Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975

Collected from the period that includes Arendt's most popularly known work, Eichmann in Jerusalem, these essays, letters, and other short and complete pieces are cause to celebrate. Among topics addressed in insightful and plain-spoken discourse are how Marxism has been misunderstood; the importance of sound government to public life and public life to human potential; the divergence between the values of Christianity and those of democracy; and the applications of various ethical lenses, including totalitarianism, the 1960 presidential conventions, and imagination as theorized by Immanuel Kant. Reading some of these essays here and now, the shock of how well they relate to current U.S. political realities, may strike a chord with many academic readers but also engage informed general readers as well. Kohn's introduction allows the latter to gain an understanding of how Arendt developed and polished conceptual ideas from concrete experiences as well as philosophical traditions.