Arendt

Villa's comprehensive account of Arendt's work stresses that although she wrote extensively about the rupture in the tradition of political philosophy that made it impossible to rely on the insights of the past alone, Arendt remained in continual conversation with Plato and Aristotle, Saint Augustine and Nietzsche, Machiavelli and Kant, Hegel and Marx. Central to this conversation is Arendt's critique of philosophy for being contemptuous of the frailty and unpredictability of public affairs that often frustrates political actors, who frequently discover the full meaning of their actions only in retrospect. Villa is particularly astute in analyzing the temptations this unpredictability gives rise to: some are led to treat political life as an artifact that could be constructed as an engineer designs a building or a sculptor builds a monument. - Seyla Benhabib, New York Review of Books No student of Arendt should be without this excellent book, which will doubtless become a classic in the field. It combines breadth and depth in discussion of Arendt's major works, and is written in beautifully clear prose. Detailed analysis is interwoven with sharp philosophical commentary, exemplifying Arendt's concern with 'worldliness' by connecting her thinking with recent political concerns. - Frisbee Sheffield, University of Cambridge, UK