Hannah Arendt

Contemporary philosophy

Hannah Arendt defined herself as a specialist in political theory rather than as a philosopher.
However, her theories, describing the nature and functioning of totalitarianism and aspects of modern culture, profoundly renewed political philosophy.
Here is an overview of the works of this brilliant woman.

Bibliography

Here are the essential books if you wish to better understand the thought of this author:

Ettinger, Elzbieta (1997), Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger, Yale University Press
Kielmansegg, Peter Graf; Mewes, Horst; Glaser-Schmidt, Elisabeth, eds. (1997), Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Émigrés and American Political Thought After World War II., Cambridge University Press
Honig, Bonnie, ed. (2010), Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, Penn State Press
May, Derwent (1986), Hannah Arendt, Penguin Books
Hattem, Cornelis Van; Hattem, Kees van (2005), Superfluous people: a reflection on Hannah Arendt and evil, University Press of America

Biography: life of Arendt

Youth

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover in Germany in 1906, into a secular Jewish family. Her father, an engineer, died when she was just 7 years old.

At the age of 18, she left to study philosophy and theology at the University of Marburg, where she studied under Heidegger, with whom she had a secret and passionate relationship. She then went to Freiburg, where she attended lectures by Husserl. Finally, she completed her training with Karl Jaspers at the University of Heidelberg. It was under his supervision that she wrote her thesis Love and Saint Augustine.

The rise of perils

From 1933, when Hitler came to power, the situation in Germany became dangerous for her. She was arrested by the Gestapo and released.

Realising that the situation was becoming increasingly dangerous, she managed to go to France, where she worked to help refugees who, like her, were fleeing Nazism.

She divorced her first husband, the young German philosopher Günther Anders, whom she had married in 1929, and married Heinrich Blücher, a German refugee.

She was arrested in France, where she was interned.

She was arrested in France and interned in the Gurs camp, from which she escaped to Portugal. Thanks to her contacts with an American diplomat, she obtained a passport for America and settled in New York, from where she could only watch helplessly as the tragedy unfolded.

In New York

After the war, she intervened on Heidegger's behalf during the trial brought against him for his attitude under the Nazi regime.

In 1951, it was a pivotal year: she published her fundamental work The Origins of Totalitarianism and began a series of lectures at prestigious American universities (Princeton, Berkeley, Columbia...). This brilliant academic career was still rare for a woman at that time.

A few years later, two more books would appear, The Human Condition (1958) and Between Past and Future (1961), ensuring her fame with the public.

She travelled to Jerusalem to cover the Eichmann trial, from which she wrote a reflective work on the banality of evil, which again met with great success, while also sparking significant controversy.

In 1963, she won the chair of political science at the University of Chicago, then was appointed professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, in 1967. It was in this city that she died in 1975, leaving to posterity dozens of books, essays or articles, several of which were published posthumously.

Main works

Love and Saint Augustine, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Boston: Mariner Books Classics, 2024
The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019
Between Past and Future, London: Penguin Classics, 2006
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, London: Penguin Classics, 2006
On Revolution, London: Penguin Classics, 2006