The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Hannah Arendt

1906–1975

German-American political thinker who analysed totalitarianism, defended political action and plurality, and coined the phrase "the banality of evil".

Black and white photograph of a smiling woman with short dark hair, wearing a suit and a brooch
Photograph by Barbara Niggl Radloff at a congress of cultural critics, 1958. Münchner Stadtmuseum.Photo: Barbara Niggl Radloff · CC BY-SA 4.0 · See the original

The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable.

The Human Condition, pp. 177–8

Hannah Arendt was born into a German-Jewish family in Hannover in 1906. She studied with Martin Heidegger at Marburg, with whom she had a brief affair that left a lasting mark on her thought, attended Husserl’s lectures in Freiburg, and wrote her doctorate on Augustine’s concept of love under Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg. Forced to flee Germany in 1933, she worked for Jewish refugee organisations in Paris, and in 1941 emigrated to New York.

Her Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) established her reputation, and The Human Condition (1958) set out her philosophy of action. Her report on the Eichmann trial provoked fierce controversy. She held posts at several American universities and died in 1975, leaving her last work, The Life of the Mind, on thinking, willing and judging, unfinished.

Key ideas

Totalitarianism
In The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt studied Nazism and Stalinism as new forms of rule, whose radical evil lay in destroying human plurality and spontaneity and making people superfluous.
Labour, work and action
The active life has three activities. Labour sustains biological life, work builds a lasting world of things, and action, speaking and acting together among others, discloses who we are and realises our freedom.
Natality and freedom
Freedom is not choosing between options but the capacity to begin something new. It is rooted in natality: every birth brings someone unprecedented into the world, so we are capable of the unexpected.
The banality of evil
Reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Arendt traced his monstrous deeds not to fanatical hatred but to thoughtlessness, an inability to see anything from another’s point of view. She came to ask whether evil can be done without base motives, or any motives at all.
Tradition
Western
Region
Germany, Paris and New York

Influences

Influenced by

Hannah Arendt1906–1975

Influenced by

Hannah Arendt1906–1975

Where these links come from
  • Hannah Arendt drew on Augustine. Source: Tatjana Tömmel and Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, Hannah Arendt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Hannah Arendt drew on Immanuel Kant. Source: Tatjana Tömmel and Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, Hannah Arendt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Hannah Arendt studied with and drew on Martin Heidegger. Source: Tatjana Tömmel and Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, Hannah Arendt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Key works

  • The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
  • The Human Condition, 1958
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963
  • The Life of the Mind

Sources

  1. Tatjana Tömmel and Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves, Hannah Arendt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy