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Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness
Two titans of twentieth-century thought: their lives, loves, ideas, and politics.
Shaking up the content and method by which generations of students had studied Western philosophy, Martin Heidegger sought to ennoble Man’s existence in relation to Death. Yet in a time of crisis, he sought personal advancement, becoming the most prominent German intellectual to join the Nazis.
Hannah Arendt, his brilliant, beautiful student and young lover, sought to enable a decent society of human beings in relation to one other. She was courageous in the time of crisis. Years later, she was even able to forgive Heidegger and to find in his behavior an insight into Nazism that would influence her reflections on “the banality of evil”—a concept that remains bitterly controversial and profoundly influential to this day.
Eloquent and moving, Stranger from Abroad dramatizes some of the greatest questions of the twentieth century—revealing bonds connecting the personal, philosophical, and political, highlighting the responsibility of intellectuals in dark times.
Shaking up the content and method by which generations of students had studied Western philosophy, Martin Heidegger sought to ennoble Man’s existence in relation to Death. Yet in a time of crisis, he sought personal advancement, becoming the most prominent German intellectual to join the Nazis.
Hannah Arendt, his brilliant, beautiful student and young lover, sought to enable a decent society of human beings in relation to one other. She was courageous in the time of crisis. Years later, she was even able to forgive Heidegger and to find in his behavior an insight into Nazism that would influence her reflections on “the banality of evil”—a concept that remains bitterly controversial and profoundly influential to this day.
Eloquent and moving, Stranger from Abroad dramatizes some of the greatest questions of the twentieth century—revealing bonds connecting the personal, philosophical, and political, highlighting the responsibility of intellectuals in dark times.
386 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2010
9 people are currently reading
182 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Maier-Katkin
1 book1 followerEducation
Diploma in Criminology 1969 (M.PHIL.), University of Cambridge
J.D. 1968, Columbia University, School of Law
B.A. 1965, City College of New York; Psychology
Research Interests
International human rights
Crimes against humanity
Criminal law
Juvenile Justice
Law and Society
Infanticide
Select Publications
Maier-Katkin, D. Forthcoming. Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt. Martin Heidegger. Friendship and the Problem of Forgiveness. New York: W.W. Norton.
Maier-Katkin, D., Mears, D., and Bernard, T. 2009 “Towards a Criminology of Crimes against Humanity,” Theoretical Criminology, 13: 227–256.
Maier-Katkin, D., Maier-Katkin, B. 2007. “The Love and Reconciliation of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.” Harvard Review, 32.
Maier-Katkin, D., Maier-Katkin, B. 2006. “Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger and the Politics of Reconciliation,” Human Rights Quarterly, 28(1): 86–119.
Maier-Katkin, B., Maier-Katkin, D. 2004. “At the Heart of Darkness: Crimes against Humanity and the Banality of Evil. Human Rights Quarterly, 26(3).
Grants
Muslim Women's Responses to Domestic Violence in Kazakhstan, $56,287, awarded by the National Science Foundation, 2000 – 2004.
Improving the Response to Domestic Violence in Kazakhstan. $30,730, awarded by the S. Department of State, 2001-2004.
Public Policy and the Idea of Freedom, $30,000, awarded by The John Templeton Foundation, March 2000 – present.
The Florida Police Corps, U.S. Department of Justice, $4,595,328, August 1998-2001.
Law Enforcement and Domestic Violence in Kyrgistan and Khazakstan, $639,650, awarded by the U.S. Department of State, November 1998-2004.
The Impact of Drug Law Reform in the Czech Republic, $60,000, awarded by the Alfred Lindesmith Center, December 1999 – 2002.
A Web-based Distance Learning Masters Curriculum in Criminal Justice, $180,000, awarded by the FSU Office of Distance and Distributed Learning, December 1998 – present.
Hamilton Fish National Institute on School and Community Violence, $200,000, May 1997 and $495,000, May 1998-2004.
Diploma in Criminology 1969 (M.PHIL.), University of Cambridge
J.D. 1968, Columbia University, School of Law
B.A. 1965, City College of New York; Psychology
Research Interests
International human rights
Crimes against humanity
Criminal law
Juvenile Justice
Law and Society
Infanticide
Select Publications
Maier-Katkin, D. Forthcoming. Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt. Martin Heidegger. Friendship and the Problem of Forgiveness. New York: W.W. Norton.
