Hannah Arendt

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2017

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the C20th, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of 'the banality of evil' when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust. With Lyndsey Stonebridge Professor of Modern Literature and History at the University of East Anglia Frisbee Sheffield Lecturer in Philosophy at Girton College, University of Cambridge and Robert Eaglestone Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University London Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:05.0	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time. I hope you enjoy the programs.
0:15.2	Hello Hannah Rent was born in 1906 near Hanover in Germany where her family
0:19.5	rarely mentioned their Jewishness. She said she first encountered the word Jew in the
0:23.2	anti-Semitic remarks of children as she played in the streets. She escaped to
0:27.4	America in 1941 and spent much of her time trying to understand why totalitarianism
0:32.3	had dominated Europe so murderously in the 20th century.
0:36.0	To prevent its return, she argued everyone should engage in political life as in an idealized
0:41.2	ancient Greek state.
0:42.7	She also wanted to know what motivated so many
0:45.2	to act so atrociously in the Second World War.
0:47.8	And it was at the trial of Aikman,
0:49.4	one of the main organizers of the Holocaust
0:51.5	that she described what she called the
0:53.2	banality of evil. With me to discuss Hannah Arend R, Lindsay Stonebridge,
0:58.0	professor of Modern Literature and History at the University of East Anglia,
1:00.8	Frisbee Sheffield, lecture, and Robert Eagleston,
1:05.8	Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at the Royal Holloway University of London.
1:10.8	Frisbee Sheffield, can we briskly talk about the early stages in her life?
1:15.0	Yes, so as you mentioned she was born in 1906 in Hanover, Germany to secular Jewish
1:22.4	parents. She excelled at school, studied ancient Greek
	...

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