Understanding and truth in Hannah Arendt: The critical reception of the Eichmann trial and the will

Abstract This article highlights a shift in Hannah Arendt's intellectual development regarding the will during the 1960s, traced into the early 1970s when she focused on thinking, willing, and judging. I argue that this change was driven by reactions to her report on Adolf Eichmann's 1961 trial in Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). By taking this change into account, I question the tendency to overlook her development in favor of extended analyses of thinking and judging, often neglecting willing. My argument underscores, accordingly, the necessity of agreeing on factual truths before engaging in interpretative disputes. The argument has three parts. First, I examine Martin Heidegger's influence on Arendt's thought, particularly his hermeneutical phenomenology as seen in her 1953 lecture, “Understanding and Politics.” Second, I explore the issue of factual truth and its threat to a shared world, as highlighted in the exchange between Arendt and critics of the Eichmann report, along with her 1967 essay, “Truth and Politics.” Finally, I discuss Arendt's concept of the will, focusing on the distinction between the life of the mind and the world of appearances in her later works, “Thinking” and “Willing” (1973–1974).