Hannah Arendt: Thinking in Dark Times, from Totalitarianism and the Human Condition to Power, Revolution, Truth, and the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt spent fourteen years without the citizenship of any country, and the experience shaped the questions she pursued for the rest of her life. This introduction follows her from Königsberg and her studies with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, through exile in Paris and New York, to the books that made her name.

The volume explains The Origins of Totalitarianism and its account of how isolated people were drawn into movements built on ideology and terror; The Human Condition and its distinction between labor, work, and action; her studies of power, violence, and revolution; the Eichmann trial and the phrase banality of evil; the late reflections on thinking and judging in The Life of the Mind; and her essays on truth, lying, and civil disobedience.

Throughout, each argument is set out in its strongest form and followed by the objections of her critics, from the quarrel over Eichmann in Jerusalem to the disputes over Little Rock, race, and her relationship with Heidegger, so that readers can judge for themselves what still stands.

No background in philosophy is needed. Her key terms are explained where they first appear, and the volume closes with a timeline and a guide to reading her own works.