Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Johanna "Hannah" Arendtwas a German-born Jew and American political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular" and instead described herself as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world." She escaped Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen. Her works deal with the nature of power, and the subjects...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth14 October 1906
CityHanover, Germany
CountryGermany
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is 'in power' we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with ... disappears, 'his power' also vanishes.
the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation. Equality, in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given us, but is the result of human organization insofar as it is guided by the principle of justice. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights.
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
Rage is by no means an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such; no one reacts with rage to an incurable disease or to an earthquake or, for that matter, to social conditions that seem to be unchangeable. Only where there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise.
If...the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant in this respect almost alone among the philosophers was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
Power is actualized only when word and deed have not parted company.
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility - of being unable to undo what one has done - is the faculty of forgiving.
To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know.
While strength is the natural quality of an individual seen in isolation, power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.
In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy.
If we don't know our own history, we are deemed to live it.