Maier-Katkin, D., Mears, D., and Bernard, T. 2009 “Towards a Criminology of Crimes against Humanity,” Theoretical Criminology, 13: 227–256.
Maier-Katkin, D., Maier-Katkin, B. 2007. “The Love and Reconciliation of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.” Harvard Review, 32.
Maier-Katkin, D., Maier-Katkin, B. 2006. “Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger and the Politics of Reconciliation,” Human Rights Quarterly, 28(1): 86–119.
Maier-Katkin, B., Maier-Katkin, D. 2004. “At the Heart of Darkness: Crimes against Humanity and the Banality of Evil. Human Rights Quarterly, 26(3).
Grants
Muslim Women's Responses to Domestic Violence in Kazakhstan, $56,287, awarded by the National Science Foundation, 2000 – 2004.
Improving the Response to Domestic Violence in Kazakhstan. $30,730, awarded by the S. Department of State, 2001-2004.
Public Policy and the Idea of Freedom, $30,000, awarded by The John Templeton Foundation, March 2000 – present.
The Florida Police Corps, U.S. Department of Justice, $4,595,328, August 1998-2001.
Law Enforcement and Domestic Violence in Kyrgistan and Khazakstan, $639,650, awarded by the U.S. Department of State, November 1998-2004.
The Impact of Drug Law Reform in the Czech Republic, $60,000, awarded by the Alfred Lindesmith Center, December 1999 – 2002.
A Web-based Distance Learning Masters Curriculum in Criminal Justice, $180,000, awarded by the FSU Office of Distance and Distributed Learning, December 1998 – present.
Hamilton Fish National Institute on School and Community Violence, $200,000, May 1997 and $495,000, May 1998-2004.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 7, 2024
Two Passionate Thinkers
In 1969, the philosopher Hannah Arendt gave a radio address called "Martin Heidegger is Eighty Years Old" in celebration of the thought of the great German thinker who had been Arendt's early inspiration as a student as well as her lover. In her address, Arendt described how Heidegger had changed the way students had viewed philosophy from a sterile, academic study to a matter for passionate engagement and thought. She said: "[w]e are so accustomed to the old oppositions of reason and passion, of mind and life, that the idea of passionate thinking, in which thinking and being alive become one, can be a bit startling."
Both Arendt (1906 -- 1975) and Heidegger (1889 -- 1976) brought passion to thought and to their difficult personal relationship. Daniel Maier-Katin's book, "Stranger from Abroad" (2010) brings passion to bear in its own right as it describes Arendt's relationship with Heidegger and its impact on her life and thought. The book has a sense of its two primary characters, their works, and their times that is rare in a work of philosophy. Maier-Katin, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University has with this study made his own contribution to the life of the mind.
Maier-Katin integrates personal lives, philosophical thinking, and history in this book. When Arendt met Heidegger, she was an impressionable, naive young woman of 18 listening to the famous philosopher, age 35, lecture on Plato's "Sophist." Married to an anti-Semitic woman, Elfride, who had recently had her own affair, and with two young children, Heidegger and Arendt became romantically involved almost immediately. Heidegger soon became somewhat cold, and Arendt left the University at Fribourg to pursue studies elsewhere vowing never to love a man again. However she soon married a man she did not love in a relationship that quickly became unhappy. Shortly after her divorce, she married another expatriate German, Heinrich Blucher, in a relationship that endured its difficulties and proved fulfilling to both parties.
With the coming to power of the Nazis, Arendt fled Germany and became effectively a stateless person for fifteen years until she secured American citizenship in 1952. Heidegger became deeply involved with Nazisim in 1933 -- 1934. In the long life that remained to him, he never clearly recanted. Arendt went on to a brilliant career in the United States with such works as "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951).
In 1950, Arendt travelled to Europe and met a philosopher whom she deeply admired, Karl Jaspers, who had staunchly resisted the Nazis. After some hesitation, Arendt sent a note to Heidegger and the two renewed their friendship, this time, of course, on a nonsexual basis. A wonderful scene in Maier-Katkin's book describes Heidegger responding to Arendt's note in person by coming to her table at the hotel cafe. Heidegger and Arendt met and exchanged letters through the mid-1950's when another long silence arose between them. They began communications and visits again in 1967, and their contact lasted until Arendt's death.
