Hannah Arendt citáty
Hannah Arendt
Datum narození: 14. říjen 1906
Datum úmrtí: 4. prosinec 1975
Další jména: Hannah Arendtová
Hannah Arendtová byla myslitelka a publicistka německo-židovského původu. Odmítala být označována za filosofku, rovněž pojem politická filosofie se jí nelíbil, upřednostňovala spíše termín „politická teorie“.
Citáty Hannah Arendt
„Cílem totalitní výchovy nikdy nebylo vštěpovat přesvědčení, ale zničit schopnost si nějaké utvořit.“
Zdroj: ARENDTOVÁ, Hannah. Původ totalitarismu I-III. 1. vydání. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 1996. 679 s. ISBN 80-86005-13-5. s. 631
„The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied — as had been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels — that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.“
— Hannah Arendt, kniha Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) epilogue.
Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)
„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, kniha The Origins of Totalitarianism
Part 3, Ch. 13, § 3.
Zdroj: 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.
„Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time“
— Hannah Arendt, kniha Rahel Varnhagen
Zdroj: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess
„It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.“
— Hannah Arendt, kniha The Human Condition
The Human Condition (1958).
„If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.“
— Hannah Arendt, kniha The Life of the Mind
Zdroj: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.
„One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.“
— Hannah Arendt, kniha The Origins of Totalitarianism
Zdroj: The Origins of Totalitarianism
„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, kniha The Origins of Totalitarianism
Zdroj: 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.
„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, kniha The Origins of Totalitarianism
Preface to the first edition, written in the summer of 1950.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Kontext: 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 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, kniha The Origins of Totalitarianism
Part 3, Ch. 12, § 3.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Kontext: 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.
