Hannah Arendt
For Arendt, politics means acting together among equals in public, and the worst evil is often done by ordinary people who have stopped thinking.
Placement
Totalitarianism, the banality of evil and the vita activa: politics as acting together in plurality.
Key ideas
- Banality of evil
- Natality
- Vita activa
- Plurality
Teachers: Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger
Influence
Influenced by 7
Aristotle
influenced by ✓
Arendt drew on Aristotle’s bios politikos and his distinction of praxis from poiesis in separating action from work and labour (The Human Condition, 1958). H. Arendt, The Human Condition (1958); SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Aristotle › 384–322 BCE
Augustine
influenced by ✓
Arendt wrote a dissertation on Augustine’s concept of love (1929) and derived natality from his ‘that there be a beginning, man was created’ (The Human Condition, 1958). H. Arendt, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (1929); The Human Condition (1958); Augustine, De civitate Dei XII; SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Augustine › 354–430
Immanuel Kant
influenced by ✓
Arendt read Kant’s judgement of taste, with its ‘enlarged mentality’, as the model of political judgement (Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, given 1970, publ. 1982). H. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. R. Beiner (1982); I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790); SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Edmund Burke
influenced by ✓
Arendt took up Burke’s argument for inherited ‘rights of Englishmen’ against abstract human rights, finding it confirmed by the rightless stateless (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951). H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951); E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Edmund Burke › 1729–1797
Rosa Luxemburg
influenced by
Arendt praised Luxemburg’s trust in the spontaneous action of the masses and her early criticism of the Bolsheviks (review of Nettl, 1966; ‘Rosa Luxemburg: 1871–1919’, 1968). H. Arendt, “A Heroine of Revolution”, review of J. P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, New York Review of Books (1966); repr. as “Rosa Luxemburg: 1871–1919”, in Men in Dark Times (1968)
Evidence: AI draft
Rosa Luxemburg › 1871–1919
Karl Jaspers studied with
studied with ✓
Arendt took her doctorate under Jaspers in Heidelberg in 1928 with Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (printed 1929); their correspondence continued until his death. H. Arendt & K. Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1926–1969 (1985); E. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (1982)
Karl Jaspers › 1883–1969
Walter Benjamin
influenced by ✓
Arendt edited Benjamin’s Illuminations (1968) and in her introduction described his thinking as ‘pearl diving’ that breaks fragments of thought from the past. H. Arendt, “Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940”, introduction to W. Benjamin, Illuminations (1968); repr. in Men in Dark Times (1968)
Walter Benjamin › 1892–1940
Influenced 9
Jürgen Habermas
influenced ✓
Habermas took up Arendt’s communicative concept of power as the ability to act in concert but faulted its neglect of strategic action (‘Hannah Arendts Begriff der Macht’, 1976). J. Habermas, “Hannah Arendts Begriff der Macht” (1976), in Philosophisch-politische Profile (1981); Faktizität und Geltung (1992); SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Giorgio Agamben
influenced ✓
Agamben drew on Arendt’s analysis of the camps and stateless refugees stripped of rights (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951) for his figure of bare life (Homo Sacer, 1995). G. Agamben, Homo sacer (1995); Mezzi senza fine (1996); H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951); SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Giorgio Agamben › b. 1942
Adriana Cavarero
influenced
Cavarero turned Arendt’s distinction between what and who someone is into a philosophy of the narratable self (Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti, 1997). A. Cavarero, Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti (1997; Eng. Relating Narratives, 2000); H. Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)
Evidence: AI draft
Adriana Cavarero › b. 1947
Judith Butler
influenced
Butler took up Arendt’s right to have rights (Who Sings the Nation-State?, with Spivak, 2007) and space of appearance (Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 2015). J. Butler and G. C. Spivak, Who Sings the Nation-State? (2007); J. Butler, Parting Ways (2012); Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015); SEP “Hannah Arendt”
Evidence: AI draft
Judith Butler › b. 1956
Achille Mbembe
influenced ✓
In “Necropolitics” (2003) Mbembe drew, alongside Foucault’s biopower, on Arendt’s analysis of race, colonial rule and the camps in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) to describe the colony as the place where sovereignty is exercised as the right to kill. A. Mbembe, “Necropolitics”, Public Culture 15:1 (2003), 11–40
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Achille Mbembe › b. 1957
Rahel Jaeggi
influenced
In Welt und Person (1997), based on her master’s thesis, Jaeggi examined the anthropological background of Arendt’s social critique to use it for analysing social pathologies. R. Jaeggi, Welt und Person. Zum anthropologischen Hintergrund der Gesellschaftskritik Hannah Arendts (1997)
Evidence: AI draft
Rahel Jaeggi › b. 1966
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Mahmood Mamdani
influenced
