Hannah Arendt: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Hannah Arendt's thought was forged between Marburg phenomenology, German-Jewish Berlin, and postwar New York intellectual life. This mix traces the teachers she quarreled with, the literary and theatrical company she kept, and the theorists who still argue with her.

The Kynda mix for Hannah Arendt

• Key Influence · Being and Time by Martin Heidegger (1927). Arendt studied under Heidegger at Marburg in 1924–25, and their relationship — intellectual and romantic — shaped her lifelong vocabulary of world, thrownness and disclosure. Being and Time's analysis of everydayness and being-with underlies her later insistence that action appears only among plural others; her critique of the philosopher's withdrawal from the polis is an argument conducted directly against this book and its author's 1933 politics.
• Influencia Obscura · The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch (1945). Broch, the Austrian novelist exiled in the United States, was a close friend of Arendt's; she edited German editions of his work and wrote a substantial essay on him as a poet caught between literature, knowledge and action. His dying-Virgil meditation on whether art can survive politics maps almost exactly onto Arendt's own anxiety about the vita contemplativa's obligations in a century of catastrophe.
• Local Roots · The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht (1928). Weimar Berlin was Arendt's first political education, and Brecht was the writer she quoted most often from memory. She devoted a searching essay to him in Men in Dark Times, praising the early ballads while condemning his Stalinist verses as the corruption of a poet's judgment. The Threepenny Opera's beggars and gangsters embody the amoral underworld she saw shadowing bourgeois respectability.
• Beyond the Medium · Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1779). Arendt received Hamburg's Lessing Prize in 1959 and used the occasion to build her ideas of friendship, worldliness and the humanity of dark times around Lessing himself. His Enlightenment drama of Jewish, Muslim and Christian coexistence — with its parable of the three rings refusing to settle the question of truth — models the endless conversation Arendt considered more political than any doctrine.
• Peer · The Need for Roots by Simone Weil (1949). Weil and Arendt never met, but both were Jewish women writing in and out of French exile about uprootedness, labor and the moral collapse of Europe. Weil's diagnosis of the modern person deprived of place and obligation runs parallel to Arendt's account of worldlessness and the loss of a political home, and the two are routinely read together as the century's rival moral anthropologies of totalitarian Europe.
• From the Canon · The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (1951). Written in New York after her flight from Gurs and Vichy France, Arendt's first major book traces antisemitism and imperialism into the novel form of rule she called totalitarian, ending with the stateless person who has lost the right to have rights. Its account of terror, loneliness and superfluous humanity established her international reputation and remains the framework most readers meet her through.
• Key Collaborator · Illuminations by Walter Benjamin (1968). Arendt edited this landmark English selection and wrote its long introductory essay, the piece that largely created Benjamin's Anglophone reputation. Having carried his papers from France to New York and passed them to Adorno's circle, she framed him as a pearl diver salvaging fragments from a broken tradition — a portrait that doubles as a statement of her own method of thinking without banisters.
• Legacy · Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben (1995). Agamben builds his account of the camp as the hidden matrix of modern politics directly out of Arendt's chapters on statelessness and the decline of the nation-state, citing her explicitly as the thinker who saw that the refugee, not the citizen, reveals sovereignty's logic. Where she stopped at the right to have rights, he pushes into biopolitics, making the book Arendt's most influential contemporary extension.

What influenced Hannah Arendt

• Walter Benjamin. The article says Arendt developed Benjamin's earlier interpretation of Kafka. (also via Berlin Childhood around 1900, Illuminations) “Arendt echoes and expands on Benjamin's larger sentiment (which at that time was still a novelty in Kafka criticism), repeating the injunction that it is a mistake to refer to Kafka as a particularly Jewish or religious figure.” (Wikipedia)
• Martin Heidegger. States Heidegger was one of the most profound influences on Arendt's thinking. (also via Being and Time) “Arendt studied at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger, with whom she engaged in a romantic affair” (Wikipedia)
• The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch (1945). The Death of Virgil (Hermann Broch) — ghost for Hannah Arendt “=== Men in Dark Times (1968) === The anthology of essays Men in Dark Times presents intellectual biographies of some creative and moral figures of the 20th century, such as Walter Benjamin, Karl Jaspers, Rosa Luxemburg, Hermann Broch, Po…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Rudolf Bultmann. Arendt studied theology under Rudolf Bultmann at Marburg. “At Marburg (1924–1926) she studied classical languages, German literature, Protestant theology with Rudolf Bultmann and philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann and Heidegger” (Wikipedia)
• Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa Luxemburg's writings influenced Arendt's political thinking. “Luxemburg's writings would later influence Hannah's political thinking” (Wikipedia)
• Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1779). Nathan the Wise (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing) — culture for Hannah Arendt “Chicago, University of Chicago Press [1972] Nathan the Wise, Minna von Barnhelm, and Other Plays and Writings, edited by Peter Demetz with a foreword by Hannah Arendt.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813). Guardini's introduction to Kierkegaard shaped Arendt's academic direction. “In Berlin, Guardini had introduced her to Kierkegaard, and she resolved to make theology her major field” (Wikipedia)
• Edmund Husserl. Arendt attended Husserl's lectures at Freiburg. “Arendt spent a semester at Freiburg, attending the lectures of Husserl” (Wikipedia)
• Being and Time by Martin Heidegger (1927). Being and Time (Martin Heidegger) — titan for Hannah Arendt “After completing secondary education in Berlin, Arendt studied at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger, with whom she engaged in a romantic affair that began while she was his student.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Nicolai Hartmann. Arendt studied philosophy under Nicolai Hartmann at Marburg. “At Marburg (1924–1926) she studied classical languages, German literature, Protestant theology with Rudolf Bultmann and philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann and Heidegger” (Wikipedia)
• Romano Guardini. Arendt studied Christian theology under Romano Guardini in Berlin. “audited courses at the University of Berlin (1922–1923), including classics and Christian theology under Romano Guardini” (Wikipedia)
• Philosophy of Existence by Karl Jaspers (1938). Philosophy of Existence (Karl Jaspers) — titan for Hannah Arendt “Her dissertation was entitled Love and Saint Augustine, and her supervisor was the existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Job's Dungheap by Bernard Lazare (1948). Job's Dungheap (Bernard Lazare) — ghost for Hannah Arendt “At the same time she began to be occupied by Max Weber's description of the status of Jewish people within a state as Pariavolk (pariah people) in his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1922), while borrowing Bernard Lazare's term paria consci…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Karl Jaspers. Karl Jaspers was Arendt's doctoral supervisor. (also via Philosophy of Existence)
• Bernard Lazare. Arendt borrowed and identified with Bernard Lazare's term of conscious pariah. (also via Job's Dungheap)
• Immanuel Kant (1724). Kant is named as an important influence on Arendt's thought. “Kant, whose hometown was also Königsberg, was an important influence on her thinking” (Wikipedia)
• Johann Herder. Arendt's articles advanced Herder's views, indicating his influence. “In both these articles she advanced the views of Johann Herder” (Wikipedia)
• The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925). The Trial (Franz Kafka) — culture for Hannah Arendt (openlibrary.org)
• Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft by Max Weber. Weber's concept of Pariavolk influenced Arendt's thinking on Jewish identity.
• Kurt Blumenfeld. Blumenfeld introduced Arendt to Jewish political thought.
• Rahel Varnhagen. Arendt strongly identified with and was influenced by Rahel Varnhagen's life story.

