Hanna Arendt: For Love of the World

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Summary: a fascinating ,well written and judicious biography
Review: This book has become something of a classic. It unearths a mass of detail about Arendt's life - the pages on her upbringing and experiences before her flight from Europe are particularly memorable. However, the main focus is kept firmly on the way Arendt's thought developed during her life. The author [who knew Arendt in her later years] is well versed in philosophy and political thought and so her account becomes a useful companion to studies of Arendt's many contributions to modern thought: 'totalitarianism', 'the banality of evil', the loss of public space in the contemporary west and much more. This book is not the kind of simple minded attempt to reduce thought to biography that we see all too often. While it is no hagiography [Arendt comes in for some serious criticism on occasion], it ends with a sense of celebration for a life well lived, one of passionate thinking motivated by 'love of the world'

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Summary: A wonderful biography, with a flaw
Review: Young-Bruehl is a master biographer. Her principal subject is not so much Hannah Arendt, but Arendt's mind; to that subject, Young-Bruehl's account is faithful and without flaws. Hannah Arendt was by all accounts a singular philosopher. Her work spanned philosophical categories other philosophers, upon entering, become trapped inside: political theorist, phenomenologist, ancient philosopher, and theologian. Young-Bruehl deftly handles and communicates the originality of Arendt's intellectual bent, depth, and perspective. For the bulk of the biography, Young-Bruehl offers Arendt herself the same thoughtful treatment--empathetic, appreciative, but never adoring. It is only at the book's very end, on a single page, that Young-Bruehl indulges in moralizing: she chides "some Jews" for failing to appreciate that Arendt's unflinching insight, and not her indifference to her people, produced her callous, even cruel 'observation' that not all Jews who died in the Holocaust were saints ("Eichmann in Jerusalem.") Much like her subject did, Young-Bruehl thus fails adequately to appreciate that what was for Arendt an intellectual asset was also a personal failing; some 'truths' are better left unsaid. However, Young-Bruehl's treatment is otherwise so careful, thorough, and insightful, that even this flaw is as open to view as its subject.