Arendt, Hannah
Arendt, Hannah (1906–75). Philosopher and political scientist, ending her career as Professor in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. She was deeply concerned with the way in which the atomization, alienation, and anomie of mass society left it open to totalitarian take-over. In her view, freedom and thought depend on the separation of political life (the public realm) from social and economic life (the private realm)—as in the Greek polis or in the system envisaged in the American revolution. The modern world has seen the advent of the opposite, with public and private realms coerced together into the social and economic sphere, depriving thought of its necessary privacy and converting politics into economic administration. This allows totalitarian ideology to take over, and opens the way to ‘the banality of evil’. All this keeps pace with anti-semitism, since the stateless Jew cannot rely on any vague notion of human rights: rights are subordinated to ends.
More From encyclopedia.com
NEARBY TERMS
Arendt, Hannah
