Kindle
$14.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Hardcover
from $87.00
Paperback
$13.86
Kindle Price: $14.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Audiobook Price: $13.62

Save: $6.13 (45%)

Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

Hannah Arendt
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics) Kindle Edition

by Hannah Arendt (Author), Jerome Kohn (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 166 ratings
See all formats and editions
From the author of Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Origins of Totalitarianism, “a book to think with through the political impasses and cultural confusions of our day” (Harper’s Magazine)
 
Hannah Arendt’s insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future. To participate in these exercises is to associate, in action, with one of the most original and fruitful minds of the twentieth century.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  5. Publication date
    September 26, 2006
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. File size
    1397 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  11. See all details
Next page
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card

Editorial Reviews

Review

Arendt...has an extraordinary talent for giving fresh meanings to everyday experiences and for revealing the staleness and fatuity of much that passes for novelty and innovation.

-- "Foreign Affairs"

A book to think with through the political impasses and cultural confusions of our day.

-- "Harper's Magazine"

About the Author

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was born in Hanover, Germany, fled to Paris in 1933, and came to the United States after the outbreak of World War II. She was editorial director of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948. She taught at Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the New School for Social Research.



Jerome Kohn is the director of the Hannah Arendt Center at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00HUVUT1C
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (September 26, 2006)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 26, 2006
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1397 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0140046623
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 166 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) taught political science and philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York and the University of Chicago. Widely acclaimed as a brilliant and original thinker, her works include Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Human Condition.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
166 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

ElizaBeth
5.0 out of 5 stars Arendt is the best
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2024
Verified Purchase
Arendt is unparalleled. This book is more manageable than her large works, and doesn’t have to be read in order. Great for smaller-sized lessons.
Helpful
 Report
H. Miller
5.0 out of 5 stars To Arendt is Human
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020
Verified Purchase
I've read a good deal of her writings. I found this book to be a good sampling of her thinking. It demonstrates how she approaches analyzing social and philosophical issues. Also it touches on a multitude of political and social issues that seem even more relevant today than they did in her time. This would allow any reader to do what Arendt wants everyone to do. Think about things. It should also prepare you for lively discussions far beyond the labels of liberal or conservative, progressive or traditionalist.
11 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Bruce P. Barten
4.0 out of 5 stars The intellectual situation is not improving; is a comic response art?
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2005
I was reading a book by Hannah Arendt at the beginning of July, when I went to a Bo Diddley concert in which his song "Shut Up, Woman" ended with "You know I love you, and I would love you twice as much if you put that razor away." I was primarily interested in what Arendt could say about Nietzsche, but her observations also included Marx and Kierkegaard. Arendt was a member of the last generation that was well-read. Since then reading has become an individual hobby for some, but books are no longer a context within which meaning advances, and her observations shaved off the B.C. comic suggestion for males proving their superiority over females by scratching them with our beards.

Do we all remember this comic?

We're going to catch the women and prove the innate superiority of men over women.

Curls: How do you plan to do that?

Peter: We'll scratch them with our beards.

Hannah Arendt might be a good example of how modern exercises in political thought think very much like Nietzsche, but use Nietzsche as the philosopher most responsible for ending the authority which thought itself, as a superfluous product of human mental aspiration, assumes in her book, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE. Its index of names does not include George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-80, dead now these 125 years), an English author that Nietzsche heard about from his friend, Helene Druscowicz, and mentioned in section 5 of the "Expeditions of an Untimely Man" in Nietzsche's book TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS with the disavowal, "let us not blame it on little bluestockings a la Eliot. In England, in response to every little emancipation from theology one has to reassert one's position in a fear-inspiring manner as a moral fanatic." People being what they are, morals ought to assume an awe-inspiring place in the expression of anyone's individuality. For Nietzsche to assume that "it possesses truth only if God is truth - it stands or falls with the belief in God" applies religious presumptions to a matter that holds no water, "For the Englishman morality is not yet a problem . . ." I tried to find something about Marx in Nietzsche's books, and instead I found an English novelist who might be familiar to anyone who reads.

To let Hannah Arendt state the matter in her own way:

"Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche remained Hegelians insofar as they saw the history of past philosophy as one dialectically developed whole; their great merit was that they radicalized this new approach toward the past in the only way it could still be further developed, namely, in questioning the conceptual hierarchy which had ruled Western philosophy since Plato and which Hegel had still taken for granted."

George Eliot did not get mentioned when Hannah Arendt considered the way in which modern society functions:

"Values are social commodities that have no significance of their own but, like other commodities, exist only in the ever-changing relativity of social linkages and commerce. Through this relativization both the things which man produces for his use and the standards according to which he lives undergo a decisive change: they become entities of exchange, and the bearer of their `value' is society and not man, who produces and uses and judges."