Much of Maier-Katkin's book is involved with themes of redemption and forgiveness. Arendt had to come to terms with Heidegger's deceitful treatment of her when she was young, his embrace of Nazism, and the continued hostility of Elfride Heidegger. She remembered her passion for the man and, much more importantly, his genius as a thinker. Much of Arendt's thought, Maeir-Katkin argues, can be understood as a development of her reflections upon Heidegger and how a person of his great gifts could embrace a shockingly repugnant ideology. Arendt reflected upon the nature of evil -- its commonplace, everyday character, which she famously came to call its "banality". She also came to think about love, forgiveness, and broad human rights which did not privilege any nationality or group.
Maier-Katkin offers informed readings of many Arendt writings including "The Origins of Totalitariansim", "The Human Condition, "Men in Dark Times", "The Life of the Mind" and her most famous and controversial book, "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and he describes how Arendt's continued reflections on Heidegger helped shape her thought. Maier-Katkin also offers good, accessible discussions of Heidegger's difficult thought, with an excellent discussion of the "turn" in Heidegger's writings after WW II, which may have reflected his disenchantment with Nazism. The book also offers a portrayal of intellectual life in Germany and, after WW II, in the United States, as Arendt found her home and became close to an intellectual community which included Randall Jarrell, W.H. Auden, and her dear friend Mary McCarthy, among others.
Maier-Katkin's book is intended in part to respond to critics of Arendt who believe her early romance with Heidegger unduly colored her judgment in her latter writings. The book succeeds in it far broader aim of telling the story of the relationship between two extraordinary individuals and of the power of forgiveness and friendship. Maier-Katkin eloquently concludes his study (p. 348):
"[T]here are personal as well as political lessons to be learned from Hannah Arendt's reconciliation with Martin Heidegger. At the end of life, thinking about thinking, willing, and judging, Arendt was close to Heidegger's thought and method while still engaged with her own questions. He continued to be for her a companion and close presence on the pathways of thought, where each of us are surrounded in our singularity by the ideas of others. The principal benefit of reconciliation, as Arendt understood, is that it brings peace, understanding, and human warmth into a world too often hostile, confused, and cold. The promise or reconciliation, which is neither forgetfulness nor an averted glance, but a full-bodied recognition of the human condition, is that it preserves the possibility of love -- in the case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, an easy commerce between old friends -- and friendship, as Hannah understood, is the foundation of all humanity."
This fine book should be of interest to students of 20th Century philosophy and intellectual and political history as well as to readers interested in the life of the mind.
Robin Friedman
In 1969, the philosopher Hannah Arendt gave a radio address called "Martin Heidegger is Eighty Years Old" in celebration of the thought of the great German thinker who had been Arendt's early inspiration as a student as well as her lover. In her address, Arendt described how Heidegger had changed the way students had viewed philosophy from a sterile, academic study to a matter for passionate engagement and thought. She said: "[w]e are so accustomed to the old oppositions of reason and passion, of mind and life, that the idea of passionate thinking, in which thinking and being alive become one, can be a bit startling."
Both Arendt (1906 -- 1975) and Heidegger (1889 -- 1976) brought passion to thought and to their difficult personal relationship. Daniel Maier-Katin's book, "Stranger from Abroad" (2010) brings passion to bear in its own right as it describes Arendt's relationship with Heidegger and its impact on her life and thought. The book has a sense of its two primary characters, their works, and their times that is rare in a work of philosophy. Maier-Katin, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University has with this study made his own contribution to the life of the mind.
Maier-Katin integrates personal lives, philosophical thinking, and history in this book. When Arendt met Heidegger, she was an impressionable, naive young woman of 18 listening to the famous philosopher, age 35, lecture on Plato's "Sophist." Married to an anti-Semitic woman, Elfride, who had recently had her own affair, and with two young children, Heidegger and Arendt became romantically involved almost immediately. Heidegger soon became somewhat cold, and Arendt left the University at Fribourg to pursue studies elsewhere vowing never to love a man again. However she soon married a man she did not love in a relationship that quickly became unhappy. Shortly after her divorce, she married another expatriate German, Heinrich Blucher, in a relationship that endured its difficulties and proved fulfilling to both parties.
