Hannah Arendt Research Paper

Hannah Arendt was a woman in a profession of men, a woman who always did what she wanted to do, a woman who never worried about whether or not it was a mans job. Being from the 20th century, Arendt is relatively modern in comparison to the philosophers and political theorists we have studied throughout the course of this semester. Arendt was born in Linden (present day Hanover), and grew up in Konigsberg and Berlin as the daughter of an engineer. As a child, neither politics nor history interested her. She grew up in a Jewish family in a pre-war Germany. However, Arendt did not know that she was Jewish at all. Her parents, who came from the social democrat movement, were not religious, and despite her grandfather being president of the liberal Jewish community, the word Jew never arose while she was a child. She first encountered it though anti-Semitic remarks from children on the streets. That was what enlightened her, she knew that she looked Jewish, and that her family home was different from the rest. She was actually under direct orders from her mother, that if any anti-Semitic remarks were ever made solely by a teacher in the classroom, she was to get up, go home, and report it at once.

Arendt studied in Marburg, Heidelberg, and Freiburg with professors Heidegger, Bultmann and Jaspers. She majored in Philosophy and minored in theology and Greek. According to Arendt, since the age of 14, when she read Kant, she always knew that she would study philosophy. “Either I study philosophy or I drown myself;” she had a need to understand. However, she was not a philosopher, but a political theorist instead. The distinction will be made later on in this reading.

Arendt’s interest in politics was the main factor that ended her indif...

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.... It creates a world of durability. In this world, humans are the builders of “walls” which separate the human world from the world of nature and allow for institutions to be built, and laws to be made, which provide space for the human life to thrive. The differences between labor and work are that labor deals with nature and biology, whereas work violates that nature, and instead molds it in order to satisfy the needs of human life. Work is also governed by a sovereign, and allows for a certain extent of freedom because it deals with human life and human intentions, whereas labor is governed by nature and necessities. Finally, work is a relatively public affair, because it deals with human life as a whole (despite work not being the primary activity corresponding to politics); yet, labor deals with individuals’ life needs and therefore, is a more private affair.