Hannah Arendt
Political philosopher born in Germany, exiled to the United States: she covers the Eichmann trial and speaks of the 'banality of evil', born of a lack of thought.
Life
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was a German-born political philosopher of Jewish origin, who fled to France and then to the United States in 1941, where she later taught at Chicago and the New School, among other places. She analysed totalitarianism, the human condition (labour, work, action) and personal responsibility. Her report on the Eichmann trial popularised the phrase "the banality of evil".
Main works
Traces how antisemitism, imperialism and mass society made totalitarian regimes possible.
Distinguishes labour, work and action, and defends political action as the place of freedom.
Portrays an ordinary criminal whose evil stems from a lack of thought rather than perversity.
In his own words
« The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. »
« they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceFreedom is the human capacity to begin something new and to act among others, rooted in the fact that every birth is a new beginning.
Arendt, What Is Freedom? in Between Past and Future (1961)
She doubts that a fixed human nature can be known; what people are depends on the conditions of life and on what they do with them.
Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)