"Politics is not the relationship between ruler and ruled, but the action of free humans gathering in a public space to create a common world through speech and action."
Today's Question
Among your daily choices, what was the 'most public decision' you made, looking beyond your own benefit to the common good?
The thinker who fled Nazi persecution into exile
Hannah Arendt witnessed the horrors of totalitarianism in the 20th century. She warned that when individuals stop thinking and evade public responsibility, society easily slips into barbarism.
Fleeing Germany in 1933, she went into exile in the US. Observing the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, she wrote 'Eichmann in Jerusalem,' pointing out that he was not a monster but a simple, unthinking human.