An Introduction to the Philosophy of Hannah Arendt

The philosopher who shone a spotlight on totalitarianism.

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Hannah Arendt is a philosopher who is very well known in continental philosophical circles. She remains unfairly unknown outside of continental philosophy circles.

Arendt is of course most famous for her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil. That book was her report of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, and that phrase that she develops there. The banality of evil has somewhat become a part of human consciousness.

Arendt’s philosophical views that she expressed in that book, though, were formed much earlier. Arendt was a student and apparently lover of Martin Heidegger, and she also studied under philosopher Karl Jaspers.

Arendt was a German Jew who originally opposed the Nazis until it became politically impossible for her to do so. She escaped Germany just in time as she was about to undergo trial for illegal activities doing research on…