"Book Lunch" Featuring Kei Hiruta's Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity”

Enjoy our recent "Book Lunch" featuring Kei Hiruta's masterpiece, “ Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity”. Share it with us, leave a comment and thanks for being the best part of our show! More on this “Book Lunch” from your host, Mitch Hampton “Looked at as two individuals, both Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt are, objectively speaking, two of the greatest thinkers in twentieth century thought. Both were Jews who fled the two dominant totalitarian regime of the 20th century- Berlin fleeing Soviet Russia as a child to become a major figure in British political philosophy, Arendt fleeing Nazi Germany as a young woman to become a leading thinker in the United States. Berlin single handedly developed the most influential idea of values pluralism in the middle of the 20th century. Likewise, Hannah Arendt was a scholar who analyzed both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, helping clarify and solidify contemporary understandings of totalitarianism. And both were much more than these: Berlin had roots in Oxford philosophy and wrote on a wide array of topics, from Russia history to Machiavelli. Hannah Arendt developed original ideas about what democracy actually means. In Kei Hirta's one of a kind book, "Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity", it is revealed that these two figures were at odds during their lifetimes. Though Berlin outright hated Hannah Arendt and Arendt more or less ignored and/or was aloof towards Berlin, this strained relationship is much more than an historical curiosity or gossip, but rather raises profound issues that continue today - issues concerning styles of philosophic thought, for example European versus Anglo-American, and beliefs about statecraft and public and private life. Hirtua explores all of these issues in ways that taught me an enormous amount and will prove to be of lasting important in non-fiction on ideas and the history of political thought in the contemporary period." Related Links: https://aias.au.dk/aias-fellows/kei-hiruta/ https://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-kei- hiruta