Understanding the Initium of Humanity

Cristina, a lifelong student of Arendt, recently shared with the Hannah Arendt Center an image of her personal Arendt library.

Here's what she had to say about her photograph.

"I'm Cristina. I' m 35 years old, and I live near Venice in Italy. This is a part of my Arendt library.

"I've been studying Arendt's thinking since I was at University. I've never stopped, even though I now work in a private company that doesn't deal with philosophy.

"In 2004, I graduated after having completed my thesis entitled " The Understanding of Totalitarianism in H.Arendt". It is focused on the deep reflection that Arendt developed over the course of her lifetime in order to answer the following question: How could it happen?

"In my thesis, I analyzed how Arendt only through understanding tried to reconcile herself with the reality of what transpired in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Understanding isn't the same as forgiveness, I realized; it is a way to find out your place in the world and your amor mundi. As a result, understanding oftentimes gives way to a painful, deep, and complicated process by which one presumably seeks to rediscover the original meaning of the human condition, of liberty, and of politics, as set against by terror, ideology, and concentration camps.

"In my opinion, Arendt's thinking is a long process, and she delivers to us an essential hope: humanity is always an initium, and this ability can be safeguarded only in the silent plurality of our mind. The banality of evil, after all, is absence of thinking. This clear concept has deeply changed my thinking, and I've sought to safeguard it against the dangers and prejudices of ordinary life. I' m proud of my library; it's a part of me."