Born 1906
in Hanover, died 1975 NY.
Studied
under Heidegger for 1 year, and had an affair with him.
Studied
half a year with Husserl, and then with Karl Jaspers.
Finished
her PHD dissertation "Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin” (LA) under Jaspers
in 1929.
1.
She was forced to flee Germany in 1933
(like my grandparents) after being arrested by the Gestapo, and eventually
moved to Paris until 1941. She spent 6 years till 1939 on Jewish Refugee
Organizations. Was interned in “Camp Gurs” as an “enemy alien” for a few weeks
in 1937.
2.
Divorced Gunther Stern in 1936 and
lived with Heinrich Blucher (expelled from the communist party for supporting
joint action with non-communists) whom she married in 1940.
3.
1941 moved to NY with her husband and
mother. Illegal visas provided by Hiram Bingham (to 2500 Jews) and monetary
support from Varian Fry.
4.
From 41-45 wrote for the Aufbau, from
44 on she directed research for the Commission of European Jewish Cultural
Reconstruction and often traveled to Germany. Became a citizen in 1950.
5.
During post war she lectured at
Princeton, Berkeley and Chicago, became a professor of Political Philosophy in
the New
School for Social Research and stayed there until her death.
Writings
1.
1940 Wrote Rachel Varnhagen's
biography not published until 1957.
A fascinating story of a prominent “salon” in the 19th Century and the woman who headed it, one Arendt so associated with she called her her best friend, dead for 100 years.
A fascinating story of a prominent “salon” in the 19th Century and the woman who headed it, one Arendt so associated with she called her her best friend, dead for 100 years.
2.
1959- The Origins of Totalitarianism
(OT) – Equated Stalinism and Nazism in both anti-Semitism and imperialism.
3.
1958 - The Human Condition. The
concepts of the Political v Social, between Labor v Work. Political life is not
universal as a place where individuals achieve freedom through the construction
of a common world.
4.
1961 attended the trial of Adolph Eichmann
in Jerusalem as a reported for The New Yorker Magazine.
5.
1963 Published Eichmann in Jerusalem:
A Report on the Banality of Evil (EJ) More about this in the movie and
below. She was not against the execution of Eichmann stating:
Just as you [Eichmann]
supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the
Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations—as though you and
your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit
the world—we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be
expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only
reason, you must hang.
6.
1962 Published On Revolution
Arendt presents a
comparison of two of the main revolutions of the eighteenth century, the
American and French Revolutions. She goes against a common view of both Marxist
and leftist views when she argues that France, while well studied and often
emulated, was a disaster and that the largely ignored American Revolution was a
success. The turning point in the French Revolution occurred when the leaders
rejected their goals of freedom in order to focus on compassion for the masses.
In America, the Founding Fathers never betray the goal of Constitutio
Libertatis. However, Arendt believes the revolutionary spirit of those men had
been lost, and advocates a “council system” as an appropriate institution to
regain that spirit.
7.
Between Past and Future and Crises
of the Republic
8.
1975- Died after completing the first
of 2 volumes on "Thinking and Willing” and "The life of the
Mind" published 1978.
She developed a Socratic method and a
conscience which tells us what we cannot do if we wish to remain “friends with
ourselves.”
14.
The third book on "Judging"
was unfinished, but some lectures were published posthumously as "Lectures
on Kant's Political Philosophy (LKPP).
==============================
Conceptions
1.
Political activity trains people in
using judgement and achieving a shared view of what is good.
It
trains the ability to choose representatives.
It
organizes concerted action and can provide a measure of political success.
2.
Human Rights are in conflict with civil
rights. Look at refugees, deprived of civil rights guaranteed by a state, they
are bereft of all practical rights since no one defends them.
a.
There is also the rejection by the population
of refugees as undesirables
b.
There is also the resistance by refugees
who attempt to maintain their own ethnic and national identities
c.
The Jewish plight was 1) Removal of
citizenship by Germany followed by 2) Removal of stateless refugees to “relocation
camps” EJ repeatedly shows this in detail.
This is a very significant subject
matter and worth studying the Origins of Totalitarianism
3.
Modernity is the age of bureaucratic
administration.
a.
An age of anonymous labor, rather than
politics and action, of elite domination and the manipulation of public
opinion. Actions are separated from actors. Who screwed up in “Fast and Furious,”
who designed “A video did it,” even what is the meaning of “gun violence” in
each case a separation between the action and the actor which protect his anonymity.
b.
It is the age where homogeneity and
conformity replace plurality and freedom. The concept of “Freedom from speech”
current in Universities, areas of refuge, and “Pluralism” defined as
restricting speech and action rather than incorporating permissiveness for
range.
c.
Isolation and loneliness erode human
solidarity and all spontaneous forms of living together. The isolation of the
Audio/Video/Phone and the separation between information and contact.
d.
In the form of Stalinism and Nazism,
totalitarianism has exploded the established categories of political thought
and the accepted standards of moral judgment, and has thereby broken the
continuity of our history. Faced with the tragic events of the Holocaust and
the Gulag, we can no longer go back to traditional concepts and values, so as
to explain the unprecedented by means of precedents, or to understand the
monstrous by means of the familiar.
3.
The burden of our time must be faced
without the aid of tradition, or as Arendt once put it, “without a bannister ”
(RPW, 336).
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