Abstract
Hannah Arendt is known for her celebration and critical examination of modern revolutions. However, the relative absence of the German Revolution from Arendt’s writings has received little attention in scholarship, despite the major role it played in the development of her political thought. This chapter examines the distinctive influence the German Revolution had on Arendt through various personal and intellectual ties. It suggests that despite the little discussion Arendt devoted to it, it constituted an important part of a broader “silent dialogue” Arendt had with the European socialist left, in which she implicitly incorporated various lines of thought into her reflections on modern revolutions while reframing them along the lines of her own political theory.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution. The Journal of Politics 20 (1): 5–43.
Arendt, Hannah. 1968. Rosa Luxemburg, 1871–1919. In Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism, 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Arendt, Hannah. 1992. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited with an interpretative essay by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1994a. Approaches to the ‘German Problem’. In Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 1994b. The Aftermath of Nazi Rule. In Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 2003. Some Questions of Moral Philosophy. In Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2006a. The Crisis in Culture. In Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. New York: Penguin Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2006b. On Revolution. New York: Penguin Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2007a. To Save the Jewish Homeland: There Is Still Time. In The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2007b. A Letter to Gershom Scholem. In The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2018a. Totalitarianism. In Thinking Without a Banister, ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 2018b. Postscript to the Hungarian Revolution and Totalitarian Imperialism. In Thinking Without a Banister, ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books.
Bazelow, Alexander R. 2005. How and Why Do We Study Philosophy: The Legacy of Heinrich Blücher. www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/download/82/129.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1996. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. London and New Delhi: Sage.
Bernstein, Richard J. 1996. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Blücher, Heinrich. 1954. Socrates. Blücher Archive Lecture Transcripts. Bard College. http://www.bard.edu/library/archive/bluecher/lectures/socrates/socrates_pf.htm.
Blücher, Heinrich. 1967. Politics, Man, and Freedom. Final Lecture at Bard College. Blücher Archive Lecture Transcripts. http://www.bard.edu/library/archive/bluecher/lectures/pol_man_free/politics_pf.htm.
Canovan, Margaret. 1992. Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, Sheila. 2011. The Red Mole: Workers’ Councils as a Means of Revolutionary Transformation. In Ours to Master and to Own: Workers’ Councils from the Commune to the Present, ed. Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini, 48–65. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Gaffney, Jennifer. 2018. Memories of Exclusion: Hannah Arendt and the Haitian Revolution. Philosophy and Social Criticism 44 (6): 701–721.
Gines, Kathryn T. 2014. Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Heuer, Wolfgang. 2004. Hannah Arendt and Her Socrates: Heinrich Bluecher. http://www.bard.edu/bluecher/rel_misc/heuer.
Isaac, Jeffery C. 1994. Oases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics. American Political Science Review 88 (1): 156–168.
Kalyvas, Andreas. 2008. Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kohler, Lotte (ed.). 2000a. Introduction. In Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blucher, 1936–1968, trans. Peter Constantine. New York: Harcourt.
Kohler, Lotte. 2000b. Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blucher, 1936–1968, trans. Peter Constantine. New York: Harcourt.
Kohler, Lotte, and Hans Saner (eds.). 1992. Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers: Correspondence, 1926–1969, trans. Robert Kimber and Rita Kimber. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Kohn, Jerome, and Ron H. Feldman. 2007. Preface: A Jewish Life: 1906–1975. In Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books.
Lederman, Shmuel. 2017. Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher: Reflections on Philosophy, Politics and Democracy. Arendt Studies 1: 87–100.
Lederman, Shmuel. 2018. Hannah Arendt, the Council Tradition and Contemporary Political Theory. In Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics, ed. James Muldoon, 150–167. New York and London: Routledge.
Lederman, Shmuel. 2019. The Centrality of the Councils in Arendt’s Political Thought. In Arendt on Freedom, Liberation and Revolution, ed. Kei Hiruta. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Medearis, John. 2004. Lost or Obscured? How V. I. Lenin, Joseph Schumpeter and Hannah Arendt Misunderstood the Council Movement. Polity 36 (3): 447–476.
Muldoon, James. 2011. The Lost Treasure of Arendt’s Council System. Critical Horizons 12 (3): 396–417.
Muldoon, James. 2016. The Origins of Hannah Arendt’s Council System. History of Political Thought 37 (4): 761–789.
Neumann, Bernd. 1998. Hannah Arendt und Heinrich Blücher: Ein Deutsch-Jüdisches Gespräch. Berlin: Rowohlt.
Nixon, Jon. 2015. Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Friendship. London: Bloomsbury.
Reinhardt, Mark. 1997. The Art of Being Free: Taking Liberties with Tocqueville, Marx, and Arendt. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Rubin, Gil. 2015. From Federalism to Binationalism: Hannah Arendt’s Shifting Zionism. Contemporary European History 24 (3): 393–414.
Schell, Jonathan. 2006. Introduction: The Arendtian Revolutions. In Hannah Arendt, On Revolution. New York: Penguin Books.
Selinger, William. 2016. The Politics of Arendtian Historiography: European Federation and The Origins of Totalitarianism. Modern Intellectual History 13 (2): 417–446.
Sitton, John F. 1994. Hannah Arendt’s Argument for Council Democracy. In Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, ed. Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, 307–329. New York: State University of New York Press.
Totschnig, Wolfhart. 2014. Arendt’s Argument for the Council System: A Defense. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 1 (3): 266–282.
Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth. 2004. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lederman, S. (2019). Forgotten Uprisings and Silent Dialogues: Hannah Arendt and the German Revolution. In: Kets, G., Muldoon, J. (eds) The German Revolution and Political Theory. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13917-9_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13917-9_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13916-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13917-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)