Hannah Arendt Zitate: 20 erhellende Gedanken über Denken, Böses, Totalitarismus, Vergebung und Schuld

Hannah Arendt: 105 Zitate 281 Gefällt mir

Hannah Arendt Berühmte Zitate

„Die traurige Wahrheit ist, dass das meiste Böse von Menschen gemacht wird, die sich zwischen Böse und Gute nicht entschieden haben.“

Hannah Arendt

„Es gibt keine gefährlichen Gedanken; Das Denken an sich, ist gefährlich.“

Hannah Arendt

„Das Böse ist immer nur extrem, aber niemals radikal, es hat keine Tiefe, auch keine Dämonie. Es kann die ganze Welt verwüsten, gerade weil es wie ein Pilz an der Oberfläche weiterwuchert. Tief aber und radikal ist immer nur das Gute.“

Hannah Arendt

„Vergebung ist der einzige Weg, um den irreversiblen Fluss der Geschichte umzukehren.“

Hannah Arendt

„Kein Mensch hat das Recht zu gehorchen bei Kant.“

Hannah Arendt

Mehr Info https://falschzitate.blogspot.com.es/2017/07/niemand-hat-das-recht-zu-gehorchen.html
Quelle: Hannah Arendt im Gespräch mit Joachim Fest. Hörfunksendung des Südwestfunks am 9. November 1964, Minute 17:01–17:04 der Originaltonaufzeichnung, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN6rzHemaY0

„Man kann sagen, dass der Faschismus der alten Kunst zu lügen gewissermaßen eine neue Variante hinzugefügt hat - die teuflischste Variante, die man sich denken kann - nämlich: das Wahrlügen.“

Hannah Arendt

Original englisch: "One can say that to some extent fascism has added a new variation to the old art of lying — the most devilish variation — that of lying the truth." - in: Partisan Review, Volume XII 1945, p.98
Quelle: Zur Zeit - Politische Essays. München dtv 1989. S. 29

Zitate über Wissen von Hannah Arendt

„Die Revolutionäre machen nicht die Revolution! Die Revolutionäre sind diejenigen, die wissen, wann die Macht auf der Straße liegt und wann sie sie aufheben können!“

Hannah Arendt

Macht und Gewalt, S. 111
"Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up." - "Thoughts on Politics and Revolution". In: "Crisis of the Republic". Harcourt Brace 1972, p. 206

Diese Übersetzung wartet auf eine Überprüfung. Ist es korrekt?

„Das Problem mit Eichmann war genau, dass so viele wie er waren und dass diese Vielen weder pervers noch sadistisch waren, dass sie schrecklich und erschreckend normal waren und es immer noch sind. Diese Normalität war aus Sicht unserer Rechtsinstitutionen und unserer moralischen Urteilsgewohnheiten weitaus furchterregender als all die Gräueltaten zusammen, da dies- wie es in Nürnberg von den Angeklagten und ihren Anwälte immer wieder gesagt worden war - implizierte, dass dieser neue Typ von Verbrecher, der in Wirklichkeit hostis generis humani ist, seine Verbrechen unter Umständen begeht, die es ihm nahezu unmöglich machen, zu wissen oder zu fühlen, dass er Unrecht tut.“

Hannah Arendt

„Wie schwer es sein muss, hier einen Weg zu finden, kommt vielleicht am deutlichsten in der gängigen Redensart zum Ausdruck, das Vergangene sei noch unbewältigt, man müsse erst einmal daran gehen, die Vergangenheit zu bewältigen. Dies kann man wahrscheinlich mit keiner Vergangenheit, sicher aber nicht mit dieser. Das höchste, was man erreichen kann, ist zu wissen und auszuhalten, dass es so und nicht anders gewesen ist, und dann zu sehen und abzuwarten, was sich daraus ergibt.“

Hannah Arendt

aus: Rede am 28. September 1959 bei der Entgegennahme des Hamburger Lessing-Preises, zitiert in: diestandard, 11. Oktober 2006 diestandard. at

