Hannah Arendt And The Old "New Science"

Hannah Arendt's political writings are frequently analyzed through the lenses of her German-Jewish identity or her tutelage under existenz philosophers like Martin Heidegger or Karl Jaspers. This approach has been useful in understanding much of what Arendt was trying to off er in her writings, but it also restricts our understanding of Arendt in very signifi cant ways. Too much focus on Arendt's direct infl uences (teachers, identity, place in history) has created an environment where academic work on Arendt has tried to dig into every possible historical clue it can to "come to terms" with her thought, in the same way that Victor Farias' book on Heidegger forced many to have to "come to terms" with Arendt's famous professor. This scholarly fascination is transposed in Richard Wolin's Heidegger's Children.