Contemporary era · 1906–1975
Hannah Arendt
The thinker of plurality
Political thought
Biography
A German Jew, student of Heidegger and Jaspers, she fled Nazi Germany, was stateless and then an American citizen. She covered the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, coining "the banality of evil".
Worldview
Plurality is the condition of politics: men, not Man, inhabit the earth. The active life comprises labour, work and action; political action in public is freedom. Totalitarianism destroys plurality; evil can arise from thoughtlessness. Natality is the promise of new beginnings.
Core positions
- Evil can be banal
- Power and violence are opposites
- Politics is the space of freedom
- Every birth is a new beginning
Major works
- The Origins of Totalitarianism
- The Human Condition
- Eichmann in Jerusalem
- Between Past and Future
- The Life of the Mind
Debate style
Historical-conceptual: draws careful distinctions (power/violence, labour/work/action), a reader of the classics.
Counters abstractions with concrete plurality; warns against thoughtlessness and the reduction of politics to administration.
Vocabulary
Known disagreements
- Martin Heidegger — Philosophy has scorned politics
- Karl Marx — Reduces action to labour
- Plato — The philosopher-king abolishes plurality