Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Johanna "Hannah" Arendtwas a German-born Jew and American political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular" and instead described herself as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." She escaped Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen. Her works deal with the nature of power, and the subjects...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth14 October 1906
CityHanover, Germany
CountryGermany
The business of thinking ... undoes every morning what it had finished the night before.
I'm completely against [feminism]. I have no desire to give up my privileges.
The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.
Ideological thinking becomes emancipated from the reality that we perceive with our five senses, and insists on a 'truer' reality concealed behind all perceptible things, dominating them from this place of concealment and requiring a sixth sense that enables us to become aware of it.
... we may remember what the Romansthought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men, among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.
... the space left to freedom is very small.ends are inherent in human nature and the same for all.
It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the ferrets of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.
Thought ... is still possible, and no doubt actual, wherever men live under the conditions of political freedom. Unfortunately ... no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.
Legitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while justification relates to an end that lies in the future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate.
The true dividing line between people is whether they are capable of being in love with their destiny.
... the will always wills to do something and thus implicitly holds in contempt sheer thinking, whose whole activity depends on "doing nothing.
Our Last Will and Testament, providing for the only future of which we can be reasonably certain, namely our own death, shows thatthe Will's need to will is no less strong than Reason's need to think; in both instances the mind transcends its own natural limitations, either by asking unanswerable questions or by projecting itself into a future which, for the willing subject, will never be.
... whatever men do or know or experience can make sense only to the extent that it can be spoken about. There may be truths beyond speech, and they may be of great relevance to man in the singular, that is, to man in so far as he is not a political being, whatever else he may be. Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves.