• DOI:10.1177/002200949803300401
• Corpus ID: 154222580

The Arendt Cult: Hannah Arendt as Political Commentator

@article{Laqueur1998TheAC,
  title={The Arendt Cult: Hannah Arendt as Political Commentator},
  author={Walter Z. Laqueur},
  journal={Journal of Contemporary History},
  year={1998},
  volume={33},
  pages={483 - 496}
}

• W. Laqueur
• Published 1 October 1998
• Philosophy
• Journal of Contemporary History

Hannah Arendt (1906-75) was a woman of many parts. She was philosopher, historian, sociologist and also journalist; she wrote poetry but also on technology; she had an interest in theology but also reviewed Kafka, Benjamin and Brecht. The following reflections do not refer to her life's work but merely one, albeit central, aspect that of a political analyst and commentator. No twentieth-century philosopher and political thinker has at the present time as wide an echo. The Library of Congress Catalogue lists more than 50 books written about her, including those comparing her with fellow thinkers such as Margaret Duras, Camus, J. Habermas, Leo Strauss and others. There are books on topics such as 'Hannah Arendt and the Philosophy of Natality' and 'Hannah Arendt, Hegel and Marx'. Altavista, the Internet engine, registers 3156 hits concerning Hannah Arendt, another search engine only 2965; the number of articles about her in scholarly journals is probably in excess of 1000. Dr Caroline Kealey has written a basic paper on Hannah Arendt in Cyberspace, dealing with topics such as the Arendtian model of the Net. On another Internet site we find 'Hannah in 3 D'; the German railway runs an Intercity Express Hannah Arendt from Karlsruhe to Hannover and back, the German postal services have a Hannah Arendt stamp (DM 1.70) and there are Hannah Arendt streets, for instance, in Marburg, even though'the connection between her and that city was tenuous she studied there for less than a year. There are Hannah Arendt Vereine and the University of Bremen bestows an annual Hannah Arendt award. Not to be outdone, neighbouring Hamburg has another Hannah Arendt prize for DM 300.000, one of the highest in Europe; the Leo Baeck award, in comparison, is for a mere DM 25.000, but then it is donated by the Jewish communities, in contrast to the Hamburg award. There is another Arendt institute in Saxony. In the Great Synagogue in Essen there is a semi-permanent exhibition devoted to Hannah Arendt. All of which tends to show that Hannah Arendt has been more successful than any other German philosopher, living or dead. There is, to the best of my knowledge, no Max Weber Express on the German railways nor is one of the Lufthansa airplanes named after Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or Hegel. (There are many Kantstrassen, however.) On the Internet there are various Arendt lists, including an elaborate Japanese one by Mr Nakayama. Those who write in report that they have 'passionate' feelings about Hannah Arendt and that reading her works has