I am a political theorist. Born in Hanover in 1906 and raised in Königsberg, I studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger at Marburg and Edmund Husserl at Freiburg before taking my doctorate under Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg in 1928. My early work asked what it means to love and to belong; my later work has asked what it means to act, to judge, and to be at home in a world shared with others.
Driven from Germany in 1933 and stateless for eighteen years, I reached New York in 1941 and became an American citizen in 1951 — the year The Origins of Totalitarianism appeared. Since then I have tried to understand the darkest events of the century not by explaining them away but by thinking them through. My concern is the space between people where politics happens, and what is lost when that space is destroyed. You are welcome to write to me by email.
Themes of My Work
- The origins and structure of total domination
- The vita activa: labor, work, and action
- Political freedom, authority, and the founding of republics
- Judgment, thinking, and the banality of evil
- Statelessness and the right to have rights
News
- 1975 Awarded the Sonning Prize for Contributions to European Civilization by the University of Copenhagen — the first American and first woman to receive it.
- 1973 Delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, the basis of The Life of the Mind.
- 1972 Published Crises of the Republic, collecting essays on lying in politics, civil disobedience, and violence.
- 1967 Awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize of the German Academy for Language and Literature.