October 14th is Hannah Arendt's birth day. She was born in Hanover, Germany as a single child to a secular, politically progressive, socialist, Jewish family in 1906 but attended synagogue (Reform) with her grandfather and received Jewish education from the rabbi there. Her name at birth was Johanna Cohn Arendt. Although she didn't identify as a philosopher, nevertheless, whether she likes it or not, she's known as a famous political philosopher. Was she possibly put off calling herself a philosopher when Heidegger, with whom she studied and loved at the University of Marburg, became a Nazi supporter? However, this love affair only comes out in 1982, after both had died, when a biographer mentions it and then later in 1995 when some letters between them are apparently discovered and turned into a sensationalist book. So we can't be sure about the relationship between Arendt and Heidegger.
Arendt died in 1975 having just completed 2 volumes on Mind: thinking, willing and judging. Well, I judge that to be very philosophical! Her work on Mind remains unfinished at a crucial stage when she was about to start volume 3 on Judging. She died suddenly while entertaining friends.
It's important, I think, not to be too distracted by her easy writing style thereby thinking she's less philosophical than she is. Hers is a very continental style of philosophy (I discuss continental philosophy on my philosophy podcast series, Philosophy Fluency, episode 2, available here) so unlikely to be popular with analytic philosophers. Arendt was a public intellectual. The Library of Congress has a collection of her papers and artefacts (25,000 items, 82,500+ images). Correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, book m/s, transcripts of Eichmann's proceedings, notes, family and personal stuff, are some of the papers held there .
Hannah Arendt wasn't the only one in her family to be politically engaged. During WWI, Arendt's mother set up a discussion group on democratic socialism. Both her parents belonged to the social democratic political party which today is called the SPD. Her musician mother, Martha, was influenced by Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish, Jewish, socialist, Marxist, living in Germany. Rosa was both a philosopher and a revolutionary who also influenced Martha's daughter, Hannah Arendt.
Although Arendt was not especially religious, she had, nonetheless, as a child, enjoyed learning about Judaism from the synagogue's rabbi. Her Jewishness remained very much part of her identity and, as is true of Spinoza who remained religious, it's impossible to read their work without bearing this in mind. (This is now being acknowledged by the US Arendt Centre for Politics and Humanities, see their Virtual Reading Group here.) However, despite this, she strangely undertook a PhD on St Augustine and love with Karl Jaspers, an existentialist philosopher, as her supervisor. But then Marx's PhD was on atomism in Ancient Philosophy! Goes to show that what a student does for their PhD need not mean a great deal or be relevant to their future research. More relevant is their upbringing rather than any subsequent institutional education. This is why I look at a philosopher's background. It helps to understand where they are coming from and so avoids unnecessary errors when reading their work. It doesn't follow from this that one is always right in interpreting a philosopher's work but at least one is as close as it is possible to be. After all, everyone has a slightly, or not so slightly, different interpretation of any given philosopher and that's a good thing. Diversity is interesting and leaves things open-ended which is important because we cannot be absolutely sure what someone thinks or means even when they are right in front of us, never mind when they are no longer with us to explain what they meant.
Arendt's work is extensive and wide-ranging from totalitarianism, anti-Semitism, violence to Mind. She responded to what was going on at the time. For instance, her book 'On Violence' is responding to what is going on in the 1960's. Her work on the trial of Eichmann, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil', is a response to something that was taking place at that time. She received criticism for using the word ' banality' in relation to Eichmann and seeing evil as banal. I think she had her philosophy cap on. She was trying to figure out: Why? A typical philosophical question. By using empathy she attempted the impossible: To enter Eichmann's mind. Maybe this is what inspired her unfinished trilogy on Mind? The trilogy may also go back to Arendt trying to understand what Heidegger was thinking in supporting Nazis.
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