Hannah Arendt (1906-75)

Arendt was a Jewish academic who fled from Germany to France in 1933 and fled France in 1940, arriving in the United States in 1941 with her husband and mother and illegal visas issued by a U.S. diplomat Hiram Bingham IV - who helped about 2,500 Jews enter the country.

She invented the phrase banality of evil from her observations of the trial of Adolf Eichmann. She saw Eichmann as having committed deeds that were monstrous while being mediocre rather than himself a monster. She saw Eichmann as a normal person conforming to the wants and values of those in power: the Nazis.

She wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism, labeling Hitler's regime as totalitarian, although Hitler and the Nazis objected only to points of views and actions that they saw as threats to their power. But she knew the Nazi regime well enough, and totalitarian was her choice of a word with which to describe it. She saw "totalitarianism" in what she described as the Nazis wanting to do away with unfit races.

She also described communists as totalitarian in their belief in class struggle and effort to do away with the ruling class: the bourgeoisie. She wrote the Origins of Totalitarianism while Stalin was in power. Stalin, like the Nazis, was bent upon crushing what he perceived to be threats to his power, while some communists clung to the belief of merely depriving the bourgeoisie their political power and leaving them free except for having to make their way working as other people did - a class of people fading from history. The Stalinists had won, with communists killing communists, Arendt describing his power as totalitarian. And she examined the movements founding father, Karl Marx, describing him as an enemy of freedom.

Arendt described the aim of the Nazis and Stalinists as omnipotence. She believed in pluralism - in freedom for diversity in ideas as well as political affiliations. She believed in debate among equals. Arendt was an Epicurean insofar as she believed in enduring. But unlike Epicurus she believed in participation in public life rather than just smelling the roses. Haunted by the rise of Hitler and Stalinism, she believed that to remain free, people should participate in the political life of their society - to counter the terror and ideology that rulers take in trying to achieve omnipotence. She did not look kindly upon withdrawing from the world to pursue timeless wisdom or personal salvation. What makes us more than animal members of a herd is our participation moved by independent thought. She saw people accepting and celebrating powerful authoritarian figures not only as protection but as an escape from the responsibility of thinking for oneself.

Among Arend's other works is On Violence, published in 1969 - 87 pages. The book touches on political rule and history. Arendt recognized that power requires approval, support and cooperation. As the book's jacket claims, she argues "against Mao Zedong's dictum that 'power grows out of the barrel of a gun,' proposing instead that 'power and violence are opposites. A summary of On Violence is posted on this site.

Philosophically she was at odds with her colleague at the University of Chicago and fellow Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Leo Strauss. They did not argue in writing, but she believed in the possibility of a liberal order and Strauss did not.

address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/thinkers/arendt.htm