Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought was published by Viking Press in 1961 (expanded to eight exercises in 1968), and it is Arendt’s most accessible philosophical work — a collection of essays that can be read independently but that together constitute a sustained meditation on the crisis of modernity.
The title refers to a parable from Kafka: a man stands in a gap between two forces, the past pushing him forward and the future pushing him back. This, Arendt argues, is the situation of modern thought: the tradition of Western political philosophy (from Plato to Marx) has broken down, and we can no longer rely on inherited concepts to understand our situation. We must think without “banisters” — without the support of established frameworks.
The essays examine the concepts that have lost their traditional meaning: authority (which depends on a hierarchical world view that modernity has destroyed), freedom (which has been confused with sovereignty and with the ability to do what one wants), history (which has been turned from a record of human action into a process with its own logic), truth (which has been subordinated to political utility), and education (which has been corrupted by the abandonment of adult responsibility for the world as it is).
The essay “The Crisis in Education” is perhaps the most widely read, arguing that progressive education — which treats children as autonomous beings who should determine their own learning — is a form of abandonment, a refusal by adults to take responsibility for introducing the young to a world they did not make and cannot yet understand.
Collecting Between Past and Future
First edition (Viking Press, New York, 1961): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $80–$250
- Without jacket: $20–$50
- Enlarged edition (1968, eight essays): $30–$80