After 1989, Hannah Arendt experienced a spectacular renaissance as an expert on the theories of totalitarian power. Since then, her work has been reread from many different angles and studied closely from a contemporary point of view. Up until now however, the role of art and literature in the work and thoughts of Hannah Arendt has been largely neglected.
Since her early work on Rahel Varnhagen and the Jewish Salons in Berlin, Hannah Arendt often focused on individual authors such as Rilke, Kafka, Brecht, Benjamin, Lessing, Heine, Stefan Zweig and Hermann Broch. Works by Dostojewski and Melville, Kipling, Proust and Conrad or Homer play a central role in her theoretical writings. As well as the authors mentioned above, this volume is dedicated to the fine arts and Arendt`s influence on contemporary artists, aesthetic views and importance of the power of the imagination in politics. It also includes some of Arendt`s as yet unpublished notes on »Exercises in the Power of the Imagination«.
With contributions by: Antonia Grunenberg, Sebastian Hefti, Marie Luise Knott, Jerome Kohn, Ursula Ludz, Ingborg Nordmann, Grit Straßenberger, Annette Vowinckel, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Thomas Wild.
