Frasi di Hannah Arendt
40 riflessioni profonde sulla condizione umana

Esplora le profonde riflessioni di Hannah Arendt, celebre filosofa, sui pericoli del pensiero, sulla natura del male, sull'impatto del totalitarismo, sul potere del perdono e sulla complessità della colpa. Approfondite la condizione umana con la sua saggezza illuminante.

Hannah Arendt è stata una politologa, filosofa e storica tedesca naturalizzata statunitense nel 1937. Nata di origine ebraica, fuggì dalla Germania nazista nel 1933 a causa delle persecuzioni e rimase apolide fino al 1951 quando ottenne la cittadinanza statunitense. Durante la sua carriera, ha lavorato come giornalista, docente universitaria e ha scritto importanti opere di filosofia politica. Tuttavia, è importante notare che Arendt preferiva essere considerata una teorica politica piuttosto che una filosofa, rifiutando sempre di essere inserita in questa categoria specifica.

✵ 14. Ottobre 1906 – 4. Dicembre 1975   •   Altri nomi Hannah Arendtová
Hannah Arendt photo

Lavori

Vita activa
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt: 125   frasi 67   Mi piace

Hannah Arendt frasi celebri

Frasi sul mondo di Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt Frasi e Citazioni

“Io non credo che possa esistere qualche processo di pensiero senza esperienze personali.”

Origine: Da La lingua materna, a cura di Alessandro Dal Lago, Mimesis, Milano, 1996.

Questa traduzione è in attesa di revisione. È corretto?

Hannah Arendt: Frasi in inglese

“The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man.”

Hannah Arendt libro Le origini del totalitarismo

Preface to the first edition, written in the summer of 1950.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Contesto: The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. Yet to turn our backs on the destructive forces of the century is of little avail.
The trouble is that our period has so strangely intertwined the good with the bad that without the imperialists' "expansion for expansion's sake," the world might never have become one; without the bourgeoisie's political device of "power for power's sake," the extent of human strength might never have been discovered; without the fictitious world of totalitarian movements, in which with unparalleled clarity the essential uncertainties of our time have been spelled out, we might have been driven to our doom without ever becoming aware of what has been happening.
And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil.

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i. e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i. e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Hannah Arendt libro Le origini del totalitarismo

Part 3, Ch. 13, § 3.
Origine: On the subject the ideal subjects for a totalitarian authority. Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. As quoted by Scroll Staff (December 04, 2017): Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times https://web.archive.org/web/20191001213756/https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times. In: Scroll.in. Archived from the original https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times on October 1, 2019.

“Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone.”

Hannah Arendt libro Le origini del totalitarismo

Part 1, Ch. 1, § 1.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Contesto: Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone. What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed.

“The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life.”

Hannah Arendt libro Le origini del totalitarismo

Part 3, Ch. 12, § 3.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Contesto: The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

Hannah Arendt libro Le origini del totalitarismo

Origine: On the subject “alternate facts”. Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. As quoted by Scroll Staff (December 04, 2017): Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times https://web.archive.org/web/20191001213756/https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times. In: Scroll.in. Archived from the original https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times on October 1, 2019.

“To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know.”

Hannah Arendt libro The Life of the Mind

Origine: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 61.

“A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible, world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything is possible and that nothing was true.”

Hannah Arendt libro Le origini del totalitarismo

Part 3, Ch. 2 The Totalitarian Movement, page 80 https://books.google.de/books?id=I0pVKCVM4TQC&pg=PT104&dq=A+mixture+of+gullibility+and+cynicism+had+been+an+outstanding+characteristic+of+mob+mentality+before+it+became+an+everyday+phenomenon+of+masses.&hl=de&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=A%20mixture%20of%20gullibility%20and%20cynicism%20had%20been%20an%20outstanding%20characteristic%20of%20mob%20mentality%20before%20it%20became%20an%20everyday%20phenomenon%20of%20masses.&f=false
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Contesto: A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible, world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything is possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynism the vice of superior and refined minds. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

“In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy.”

Letter to James Baldwin (21 November 1962).
General sources
Contesto: In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in private and, as a people, only so long as you are not free.

Autori simili

Martin Heidegger photo
Martin Heidegger 39
filosofo tedesco
Nelly Sachs photo
Nelly Sachs 36
poetessa e scrittrice tedesca
Walter Benjamin photo
Walter Benjamin 33
filosofo e scrittore tedesco
Ernst Jünger photo
Ernst Jünger 277
filosofo e scrittore tedesco
Herta Müller photo
Herta Müller 32
scrittrice tedesca
Max Weber photo
Max Weber 18
economista, sociologo, filosofo e storico tedesco
Edith Stein photo
Edith Stein 19
religiosa e filosofa tedesca
Theodor W. Adorno photo
Theodor W. Adorno 31
filosofo, musicologo e aforista tedesco
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Rosa Luxemburg 5
politica, teorica del Socialismo rivoluzionario, tedesca di…
Umberto Eco photo
Umberto Eco 257
semiologo, filosofo e scrittore italiano