The Febrile Imagination of Arendt Haters

Stanley Kaufmann has a over-the-top critique of “Hannah Arendt” in The New Republic. As with most such reviews, it is driven more by personal animus towards Arendt than by any consideration of the film. Here is one representative graph:

Today at least we can see that there is small point in separating emotions from facts, as Arendt did. The immense horror of the Holocaust washed away any philosophical distinctions. Any sparing of Eichmann would have left millions of people feeling guilty of not fulfilling their duty. (An incidental bother: Before the war Arendt had been the student and lover of Martin Heidegger, who became a Nazi, and Arendt returned to him briefly after the war. This was presumably more a matter of Venus than politics; still it bothered many.) But Arendt’s strict adherence to her views resulted in her discharge from her teaching position, and the picture closes with her defiant parting address to her class.

First, Arendt did not return to her love affair with Heidegger after the war. Why imply she did?

Second, Arendt was not dismissed from a teaching position. 

Mr. Kaufmann seems to have slept periodically through the movie and mixed up fantasy and reality in his fertile imagination. These are of course small points, but they are indications of just how deeply some people feel the need to discredit Arendt with personal attacks instead of addressing her ideas.

-RB