This book is clearly the product of long rumination, the work of a scholar who has spent many years in the company of Arendt’s books.

The Review of Politics

In this penetrating analysis, McCarthy reveals how anti-political biases within the Western philosophical tradition spawned 'anthropologies' that Arendt regarded as profoundly at odds with human dignity, plurality, and freedom. Rejecting both the reductionism that conflates people with beasts and the romanticism that conflates them with gods, Arendt emerges as a civic republican whose highest political virtue is devotion to a common world that, by uniting and separating us, allows us to actualize the full range of human possibilities. Lucid, unpolemical, and scrupulously fair, McCarthy’s book is scholarship at its best.

- Sandra K. Hinchman, St. Lawrence University,

The Political Humanism of Hannah Arendt powerfully, honestly, and provocatively unites two core strands of Arendt's thinking. Arendt's humanism responds to the loss of the idea of humanity experienced in the rise of totalitarianism. Her political emphasis elevates freedom over security. Together, political humanism names Arendt's radical belief that being human is an activity of citizenship. This is a fresh and inspired account of Arendt's entire corpus that captures both the power and importance of her thinking. McCarthy writes in his own voice, seeking his way in the world and finding in Arendt a guide whose judgment of the world is harsh but not fatalistic. His book will appeal to scholars, but also to those who want, as did Arendt, to face up to, understand, and respond to our present challenges.

- Roger Berkowitz, Bard College,