Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A timely guide on how to live--and think--through the challenges of our century drawn from the life and thought of political-theorist Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century's foremost opponent of totalitarianism and a "prophet against conformity" (The Nation). 'We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.' --Crises of the Republic
The violent unease of today's world would have been all too familiar to Hannah Arendt. Tyranny, occupation, disenchantment, post-truth politics, conspiracy theories, racism, mass migration, the banality of evil: she had lived through them all.
Born in the first decade of the last century, she escaped fascist Europe to make a new life for herself in America, where she became one its most influential--and controversial--public intellectuals. She wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and above all about freedom. Questioning--thinking--was her first defence against tyranny. She advocated a politics of action and plurality, and she knew that this also meant having the courage to defy and disobey.
We Are Free to Change the World is a book about the Arendt we need for the twenty-first century. It tells us how and why Arendt came to think the way she did, and how to think when our own politics goes off the rails. Both a guide to Arendt's life and work, and its urgent dialogue with our troubled present, We Are Free to Change the World is a clarion call for us to think, as Hannah Arendt did--unflinchingly, lovingly, and defiantly--through our own unpredictable times.