The Origins of Totalitarianism
Not tyranny at larger scale but something new, and its precondition was ordinary loneliness.
Arendt published this in 1951, having fled Germany in 1933 and France after that, and it remains the most serious attempt to explain how Nazism and Stalinism were a new kind of regime rather than tyranny at greater scale. Three parts: antisemitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism proper. Its argument about loneliness as the ground condition for total domination is the part people keep returning to.
Recommended by 1 Person
Carissa Véliz
Arendt was a very insightful philosopher who lived through some of the darkest times in history and whose own life was deeply affected by her personal experience of Nazism and the Holocaust. A German-born Jew, she fled her homeland in 1933 and then France, eventually settling in the US.
Interview · May 2026
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