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  • Hannah Arendt—Leidenschaften, Menschen und Bücher
  • Chris Long (bio)
Barbara Hahn, Hannah Arendt—Leidenschaften, Menschen und Bücher Berlin: Berlin, 2005. 143 pages.

Hannah Arendt—Leidenschaften, Menschen und Bücher consists of a series of six meditative essays on various points of convergence in the life and works of one of the mid-twentieth century's most influential political theorists. At a scant 143 pages, including endnotes and bibliography, it is a short book, and its simultaneously analytical and speculative content derives primarily from the author's intense engagement with Arendt's Denktagebuch, which was first published in a two-volume edition in 2002. "Nun erst wird deutlich, wie eng verknüpft das Netz aus Publikationen, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen ist, das Hannah Arendt hinterließ" (9), writes Barbara Hahn on the first page of her first chapter. Rather than developing into a more or less routine intellectual [End Page 674] biography, however, Hahn's "'unexpected encounters'" (124) with Arendt's texts—both what she wrote and what she read—produce a deceptively loose association of close readings.

Such apparent fragmentation is not without purpose, for in asserting Arendt's continued relevance, Hahn sets herself and her readers the profoundly difficult task of reading this renowned author entirely anew "und damit zu überlegen, wo kleine Schritte aus den von ihr hinterlassenen Konjunktiven in den Indikativ möglich sind" (20). Written "im Modus des Wanderns und Anhaltens" (10), Hahn's essays eschew a strictly linear progression in order to seek footholds for possible steps from the hypothetical to the actual in certain recurring personal, intellectual, and textual relations that inform Arendt's work. Nevertheless, as the collection proceeds, there is at least a provisional shift in emphasis from books to people to passions in Hannah Arendt's life.

The first two essays, "Wie kann jemand zum Denker werden" and "Das mörderische Alphabet," explore in form as well as content Arendt's engagement with a cyclicality that undermines absolute beginnings. For instance, although the phrase "'Wie kann jemand zum Denker werden'" is formatted as the title of the first essay, it also continues without grammatical interruption into the initial paragraph with "'wenn er nicht mindestens den dritten Theil jeden Tages ohne Leidenschaften, Menschen und Bücher verbringt?'" (9). The words "Leidenschaften, Menschen und Bücher," in turn, recall the second part of the book's title, and with this confluence of texts, Hahn offers a brief example lesson in the ambivalences of revolution (as both change and repetition) with which Arendt grappled. She is not, however, quoting here from Arendt's work on revolution, but from Friedrich Nietzsche's Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, which belongs to "ein[em] unwahrscheinlich[en] Chor von Texten, den Hannah Arendt arrangiert, um von Hinterlassenschaften zu sprechen" (11). This chorus also includes the Hebrew Bible and the works of Bertolt Brecht, and it is exactly the philosophical tension in this "improbable" combination that makes it so useful for Arendt. While the dual creation stories of the former illustrate the dependence of any "first" on a "second" for its status as a beginning, Brecht's Der Neinsager adds a cautionary note: "'Wer a sagt, der muß nicht b sagen. Er kann auch erkennen, daß a falsch war . . .'" (28). From her Denktagebuch to The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt finds models for resisting the relentless logic of ABC, "das mörderische Alphabet," in texts that interrupt, contradict, and repeat themselves.

The next two essays, "Die Titel der Dinge sind das fürchterlichste" and "Ein Kuss auf der Brücke," underscore the importance of certain personal relationships for Arendt and her work. As a political theorist, Arendt considered human plurality the essential realm of political science, but her more extreme position—"Mensch—in diese Kategorie ist Pluralität eingeschrieben" (23)—is tested here on its author. Hahn notes that in Arendt's Denktagebuch, there are three types of human relations and that these correspond to philosophy, the erotic, and politics (78). The erotic, which subsumes both love and friendship, [End Page 675] serves as a tenuous bridge between the individuality of philosophy and the general community of politics. It is thus significant that "Ein Kuss auf der Brücke" begins with...

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