On Hannah Arendt's Trilogy on the Origins of Totalitarianism and its Putative Lessons for a (Better) Future

The importance and impact of Hannah Arendt's contribution to twentieth-century philosophy and social sciences cannot be easily over-estimated.In this review, we started from a re-reading of Arendt's trilogy 'On the Origins of Totalitarianism'.When compared to other authors of the epoch, e.g.George Orwell's 'Notes on Nationalism' (in which a clear demarcation line is drawn between nationalism and patriotism) and with the political and philosophical contexts of the pre-and postwar periods of the twentieth century, the profoundness of Arendt's oeuvre becomes apparent.Already in her early work, such as in Arendt's PhD thesis on 'The Notion of Love in Augustine', referring to the work of the early Christian philosopher St. Augustine, her acumen of analysis as well as a new positioning in the philosophical field of the era, can be discerned.However, in the line of Hans Achterhuis' reading of 'The Unknown Hannah Arendt', there is much more to it, in order to understand the kaleidoscopic nature of her work.More in particular, the silver lining in her oeuvre of the Jewish/Hebraic tradition of storytelling can be linked to a different understanding of Truth as Emeth (in the unity of speech and act in the auditive, Biblical tradition).This understanding is diametrically opposed to the Greek/Hellenic conceptualization of Truth as Aletheia (or the factually objectifiable, visual truth).Herewith, Arendt's philosophy shows both a common heritage and an abyssal rupture with that of Martin Heidegger.It has been suggested that this philosophical distinction forms an essential bypass when trying to transfer the conceptualizations in Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism towards the contemporary discussions on totalitarianism and geopolitics.The question "can we learn from the lessons from history", however, remains rather rhetorical than practical, despite of Timothy Snyder's lessons 'On Tyranny'.Although they are well-designed to demonstrate the important social and political mechanisms that may protect the world from a global breakdown of democratic principles, the lessons drawn from the past seem futile and hardly defensive against the world's big players of today.Nevertheless, Arendt's trilogy and Snyder's lessons are considered indispensable tools in educating the young generations.