Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought

A rare signed copy of eight essays by the German-American political theorist and philosopher, from the library of the Morgenthau family. Hans Morgenthau, also a German-born political theorist, was Arendt's close friend, traveling companion, intellectual partner, and possibly lover during the last two decades of her life. Barry Gewen writes of their relationship in a 2015 article for The National Interest: Each supported the other in good times and bad. There was no more trying period for Arendt than the months in the mid-1960s when the controversy over her book Eichmann in Jerusalem was burning white-hot. [...] Morgenthau was unfailingly loyal. He dined with her at the University of Chicago faculty club when other faculty members made a point of shunning her, and when she was attacked in the New York Times, he wrote a letter to the editor in her defense. Reporting from New York, where a public meeting to discuss her ideas on Eichmann quickly deteriorated into a shouting match, Morgenthau said: “The Jewish community is up in arms.” He continued, “Reality has protruded into the protective armor of illusion and the result is psychological havoc.” For her part, Arendt was there for him when he was suffering through a series of illnesses. And when he was in danger of damaging his professional reputation because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, she was by his side..