Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was born in Hannover, Germany, into a secular Jewish family. During her studies in philosophy and theology with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, she became familiar with ancient philosophy, the work of Augustine and Kant, and phenomenology. Heidegger, in particular, whose work she later criticized, had a lasting influence on her own work. Initially hardly interested in politics, this suddenly changed in the early 1930s. She grew increasingly disappointed with academic philosophers who overwhelmingly refrained from opposing emerging National Socialism or who, like Heidegger, even openly flirted with it. Her famous refusal to be classified as a political philosopher (preferring to be called a political theorist) stems from this experience. Her flight from Nazi Germany in 1933 was followed by years of wandering as a stateless refugee through France, among other places, where she worked for several years for various Jewish and Zionist...