Hannah Arendt "Zur Person" Full Interview

The Hannah Arendt Movie was released several months ago. The film is directed by Margarethe von Trotta and is produced as a biopic of influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt. Arendt’s reporting on the 1961trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker— controversial both for her portrayal of Eichmann andt he Jewish councils — introduced her now-famous concept of the “Banality of Evil.” The film uses footage from the actual Eichmann trial and weaves a narrative that spans three countries. Watch the trailer:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDO5u2YSbm0]

Of course, this film probably (I haven’t seen it) does not do a very good job of providing some insight into Arendt’s thinking. The next old interview of with Günter Gaus with her does. She talks about the differences between philosophy and politics, about gender and philosophy. She clearly is not very positive about philosophy, philosophers and intellectual. Of course she also discusses the Eichmann controversy, anti-Semitism, Auschwitz, Germans and Jews and Judaism before and after the war, Zionism and Israel. The interview concludes with the topic of trust. The interview from 1964 was later published as “What Remains? Language Remains” in The Portable Hannah Arendt. The video is in German but with English subtitles:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsoImQfVsO4]

The most fascinating part for me in the interview has been captured nicely by Zachary Braiterman on jewish philosophy place:

In the interview, Arendt’s more general remarks about the Holocaust, the political, and those bitter words about the Eichmann controversy come first. What follows is peculiar. There are warm words about what she pictures as the intimate old worldless, i.e. apolitical Jewish world that existed just prior to the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. And then come those words from The Human Condition that touch upon trust as the basis of politics and the human condition.

But that’s what makes no sense, because the former comments about trust stand in direct contradiction to what she herself says, what she herself knows about Auschwitz. This goes much deeper than the precariousness of the human condition, as since theorized by Judith Butler. For Arendt, Auschwitz outstrips political enmity. She says this in the interview. The Holocaust would represent the abyss and abjection that grind trust and the human condition into dust. Auschwitz throws the human condition into complete confusion. If you ask me, there’s no judgment, not of Eichmann, and not of the heads of the Jewish Councils that can sort this out, restore the polis and politics, “the world,” this “space of appearance,” and make it right.

And then you see it. This is what thinking looks like. After that last word, there’s silence, absolute silence. The camera continues to roll for about 8 interminable seconds. Arendt sits there motionless, as if struck dumb. Her eyes just blink, and her mouth saddens. There’s this sense of having stumbled into something deep, counterintuitive, and true about the human condition, counterintuitive and painful because it makes no sense in relation to the Holocaust and to Eichmann and the heads of the Jewish Councils.

H/T: OpenCulture