Unlearning with Hannah Arendt

“[A] short, powerful book.” —The Independent

“Well written…and translated from the German with admirable clarity by David Dollenmayer.” —Jewish Book Council

“Knott has formed a historically engaged and incisive contribution to Arendt’s legacy.” —Granta

“Knott presents an uncommonly intimate look at [Arendt’s] intellectual processes. Readers…who share Knott’s reverence for Arendt will luxuriate in this selection.” —Booklist

“Charmingly written, carefully translated, and easy for ordinary readers.” —Library Journal

“A strangely enjoyable trip into someone’s psyche. Knott almost allows herself to channel Arendt and the book acquires a rich, inviting tone that makes it impossible not to keep on turning page after page…Knott’s clever analysis of Arendt’s work reveals a humanity that’s almost touching. The author isn’t precisely defending Arendt’s alienating viewpoints. Rather, she’s sharing with us the pleasures that can still be found in others’ thoughts—once we set aside our prejudice.” —PopMatters

“Thinking about Arendt and about the things Arendt thought about, Marie Luise Knott has crafted a marvelous demonstration of scholarship, playfulness, understanding, and friendship across the distance the world puts between us. Unlearning With Hannah Arendt, with its essays on laughter, language, and forgiveness, is a triumphant display of Arendt’s thoughtful humanity, and also of Knott’s. One cannot help but think that it would have delighted Hannah Arendt to imagine that she and her ideas would be discussed in this spirit forty years after her death.” —Daniel Maier-Katkin, Florida State University and author of Stranger From Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness

“Describing Adolf Eichmann’s effect on Hannah Arendt, Marie Luise Knott writes, ‘He confused her, and she allowed herself to be confused.’ It was a courageous stance for Arendt to take, to allow herself in the face of the shocking, to unlearn what she thought she knew. It was a stance, Knott shows us, that Arendt adopted throughout her life. As our world continues to shock, we also must allow ourselves to be confused, to refrain from immediate resort to safe categories. We thus find needed wisdom in this sensitive meditation on the life of Hannah Arendt.” —Douglas Porpora, Drexel University, author of Post-Ethical Society: The Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the Moral Failure of the Secular

“Marie Luise Knott’s essays enable the reader to benefit from Arendt, even where you are actually not willing to follow her. It doesn’t show her ways of thinking as a fixation of certainties but as a process to dissolve certainties and to systematically forget them.” —Wolfgang Matz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“A knowledgeable little book.” —Alexander Cammann, Die Zeit

“A really…illuminating essay.” —La Stampa