Hannah Arendt. A fragmentary portrait of the work

'Evil is always extreme, but never radical, it has no depth, nor does it have any demons. It can devastate the whole world precisely because it grows like a fungus on the surface. But only the good is deep and radical. ' (Hannah Arendt in a letter to Gershom Sholem) This sentence, which is certainly of far-reaching significance when dealing with the question of the nature of evil, also characterizes the author's personal periphery and liberation; it stands for Arendt's reflection on the sources of her basic trust and the development of a philosophical belief. 'I have changed my mind', she had put in front of the sentence; she had freed herself from the concept - or rather, from the feeling of 'radically evil' - which was decisive in her main work 'Elements and Origins of Total Domination'. Even what, as she kept saying, "should never have happened," she saw as the fruit of a deeply mistaken life. What she showed in the later philosophical texts 'Vita activa' and 'Vom Leben des Geistes' is the development of an honest self, alternating between self-understanding, unreserved conversation and a rich culture of narration and remembrance in the free and political forms of the public they - forever exemplary - lived. So she finally found her way back to her beginnings: to the passion of a free thinker and devout philosopher.