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Name:
Hannah Arendt
Dates:
Born: October 14, 1906 in Hanover, Germany
Died: December 4, 1975 in New York City (heart attack)
Major Works:
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
The Human Condition (1958)
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)
On Revolution (1963)
On Violence (1970)
Specializations:
Social Philosophy
Political Philosophy
Social Psychology
Biography:
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was an American political scientist who was born in Germany, but fled
to France in 1933 to escape the Nazis and, in 1941, fled to the United States. She became a
United States citizen in 1951, later working as a professor and lecturer at schools like the
University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago.
Her multivolume work Origins of Totalitarianism explored the connection between political fascism and political anti-semitism in European history. Later works by Arendt expressed profound disappointment that philosophy was not better able to influence humanity to do good. In the preface to this work, she herself defined her ambition as:
Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to and resisting of, reality - whatever that may be.
Perhaps as a result, she spent a great deal of time studying the worst and most violent which humans had to offer - two of her most famous works Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) were on that topic. In the former, her principal argument was that totalitarianism had not been adequately explained and that it was a truly novel form of government, differing in fundamental ways from other forms of political oppression. Some of this stemmed from the uniqueness of modern society, with its alienation, atomization, and diffusion of responsibility, all of which help give rise to totalitarian tendencies.
Perhaps what is important about Arendt's writings, especially those on totalitarianism, is how they explore the nature of power in human relationships. For example, she deplored the use of the term "force" when talking about political power - as in the phrase "social forces" - because that term carried the connotation of something uncontrollable and unstoppable. She was greatly influenced by the writings of Max Weber and the distinctions he described regarding concepts such as authority and power.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
