The full story of the conflict between two pivotal twentieth-century thinkers is explored, revealing the lessons their disagreements offer today. Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin, both Jewish émigré intellectuals, had fundamental disagreements on politics, history, and philosophy. Berlin intensely disliked Arendt, claiming she embodied “everything that I detest most,” while Arendt responded to his hostility with indifference and suspicion. This narrative, rich in drama and passion, chronicles their fraught relationship, from their first meeting in wartime New York to the widening intellectual chasm in the 1950s, the controversy surrounding Arendt’s 1963 book, and their final missed opportunity to engage at a 1967 conference. Kei Hiruta draws on new archival material to trace the evolution of their conflict and Berlin's lingering animosity toward Arendt after her death. The examination delves into key issues that both connected and divided them, such as totalitarianism, evil, the Holocaust, human agency, moral responsibility, Zionism, American democracy, British imperialism, and the Hungarian Revolution. Central to their disagreements was a profound question about the essence of human freedom.
