Hannah Arendt Discusses Philosophy, Politics & Eichmann in Rare 1964 TV Interview

Han­nah Arendt’s work has come under some crit­i­cal fire late­ly, what with the release of the Mar­garethe Von Trot­ta-direct­ed biopic, star­ring Ger­man actress Bar­bara Sukowa as the con­tro­ver­sial polit­i­cal the­o­rist. At issue in the film and the sur­round­ing com­men­tary are Arendt’s (alleged­ly mis­lead­ing) char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of the sub­ject of her 1963 book Eich­mann in Jerusalem, as well as her ambivalent—some have said cal­lous, even “victim-blaming”—treatment of oth­er Jews. None of these con­tro­ver­sies are new, how­ev­er. As Arendt schol­ar Roger Berkowitz notes in a recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al, at the time of her book’s pub­li­ca­tion, “Near­ly every major lit­er­ary and philo­soph­i­cal fig­ure in New York chose sides in what the writer Irv­ing Howe called a ‘civ­il war’ among New York intel­lec­tu­als.”

While acknowl­edg­ing Arendt’s flaws, Berkowitz seeks to exon­er­ate the best-known con­cept that emerged from her work on Eichmann’s tri­al, the “banal­i­ty of evil.” And while it can be com­fort­ing to have an inter­preter explain, and defend, the work of a major, con­tro­ver­sial, thinker, there is no intel­lec­tu­al sub­sti­tute for engag­ing with the work itself.

In the age of the media interview—radio, tele­vi­sion, pod­cast and otherwise—one can usu­al­ly see and hear an author explain her views in per­son. And so we have the inter­view above (in Ger­man with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles), in which Arendt sits with tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter and jour­nal­ist Gunter Gaus for a Ger­man pro­gram called Zur Per­son (The Per­son), a Char­lie Rose-like show that fea­tured celebri­ties, impor­tant thinkers, and politi­cians (includ­ing an appear­ance by Hen­ry Kissinger).

A blog­ger at Jew­ish Phi­los­o­phy Place writes that Arendt’s interview—a tran­script of which was lat­er pub­lished in The Portable Han­nah Arendt as “What Remains? Lan­guage Remains”—is “slow and delib­er­a­tive, not sharp and declar­a­tive, mov­ing in cir­cles, not straight lines.” The inter­view touch­es on a vari­ety of top­ics, draw­ing on ideas expressed in Arendt’s ear­li­er works, The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism and The Human Con­di­tion. She is some­what cagey when it comes to the so-called “Eich­mann Con­tro­ver­sy,” and she may have had per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons for indi­rec­tion. Her affair with her for­mer pro­fes­sor, avowed and unre­pen­tant Nazi Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, dogged her post-war career, and the afore­men­tioned intel­lec­tu­al “civ­il war” prob­a­bly increased her cir­cum­spec­tion.

Arendt’s crit­ics, then and now, often remark upon what the Jew­ish Phi­los­o­phy Place writer suc­cinct­ly calls her “dis­dain for oth­ers.” While the new biopic (trail­er above) may obscure much of this crit­i­cal controversy—unfilmable as such things are anyway—readers wish­ing to under­stand one of the Holocaust’s most famous inter­preters should read, and hear, her in her own words before mak­ing any judg­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt’s Orig­i­nal Arti­cles on “the Banal­i­ty of Evil” in the New York­er Archive

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks About Lan­guage, Being, Marx & Reli­gion in Vin­tage 1960s Inter­views

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness