Wahrheit gibt es nur zu zweien: Briefe an die Freunde

by Hannah Arendt

Selten hat sich ein Mensch solch ein ­Universum der Freundschaft erschlossen wie Hannah Arendt. Darin findet die ins Exil Geflohene Halt, davon erzählen ihre Briefe: Bot­schaften der Liebe an ihren Mann Heinrich ­Blücher, philo­sophische und politische Gespräche mit ihrem Lehrer Karl Jaspers, Bekenntnisse zur Dichtung an den jungen Schriftsteller Uwe Johnson. »Wahrheit«, schreibt Arendt, »gibt es nur zu zweien«. Wie viele Facetten das ­Gespräch unter vier Augen für sie hat, zeigt diese Auswahl ihrer schönsten Briefe.

464 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2013

About the author

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).

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