Suchergebnisse

Upon publication of her 'field manual', "The Origins of Totalitarianism", in 1951, Hannah Arendt immediately gained recognition as a major political analyst. Over the next twenty-five years, she wrote ten more books and developed a set of ideas that profoundly influenced the way America and Europe addressed the central questions and dilemmas of World War II. In this concise book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl introduces her mentor's work to twenty-first century readers. Arendt's ideas, as much today as in her own lifetime, illuminate those issues that perplex us such as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and 'radical evil'. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who was Arendt's doctoral student in the early 1970s and who wrote the definitive biography of her mentor in 1982, now revisits Arendt's major works and seminal ideas. Young-Bruehl considers what Arendt's analysis of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union can teach us about our own times, and how her revolutionary understanding of political action is connected to forgiveness and making promises for the future. The author also discusses "The Life of the Mind", Arendt's unfinished meditation on how to think about thinking. Placed in the context of today's political landscape, Arendt's ideas take on a new immediacy and importance. They require our attention, Young-Bruehl shows, and continue to bring fresh truths to light

Upon publication of her 'field manual', "The Origins of Totalitarianism", in 1951, Hannah Arendt immediately gained recognition as a major political analyst. Over the next twenty-five years, she wrote ten more books and developed a set of ideas that profoundly influenced the way America and Europe addressed the central questions and dilemmas of World War II. In this concise book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl introduces her mentor's work to twenty-first century readers. Arendt's ideas, as much today as in her own lifetime, illuminate those issues that perplex us such as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and 'radical evil'. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who was Arendt's doctoral student in the early 1970s and who wrote the definitive biography of her mentor in 1982, now revisits Arendt's major works and seminal ideas. Young-Bruehl considers what Arendt's analysis of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union can teach us about our own times, and how her revolutionary understanding of political action is connected to forgiveness and making promises for the future. The author also discusses "The Life of the Mind", Arendt's unfinished meditation on how to think about thinking. Placed in the context of today's political landscape, Arendt's ideas take on a new immediacy and importance. They require our attention, Young-Bruehl shows, and continue to bring fresh truths to light

"This biography of one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century is here reissued in a trade paperback edition for a new generation of readers. In a new Preface the author offers an account of writings by and about Arendt that have appeared since the book's 1982 publication, providing a reassessment of her subject's life and achievement."--Jacket

Social scientific efforts to combat prejudice since the 1950s are reviewed, tracing different stages in the major strategies, which were primarily focused on the definition process -- whereby some groups were defined as "different" -- rather than battling prejudice, per se. Criticisms of science & its "essentialism" followed, leading to reevaluations of scientific categories such as "race" & "gender." With the deconstruction of the idea of the "melting pot" came a shift in emphasis to tolerance-promoting diversity counseling & the rise of a new "politics of identity" among minority groups. The place of homosexuality among other types of prejudice is considered, adopting the view that prejudices operate like psychological defense mechanisms, but are enacted in the social realm. The function of homophobia for different character types is explored from a psychoanalytic perspective, & combining these insights with lessons learned from the history of battles against other types of prejudice is argued to be the best way of addressing it in contemporary society. The development of the Gay Liberation movement & its battles against "scientific" claims & definitions of homosexuality as a disease, which eventually resulted in it being "depathologized" by the American Psychiatric Assoc, are recounted. K. Hyatt Stewart