ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NUMEROUS individuals and institutions helped to make this book possible. I should like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for a timely grant; the Loeweinstein Fellowship at Amherst for additional funding; and the Trustees of Amherst College for their generous leaves policy. I should also like to thank the Center for European Studies at Harvard for providing a congenial home away from home during summers and my sabbatical. Finally, thanks to the staff at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach for making available many of the manuscripts Heidegger sent Arendt. (The Arendt/Heidegger correspondence remains, as a general rule, off limits to scholars at the present time.)

I have benefited from conversation and argument with, amongst others, George Kateb, Seyla Benhabib, Richard Flathman, Bill Connolly, Bonnie Honig, Tracy Strong, Fred Dolan, Bob Gooding-Williams, Nathaniel Berman, Terry Aladjem, Patchen Markell, Shin Chiba, Nick Xenos, and (especially) Jeff Lomonaco. Parts of the book were presented at the Harvard and Princeton Political Philosophy Colloquiums: I wish to thank all who participated, especially Steve Macedo at Harvard. My colleague Austin Sarat proved a tireless reader of drafts and an indispensable source of much good advice. I first began reading Arendt seriously as a graduate student at Princeton, and I am grateful for the guidance Sheldon Wolin provided. I am also thankful to Richard Rorty, who afforded many of us at Princeton our first glimpse of a “disenchanted” Heidegger. As the book will attest, I have found disagreements with my teachers and colleagues to be the most instructive; I beg their indulgence.

Lurline Dowell word-processed the penultimate version of the entire book and was of great help throughout the composing process. Vicki Farrington bravely undertook the task of last-minute changes.

A special word of thanks to Cathy Ciepiela, Fred Dolan, and Tycho Manson for friendship over sometimes difficult years. The book is dedicated to my parents, whose support has been constant and unstinting. Finally, I should like to thank George Kateb, for the example provided by his dedication to the life of the mind, and Svetlana Boym, for teaching me about aesthetics and showing me that seriousness can take many forms, not all of them Germanic.

Parts of Chapter 3 originally appeared in Political Theory, vol. 20, no. 2, 274–308, © Sage Publications, reprinted by permission, Sage Publications, Inc.