Mamdani read the Rwandan genocide with Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, placing it in a history of colonial genocide that began with settlers’ violence against natives, such as the genocide of the Herero. M. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (2001), ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Mahmood Mamdani › b. 1946
Seyla Benhabib
influenced
Benhabib drew on Arendt’s ‘enlarged mentality’, taken from Kant’s Critique of Judgement, for her interactive universalism (Situating the Self, 1992) and read Arendt as a ‘reluctant modernist’ (1996). S. Benhabib, Situating the Self (1992); The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (1996); H. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1982)
Evidence: AI draft
Seyla Benhabib › b. 1950
Jason Stanley
influenced
Stanley drew on Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism for fascist ‘unreality’, where propaganda and conspiracy erode a shared sense of fact (How Fascism Works, 2018). J. Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), “Unreality”; H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Evidence: AI draft
Jason Stanley › b. 1969
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Iris Marion Young
criticised by
Young took up Arendt’s distinction between guilt and political responsibility but tied responsibility to participation in unjust structures, not to membership in a polity (Responsibility for Justice, 2011). I. M. Young, Responsibility for Justice (2011), ch. 3 “Guilt versus Responsibility: A Reading and Partial Critique of Hannah Arendt”; H. Arendt, “Collective Responsibility” (1968)
Evidence: AI draft
Iris Marion Young › 1949–2006
Criticizes 5
Plato
criticised
Arendt held that Plato’s philosopher-ruler replaced action among equals with the model of making, beginning the tradition’s escape from politics into rule (The Human Condition, 1958, § 31). H. Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), § 31 “The Traditional Substitution of Making for Acting”; “What Is Authority?”, in Between Past and Future (1961)
Evidence: AI draft
Plato › 428–348 BCE
Arthur de Gobineau
criticised
Arendt analysed Gobineau as an aristocratic theorist of decline whose race-thinking, before racism proper, later became a weapon of racist politics (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951, ch. 6). H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), part II, ch. 6 “Race-Thinking before Racism”
Evidence: AI draft
Arthur de Gobineau › 1816–1882
Karl Marx
criticised
Arendt objected that Marx blurred the distinction between labour and work and, defining man as animal laborans, lost sight of action (The Human Condition, 1958, ch. III). H. Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), ch. III “Labor”; “Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought” (1953, publ. 2002)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Martin Heidegger studied with
studied with ✓
Arendt studied with Heidegger in Marburg in 1924–25, attending his lecture course on Plato’s Sophist, and then went to Jaspers in Heidelberg; their personal relationship, documented in their letters, began in Marburg. E. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (1982); H. Arendt & M. Heidegger, Briefe 1925 bis 1975 (1998)
criticised
Arendt criticised Heidegger’s Self as isolated, its being-with merely structural (‘What Is Existenz Philosophy?’, 1946), and his turn to a ‘will-not-to-will’ (The Life of the Mind, 1978). H. Arendt, “What Is Existenz Philosophy?”, Partisan Review 13 (1946); The Life of the Mind II: Willing (1978)
Evidence: AI draft
Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976
Frantz Fanon
criticised
Arendt rejected the belief, drawn from Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, that violence creates a new humanity: violence can destroy power, never create it (On Violence, 1970). H. Arendt, On Violence (1970), with her sharpest criticism aimed at Sartre’s preface; R. J. Bernstein, “Violence”, Political Concepts 3.1 (2012)
Evidence: AI draft
Frantz Fanon › 1925–1961
Works
Antisemitism, imperialism, totalitarianism.
Labor, work, action.
A report on the banality of evil.
Thinking, willing, judging – after Eichmann.
Position
Arendt wanted to understand what had happened in the twentieth century. In The Origins of Totalitarianism she traced how antisemitism, imperialism and the dissolution of class society culminated in a new form of rule based on terror, ideology and the destruction of human spontaneity. In The Human Condition she distinguished labour, work and action; only action – speaking and acting together among equals, in plurality – constitutes the political, and every birth (“natality”) brings the possibility of a new beginning. Her report on Eichmann coined the phrase “the banality of evil”: monstrous deeds can arise from thoughtlessness rather than demonic depth. Arendt remains a central voice of political thought, independent of every school. Her essay “Reflections on Little Rock” (1959), which opposed court-ordered school desegregation, and her portrayal of Africans in The Origins of Totalitarianism have drawn sustained criticism (Ralph Ellison, Kathryn Gines).
Life & context
Arendt was born near Hanover in 1906 and grew up in Königsberg. She studied with Heidegger and Husserl and took her doctorate under Karl Jaspers. In 1933 she fled to Paris, was interned in 1940 and escaped to New York in 1941; for years she was stateless. She taught at various American universities and reported on the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker.
Further main works
- On Revolution (1963)
Appears in
- Journey ‘Philosophy under National Socialism’ · Stop 10 of 10
- Journey ‘Thinking after Auschwitz’ · Stop 3 of 10
- Debate ‘Democracy, Truth and Polarisation’
- Debate ‘Open or Closed Borders? The Ethics of Migration’
- Debate ‘Arendt and Scholem on Eichmann in Jerusalem’
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