Friendship

Dear Reader, 

I have a special essay to share with you this week.

For Thinking is Dangerous, novelist Madeleine Thien reflects on “The Many Friendships of Hannah Arendt.” 

It is a beautiful meditation on Arendt’s correspondence and the friendships that nourished her throughout her life.

Enjoy!

Sam

Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy

“Why did I not write earlier? Well, the truth of the matter is that I did not ‘feel fine.’

                                                   — Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, September 16, 1963

Letters, postcards and telegrams containing elaborate travel arrangements race around the world, as she folds multi-day visits to friends into an exhausting schedule of teaching and appearances (though she herself rarely seems exhausted). Telephone calls and voluminous letters keep the passageways well-lit and well-trodden, but being together in person—seen and heard—remains of primary importance.

In her works, Arendt reflects on what it would mean “to love the world enough to take responsibility for it.” Thinking and action arise repeatedly in her works, alongside rootlessness, loneliness, forgiveness, beginnings, and love of the world. For Arendt, thinking is a dialogue with ourselves, outside of public view. It is private not because it is unspeakable or confessional, but because inconclusiveness, possibility, and beginnings are its qualities; this kind of lifelong thinking is not driven by what we want to attain or become. It has no end.

Continue reading here.