Hannah Arendt

Contemporary philosophy

Hannah Arendt defined herself as a political theorist rather than a philosopher.
Yet her work, which laid bare the nature and inner workings of totalitarianism and shed new light on aspects of modern culture, profoundly renewed political philosophy.
Here is an overview of the work of this remarkable thinker.

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, Germany, in 1906, into a secular Jewish family. Her father, an engineer, died when she was just seven years old.

At eighteen, 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 moved to Freiburg, where she attended Husserl's lectures. Finally, she completed her studies under Karl Jaspers at the University of Heidelberg, writing her doctoral thesis Love and Saint Augustine under his supervision.

The Rise of Perils

From 1933, when Hitler came to power, Germany became a dangerous place for her. She was arrested by the Gestapo, then released.

Realising that her situation was growing increasingly precarious, she made her way 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 fellow German refugee.

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

In New York

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

1951 was a pivotal year: she published her landmark work The Origins of Totalitarianism and embarked on a series of lectures at prestigious American universities (Princeton, Berkeley, Columbia…). Such a brilliant academic career was still unusual for a woman at the time.

A few years later, two further books appeared: The Human Condition (1958) and Between Past and Future (1961), cementing her reputation with the wider public.

She travelled to Jerusalem to cover the Eichmann trial, out of which grew a searching meditation on the banality of evil, which again met with great success while also sparking considerable controversy.

In 1963, she was appointed to the chair of political science at the University of Chicago, and then to a professorship at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1967. It was in that city that she died in 1975, leaving behind dozens of books, essays, and 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