With the coming to power of the Nazis, Arendt fled Germany and became effectively a stateless person for fifteen years until she secured American citizenship in 1952. Heidegger became deeply involved with Nazisim in 1933 -- 1934. In the long life that remained to him, he never clearly recanted. Arendt went on to a brilliant career in the United States with such works as "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951).
In 1950, Arendt travelled to Europe and met a philosopher whom she deeply admired, Karl Jaspers, who had staunchly resisted the Nazis. After some hesitation, Arendt sent a note to Heidegger and the two renewed their friendship, this time, of course, on a nonsexual basis. A wonderful scene in Maier-Katkin's book describes Heidegger responding to Arendt's note in person by coming to her table at the hotel cafe. Heidegger and Arendt met and exchanged letters through the mid-1950's when another long silence arose between them. They began communications and visits again in 1967, and their contact lasted until Arendt's death.
Much of Maier-Katkin's book is involved with themes of redemption and forgiveness. Arendt had to come to terms with Heidegger's deceitful treatment of her when she was young, his embrace of Nazism, and the continued hostility of Elfride Heidegger. She remembered her passion for the man and, much more importantly, his genius as a thinker. Much of Arendt's thought, Maeir-Katkin argues, can be understood as a development of her reflections upon Heidegger and how a person of his great gifts could embrace a shockingly repugnant ideology. Arendt reflected upon the nature of evil -- its commonplace, everyday character, which she famously came to call its "banality". She also came to think about love, forgiveness, and broad human rights which did not privilege any nationality or group.
Maier-Katkin offers informed readings of many Arendt writings including "The Origins of Totalitariansim", "The Human Condition, "Men in Dark Times", "The Life of the Mind" and her most famous and controversial book, "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and he describes how Arendt's continued reflections on Heidegger helped shape her thought. Maier-Katkin also offers good, accessible discussions of Heidegger's difficult thought, with an excellent discussion of the "turn" in Heidegger's writings after WW II, which may have reflected his disenchantment with Nazism. The book also offers a portrayal of intellectual life in Germany and, after WW II, in the United States, as Arendt found her home and became close to an intellectual community which included Randall Jarrell, W.H. Auden, and her dear friend Mary McCarthy, among others.
Maier-Katkin's book is intended in part to respond to critics of Arendt who believe her early romance with Heidegger unduly colored her judgment in her latter writings. The book succeeds in it far broader aim of telling the story of the relationship between two extraordinary individuals and of the power of forgiveness and friendship. Maier-Katkin eloquently concludes his study (p. 348):
"[T]here are personal as well as political lessons to be learned from Hannah Arendt's reconciliation with Martin Heidegger. At the end of life, thinking about thinking, willing, and judging, Arendt was close to Heidegger's thought and method while still engaged with her own questions. He continued to be for her a companion and close presence on the pathways of thought, where each of us are surrounded in our singularity by the ideas of others. The principal benefit of reconciliation, as Arendt understood, is that it brings peace, understanding, and human warmth into a world too often hostile, confused, and cold. The promise or reconciliation, which is neither forgetfulness nor an averted glance, but a full-bodied recognition of the human condition, is that it preserves the possibility of love -- in the case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, an easy commerce between old friends -- and friendship, as Hannah understood, is the foundation of all humanity."
This fine book should be of interest to students of 20th Century philosophy and intellectual and political history as well as to readers interested in the life of the mind.
Robin Friedman
July 25, 2011
This was the 1st reading I have done on Hannah Arendt, and I loved the close-ups on history and the many astute observations afforded by the author. His overview of the systems of various pertinent philosophers was also welcome. But the book became something of a slog because of his apparent need to make her a saint. I read some other book reviews along the way to try and gain perspective. One reviewer said Maier-Katkin was unabashedly on Arendt's side and was valiantly defending her. That was obvious, but I also thought he was making her the champion for his own views at times. That made his arguments ponderous and dense, compared to other points where he was simply letting Arendt speak for herself or was honestly sharing what he had learned. A key part of Arendt's philosophy (according to Maier-Katkin) is that people get into moral danger when they become uncritical mouthpieces of conventional cultural beliefs. Maier-Katkin is not shy about judging Nazis and others whom he sees as offenders in that regard. But he acts as though he himself were issuing judgment from some objective place outside culture, and yet he himself has opinions that have become conventional in some quarters. I wish he had been willing to be open about his background instead of seemingly making Arendt speak for him. Sometimes I wondered if I were seeing the real Hannah Arendt, or, instead, the one he needed her to be.
