If I had read nothing of Arendt before, I would begin with her very beautiful, if unfortunately titled, collection of essays Men in Dark Times, and I would read, in that collection, the preface and the pieces on Lessing, Luxemburg, Jaspers, and Benjamin. The Lessing and Benjamin essays are extraordinary. I would then devote myself to the first two volumes of The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition.
The biography of Arendt is Elizabeth Young-Bruehl's For the Love of the World (Yale University Press).
For a sense of the non-feminist interest in Arendt these days, you might read Dana Villa's forthcoming book (or at least the first half of it) Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political. As a shortcut, read Villa's essays "Postmodernism and the Public Sphere" (American Political Science Review, June 1994) and "Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action" (Political Theory, May 1992). Also, take a look at the Arendt chapter of Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato's Civil Society and Political Theory (MIT Press).
For a sense of the feminist interest in Arendt, Bonnie Honig's edited Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt (Penn State Press) is the best start. From there, you can work from the citations and bibliography. I would consider reading Lisa Disch's book Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy (Cornell) as well as Seyla Benhabib's forthcoming The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Sage).
Of course, there is the new controversy over Elzbieta Ettinger's Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger, which I haven't yet read. But the reviews are great fun: Richard Wolin's "Hannah and the Magician" (how can you beat a title like that?) in The New Republic, Oct. 9; Carlin Romano's "The Nazi and the Schoolgirl" in The Nation, Oct. 9; Richard Bernstein's "Obsession Transcends 'The Banality of Evil'" in The New York Times, Sept. 11; and Judith Shulevitz's "Arendt and Heidegger: An Affair to Forget?" in The New York Times Book Review, Oct. 1.
Finally, there is the fascinating collection of essays edited by Ron Feldman, The Jew as Pariah (Grove Press) on the controversial writings by Arendt on the "Jewish Question" and the responses to those writings by others.
Joan CocksQuestions? Comments? Concerns? Contact the WiG Steering Committee.