Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt

Famous—or notorious, depending on one's viewpoint—for coining the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the mindset of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in her account of his trial, political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-75) lived an eventful life, which is perceptively covered in Ada Ushpiz's insightfully balanced biography. Combining archival photographs and news clips, excerpts from TV interviews with Arendt, and newly-filmed conversations with fellow thinkers (some sympathetic to her views, others harshly critical), Ushpiz skillfully traces Arendt's educational development under the tutelage of such eminent figures as Karl Jaspers, for whom she maintained a lifelong reverence. The film also covers the vicissitudes of Arendt's personal life, which included a student-teacher affair with the married Martin Heidegger, whose embrace of Nazism became a critical element in the thought of Arendt (she was forced to flee Europe for the United States during Hitler's rise to power). Vita Activa does not ignore the arguments of those who deplore Arendt's ideas about Eichmann's moral culpability regarding the horror of the Holocaust, but it does focus on her own words, along with those of admirers, to draw a nuanced sketch of her ideas, which held that thoughtful reflection—and by extension independent judgment—is a necessary component of any action in an assessment of moral character. A perceptive study of an important 20th-century intellectual, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)