The Life Of The Mind

Hannah Arendt was a political theorist and philosophical writer, and is now considered one of the greatest leading intellectuals in modern history. She was born in 1906 to a comfortable secular Jewish family in Germany. She fled Germany in 1933 for France before immigrating to the United States in 1941 during World War II. While in the United States, Arendt worked at several universities, including Princeton and Berkeley, and wrote major works that have become political and theoretical guideposts. She wrote her books in English and translated them herself into German, often incorporating German poetry into her translations.

The writer’s experiences in Germany and her critical and observational interest in the modern world influenced her academic work. Arendt separated herself from the philosophical tradition, criticizing its apparent separation from worldly matters. Influenced by thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Arendt was concerned with the individual and collective objective experiences of humans. Her ideologies emphasized the plurality of humankind, and she argued that philosophical understanding should directly relate to experience and appearance. Her focus on politics in her writing, and the social and historical forces driving human experience, separates her from easy philosophical categorization.

Arendt’s writing drew on history, poetry, philosophy, and science to explore her subjects, emphasizing her pluralistic and comprehensive approach to her work.