the human condition with regard to our responsibility 
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Anya Topolski | In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity | http://www.hannaharendt.net
for others and the shared world. Each of these parts is necessary to ‘found’ and 
‘substantiate’ my claim that the political needs to be rethought from the perspective of 
intersubjectivity, an intersubjectivity that is an ethical principle appropriate to the realm 
of the political.
Dr. Anna Topolski
Centre for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 
Parkstraat 45 # 3602, 4.273000 Leuven Tel: 32 (0)16 323262
E-mail: anya.topolski@hiw.kuleuven.be
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In Search of a Political Ethics of Intersubjectivity: Between Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas and the Judaic

Formosa, Paul

Ausgabe 1, Band 4 – Mai 2008 
Bethania Assy, Hannah Arendt – An Ethics of Personal 
Responsibility, (Hannah Arendt Studien Bd. 3), Peter 
Lang, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 199, 2008. With a 
preface by Agnes Heller.
The central thesis of Bethania Assy’s recent book is that we can derive an “ethics of 
responsibility” from the work of Hannah Arendt, (p. 160) and by focusing on 
responsibility we can resolve the many inner tensions, such as that between spectator and 
actor, which pervade Arendt’s work. Assy’s threefold ethics of responsibility is comprised 
of a responsibility toward ourselves to choose who we display to others through consistent 
action, a responsibility to judge for ourselves and develop representative opinions 
through engagement with others, and a responsibility to care for the plurality of the 
fragile public space that constitutes our world. (p. 10) All three levels of responsibility are 
deeply interconnected, for we show who we are through acting and judging in concert 
with our peers, and through so doing we maintain and care for the public space that 
constitutes the world. In this sense we can read Arendt’s claims that in liberal modernity 
genuinely public interests have been overwhelmed by private and social concerns, and 
that the loneliness of the jobholder, perpetually labouring, working and consuming, has 
become the dominant mode of being, as claims about our individual and collective lack of 
responsibility. The point of rights, for Arendt, is not so much to protect a sphere of private 
interest from interference by others, as it is to guarantee the space from which we can 
freely interact with our peers. Such interaction is the very thing that makes life 
meaningful, and allows us to be reconciled to a world in which great moral disasters, such 
as the Holocaust, can and do occur.
Assy is thus right to contend that responsibility is the central focus of Arendt’s ethical 
and political thinking. But we may well ask whether Arendt’s understanding of 
responsibility, as Assy interprets it, is itself ethically and politically responsible. This 
question involves answering whether the often noted inner tensions in Arendt’s work 
between the actor and the spectator, the withdrawn life of the mind and the involved life 
of the citizen, care of the self and care of the world, and so on, can be satisfactorily 
resolved. Assy admirably attempts such reconciliation. On her reading of Arendt, 
appearance, consistency, the compatibility of truth and doxa (a Socratic doctrine rejected 
by Plato), otherness and plurality operate at both the level of the mind and the level of the 
citizen. As Assy clearly illustrates, the same categories - publicity, consistency, plurality, 
responsibility, judgment - that are operative in accoutring for the life of the mind are also 
operative in the political realm. (pp. 159-60) Morality and politics are both part of the 
realm of appearance and opinion, and are not a matter of rational cognition or the 
unknown intentions of an ‘inner’ or noumenal self. Heroic figures, like Achilles, and 
master storytellers, like Homer, are not the only actors and spectators, although they have 
a unique role as the creators of cultural objects that preserve exemplarity. Through 
ordinary interactions with our peers we too can reveal who we are, even if such everyday 
actions rarely take on the veneer of exemplarity, to be remembered and used as guides for 
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future judging that the heroic likes of Achilles, as immortalised by Homer, attain. (pp. 
148-50) Similarly, though few of us attain the poetic heights of a Homer, we can also 
reveal who we are through acting as judges and spectators of the lives of ourselves and 
our peers, through deliberating with others about the sort of world we wish to live in. (p. 
149) 
Thinking clears the way for judging, judging can lead to willing, and willing can lead to 
action in the world. It is thus through being both actors and spectators in the world that 
we not only reveal who we are to others, but also constitute our own inner identity. 
Indeed we have a responsibility to do just this. Mind and world, spectator and actor, are 
ontologically interdependent and cohere at a deeper level of unity. As such, the Kantian 
dualisms in Arendt’s thought are, if we follow Assy’s reading, reconciled in a Hegelian 
sense through the intermediary of responsibility. Assy expresses this point by claiming 
that “we are of the world not merely in it”, (p. 2) or in more phenomenological terms, 
“being and appearing coincide” (2). To see a dualistic gulf between the life of the mind 
and the life of the citizen in Arendt’s work is to fail to appreciate the extent to which 
Arendt undermines that very distinction.
But this reconciliation is not without its fissures, as illustrated by the figure of Socrates. 
We get two images of Socrates in Arendt’s work, the anti-political Socrates of conscience 
who cares for the self above the world and is thereby led to inaction, and the engaged 
Socrates who neatly reconciles the political and the philosophical and is at home in both 
realms, but neither exclusively. (p. 124) We can call the first Socrates the exemplar of 
thinking and the advocate of an “ethics of impotence”, (p. 70) and the second Socrates the 
exemplar of judgment and the advocate of an ethical politics of action based on judgment 
formed through public deliberation. While Assy claims that Arendt “shifts toward” the 
latter model, (p. 124) she also notes that in what Arendt calls ‘crises’, ‘times of emer-
gences’, or (following Jaspers) ‘border situations’, we are supposedly to abandon the latter 
model and adopt the former. That is, Arendt’s “ethics of emergencies” is to revert to an 
ethics of impotence, (p. 61) by caring for the self above the world. In such times we are to 
become pure spectators who ‘act’ only by not acting at all. Assy seems to accept this 
Arendtian position which, however, undermines the generality of her responsibility 
message. A better move would have been to deploy her account of responsibility against 
Arendt, by arguing that especially in such times we must reveal who we are through 
acting, as best we can, with like-minded peers to prevent further atrocities. Sometimes, 
surely, it would be irresponsible to merely abstain from action, especially during 
emergencies. Indeed, we might say, Assy’s threefold ethics of responsibility should 
demand nothing less. 
