Abstract

A biographical portrait of Hannah Arendt. Mentions her writings on Jewish subjects, and her work in fighting Nazism during the 1930s. Describes her attempt to explain Nazi genocide in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951). She argued that antisemitism is partly caused by the Jews themselves, their economic position in modern society, and their refusal to take part in public life. Other factors leading to the Final Solution were imperialism and the rise of mass society, but the ultimate motivating force was an impulse of "radical evil." Ch. 7 (p. 101-111) deals with Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1961) and her ideas on the "banality of evil" as exemplified by Eichmann.