Considering the common element of self-defeat in Nietzsche, Marx, and Kierkegaard, Arendt suggests, "In complete independence of one another--none of them ever knew of the others' existence--they arrive at the conclusion that this enterprise in terms of the tradition can be achieved only through a mental operation best described in the images and similes of leaps, inversions, and turning concepts upside down: Kierkegaard speaks of his leap from doubt into belief; Marx turns Hegel, or rather `Plato and the whole Platonic tradition' (Sidney Hook), `right side up again,' leaping `from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom'; and Nietzsche understands his philosophy as `inverted Platonism' and `transformation of all values.'"

Freedom is a neat theme because it allows everyone to participate as liberators. Even the CIA is still looking for a slam dunk way to make it happen, but the future is never a cakewalk. Education has been trying to produce people who can reach some consensus on things that have to be done, but the methods which lead in that direction are incredibly boring to anyone who has access to the feelings of those who produce and perform art. As Bo Diddley would say, "Sit down and shut up."
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Miguel C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic.
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2012
Verified Purchase
If you haven't read, "The Human Condition" (THC), you may come away with a misunderstanding of the concepts in this book; however, if you have, this book works as a good supplement. For example in, "What is Freedom?", Arendt works out her concept of 'freedom' as participation in the polis (direct democracy), or, as she would say, as engaging in action and speech in the public realm and while the concept is worked out adequately here, her explanation of this very same concept is much richer in THC. All in all, this is a fantastic book, Arendt's political philosophy never fails to deliver(she didn't like the term "Philosopher" applied to her for reasons that are made clear in THC; I use the term for the sake of being understood), but readers would do well to read THC first.
27 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Dida
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great geniuses.
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2017
Verified Purchase
How would you not give Hannah Arendt five stars? One of the great geniuses. She contains multitudes. But this is no easy read.
5 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Andrew B. Noselli
5.0 out of 5 stars Her best work?
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2017
Verified Purchase
Something tells me this is Arendt's best book. I used to visit her grave at Bard College.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Noel S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Starting Point
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
Arendf's essays are a good entry point into her writings. This is one of the best collections available. "Truth and Politics" alone is worth the purchase price.
6 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Margaret Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing work if Hannah Arendt
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2015
Verified Purchase
Amazing work if Hannah Arendt.I got a lot out of reading it.very glad it was still available and as an ebook.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
ImranBary
5.0 out of 5 stars Do you hate your sanity? If so, purchase this book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 23, 2023
Verified Purchase
Have you ever sat and wondered, “darn I am in a current state of peace and tranquility, I must thwart it in some way.” Well if so, this is the perfect book.

In all honesty, Hannah spilled. She put her whole ____ into this book.
Report
Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Much ado about nothing
Reviewed in France on August 29, 2022
Verified Purchase
Arendt certainly displays an important knowledge of philosophy but overall, the book is unnecessarily complex for the outcome. Arendt justly emphasizes the consequences of the loss of tradition in the West, but never seem to go beyond this first observation.

Sometimes also, the author makes quite bold statements without any justification. For instance, page 86 :
"The trouble is that almost every axiom seems to lend itself to consistent deductions and this to such an extent that it is as though men were in a position to prove almost any hypothesis they might choose to adopt, not only in the in the field of purely mental constructions like the various over-all interpretations of history which are all equally supported by facts [?], but in the natural sciences as well [???]"
Report
E.G.Fischer
5.0 out of 5 stars was wo eerhaeltich ist
Reviewed in Germany on February 27, 2020
Verified Purchase
Schnelle ausgiebige Informationen, Zusendungsdaten stimmten
Report
Peyman ADL DOUSTI HAGH
5.0 out of 5 stars In the Name of Iran
Reviewed in Canada on May 7, 2014
Verified Purchase
In this book, she took an assertive approach toward Liberal and Conservative ideologies that they are interested in elite class interest and not greater good of the society. She is also very critical and pessimistic about mass movement and believes that people tend to revolt against tyrannical regime, and still form a tyrannical regime.

Revolution means going back to place of the origin. Does that mean when a revolution breaks out in a nation, nothing changes?
Report
Xof
3.0 out of 5 stars Ouvrage intéressant
Reviewed in France on March 3, 2015
Verified Purchase
De bonnes réflexions, ce livre est un bon classique. Je regrette néanmoins que l'auteure ne développe pas une réflexion personnelle importante, mais fasse plus un constat, un état des lieux, pas beaucoup plus...
Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report