(Expanded version with full scholarly footnotes, sections, and an introductory thread)
By Zlatko Kramarić*|ARGUMENTUM
OPENING THREAD: WHY ARENDT TODAY?
To reflect on the “European spirit” at a time when the continent is once again confronted with the spectres of authoritarianism means, inevitably, to return to Hannah Arendt. Her analyses of totalitarianism, the fragility of political spaces, and the banality of evil have become indispensable tools for understanding Europe’s present moment. For contemporary discussions in Croatia and the broader region, Arendt provides a double framework:
(1) a genealogy of where Europe went wrong, and
(2) a normative horizon of political freedom as Europe’s most important invention.
In this intellectual constellation, Bertolt Brecht is not an accidental companion. His theatrical dissection of fascist psychology, his verses about Hitler, and his relentless exposure of everyday collaborationism resonate deeply with Arendt’s model of “thoughtlessness” as the root of evil.
Finally, any European contextualisation of Arendt must confront the intellectual triangle within which she worked: the polemicized horizon defined by Heidegger and Jaspers. Arendt stands between these two figures, and only through that tension can we fully understand her contribution to European political thought.
I. ARENDT AND THE EUROPEAN SPIRIT: BETWEEN HUMANISM AND THE FAILURE OF POLITICS
Arendt saw the European tradition as profoundly ambivalent: a civilisation that produced both the polis and Auschwitz. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, she argues that European rationalism, bureaucratisation, and imperialism constituted the infrastructure that made totalitarianism possible.¹
At the same time, in The Human Condition, she insists that Europe invented the idea of a public political realm—a space of action, plurality, and speech—that totalitarian regimes seek to annihilate.
Thus arises the central tension of the European spirit:
the conflict between freedom and system, plurality and doctrinal consistency, action and administrative logic.
II. THE BANALITY OF EVIL AND THE LOGIC OF OBEDIENCE: ARENDT AND BRECHT IN DIALOGUE
1. Arendt: Eichmann as a symptom of the continent
Arendt’s controversial depiction of Eichmann as a “banal” bureaucrat profoundly shifted the moral understanding of evil. Evil, she suggested, is not primarily demonic but administrative—rooted in conformity, careerism, and the suspension of judgment.²
Europe’s tragedy, in this reading, is that it produced institutions capable of turning ordinary people into efficient instruments of destruction.
2. Brecht: “Do not ask only about the murderer, but about the circumstances…”
Brecht’s theatrical and poetic treatment of Nazism provides a striking complement to Arendt. In Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, he anatomises fear, opportunism, and tacit complicity—precisely the microstructures of behaviour Arendt uncovers in Eichmann.³
Brecht’s famous suggestion that “the tiger is guilty, but the tiger does not fall from the sky” points to structural factors, ideological conditioning and civic paralysis.
Together, Arendt and Brecht articulate a coherent model:
Totalitarianism depends on ordinary citizens who have ceased to think; and modern Europe created the social and bureaucratic mechanisms enabling that condition.
III. EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY AROUND ARENDT: THE HEIDEGGER–JASPERS AXIS
1. Heidegger: radical metaphysics and political blindness
Heidegger occupies a paradoxical place in Arendt’s life and work: a youthful intimacy, a deep philosophical influence, and a moral disappointment. She adopted his analysis of situated existence but rejected the political irresponsibility that led him into complicity with Nazism.
In her letters to Jaspers, Arendt would call him “a genius without character”.⁴
Heidegger thus becomes an example of the German intellectual tradition at its most brilliant—yet also at its most politically catastrophic.
2. Jaspers: communication, responsibility, and the ethical foundation of politics
Jaspers offered the opposite pole: rational communication, existential accountability, and political humility. Their post-war correspondence shaped Arendt’s later understanding of politics as a community of responsibility.⁵
Where Heidegger sought the hidden truth of Being, Jaspers insisted on moral clarity in the public world.
3. Arendt between the two: thinking and judging
Arendt’s unique position emerges precisely between these two figures. From Heidegger she learned how to think; from Jaspers how to judge.
This synthesis is one of her main contributions to the European intellectual tradition:
thinking without responsibility leads to barbarism; responsibility without thinking collapses into moralism.
IV. TOTALITARIANISM AS EUROPE’S SELF-FORGETFULNESS
For Arendt, totalitarianism was not an accident but a culmination. Europe’s own intellectual and political dynamics—imperialism, racism, bureaucratic rationalisation, the collapse of the nation-state, and the cult of scientific mastery—formed the matrix within which totalitarian ideologies could emerge.
Her analysis therefore serves as an account of European self-forgetfulness: the forgetting of political plurality, of judgment, and of the fragile human condition that sustains freedom.
V. CONCLUSION: ARENDT AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN EUROPE’S PAST AND FUTURE
Arendt teaches us that Europe is both the continent that invented freedom and the continent that mechanised destruction. Her philosophical and political reflections remain essential for any contemporary discussion of democracy, responsibility and pluralism, particularly in societies still negotiating their post-authoritarian legacies.
In this sense, Arendt becomes a philosopher of Europe’s unfinished project—a thinker who reminds us that the European spirit is not a historical inheritance but a daily political task.
1. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1951), 3–45. Arendt argues that imperialism and racism were structural products of European modernity rather than deviations from it.
2. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 287–289. Arendt describes Eichmann as a bureaucrat driven not by fanaticism but by “thoughtlessness”.
3. Bertolt Brecht, Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, in Collected Works, vol. IV (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 112–135. Brecht exposes the everyday mechanics of complicity and ideological submission.
4. Hannah Arendt – Karl Jaspers, Correspondence 1926–1969 (New York: Harcourt, 1992). Arendt refers to Heidegger as “a genius without character” in her letters from the late 1940s.
5. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1946). Jaspers’ differentiation between criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical guilt profoundly shaped Arendt’s theory of political responsibility.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, 1951.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Viking, 1963.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Arendt, Hannah & Jaspers, Karl. Correspondence 1926–1969. New York: Harcourt, 1992.
Brecht, Bertolt. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1967.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1927.
Jaspers, Karl. The Question of German Guilt. Heidelberg: Schneider, 1946.
*Zlatko Kramarić is a Croatian publicist, author, and diplomat, currently serving as Ambassador to Albania. Formerly a university professor and politician, he is known for his work in literature, cultural studies, and regional history.
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