SOURCE: "Bad Times," in New York Review of Books, Vol. XIII, No. 8, November 6, 1969, pp. 4, 6, 8-9.

In the following excerpt, Cameron highlights ambiguities in Arendt's political writings, tracing their genesis to the "peculiar character" of twentieth-century culture.

Thinkers who are original and profound often mask their ideas in a style, not so much of prose as of thought, that is opaque to all but the most determined reader. This is obvious in the work of, say, Kant; and opacity of style may produce those long-lasting ambiguities that provide rich material for the work of the commentator. If Miss Arendt's work survives—and it is surely more likely to survive than that of most other contemporary writers on politics—we may well find that the darkness of her thought attracts a multitude of commentators.

It is not even clear that the most polemical of her works, Eichmann in Jerusalem, has...