„Hier hat natürlich auch die dem Außenstehenden so auffällige tiefe Ungeschicklichkeit der Deutschen ihren Grund, sich in einem Gespräch über die Frage der Vergangenheit überhaupt zu bewegen. Wie schwer es sein muss, hier einen Weg zu finden, kommt vielleicht am deutlichsten in der gängigen Redensart zum Ausdruck, das Vergangene sei noch unbewältigt, man müsse erst einmal daran gehen, die Vergangenheit zu bewältigen. Dies kann man wahrscheinlich mit keiner Vergangenheit, sicher aber nicht mit dieser. Das höchste, was man erreichen kann, ist zu wissen und auszuhalten, dass es so und nicht anders gewesen ist, und dann zu sehen und abzuwarten, was sich daraus ergibt.“

Hannah Arendt

Von der Menschlichkeit in finsteren Zeiten. Rede am 28. September 1959 bei der Entgegennahme des Hamburger Lessing-Preises. Piper München 1960, S. 32 f. archive.org https://archive.org/details/HannahArendtVonDerMenschlichkeitInFinsterenZeiten1960/page/n15

Hannah Arendt Zitate und Sprüche

„Der wohl hervorstechendste und auch erschreckendste Aspekt der deutschen Realitätsflucht liegt in der Haltung, mit Tatsachen so umzugehen, als handele es sich um bloße Meinungen.“

Hannah Arendt

Nach Auschwitz. Essays & Kommentare 1 spiegel.de http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13494945.html?name=Die+Sorgfalt+des+T%26ouml%3Btens
Original englisch: "But perhaps the most striking and frightening aspect of the German flight from reality is the habit of treating facts as though they were mere opinions." - The Aftermath of Nazi Rule - Report from Germany. In: Commentary 10 (1950), p. 342 (344) stanford.edu pdf http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DLCL/files/pdf/hannah_aftermath_of_nazi_rule.pdf

Über Ehe

„Der Philosoph, der in der Öffentlichkeit eingreifen will, ist kein Philosoph mehr, sondern Politiker; er will nicht mehr nur Wahrheit, sondern Macht.“

Hannah Arendt

Wahrheit und Politik, S. 338 in: "Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft", 2000

Über Wahrheit

„Weisheit ist eine Tugend des Alters, und sie kommt wohl nur zu denen, die in ihrer Jugend weder weise waren noch besonnen.“

Hannah Arendt buch Men in Dark Times

"Isak Dinesen": in "Menschen in finsteren Zeiten", Piper 1989, S. 130
Original englisch: "Wisdom is a virtue of old age, and it seems to come only to those who, when young, were neither wise nor prudent." - Schlusssatz des Aufsatzes "Isak Dinesen: 1885-1962". Ursprünglich als Besprechung des Buches "Titania - The Biography of Isak Dinesen" von Parmenia Migel, in: The New Yorker, Heft 44 (11. November 1968), pp. 223-235, überarbeitet sodann in: "Men in Dark Times", Harcourt Brace 1968, pp. 95-109

Über Weisheit , Über Jugend

„Die Alternative Kapitalismus-Sozialismus ist keine wirkliche Alternative. Dies sind gleiche Brüder mit ungleichen Kappen.“

Hannah Arendt

Macht und Gewalt, S. 119
"For this reason alone, the alternative between capitalism and socialism is false - not only because neither exists anywhere in its pure state anyhow, but because we have here twins, each wearing a different cap." - "Thoughts on Politics and Revolution". In: "Crisis of the Republic". Harcourt Brace 1972, p. 214

„Eine Welt, die Platz für die Öffentlichkeit haben soll, kann nicht nur für eine Generation errichtet oder nur für die Lebenden geplant sein; sie muss die Lebensspanne sterblicher Menschen übersteigen.“

Hannah Arendt

Vita Activa oder Vom tätigen Leben", Seite 68, Piper Verlag, 2002
"If the world is to contain a public space, it cannot be erected for one generation and planned for the living only; it must transcend the life-span of mortal men." - The Human Condition. Chapter II: The Public and the Private Realm. 7.: The Public Realm: The Common. Chicago 1958. p. 55

Über Menschen , Über die Welt

„Natürlich ist es »nützlicher«, Unrecht zu tun als Unrecht zu leiden; um des denkenden Dialogs mit mir selbst willen muss gerade dieser Nützlichkeitsstandpunkt aufgegeben werden.“

Hannah Arendt

Wahrheit und Politik, S. 348 in: "Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft", 2000

