Translation by Guillermo Solana Alonso

The works gathered in The Crises of the Republic, belonging to the last stage of Hannah Arendt's production, are genuine essays in understanding. They analyze controversial issues in the political life of the United States in the period of détente of the Cold War, at the height of the pacifist and protest movements and the student rebellion. But they are above all a brilliant reflection on the formation of judgment in politics, the ability to learn from events and the meaning of action.

"The Lie in Politics" is a meditation on the Pentagon Papers, on deception, self-deception, the elaboration of images, ideologization and the departure from the facts as elements that determined the management of the US Administration in relation to the Vietnam War. In the essay on "Civil Disobedience," Arendt takes up the theme of "the moral relationship of the citizen with the law in a society of assent." In reference to the figures of Socrates and Thoreau, but also to Locke, Montesquieu and Tocqueville, he enters into the debate generated by the challenge to established authority and proposes to understand civil disobedience in terms of voluntary associations or organized minorities, that is, as protest groups with constitutional legitimacy. "On Violence" starts from the observation, barely noticed, that "the more dubious and uncertain the instrument of violence has become in international relations, the more reputation and appeal it has acquired in internal affairs, especially in matters of revolution", and provides a clarifying distinction between the notions of power, power, authority, force and violence. In the conversation that closes the book, "Thoughts on Politics and Revolution", Arendt shows her most polemical and incisive side on issues such as the student movement, the Third World or the opposition between capitalism and socialism.