Why Hannah Matters?: A Personal Reflection

Every now and then, I am asked why Hannah Arendt? (I am doing PhD in Political science. I work on Hannah Arendt). At first, this question seemed insignificant to me but over a period of time, I have realized the question is not so simple. It says something about the world we live in. The more I read Arendt, the more I realize she is the thinker for our times. But why does she matter so much to me? Why devote a PhD, years of struggle to her thought?

Well, I didn’t choose Arendt just to get a PhD degree. I chose her because her questions are my questions. She speaks to something deep and restless in me, something many of us feel today but don’t always have the language for to think clearly and carefully. I don’t read her just as a political philosopher, but as a companion who walked through the darkest chapters of the 20th century and still held on to thinking resolutely.

She lived through Nazi Germany, lost her homeland, her identity, her friends and family, yet she never surrendered to despair. Instead, she chose to engage with the world. She chose to think. She showed us that the act of thinking is a political and moral responsibility.

In an age where thinking has been outsourced to AI, Arendt reminds us that to think is to act and resist. This is one of the reasons I am doing PhD, not just to get a degree but to participate in a tradition of thinking with great thinkers and engaging deeply with them. PhD is not just about producing research papers, citations, heavy weight theses but a laborious process of thinking critically and meaningfully. We have forgotten that philosophy (PhD Stands for Doctor of Philosophy) doesn’t always answers. The task of philosophy is to provoke you to think.

Arendt taught me what it means to think. As she says in the beginning of The Human Condition: ‘What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.’ While covering the (in)famous trial of Eichmann which later was published in the form of a book “Eichmann in Jerusalem:A Report on the Banality of Evil’’, she concluded that ‘Eichmann lacked the capacity to engage in self-reflective thinking, to imagine the world from the perspective of another’ and this is precisely the sin of most of our careerist bureaucrats and politicians, who abandon thinking when it matters for the sake of advancing their careers. We have Eichmanns in every office.

For Arendt, every human being is a thinking being and can reflect and judge for himself. In fact her final work, ‘The Life of the Mind’ is a meditation on thinking. PhD or for that matter any education, is an endless commitment to the activity of thinking. In a time when it’s easy to fall into ideological comfort zones or echo chambers, she invites us to think without bannisters. This is why we need philosophers and political thinkers, not to tell us what to think but to teach us how to think and to remind us that politics is not just about parties and policies, but about living together in a world we share in common and often don’t understand. And that’s why my PhD on Arendt or for that matter on any other political thinker matters.

My engagement with her isn’t just academic. It is existential. It’s about engaging with what is meaningful. She didn’t just describe the world but tried to make sense of it and to care for it and to change it as Marx would expect but before that to comprehend it as Heidegger would require. Heidegger, a seminal and arguably the most influential philosopher of his generation, cherished her company. I read her, I argue with her, I learn from her not because she offers easy answers but because she reminds me that to be human is to ask questions even when the answers don’t come easily. Her form of thinking is not a retreat from the world. It is a confrontation with experiences, beliefs, and convictions. As she says, ‘the notion that there exists dangerous thoughts is mistaken for the simple reason that thinking itself is dangerous to all creeds, convictions, and opinions.’ Given increasing skepticism about the academia and questions regarding its complicity in the capitalistic world, I often questioned myself why should I continue with what has been described as luxury.

From Arendt I learnt meaning of action and engagement. Her dialogues with Eric Voegelin helped me work out in more concrete terms further trajectory of PhD. PhD isn’t about a degree, a thesis that only your supervisor and examiner read and gathers dust in libraries but about how one comprehends some aspect of the world one encounters and does ones bit to change it. PhD shows limitations of passionate activism unguided by deep vision and understanding. We need the poles of contemplation and action to illuminate the odyssey of life with meaning and purpose. What is the idea of a city (given our fascination with smart cities) one learns from deep engagement with such gifted scholars of the Greeks. Arendt reminds us that the world we live in is not given. It is created when we are willing to appear before others and share it through speech and action. She not only helps us to think about the darkness of our times but is a source of illumination when it comes to loving the world despite all the suffering in it and this she calls ‘Amor Mundi’ – love of the world.

Arendt’s conception of Amor Mundi, to quote Samantha Rosehill ‘is not comforting, it is challenging. In teaching us to love the world, Arendt is teaching us to be thinking and engaged citizens.’ In an increasingly alienating world, Arendt helps us to feel at home. She teaches you what it means to be committed to the world despite all the horrors and therefore to care for it. That is why I chose her; or maybe she chose me.

 Aamir Hussain, Research Scholar, Department of Politics and Governance, Central University of Kashmir