Hannah Arendt: Thinking is Dangerous
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"For many years, I have met Germans who declare they are ashamed of being Germans. I have often felt tempted to answer that I am ashamed of being human, that all nations share the onus of evil committed by all others."
-Hannah Arendt
The backlash against Hannah Arendt’s writings on Eichmann in Jerusalem included speculations that Arendt was a Nazi sympathizer. For instance, her early relationship with German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was himself a Nazi, is still scrutinized by critics today. But Arendt’s complexities as a philosopher – and as a person – cannot be summed up in a few tidy phrases or sentences. Vita Activa takes a look at archival materials and engages with experts to develop a multifaceted portrait of Arendt. From her time as a brilliant young scholar at the University of Marburg, to fleeing Germany across the Ore Mountains in 1933, to becoming a New Yorker and public intellectual, this documentary presents an empathetic glimpse into a fascinating life.
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The film will be introduced by Brooklyn-based Arendt scholar and author
Samantha Rose Hill, who is the moderator of podcast
Hannah Arendt: Between Worlds.
Between Worlds is a coproduction of the Goethe-Institut and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. The podcast is part of
Thinking is Dangerous, a project for thinking with Arendt about our world today.
Samantha Rose Hill is the author of
Hannah Arendt (Reaktion, 2021) and
Hannah Arendt’s Poems (Liveright, 2022). She is associate faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the University of the Underground. Her work has appeared in the
Los Angeles Review of Books,
Aeon,
LitHub,
OpenDemocracy,
Public Seminar,
Contemporary Political Theory, and
Theory and Event.
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