Hannah Arendt – first female fully professor at the University of Princeton
On October 14, we commemorate 116th anniversary of one of the most famous philosophers of 20th Century. Hannah Arendt was a german-american philosopher. Her life was influenced by the events of WWII, when she had to emigrate to USA. She became first female fully professor at the University of Princeton. In the United States, she was in the position of a public intellectual, actively commenting on public issues, bringing to the American public, among other things, regular comments on the trial of Adolf Eichman. She influenced also academics around the whole world. Her works – The Origin of Totalitarism or Human Conditions, are still among the most cited works in social and human sciences. Her impact on the historiography is undoubt. Arendt's definition of Nazi crimes through the concept of the banality of evil is probably among the most well-known among the general public. Her assessment of Eichmann, whom she characterized as unable to think critically about his loyalty to the Nazi ideology, which he subscribed to because of his sense of loneliness in his alienating world, is also relevant today.
Online sources:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/
https://hac.bard.edu/about/hannaharendt/
Spracovala: Patrícia Fogelová, Spoločenskovedný ústav CSPV SAV, v. v. i.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons/Gunther Adler