Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series) Paperback – December 3, 2013

Item arrived in good condition.The book features 4 interviews with the political theorist cum philosopher Hannah Arendt: the now classic 1964 interview with the journalist Günther Gass, another interview in 1964 with the historian Joachim Fest, a 1970 interview and her last interview two years before her death. These 4 interviews demonstrate why the insights of Professor Arendt remain relevant even in the 21st century.

Not her best but interesting. She had an incisive and original mind and tried to explain and come to terms with the major problem of her era. The link between Fascism, antisemitism, economic depression, and unemployment is hopefully a bygone constellation of horrors but Primo Levi said, It happened and therefore it can happen again. So Hannah Arendt is worth paying attention to. Peter E. Schrag

This is a good interview. Do be aware that it is also in the Hannah Arendt Reader. So, no need to get both.

Good collection of interviews in the years after the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem. She comes across as reflective and cogent.

This is hardly a worth-while collection from the work of this brilliant thinker -- especially at the price. The book is 133 pages and of the 4 interviews, the first, from 1964, is important but can be found in "The Portable Hannah Arendt". The second, also from 1964, is a brief rehash of the Eichmann affair that falls far short of Arendt's responses included in the "Portable". The third, dated 1970, is a thoughtful review of the left-wing, especially American, political scene at the time, and its 36 pages provide the only reason for buying this book. The fourth, from 1973, is an embarrassment to the editors. It's a bizarrely truncated "reconstruction" of Arendt's responses to a television interview conducted in French, which, between the editing and original (translated) level of questioning, left Professor Arendt with little to say -- sadly discourteous for a last interview.

If you like Arendt you will really like the interview (though I come into this without knowing as much about her as a person) as it provides some insight into her.

This work in fact incorporates 4 different interviews with Arendt:1. October 1964 German television interview with Gûnter Gras on the themes of Arendt's earlier Life and what remains of Germany after the holocaust.2. An interview again by German television about Arednts book on Eichmann.3 An interview during the summer of 1970 on the themes of thought, politics and revolution, and finally4. The last interview for French television given in October 1973 on the themes of the heritage of the 20th century and the state of American Politics. Hannah Arendt was interned in a German camp and miraculously escaped, eventually to seek asylum in the United States. The issue of her Jewishness arises several times during these interviews. The most amusing and personally significant event recounted from her childhood was during her confirmation lessons when she opposed her teacher with the statement "I do not believe in God" and received the reply "And who asked you?" This story was told in response to a question as to the fate of the Jewish people at the hands of the process of secularization. Christianity is being secularized because it is only a creed or a faith. The Jewish religion runs deeper it is form of life, she argues.In a discussion relating to the relative merits of capitalism and socialism which she describes as twins wearing different hats she responds with an uncertain prediction that a kind of "council democracy" might solve the problem of the loss of faith in elected representatives who do not truly represent the wills of the voters. But as always she is humble in the face of the preponderance of a large number of operating variables, some operating in clear sight and others in more subterranean ways.In the interview related to Eichmann she admits to not anticipating the intensive negative reaction to her book and she describes the reaction as bureaucratic and as not understanding her intentions. Issue was taken over her secularization of the evil involved when she referred to the banality of the evil of Eichmann. Arendt had done her research thoroughly reading over 3000 sides of interview material with Eichmann. She recounts how she laughed out loud at Eichmann's concern over the fact that he had slapped a member of the Jewish Council in the face and motivates her act of laughter by an abstract account of tragedy and comedy. Eichmann quite simply would not have met the Aristotelian criterion of being able to qualify as a significant and serious enough character in the plot of the holocaust to qualify for the title as a "tragic actor". In her view he was a clown.The last interview occurred in the middle of the Watergate affair and her political analysis involved observing that we were seeing criminalityoccurring quite naturally in the political process. In her work on the Origins of totalitarianism she had observed how Hitler had inverted the values of both morality and the law without blinking an eye.It is such a pity that we do not have analysts of her quality to comment upon the signs of our times. Both her and Paul Riceour will be sorely missed in our 21st century.