Between War and Politics

This...book proves there will continue to be a long and fruitful relationship among scholars, readers, and Arendts body of work. Patricia Owen...stakes on Arendts familiar conceptual distinctions and categories. She breathes new life into them by using Arendts often-underemphasized writings on war to understand the importance of her thought to international relations.[Owens] provides her reader with new perspectives on many aspects of Arendts thought...A book this good deserves more readers than it will probably get. * Perspectives on Political Science *
With exemplary clarity, Between War and Politics reveals the relevance of Hannah Arendt's thought for a host of contemporary debates in international relations and international law. It also reveals the degree to which the question of war informed Arendt's political thinking more generally. What Owens has accomplished in this regard is nothing less than extraordinary: a reading of the full range of Arendt's writings which replaces the abstract opposition between war and violence (on the one hand) and a normative conception of "authentic" political relations (on the other) with something far more nuanced, insightful, and productive. Between War and Politics is a book all future scholars, critics, and students of Arendt's political thought will have to conjure with. It forever alters the profile of a theorist we thought we knew well. * Dana Villa, Packey J. Dee Professor of Political Theory, University of Notre Dame *
A well-written, cogently argued and entirely persuasive account of Arendt's sustained but largely ignored engagement with war and violence, and how it provides a key to many of her most important political and philosophical ideas. * Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Governmen, Dartmouth College *