Le Musee Imaginaire d'Hannah Arendt - Paperback

by Bérénice Levet (Author)

Hannah Arendt's work has certainly been explored in depth and in many different ways, but so far no-one has focused on the significance she gave, both in her books and her life, to her thoughts on great aesthetic creations. Yet music, and more particularly, painting and novels were powerful motivating forces in Arendt's philosophical output all through her life. Of course, she was never far removed from the great philosophers; but no more so from novelists and painters. She frequently visited museums and read Balzac avidly, not only for the pleasure it afforded her but also because, at a time when she thought increasingly about the "life of the mind", she liked to be attentive to the creative process.

A whole section of her work is a hymn to life, to birth and positivity, and - in that context - the works within the cultural canon comprise an intestimable raw material to her.