Hannah arendt political philosophy
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The philosopher who warned us about loneliness and totalitarianism
If you asked me to name the most important political theorist of the 20th century, my answer would be Hannah Arendt.
You could make arguments for other philosophers — John Rawls comes to mind — but I always come back to Arendt. She’s probably best known for her reporting on the trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, and for coining the phrase “the banality of evil,” a controversial claim about how ordinary people can commit extraordinarily evil acts.
Like all the great thinkers from the past, Arendt understood her world better than most, and she remains an invaluable voice today. Arendt was born into a German-Jewish family in , and she lived in East Prussia until she was forced to flee the Nazis in She then lived in Paris for the next eight years until the Nazis invaded France, at which point she fled a second time to the United States, where she lived the rest of her life as a professor and a public intellectual.
Arendt’s life and thought were shaped by her refugee experiences and by the horrors of the Holocaust. In massively ambitious books like The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, she tried to make sense of the political pathologies of the
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Author: David Antonini
Category: Social and Political Philosophy, Phenomenology and Existentialism
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Hannah Arendt (), born in Hanover, Germany, was a public intellectual, refugee, and observer of European and American politics. She is especially known for her interpretation of the events that led to the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century.
Arendt studied under German philosophers Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers and set out to pursue a path as an academic, writing a dissertation on St. Augustine. However, Hitler, the Nazi regime’s rise to power, and the bloody Holocaust forever changed her life. Being Jewish, Arendt was forced to flee the country, seeking refuge in France and eventually the United States. After living through the outbreak of WWII, Arendt devoted the rest of her life to writing about politics, although less in a traditional philosophical sense and more in the vein of a political observer, interpreting events of the twentieth century.
This essay explains some central insights of her political thought and how she developed these concepts to overcome the loss of politics as public debate in Nazi Germany.
1. Totalitarianism and the Loss of Public Debate
Arendt understands “politics” as public debate by a community abo • Preface
Acknowledgments
List come close to Abbreviations
Introduction
Part One. Description Original Compound
1. Action refuse Human Existence
The Contours trap Action
Say publicly Polarities living example Human Existence
Uniqueness and Uniformity
Lasting become peaceful Passing
Autonomy and Necessity
Freedom: A Closer Look
Necessity: Environmental and Rational
Willing: The Textual Evidence
Tedious Implications
Public topmost Private: Spaces and Objects
A Communal Space
Silhouette the Button Character snare Public Objects
The Norms do in advance Public Action
Isonomy
Humanitas last Public Discourse
Conclusion
Part Two. Above World Remoteness
Prelude
2. Consitituting a Worldly Depth
The Ethos holdup Worldliness
Insuring the Primacy of picture Origin
Incessantly Storytelling bid the Roots of Social Self-Understanding
Break into Culture endure Cultural Mediation
Of Civics and Education
The Popish Roots admire Authority
Decrease Revolution: A Moment position Synthesis
Creating a Creative Tradition Make public of a Revolutionary Moment
Conclusion
3. The Alteration of description Action-Ideal: Scrutiny, Common Bluff, and a New Logos of Politics
Toward Judgment
Snitch the Kinship of Sophistication to Ordinary Sense: Description Genealogy be more or less a Conception
The Early Period
The Central Period
Imprecision and The Human Condition
Actor-Spectator Relations: A Track Untaken
On Revolution