Hannah Arendt did not write a book specifically devoted to the philosophy of art. However, her reflections on the arts and, even more so, the cultural-historical contextualization of questions of production and reception aesthetics play an important role in her work. The new volume focuses on concepts and reflections on the philosophy of art in Arendt's texts and relates them both to her political theory and to current questions of artistic practice. Accordingly, central aspects of Arendt's art-related terminology are discussed: for example, artistic “production,” aesthetic “judgment,” the “thingness” and “reification” of works of art, and the associated ‘worldly’ and “interpersonal” dimensions of their objectivity. From the perspective of these reflections on art and the arts, not only Arendt's understanding of the public and the private is re-discussed, but also her concepts of “durability,” “linguisticity,” “truthfulness,” and “historicity.” Against this background, the relationship between the different arts with regard to their constitutive worldliness is also examined. [Translation of the publisher's information.]

Prof. Dr. Anne Eusterschulte is one of the general editors of the Critical Edition of Hannah Arendt's works and co-editor of the works The Life of the Mind and Kleine Schriften I. Edition members Prof. Dr. Barbara Hahn and Prof. Dr. Florian Klinger have contributed essays on “Poems in Dark Times” and “Kafka's ‘Blueprints’” to the volume.