Wille , Leiden

„Sofern Vergangenheit als Tradition überliefert ist, hat sie Autorität; sofern Autorität sich geschichtlich darstellt, wird sie zur Tradition. Walter Benjamin wusste, dass Traditionsbruch und Autoritätsverlust irreperabel waren, und zog daraus den Schluss, neue Wege für den Umgang mit der Vergangenheit zu suchen.“

Hannah Arendt

Arendt und Benjamin: Texte, Briefe, Dokumente

Vergangenheit

„Wir, die wir die Denker ehren wollen können schwerlich umhin, es auffallend und vielleicht ärgerlich zu finden, daß Plato wie Heidegger, als sie sich auf die menschlichen Angelegenheiten einließen, ihre Zuflucht zu Tyrannen und Führern nahmen. Dies dürfte nicht nur den jeweiligen Zeitumständen und noch weniger einem vorgeformten Charakter, sondern eher dem geschuldet sein, was die Franzosen eine ‚déformation professionelle’ nennen. Denn die Neigung zum Tyrannischen läßt sich theoretisch bei fast allen großen Denkern nachweisen (Kant ist die große Ausnahme). Und wenn diese Neigung in dem, was sie taten, nicht nachweisbar ist, so nur, weil sehr wenige selbst unter ihnen über‚ das Vermögen, vor dem Einfachen zu erstaunen’, hinaus bereit waren, ‚dieses Erstaunen als Wohnsitz anzunehmen’.
Bei diesen wenigen ist es letztlich gleichgültig, wohin die Stürme ihres Jahrhunderts sie verschlagen mögen. Denn der Sturm, der durch das Denken Heideggers zieht – wie der, welcher uns nach Jahrtausenden noch aus dem Werk Platos entgegenweht –, stammt nicht aus dem Jahrhundert. Er kommt aus dem Uralten, und was er hinterläßt, ist ein Vollendetes, das, wie alles Vollendete, heimfällt zum Uralten.“

Hannah Arendt

Denken

„So läuft der Unterschied zwischen traditionellen und modernen politischen Lügen im Grunde auf den Unterschied zwischen Verbergen und Vernichten hinaus.“

Hannah Arendt buch Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft

Wahrheit und Politik, S. 356 in: "Zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft", 2000; Philosophische Perspektiven, Vittorio Klostermann 1969, S. 38 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=OSPkAAAAMAAJ&q=traditionellen
“In other words, the difference between the traditional and the modern lie will more often than not amount to the difference between hiding and destroying.” - "Truth and Politics". The New Yorker, February 25, 1967, p. 73 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=DQ8nAQAAIAAJ&q=difference; "The Origins of Totalitarianism". New York: Harcourt Brace 1976, 252-3, hier zitiert nach Cathy Caruth eurozine.com https://www.eurozine.com/lying-and-history/ & books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=tm4nAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA43

Über Lügen

„Einsicht in einen politischen Sachverhalt heißt nichts anderes, als die größtmögliche Übersicht über die möglichen Standorte und Standpunkte, aus denen der Sachverhalt gesehen und von denen her er beurteilt werden kann, zu gewinnen und präsent zu haben.“

Hannah Arendt

Was ist Politik? Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß [1950-1959]. Hg.: Ursula Ludz, Piper, München 1993, S. 97

Hannah Arendt: Zitate auf Englisch

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”

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Hannah Arendt

The New Yorker (12 September 1970).

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.”

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Hannah Arendt

“The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.”

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Hannah Arendt buch On Violence

"On Violence".
Crises of the Republic (1969)

“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.”

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Hannah Arendt buch Eichmann in Jerusalem

Epilogue.
Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)

“And the distinction between violent and non-violent action is that the former is exclusively bent upon the destruction of the old, and the latter is chiefly concerned with the establishment of something new.”

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Hannah Arendt

“As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.”

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Hannah Arendt

“For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same.”

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Hannah Arendt

Quelle: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

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Hannah Arendt

“Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”

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Hannah Arendt buch On Revolution

On Revolution (1963), ch. 2.
General sources
Kontext: What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

“The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.”

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Hannah Arendt

“Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Human Condition

Quelle: The Human Condition

“the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons”

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Hannah Arendt

“Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.”

