On the Eeriness of the World. Thinking with Hannah Arendt

In his portrait in the history of ideas based on her most important works, Matthias Bormuth brings us closer to Hannah Arendt's thinking as reflected in our present day. He offers a reading guide and, at the same time, a guide to thinking for ourselves. In doing so, he follows the traces of Arendt's life, from her beginnings in German existential philosophy to the political upheaval of 1933, her Zionist activism in exile in Paris, and her confrontation with anti-Semitism through her alter ego Rahel Varnhagen, right up to her time in New York. From 1941 onwards, she launched her social philosophy as a public intellectual, which has shaped international debate since The Origins of Totalitarianism, and as a critical journalist, she sparked a worldwide controversy about thoughtless action and social responsibility with Eichmann in Jerusalem. Her passionate reflections create a “signature of plurality” that begins in the individual and unfolds further in dialogue with others.

Moved by the uncanniness of the world, Hannah Arendt seeks to understand its totalitarian and technological temptations. She thus encounters her time with a philosophy of freedom that is more relevant than ever, even fifty years after her death. Matthias Bormuth shows, based on her works, that Hannah Arendt is the Socratic thinker of modernity: only those who can be themselves are also capable of encountering the world.