Hannah Arendt

About the author

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) stands as one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. Born into a Jewish family in Hannover, she studied philosophy at Marburg under Martin Heidegger and completed her doctorate at Heidelberg in 1929 under Karl Jaspers. Briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1933, she fled Germany for Paris, then eventually settled in the United States.

Her work ranges across power, authority, and totalitarianism, but she is perhaps best remembered for her coverage of the Eichmann trial and the phrase "the banality of evil.