Arendt, Hannah

Philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) is known for her writings on the meaning of political being in the world. These writings include her analysis of 20th-century totalitarian regimes and her careful consideration of work and labor. Born in Hanover, Germany, Arendt studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger and later with Karl Jaspers. In 1933, Arendt fled Germany for Paris, surviving a brief internment en route. Although Arendt was neither religious nor a Zionist, the rise of the Nazi party and the rapid spread of anti-Semitism through Europe provoked in Arendt a strong consciousness of her Jewish identity. In her intellectual writings of the 1930s, she argued that conditions of freedom and citizenship should never require repudiation of one’s ethnic or cultural identity.

Emigrating to New York in 1941, ...