January 9, 2018
At first I found it difficult to get into this book. I found the narration of the amorous liaison between young Arendt and a more mature Heidegger unsophisticated and schmaltzy. And I kept being distracted by editorial oversights, particularly as regards proper names and toponyms (Tales of Melitus? Adolph Hitler? Nuremburg? Schwartzwald?). Felt like a not very motivated graduate student at work. But as the book progresses, the story gets under steam and the writing becomes significantly more assured. By the time Arendt is in Jerusalem to report on the Eichmann trials, the story has turned into an enjoyable cliff-hanger. Altogether ’Stranger from Abroad’ offers an accessible entry point into the biography and intellectual legacy of Hannah Arendt. Heidegger’s thinking remains much more sketchy. Maier-Katkin develops and intersects a number of interesting lines of thought: how Arendt’s made sense of Heidegger’s nazist escapades may have led her to the pivotal insight of the ‘banality of evil’ so central to her conceptualisation of totalitarianism. And their reconciliation epitomised the crucial importance of moral judgment in human society. Seen from our present-day vantage point it is also startling to discover how farsighted she was as regards the state of American political culture. The McCarthy years and the Watergate Affair were just two milestones in an irreparable decline of the health of the republic. Arendt was alarmed by “the emergence of lying as a way of life in politics” and considered the Nixon administration “a bunch of con men, rather untalented mafiosi” who had succeeded in appropriating to themselves the government of the mightiest power on earth. It’s easy to guess how she might have judged current political mores.
August 26, 2025
Everything I like in one book:love, romance, friendship, forgiveness, philosophy, history, politics and a great overview of each of their accomplishments. I so admire Arendt after reading this book.
October 7, 2011
This amazing book not only brings us closer to understanding the work of two intellectual giants of the last century, but also sheds much light on the murky questions that linger even after all these years, concerning the events that were allowed to happen in the most 'civilized' area of the world, that dragged the whole world into war.
The subtext of course is the nature of Heidegger's complicity and guilt for his disastrous flirtation with the Nazi regime. A question that arises for me is whether dubious character undermines undeniable genius, and the corrollory, how far can we go in excusing unexcusable behavior? That HA was able to forgive the man while still judging his deeds does not signify to me a weakness on her part, as many did. It tells me she was more than a theorist, and that she walked her talk, placing the human values of compassion and kindness above the desire to turn away and ignore an unpeasant issue.
The subtext of course is the nature of Heidegger's complicity and guilt for his disastrous flirtation with the Nazi regime. A question that arises for me is whether dubious character undermines undeniable genius, and the corrollory, how far can we go in excusing unexcusable behavior? That HA was able to forgive the man while still judging his deeds does not signify to me a weakness on her part, as many did. It tells me she was more than a theorist, and that she walked her talk, placing the human values of compassion and kindness above the desire to turn away and ignore an unpeasant issue.
November 2, 2014
http://www.cerisepress.com/02/06/betw...
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It's a biography, of sorts - more about Hannah Arendt, than Martin Heidegger - but it also touches on the philosophy behind some of the great thinkers, and political movements of the last 100 years.
The pacing was great; I truly couldn't put it down once I started.
March 2012 - Reading this again for book club and I am impressed, again!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It's a biography, of sorts - more about Hannah Arendt, than Martin Heidegger - but it also touches on the philosophy behind some of the great thinkers, and political movements of the last 100 years.
The pacing was great; I truly couldn't put it down once I started.
March 2012 - Reading this again for book club and I am impressed, again!
October 28, 2010
A dreadful, adoring, but very decently written, apology for Arendt and Heidegger, which reduces Heidegger's nazism to a period of one year, with a bit of an afterglow (despite all we have learned about him recently), and defends Arendt against her too-Jewish detractors (but ignores her Gentile detractors, such as Golo Mann) by pointing out the sins of the Israelis (leaving uncorrected the assertion that the sad deaths of 120 Arab civilians in Deir Yassin was a deliberate massacre of 220), and by saying that what we now know about Henry Kissinger's and Richard Nixon's acts in Vietnam proves that she was correct about Adolf Eichmann, who was every bit as much a war criminal as they were. On the other hand, all honor to him for properly using the word "complicitous" rather than the non-word "complicit." To give an example (which is not one of his sentences, but its thought becomes part of Maier-Katkin's argument): it is correct usage (though a lie) to say that the Jews of Poland were complicitous in the Nazi program to exterminate them.
If you know much about Arendt and Heidegger, you will not find it in the least persuasive - but rather shallow and naive. If you don't - well, you may find this account rather namby-pamby. On the other hand, if you believe, as Maier-Katkin does, that the cowardice of the doomed Jews of Europe in the face of the Nazi determination to kill them makes Jews pretty much as bad as Nazis, you will admire this book.
If you don't (and what's wrong with you for not agreeing with this official of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, who provides a forum for the serially mendacious and creepy Justice Richard Goldstone), well, you may not.
If you know much about Arendt and Heidegger, you will not find it in the least persuasive - but rather shallow and naive. If you don't - well, you may find this account rather namby-pamby. On the other hand, if you believe, as Maier-Katkin does, that the cowardice of the doomed Jews of Europe in the face of the Nazi determination to kill them makes Jews pretty much as bad as Nazis, you will admire this book.
If you don't (and what's wrong with you for not agreeing with this official of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, who provides a forum for the serially mendacious and creepy Justice Richard Goldstone), well, you may not.
August 7, 2011
A great book about two prominent thinkers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. It illustrates how their thinking evolved as a result of living through World War II and reflecting on/ responding to each other's ideas. Having read the book, I now have more questions than answers as to what makes us human and how we can protect ourselves from becoming inhumane. But perhaps this is what both philosophers would have expected of their readers, since they stressed the importance of questioning/ writing with and against themselves.
September 19, 2010
A pleasure to read. An intellectual page turner. Author makes complex people, ideas, and relationships vivid.
August 29, 2022
(Jim Cook’s review). This 2010 book by Daniel Maier-Katkin is compulsively readable. I couldn’t put it down, but it was way past my bedtime so I had to finish reading it the next day!
The author is a criminologist by profession, not a historian or philosopher, yet he relates all the important aspects of their philosophical life-stories intelligently and vividly. I especially liked his treatment of Arendt’s, Eichmann At Jerusalem. The author’s knowledge of criminal justice and trial procedures was put to effective use in his account of Arendt’s book about Eichmann’s trial for war crimes in Israel.
I also think that the author’s aspiration to integrate aspects of their writings with their lives was generally very successful, with only one (unavoidable) issue: the extent of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. The book was published several years before Heidegger’s Black Notebooks became widely available in 2014. No doubt, Maier-Katkin would have written somewhat differently about this topic had he known about Heidegger’s views about what he called the “world Jewish conspiracy.”
That said, the book provides an excellent and compelling overview of life - and philosophy - in Europe (and New York City) during the 1930s - 1960s. The reader meets many interesting philosophical interlocutors from the times from Husserl and Sartre, to Karl Jaspers (and his wife, Gertrud), Walter Benjamin, and many others.
Anyone interested in European continental philosophy during this era will enjoy reading Stranger From Abroad. It’s a riveting story of love, betrayal, friendship, fascism and much more besides. This one gets five stars!
The author is a criminologist by profession, not a historian or philosopher, yet he relates all the important aspects of their philosophical life-stories intelligently and vividly. I especially liked his treatment of Arendt’s, Eichmann At Jerusalem. The author’s knowledge of criminal justice and trial procedures was put to effective use in his account of Arendt’s book about Eichmann’s trial for war crimes in Israel.
I also think that the author’s aspiration to integrate aspects of their writings with their lives was generally very successful, with only one (unavoidable) issue: the extent of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. The book was published several years before Heidegger’s Black Notebooks became widely available in 2014. No doubt, Maier-Katkin would have written somewhat differently about this topic had he known about Heidegger’s views about what he called the “world Jewish conspiracy.”
