Hanna Arendt as a Kantian Political Philosopher

Hannah Arendt and Kant’s political theories Although it would be going a step too far to describe Hannah Arendt as a Kantian political philosopher, we can say with little fear of contradiction that she was a political theorist who was strongly influenced by Kant. Her connection with Kant is also evident in her many allusions to Kant in her writings. Usually these references to Kant show a very accurate and powerful sense of the meaning and significance of his philosophy. One such example is her discussion of radical evil in the Origins of Totalitarianism, and her book on Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt is concerned to show that in its morality totalitarianism had taken a step that was well beyond the ordinary into a world of absolute, seemingly irresistible evil. She remarks that ‘it is inherent in our entire philosophical tradition that we cannot conceive of a “radical evil,” and she refers to Kant’s philosophy of religion to prove her point. To remedy this defect she famously coins the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ which figures most prominently in her book about Eichmann. Hannah Arendt was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Partly this is accounted for by the way in which she was both participant and observer of one of the most outrageous and immoral events, if not in the whole of human history, certainly in her own lifetime: the almost complete extermination of European Jews. Herself a Jew, she was fortunate enough to be able to flee from the persecution unleashed on German Jews by the outspokenly racist regime led by Adolf Hitler. Arendt observed the rise of Nazism and its drastic nemesis from the comparative safety of the United States where she eventually settled and became a significant intellectual and public figure. She published extensively both in English and German and reached a very wide audience particularly for articles that she published in journals such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Partly this influence can be accounted for by her familiarity with and embeddedness within the German philosophical tradition for which Immanuel Kant’s philosophy was central. Her ideas are best understood when located within this tradition. Tracing the connection of her ideas with Kant’s philosophy serves not only to shed interesting light upon the wider import of Kant’s ideas but also Arendt’s philosophy. Arguably Arendt brought Kantian thinking into a stark confrontation between the ideals of the European Enlightenment and the disturbing realities of early twentieth century European politics.