Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for several Jewish refugee organizations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held several academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975.
She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action).
Books in order of publication:
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (1957)
The Human Condition (1958)
Between Past and Future (1954…1968)
On Revolution (1963)
Men in Dark Times (1968)
Crises of the Republic (1972)
The Life of the Mind (1978)
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