However, there is one particular tension that Assy arguably fails to do sufficient justice. 
That is the tension between the Arendt, in her more Kantian mode, who puts in place the 
architecture for developing a constructivist account of universal judgment validity, and 
the Arendt, in her more existentialist mode, who thinks that not only can no general 
norms be rationally justified but that all such norms are positively harmful in that they 
tend to become mere customs and habits. (p. 2) While Assy admits the “deliberative 
emphasis” in Arendt’s account of judgment, she goes out of her way, on numerous 
occasions throughout her book, to differentiate this from a “rational faculty leading to 
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agreement”. (pp. 101, 136)  As such, Assy resolves the tension in Arendt’s account of 
judgment only by, arguably, overplaying the existentialist and underplaying the Kantian 
tendencies in Arendt’s work. Whether this is what Arendt would have done in her 
unwritten book on judging, or whether she would have explicitly maintained the tension, 
or moved closer to Kant, we cannot know. Which solution we think she ought to have 
adopted will clearly depend on whether or not we think that we can have, in one coherent 
account, space for universal moral norms, the importance of public interaction and 
judging, the avoidance of norms becoming mere habits and customs, and the recognition 
of the ontological status of plurality and difference as constitutive of the public realm. 
Assy’s Arendt thinks that universal moral norms are incompatible with the full 
recognition of plurality and difference, and this pushes Arendt in the direction of the likes 
of Derrida. Alternatively, something more like Seyla Benhabib’s Arendt (see p. 100) 
thinks that we can combine a respect for difference and an understanding of plurality 
with intersubjectively valid norms, and this pushes Arendt in the direction of the likes of 
neo-Kantians such as the later Rawls and Habermas. Our assessment of Assy’s book will 
thus depend on which trajectory we see Arendt’s account of judging taking. If we hold the 
latter trajectory has the answers, then the type of responsibility advocated by Assy’s 
Arendt will seem rather irresponsible in that it fails to recognise and ground the validity 
of universal moral and political norms of justice that alone can protect plurality from 
political interference. If we think the former trajectory has the answers, then the type of 
responsibility advocated by Assy’s Arendt will seem the only one that is sufficiently 
responsive to the condition of plurality that constitutes the public realm. 
We can illustrate this point as follows. For Assy the fundamental Arendtian moral and 
political question is: who do we want to share the world with? (p. 2) We must keep 
ourselves company and, as the world itself is intersubjectively constructed, the company 
we keep makes the world we live in. But, for Assy’s Arendt, there are no rationally 
justifiable standards by which we are to make the decision about the company we want to 
keep. To the person who is happy to have a murderer for company, or is happy to reveal 
themselves to be a Bluebeard or a Hitler, or if these are usual cases, an Eichmann, there is 
nothing much we can say except that you are not the sort of company we choose to keep. 
Of course, they are equally justified in responding in kind. Without intersubjectively valid 
standards to appeal to we are left in an agonistic dead end, neither side having any further 
argumentative leg to stand on. This is decisionism, for at the deepest level the basis of our 
moral and political values is the decision, which cannot be rationally justified - although 
we can try to ‘woo’ and ‘persuade’ others of our view - about the sort of company we wish 
to keep.
However, Arendt has the conceptual architecture in place to deal with this disagree-
ment. We might argue that the company we choose to keep is based on representative 
opinions, judgments that take into account the views of all, and that these opinions are, 
on these grounds, intersubjectively valid. In contrast, the opinions of a Bluebeard or a 
Hitler are not representative and therefore not intersubjectively valid. But this move 
pushes Arendt in a direction that she wished to avoid, by focusing not so much on the 
responsibility of revealing a unique who but rather on the responsibility of abiding, first 
and foremost, by intersubjectively valid norms of interaction. Of course we can make 
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room for both views – universally valid norms of right and the freedom to express who 
one is, in terms of one’s conception of the good, within the limitations of right. But then 
we get a liberal Arendt who ends up far closer to Rawls and Habermas than Assy, and 
many other Arendt scholars, would want. 
Assy’s book is a solid piece of Arendt scholarship that usefully draws upon both 
Arendt’s published work and the rich archives of her unpublished materials, as well as 
engaging with the relevant secondary literature. Assy focuses mainly on the material 
Arendt wrote in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, after her coverage of the Eichmann trial, 
which for Assy marks the beginning of Arendt’s attempts to think positively about 
morality - a problematic view given that Eichmann is a figure that steps straight out of 
1958’s The Human Condition. Assy’s use of the concept of responsibility to tie together 
disparate parts of Arendt’s work and resolve tensions is productive, even if, as I have 
suggested, it is not completely successful. At times the book, especially in the earlier 
chapters, covers material that will already be familiar to Arendt scholars. However, the 
book, especially in the latter chapters, makes more than enough interesting and original 
points in its attempt to unify Arendt’s work to warrant attention by Arendt scholars, as 
well as providing a detailed introduction for those new to Arendt’s work. More 
importantly, Assy’s book illustrates the continuing importance of Arendt’s work for 
thinking deeply about the very nature of the moral and the political. No doubt, there 
remains more thinking to do on these matters and Assy’s book helpfully raises many of 
these important issues.
Paul Formosa, The University of Queensland, Australia
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