Overview

This is the first book length study of war in the thought of one of the twentieth-century's most important and original political thinkers. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance. But this element of her work has surprisingly been neglected in international and political theory. This book fills an important gap by assessing the full range of Arendt's historical and conceptual writing on war and introduces to international theory the distinct language she used to talk about war and the political world. It builds on her re-thinking of old concepts such as power, violence, greatness, world, imperialism, evil, hypocrisy and humanity and introduces some that are new to international thought like plurality, action, agonism, natality and political immortality. The issues that Arendt dealt with throughout her life and work continue to shape the political world and her approach to political thinking remains a source of inspiration for those in search of guidance not in what to think but how to think about politics and war. Re-reading Arendt's writing, forged through firsthand experience of occupation and struggles for liberation, political founding and resistance in time of war, reveals a more serious engagement with war than her earlier readers have recognised. Arendt's political theory makes more sense when it is understood in the context of her thinking about war and we can think about the history and theory of warfare, and international politics, in new ways by thinking with Arendt.This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

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9780199299362

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Reviews

This...book proves there will continue to be a long and fruitful relationship among scholars, readers, and Arendts body of work. Patricia Owen...stakes on Arendts familiar conceptual distinctions and categories. She breathes new life into them by using Arendts often-underemphasized writings on war to understand the importance of her thought to international relations.[Owens] provides her reader with new perspectives on many aspects of Arendts thought...A book this good deserves more readers than it will probably get. Perspectives on Political Science With exemplary clarity, Between War and Politics reveals the relevance of Hannah Arendt's thought for a host of contemporary debates in international relations and international law. It also reveals the degree to which the question of war informed Arendt's political thinking more generally. What Owens has accomplished in this regard is nothing less than extraordinary: a reading of the full range of Arendt's writings which replaces the abstract opposition between war and violence (on the one hand) and a normative conception of authentic political relations (on the other) with something far more nuanced, insightful, and productive. Between War and Politics is a book all future scholars, critics, and students of Arendt's political thought will have to conjure with. It forever alters the profile of a theorist we thought we knew well. Dana Villa, Packey J. Dee Professor of Political Theory, University of Notre Dame A well-written, cogently argued and entirely persuasive account of Arendt's sustained but largely ignored engagement with war and violence, and how it provides a key to many of her most important political and philosophical ideas. Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Governmen, Dartmouth College

With exemplary clarity, Between War and Politics reveals the relevance of Hannah Arendt's thought for a host of contemporary debates in international relations and international law. It also reveals the degree to which the question of war informed Arendt's political thinking more generally. What Owens has accomplished in this regard is nothing less than extraordinary: a reading of the full range of Arendt's writings which replaces the abstract opposition between war and violence (on the one hand) and a normative conception of authentic political relations (on the other) with something far more nuanced, insightful, and productive. Between War and Politics is a book all future scholars, critics, and students of Arendt's political thought will have to conjure with. It forever alters the profile of a theorist we thought we knew well. Dana Villa, Packey J. Dee Professor of Political Theory, University of Notre Dame A well-written, cogently argued and entirely persuasive account of Arendt's sustained but largely ignored engagement with war and violence, and how it provides a key to many of her most important political and philosophical ideas. Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Governmen, Dartmouth College

Author Information

Patricia Owens is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London. She holds graduate degrees from Cambridge University and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. And she has held research positions at Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

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