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Hannah Arendt

" Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: A Commentary http://books.google.com/books?id=iMIPAQAAMAAJ&q="Revolutionaries+do+not+make+revolutions+The+revolutionaries+are+those+who+know+when+power+is+lying+in+the+street+and+when+they+can+pick+it+up+Armed"".
Crises of the Republic (1969)

“Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Life of the Mind

Quelle: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 5.

“Man's urge for change and his need for stability have always balanced and checked each other, and our current vocabulary, which distinguishes between two factions, the progressives and the conservatives, indicates a state of affairs in which this balance has been thrown out of order. No civilization — the man-made artifact to house successive generations — would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”

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Hannah Arendt

"Civil Disobedience".
Crises of the Republic (1969)

“The cultural treasures of the past, believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of which it turns out that they propose things altogether different than what had been thought.”

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Hannah Arendt

"Martin Heidegger at Eighty," in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays (1978) by Michael Murray, p. 294.

“Eichmann, much less intelligent and without any education to speak of, at least dimly realized that it was not an order but a law which had turned them all into criminals. The distinction between an order and the Führer's word was that the latter's validity was not limited in time and space, which is the outstanding characteristic of the former. This is also the true reason why the Führer's order for the Final Solution was followed by a huge shower of regulations and directives, all drafted by expert lawyers and legal advisors, not by mere administrators; this order, in contrast to ordinary orders, was treated as a law. Needless to add, the resulting legal paraphernalia, far from being a mere symptom of German pedantry and thoroughness, served most effectively to give the whole business its outward appearance of legality.And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it — the quality of temptation.”

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Hannah Arendt buch Eichmann in Jerusalem

Quelle: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VIII.

“The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Life of the Mind

Quelle: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), pp. 31-32.

“In its flight from death, the craving for permanence clings to the very things sure to be lost in death.”

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Hannah Arendt

Quelle: Love and Saint Augustine (1929), p. 17

“The only man for whom Hitler had ‘unqualified respect’ was ‘Stalin the genius’, and while in the case of Stalin and the Russian regime we do not… have the rich documentary material that is available for Germany, we nevertheless know since Khrushchev’s speech before the Twentieth Party Congress that Stalin trusted only one man and that was Hitler.”

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Hannah Arendt buch Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft

Part 3, Ch. 1 § 1.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

“Kant was also quite aware that "the urgent need" of reason is both different from and "more than mere quest and desire for knowledge." Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Life of the Mind

Quelle: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 14.

“[H]e was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. […] Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he repeated it until it became a cliché) each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. […] The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.”

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Hannah Arendt buch Eichmann in Jerusalem

Quelle: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. III.

“If the inner psychic ground of our individual appearance were not always the same, there could be no science of psychology, which qua science relies on a psychic “inside we are all alike,” just as the science of physiology and medicine relies on the sameness of our inner organs. […] The monstrous sameness and pervasive ugliness so highly characteristic of the findings of modern psychology, and contrasting so obviously with the enormous variety and richness of overt human conduct, witness to the radical difference between the inside and the outside of the human body.”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Life of the Mind

Quelle: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), pp. 34-35.

“Kant … discovered “the scandal of reason,” that is the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless cannot help thinking about.”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Life of the Mind

Quelle: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 14.

“Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.”

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Hannah Arendt buch The Human Condition

The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16.

“Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

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Hannah Arendt buch Men in Dark Times

Men in Dark Times (1968).

“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S. S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German Army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the S. S. élite with academic degrees. Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”

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Hannah Arendt buch Eichmann in Jerusalem

Quelle: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VI.

“Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

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Hannah Arendt buch Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft

Part 3, Ch. 2 The Totalitarian Movement, page 80 https://books.google.de/books?id=I0pVKCVM4TQC&pg=PT104&dq=A+mixture+of+gullibility+and+cynicism+had+been+an+outstanding+characteristic+of+mob+mentality+before+it+became+an+everyday+phenomenon+of+masses.&hl=de&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=A%20mixture%20of%20gullibility%20and%20cynicism%20had%20been%20an%20outstanding%20characteristic%20of%20mob%20mentality%20before%20it%20became%20an%20everyday%20phenomenon%20of%20masses.&f=false
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Kontext: A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible, world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything is possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynism the vice of superior and refined minds. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.