Hannah Arendt 1906 – 1975

Hannah Arendt was a 20th-century German-American political theorist whose work shaped post-war thinking about totalitarianism, political action, and moral responsibility. The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, traced the conditions that produced 20th-century totalitarian movements, while The Human Condition developed a philosophical anthropology of labour, work, and political action. Her 1963 reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann coined the influential phrase the banality of evil, prompting decades of debate about the nature of moral judgement under modern bureaucratic conditions. She fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and eventually settled in the United States, teaching at the New School and other institutions. Her philosophical training under Heidegger and Jaspers placed her within the continental tradition, though her concerns and audience were always broader.