That said, the book provides an excellent and compelling overview of life - and philosophy - in Europe (and New York City) during the 1930s - 1960s. The reader meets many interesting philosophical interlocutors from the times from Husserl and Sartre, to Karl Jaspers (and his wife, Gertrud), Walter Benjamin, and many others.
Anyone interested in European continental philosophy during this era will enjoy reading Stranger From Abroad. It’s a riveting story of love, betrayal, friendship, fascism and much more besides. This one gets five stars!
January 17, 2021
I read this book to better understand Hannah Arendt’s accusations that the “Jewish leadership” did not do enough to resist Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. I know very little of the rabbis and others who ratted out their neighbors and kept lists of their neighbors’ valuables, which they then handed over to the Gestapo, but it seems to me Ms Arendt bravely told the truth in her reporting on Adolph Eichmann’s trial, turning it into a book, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”.
Ms Arendt’s life was thinking and how thinking, willing and judging determine the life humans ultimately lead. Martin Heidegger, her philosophy teacher, lover and life-long friend, studied the mind and its relation to “Being”. The book delves deep into their lives, both together and separately, Hannah coming out the more heroic by far.
The lying inherent in politics was a constant concern to Hannah, as the Holocaust showed her where it could lead. She had particular disdain for Richard Nixon, from his days as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s henchman on the House Un-American Activities Committee, to his escalation of bombing in Vietnam as President, and ultimately to his undoing in the Watergate scandal.
Well written, annotated and indexed.
Ms Arendt’s life was thinking and how thinking, willing and judging determine the life humans ultimately lead. Martin Heidegger, her philosophy teacher, lover and life-long friend, studied the mind and its relation to “Being”. The book delves deep into their lives, both together and separately, Hannah coming out the more heroic by far.
The lying inherent in politics was a constant concern to Hannah, as the Holocaust showed her where it could lead. She had particular disdain for Richard Nixon, from his days as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s henchman on the House Un-American Activities Committee, to his escalation of bombing in Vietnam as President, and ultimately to his undoing in the Watergate scandal.
Well written, annotated and indexed.
November 9, 2023
This book was a revelation. I found it for $5 at a used book store and, to be honest, bought it because I presumed it was going to talk about Arendt's relationship with Martin Heidegger. The book of their epistolary communication is still pending my final order on Amazon. Though the book contained detailed account of their romance and friendship, it had so much more that went beyond biographical. In these uneasy times of Israel-Palestine conflict, it was very interesting to read Arendt's first hand experience with the fledgling Zionist movement and her take on the Israeli leadership. I found the parts about her participation (or rather observation) in the process over Adolf Eichmann in Israel and the ensuing mistreatment Arendt experienced at the hands of her critics especially illuminating about the human condition. All in all, I did not care much about Arendt's life-long fascination with Martin Heidegger (though found her notion that some human beings warrant forgiveness despite their heinous behavior quite admirable), but her preoccupation with the necessity of plurality (globalism?), injustice, and human nature was entirely enthralling and certainly urged me to seek her other works.
July 10, 2017
An interesting and clear little book about the relationship between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. The work centers on the latter's life, as a sort of biography. I have not yet read any of Arendt's works, so I cannot comment on Maier-Katkin's understanding of her thought. I can say that he has a very basic and simplified understanding of Heidegger's thought (perhaps not very amply grasping his later thought, though this is understandable, for the simplicity of it is quite complex). Overall it is worth reading for biographical information alone, though it doesn't really contribute anything new to the understanding of this relationship that bridges lives and thoughts.
October 27, 2019
One day, walking around Berlin, I saw a street named after Hannah Arendt. I wondered whom the street was named after. Now I know. Wonderful choice. Wonderful woman. She called a spade a spade. Didn't worry about religious or cultural lines. She was a German Jew who didn't make monsters out of every German or heroes out of every Jew. She recognized that people are a combination of both.
March 20, 2025
Beautifully written account of the lives of the philosophers with the historical context enriching the understanding of their works. Includes wonderful facts like knowing Arendt didn't like Adorno etc. I wasn't aware these people overlapped, so to read their stories as people meeting in the small conference rooms of universities was illuminating. Super well written.
May 15, 2018
I found this book informative. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about Hanna Arendt
November 13, 2021
Heidegger may have been a brilliant philosopher, but a man fraught with immoralities. Hannah Arendt's political insights came up short in measuring the worth of a man.
May 5, 2023
A very odd affair, slightly depressing, but I remember liking this book. I will probably say more about it later.
August 15, 2015
This is an excellent book. And honestly it’s a beautiful narrative about thinking. And not just thinking as in an exercise of the mind divorced from the concrete realities of life; but thinking that includes, that encompasses, all that comes with living in a social world. It is about the ethics of thinking, the effects of thinking intentionally, and the horrendous ramifications of thoughtlessness. This text is an exploration of people in relationship who don't separate the life of the mind from the presence of the other. How should one think about forgiveness and how does one will it? How does one think about reconciliation? What happens when your greatest teacher is your biggest betrayer? What happens when the one who taught you how to think becomes the greatest example of thoughtless evilness?
The text’s central focus is, no doubt, on the interrelated thinking of Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger. Which also means the text is, of course, about their romantic relationship, but it’s also about their communities, people in their lives who were influenced, impacted and disgusted by their connection. You get to learn so much about Karl Jaspers, Mary McCarthy, and a little about W.H. Auden, Husserl and Bertolt Brecht. Maier-Katin has a wonderful command of their thoughts and their influences on one another and I think he is a fair, maybe even too fair of a reader of the bond they shared (I wanted to read more about his interpretation of their relationship after Arendt’s second marriage). He defends Arendt from people who consider her a self-hating jew because of her famous text, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (But there was little consideration of just how much her affection for Heidegger impacted her reading of Eichmann. He outlines the scholarship but I am not convinced he took them as seriously as he should; perhaps, it is because most of the material is overwhelmingly unfair to her). But he is also understandably hard on Heidegger. His disgust for Martin isn't hidden, and it doesn't need to be. But that did not stop him from articulating Heidegger’s thoughts really well. He was more than informative. This book was beautiful written and I wouldn't mind reading it again, tonight.
The text’s central focus is, no doubt, on the interrelated thinking of Hannah Arendt & Martin Heidegger. Which also means the text is, of course, about their romantic relationship, but it’s also about their communities, people in their lives who were influenced, impacted and disgusted by their connection. You get to learn so much about Karl Jaspers, Mary McCarthy, and a little about W.H. Auden, Husserl and Bertolt Brecht. Maier-Katin has a wonderful command of their thoughts and their influences on one another and I think he is a fair, maybe even too fair of a reader of the bond they shared (I wanted to read more about his interpretation of their relationship after Arendt’s second marriage). He defends Arendt from people who consider her a self-hating jew because of her famous text, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (But there was little consideration of just how much her affection for Heidegger impacted her reading of Eichmann. He outlines the scholarship but I am not convinced he took them as seriously as he should; perhaps, it is because most of the material is overwhelmingly unfair to her). But he is also understandably hard on Heidegger. His disgust for Martin isn't hidden, and it doesn't need to be. But that did not stop him from articulating Heidegger’s thoughts really well. He was more than informative. This book was beautiful written and I wouldn't mind reading it again, tonight.
February 2, 2014
For me this was very good. I knew nothing about the relationship and though the account may be slanted by Arendts telling, it was still enlightening and interesting. I also enjoyed the bits of philosophy interspersed. I am sure there will be those who are scornful, but for someone whose only exposure to philosophy was a freshman course many moons ago, it was an eye opener which made me want to know more.
June 13, 2011
Hannah Arendt's attitude and values are very interesting - at times a bit hard to follow, but in general rather inspiring. It's also really readable and nto too philosophical! I am now very curious to read her real work.
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August 2, 2010This book is okay if you don't know much about Hannah Arendt or Heidegger, but the author doesn't offer much new material.
November 18, 2011
an in-depth look at Arendt's relationship with Heidegger. Examines her underlying philosophy toward her Jewishness, Nazi Germany, Israel and friendship. An intellectual book and interesting read.
January 30, 2015
Maier-Kathin has written an extensive biography of Arendt and her circle. The book is well-researched and has extensive end notes and references for further reading.
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