Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Hannah Arendt was a philosopher, political theorist and sociologist. Arendt was one of the most important theoric writer of the XX century. She was German with Jewish origin and for this reason at 1933 she escaped from the nazism to Paris. Since that moment she started to work in different organizations related with the historical context. Years later she move on to New York where she become gradually a theoric related with politic and philosophy. In this country she worked on her most important investigations. Her teacher, in Germany, was Martin Heidegger.

Her principal topics of searching during her academic life were totalitarianism related with the historical context that she lived during her youth and politic theories. Also she made theories about human behavior related with power dynamics.Her most important studies are The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) as mentioned earlier, this searchings were born at United States.

The first text where her thinker and philosopher career was established was The origin of Totalitarianism that was written in 1951 after WWII. During this text she develops two concepts to explain the human activities that had been reproduced during the human Western history; the first concept is vita activa ( active life) and the next one is vita contemplativa (contemplative life). The first one is more familiar for modern society, this concept it is divides by work, action and labor.

In the book Eichmann in Jerusalem that was written in 1963 she explain, in related to what happened in the Nazi Germany, the concept “the banality of evil” which means that the person who killed at WWII it wasn't because this person was evil otherwise this person was following instructions.

The investigations of Hannah Arendt were really important for the theory of human behavior and politic.

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