Arendt in Catalan

On the fiftieth anniversary of Hannah Arendt's death, I am reviewing the Catalan editions of her works, starting with the outstanding contribution of the publishing house Lleonard Muntaner, which began in 2006 with the translation of the Conversations with Hannah Arendt, by Ramon Farrés, which includes the complete transcript of three conversations and two round tables. The first conversation is the well-known television interview with Günter Gaus, broadcast on October 28, 1964, in which Arendt says she does not consider herself a philosopher, and defines herself as a political theorist. The book has a long epilogue by Xavier Antich, professor of aesthetics, which touches on some of the main lines of Arendt's thought. It is followed by Participate in the world (2020), a collection of articles written for the German-language Jewish magazine Aufbau during the period of exile, between 1941 and 1945, translated by Anna Soler Horta. The edition includes an appendix with the minutes of the meetings of the Young Jewish Group of 1942 in New York, with very notable interventions by Arendt, translated by Edgar Straehle. The contribution to the dissemination of Arendt's work by the publishing house Lleonard Muntaner is completed with the publication of Civil disobedience (2022) and Personal responsibility under the dictatorship (2025), translated by Dolors Udina.

The books mentioned, except the Conversations, have valuable introductory studies by the philosopher Stefania Fantauzzi, who specializes in Arendtian thought. In the prologue of Civil disobedience, Fantauzzi sets forth Arendt's understanding of disobedience as a legitimate space for political action between legality and duties, a guarantor of individual freedom. Thus, an act of disobedience is legitimate if it is not a private act inspired by conscience, but a response in favor of the general interest. Disobedience to the law in Arendtian terms is the demand for rights by those who do not have them. In the prologue to Personal responsibility, Fantuzzi expounds Arendt's thesis that politics is not based on obedience or conformity, but on consent and individual responsibility, which can be exercised even in totalitarian regimes. Fantuzzi confirms Arendt's militarism in Participate in the world, and the arguments he uses to justify the creation of a Jewish army to combat Nazism.

The Arrendian Universe

Other publishers have also contributed to expanding Arendt's universe in Catalan, but to a lesser extent. Thus, we can find Arendt's complete poetry collected in the edition Poems (Edicions del buc, 2018), translated into Catalan by Lola Andrés and Anacleto Ferrer, is a collection of 71 poems, 21 of which are from her youth, written between 1923 and 1926 (while she was studying philosophy in Marburg and Heidelberg) and which reflect the relationship between love; the remaining 50 are poems of exile and maturity, written between 1942 and 1961, among which stands out the poem dedicated to her second husband, the philosopher Blumenfeld, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and the poems composed in memory of deceased friends, such as Walter Benjamin. It is a collection that shows the most personal and intimate side of this thinker.

Another work translated into Catalan is On violence (Catalan International Institute for Peace and Ángulo Editorial, 2011), translated by Ángela Lorena, professor of Philosophy and Feminist Theory at the University of Barcelona, ​​​​and with a prologue by Fina Birulés, philosopher and leading Arendt specialist in Spain, which helps to situate the reflections in a particularly turbulent non-violent moment for civil rights, the pacifist rebellion against the Vietnam War, and May 1968. The text is the revised version of the intervention in a highly controversial debate on the legitimacy of violence with the philosopher Noam Chomsky, the poet Robert Lowell and the Irish politician and intellectual Conor Cru New York. According to Birulés, Arendt defends the thesis that violence is opposed to power and that neither phenomenon has a biological or irrational origin. For Arendt, violence is anti-political, apolitical, or pre-political, because it has an instrumental character, follows the dynamics of ends and means, and appears inspired by the rage provoked by the feeling of injustice. In any case, she does not declare herself a pacifist, considering that violence can be a necessary step to achieve freedom.

On the other hand, her personal notes on the tragic life and death of her friend Benjamin, entitled Walter Benjamin 1892-1940 (Flâneur, 2024), thanks to the translation by writer Yannick Garcia; and the essay translated from French The crisis of culture (Pórtico, 1989), by Jaume Colomer and Àlvar Valls, which includes the conference given in Barcelona by Alain Finkielkraut: Hannah Arendt and the crisis of culture. But, without a doubt, one of the milestones celebrated with greatest satisfaction is the reissue of The human condition (Edicions 62, 2023), in the version that the Catalan philosopher Oriol Farrés had already made in 2009 for the Empúries publishing house and which was out of print.

The publishing panorama of Arendt in Catalan is completed with the publication of a series of studies on the thinker: first of all, we must mention the very recent essay Hannah Arendt's Relevance: The Origins of Totalitarianism and the 21st Century (Asuntos, 2025), by his disciple and biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, translated by Gustau Muñoz; the book Hannah Arendt. Thinking in Dark Times (Enoanda, 2022), by the philosopher and translator Edgar Straehle; the doctoral thesis Action and Political Theory in Hannah Arendt (UB, 2000), by Anna Masó; the four studies on Arendt also by Masó, entitled About Hannah Arendt (Ediciones UB, 2020); and above all the contributions of Fina Birulés with the essay Hannah Arendt: The World at Stake (Arcadia, 2023), in which he delves into the notions of world and birth, and a second book entitled Hannah Arendt: Political Freedom and Totalitarianism (Gedisa, 2019), in which he analyzes the concepts of totalitarianism and freedom, with a prologue by Laura Llevadot, director of the post-foundational political philosophy collection in which the publication is framed. A final reference is Freedom according to Arendt (Tàndem, 2001), a unique book written by Maite Larrauri and illustrated by Max, which is halfway between popularization and comics.

Increased translations

The continued increase in Catalan translations of Arendt's works demonstrates the great interest aroused by her work, due to the highly topical nature of the themes she addresses. However, there is still a long way to go to make the entirety of her work accessible to Catalan-speaking readers, as key titles remain untranslated, such as The origins of totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, the doctoral thesis The concept of love in Saint Augustine; the book dedicated to the assimilated Jewish writer Rahel Varnhagen; the texts on the Jewish Question; and other works such as Men in times of darkness (except the chapter dedicated to Benjamin translated into Catalan), About the revolution, the interpretation of Marx within the framework of Western political thought; writings on Palestine; personal notes and memoranda; articles and texts on republicanism and other political topics; and correspondence with Martin Heidegger, Gershom Scholem, Mary McCarthy, Karl Jaspers, and other friends.