Absent in Arendt: Semmelweis and Boltzmann

Ignaz Semmelweis and Ludwig Boltzmann are two figures missing in Chapter VI of Arendt's The Human Condition.  Arendt may simply have been unaware of the opposition Boltzmann had faced.

Semmelweis is not remarkable in being missed: Pasteur is not there.  And yet arguably the changes in public hygiene have been the single most remarkable change in the "global" world which she is considering.

Arendt mocked those who might dream of living to be one hundred (had she had a child late in life, she might have wished to see grandchildren graduate from university...)

With very little to say about childbirth - the act of giving birth - but more to say about "birth" in the abstract (Heidegger was not present for the birth of his son Hermann, paternity aside) - and perhaps Arendt was never witness to a birth - it is remarkable that the man of science who spoke for such a simple truth would go unmentioned.  Semmelweiss fared worse in asylum than had Hölderlin and worse than would Heidegger.

Also remarkably absent is Edward Jenner, his methods and the near eradication of smallpox by the time of Arendt's research.  Had Arendt been the lone surviving child of a large family, her attitude and her book might have been different.

Did she in fact understand the difference between a bacillus and a virus?  Had she switched to filter cigarettes based on the mistaken belief that this would reduce the health risk? She and Heinrich both succumbed  to infarcts likely caused by a lack of exercise combined with heavy smoking. Would she have considered the science relevant? The case against filters is not obvious and is based on the nature of nicotine addiction.  Had she not seen how emphysema or lung cancer could reduce the range of action? In her case, she was prevented from writing her book on Judging and prevented from delivering a Heidegger eulogy.

Is it mostly common sense that is lacking n Chapter VI?

Also missing: the concepts of information and noise (Claude Shannon's "Theseus" dates from 1950.)
Prior to 1960, Arendt was unlikely to hear of non-linear dynamics in her circle.

See: Heidegger's bizarre broadcast of his opinion about the science behind radio and television (available on youtube.com)

A web  search of the 4000 volume collection of Arendt at Bard reveals no title by Boltzmann or Bolzano - nor Brentano or Ingarden - nor any Milosz poetry - although Celan and Char are there - and Hans Baumann's translation of Akhmatova's Requiem.

One very odd absence is the first volume of the Ricoeur which is suppoed to be modeled on Jaspers: only the small second volume is there.  Joel Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, is there but I have not been able to confirm that it is hers and not Bluecher's.  Another odd absence is the 1964 Explanation of Behaviour by Charles Taylor - as is the absence of the 1971 von Wright Explanation and Understanding - both books very familiar to me as a student of philosophy years before her death.

Note: her personal library had very little Husserl, no Levinas, no Canetti, no Tournier - and for her friendship with Randall Jarrell, a curious absence of American poets: even Denise Levertov is absent.  Michael Hamburger's translation of Baudelaire prose poems is there.  Broch is there, but only an English translation of Musil as "Five Women" - not a single volume in German.  The only Murdoch is the Black Prince: Iris Murdoch as philosopher is missing.  A great deal of British philosophy from the post-war 50's and 60's is absent (but there are at least 2 of the 4 R.G. Collingwood that one might expect.)  There are 4 volumes by Oakeshott - but the critical volume, his 1933 Modes of Experience is not there. Cassirer is of course there in multiple volumes, but Susanne Langer is missing.  Russell is missing.  The main works on Whitehead are missing (on small set of excerpts.)  But Bergson is there - even the T.E.Hulme translation of his Introduction to Metaphysics. Popper is missing (there is a Bryan Magee paperback.)  But Melville is there. Binswanger is there, but not Boss. Santayana is there in one volume as is Ortega, as is Unamuno.  Merleau-Ponty is not there in French.  But most of the Raymond Aron is there in French BUT NOT his work as a philosopher, which is truly amazing: not his 1961 (or the 1964 edition) or his 1969 - and her name is sometimes associated with his! Missing: La philosophie critique de l'histoire and Dimensions de la conscience historique.  The only Hayek is The political ideal of the rule of law. Rawls' T of E is there. As I look about my shelves of philosophy from the 50's, 60's and early 70's I wonder what more she had parted with, or given to students ... but no Canetti - and Arendt an authority of sorts on Broch?  Levi-Strauss is there -twice in French and twice in English. Calvino is not there. Valéry is there (an often in French) as is Gide. Piaget is not. Luria is not. Vygotsky is not. But The Master and Margarita is there. Pepys is not. Boswell is not. But Keats and Shelley are there.  They were playig catch-up with Americans, not with Brits. Emil Fackenheim, 1967, is there. Quine is not. The only Carnap is Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre - Die Logische Aufbau der Welt is not. But Weyl, Symmetry, 1952, is there - but nothing from 1913-1940.  There is no indication what year she acquired it, but the archive reports that it has ephemera and marginal lining. Her Freud includes the Standard Edition. Of a little Wittgenstein, only the Tractatus is reported as annotated; the Investigations are not listed in English or German. The only Ayer is the 1972 Russell. There is no Moore. No sign of a single American pragmatist. Kafka fares better. There is no signs she loaned out Tillich or Jonas or Löwith. Wollheim's Freud is there, but not his Art and its Objects - but Oakeshott on poetry is there (remember - she gave the Gifford Lectures on life and mind.) And as I said: the missing poets. Williams. Stevens. But there is Alvarez and Pound.  But no Beckett. Not in French or English. OF de Beauvoir, only La force des choses. As with Tournier, Roman Gary is absent. Is it possible that she missed both Le Roi des aulnes and Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique - the 1967 Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française? But she must have had a copy of The Painted Bird because she has notes about the author. But not Steps or Being There or Cockpit.  Did she read them and discard them? Sell them second-hand? Leave them in the college cafeteria? In an airport lounge? Where is Gravity's Rainbow?

Where are the two books by Raymond Aron on philosophy and history?  Arendt, who told Heidegger that she was only now reading Merleau-Ponty in 1972.  Marx, Heidegger and Jaspers will only take you so far.

Next: the curious parallel between a transcript of a lecture by Bluecher and writings of Jaspers. When is thought borrowed? (Bluecher, a Bard professor, was an autodidact and not a writer - and so perhaps not schooled in citations and references.)