ABSTRACT
The publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951 established Hannah Arendt as a major figure in post-war political theory. The Life of the Mind represents a culminating philosophic effort to understand the role of contemplation in the affairs of human society. Arendt reveals little knowledge of modern warfare, that is, little about the ambiguities of modern conflict–counter-insurgency, paramilitary struggle, police action, guerrilla action–that would show that war is becoming obsolete. The Arendt volume shares the position of the Israeli judicial system: Eichmann was guilty of heinous war crimes, and Israel, as the representative of the Jewish state and its people, had every right to execute the culprit. Arendt still leaves us with a problem: the contradiction between the idea of progress as the law of the human species and the idea of human dignity as an inalienable aspect of individual human beings.
