Hannah Arendt
The German-born thinker who fled the Nazis, wrote on totalitarianism and coined “the banality of evil.”
Books
The Origins of Totalitarianism1951How antisemitism and imperialism led to the Nazi and Soviet regimes. The book that made her name.
The Human Condition1958What people do with their lives, from labor to political action, and why the difference matters.
Eichmann in Jerusalem1963Her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she found “the banality of evil.”
The Life of the Mind1978Her last book, left unfinished, on thinking and willing, with Socrates as the model thinker.
Mentioned in
In praise of asking, part two
Why should a simple question cost so much? A nine-year-old tested a healing method with a towel and a piece of cardboard, a doctor drank a glass of bacteria, and Socrates drank the hemlock; each price depended on the certainty the question shook.