Peers and kindred spirits

• Northwestern University. Arendt taught at Northwestern University. “University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and Cornell University” (Wikipedia)
• Princeton University. Arendt taught at Princeton University, becoming its first female full professor. “She was a visiting scholar at Princeton University (where she was the first woman to be appointed a full professor in 1959)” (Wikipedia)
• Yale University. Arendt was a fellow at Yale University. “Yale University, where she was a fellow” (Wikipedia)
• The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963). The Group (Mary McCarthy) — collaborator for Hannah Arendt “Arendt had begun corresponding with the American author Mary McCarthy, six years her junior, in 1950 and they soon became lifelong friends.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Arendt became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962” (Wikipedia)
• University of Chicago. Arendt taught at the University of Chicago. “She also taught at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1967, where she was a member of the Committee on Social Thought” (Wikipedia)
• Berlin Childhood around 1900 by Walter Benjamin (1950). Berlin Childhood around 1900 (Walter Benjamin) — geography for Hannah Arendt “In Paris, she befriended Stern's cousin, the Marxist literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin and also the Jewish French philosopher Raymond Aron.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin (1953). The Hedgehog and the Fox (Isaiah Berlin) — peer for Hannah Arendt “Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (Princeton University Press, 2018) Blattberg, Charles.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• University of California, Berkeley. Arendt taught at UC Berkeley. “University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and Cornell University” (Wikipedia)
• Structured Liberal Education. Arendt helped found the Structured Liberal Education program at Stanford. “In 1974, Arendt was instrumental in the creation of Structured Liberal Education (SLE) at Stanford University” (Wikipedia)
• The Need for Roots by Simone Weil (1949). The Need for Roots (Simone Weil) — peer for Hannah Arendt “The Origin of the Political: Hannah Arendt or Simone Weil?” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Albert Memmi. Plotkin groups Hannah Arendt with Albert Memmi as sharing a similar alienated, self-critical stance toward Jewish identity. “She belongs to the category of Albert Memmi, for Hannah Arendt made nothing but a mockery of this trial.” (The Phoenix Jewish News (Phoenix))
• American Academy of Arts and Letters. Arendt became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. “a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1964” (Wikipedia)
• Illuminations by Walter Benjamin (1968). Illuminations (Walter Benjamin) — collaborator for Hannah Arendt “In Paris, she befriended Stern's cousin, the Marxist literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin and also the Jewish French philosopher Raymond Aron.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Columbia University. Arendt taught at Columbia University. “University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and Cornell University” (Wikipedia)
• The New School. Arendt was a professor at The New School from 1967. “From 1967, she was a professor at The New School for Social Research in Manhattan, New York City” (Wikipedia)
• Wesleyan University. Arendt held a position at Wesleyan University's Center for Advanced Studies. “the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University (1961–62, 1962–63)” (Wikipedia)
• Cornell University. Arendt taught at Cornell University. “University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and Cornell University” (Wikipedia)
• The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht (1928). The Threepenny Opera (Bertolt Brecht) — geography for Hannah Arendt (wikidata.org)
• Simone de Beauvoir (1908). The Human Condition (Hannah Arendt) — peer for Simone de Beauvoir (via The Human Condition) (openlibrary.org)

Who Hannah Arendt influenced

• Bill T. Jones (1952). Jones names Hannah Arendt as an intellectual influence he turns to. (also via Men in Dark Times) “I’ve become a big fan of Hannah Arendt a real thinker about totalitarianism, a real thinker about group think, and a thinker about thinking.” (Moyers On Democracy Podcast (public broadcasting))
• Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism by Judith Butler (2012). Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (Judith Butler) — legacy for Hannah Arendt “They also hold the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School (EGS).” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben (1995). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Giorgio Agamben) — legacy for Hannah Arendt “In this series of works, Agamben responds to Hannah Arendt's and Foucault's studies of totalitarianism and biopolitics.” (en.wikipedia.org)