Hannah Arendt

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

Summary

Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975) was a German Jewish political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she always refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with man in the singular. She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

Her work was influential in the area of Social and Political Aspects of Aggression (see Psychological Aspects of Biodanza).

Ideas

• Arendt believed that the decline of the European nation states was due to global capitalism and colonialism,
• Totalitarian ideologies are based upon the devastation of the ordered and stable societies,
• They offer explanations for the events of the past (what caused the evil that destroyed the old order) in order to offer a reassuring path to establishing order and stability in the future.