Men in Dark Times (Paperback)

by Hannah Arendt (Author) "THE distinction conferred by a free city, and a prize that bears the name of Lessing, are a great honor..." (more)
Key Phrases: earthly absolute, ego nucleus, little hunchback, Rosa Luxemburg, First World War, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Essays on Karl Jaspers, Rosa Luxemburg, Pope John XXIII, Isak Dinesen, Bertolt Brecht, Randall Jarrell, and others whose lives and work illuminated the early part of the century. Index.

About the Author
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) taught political science and philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, Brooklyn College, and the University of Chicago. She also wrote political studies "Origins of Totalitarianism" 1951, "The Human Condition" 1958, "Eichmann in Jerusalem" 1963

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (March 25, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156588900
• ISBN-13: 978-0156588904
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #335,064 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hannah Arendt's Political Biographies, April 3, 2000

By A Customer

Men in Dark Times is a collection of biographical essays Arendt wrote over a period of 15 years (1955-1968), all of which were published elsewhere, and collected here under this title. She has choosen to collct her portraits of cultural and political figures who worked and were caught up in world affairs in the first half of the twentieth-century, figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Jaspers, Isak Dinesen, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht. The oppening essay, "On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing," focuses on the thought of the eighteenth-century German philosopher, and she uses his thoughts on friendship, on the political and civic aspects of friendship, the ways in which philosophical and political works are formed through civic friendship, to tie all of the personae discussed in the book together. She sees them all as struggling to produce in an era racked by political upheavel. As always, she writes with a highly astute critical eye and a sharp tongue. It is one of her more polemical works, and is sure to make one re-evaulate how we look not only at the lives and works of those she tells us about, but also about ourselves.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual portaits that augment human dignity , October 18, 2004

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

These portraits of Karl Jaspers, Waldemar Gurian, Randall Jarrell, Walter Benjamin,Isak Dinesen,Bertolhdt Brecht, Pope John XXIII are remarkable for their human insight, their narrative power and their philosophical understanding. Arendt makes of each portrait a life- story, often a most moving story, and a presentation and critical assessment of the figure 's life- work. In some cases she had a central part in introducing to an English reading audience seminal figures ( Walter Benjamin and Hermann Broch are the outstanding examples) who were far less well known , than they would come to be. She chooses figures whose power of creation is great and unique, and she assesses them in terms of her own set of categories and understandings. One outstanding instance is her evaulation it is really a laudatio a work of praise for the great Pope John XXIII .She speaks of his remarkable simplicity, humanity and courage. His simple great faith "Every day is a good day to be born, and every day is a good day to die"
Some of the portraits are of personal acquaintances and friends. And one feels that in writing about them she is somehow doing for them what she in her " The Human Condition" spoke about as the role of the poet the immortalization of the hero and their deeds. She has a wonderful eye, and her description for instance of the awkwardness with material things of Waldemar Gurian catches the essence of the person in a striking way.
All in all the portraits of Men in Dark Times shed light on the human character and soul, and are a testimony not only to the greatness of the subjects but to the greatness of the writer herself.