汉娜·阿伦特（Hannah Arendt）1906年出身于德国汉诺威一个犹太人家庭，在马堡和弗莱堡大学读哲学、神学和古希腊语；后转至海德堡大学雅斯贝尔斯的门下，获哲学博士学位。1933年先是流亡巴黎，1941年到了美国，1951年成为美国公民。同年，《极权主义的起源》一书出版，为她奠定了作为一个政治理论家的国际声望。

流亡之前，阿伦特以一个犹太人的身份协助犹太组织工作，为此曾被纳粹政府关押过。去美国之后，她为流亡者杂志《建设》撰写评论等；做过肯舍出版社的编辑；1952年担任过“犹太文化重建委员会”的负责人。自1954年开始，阿伦特在美国加利福尼亚大学、普林斯顿大学、哥伦比亚大学、社会研究新学院、纽约布鲁克林学院开办讲座；后担任过芝加哥大学教授、社会研究新学院教授。随着《人的状况》、《在过去与未来之间》、《论革命》等著作的出版，使她成为二十世纪政治思想史上的瞩目人物，近年来声誉日隆。1975年12月阿伦特因心脏病突发去世。

The Origins of Totalitarianism is an indispensable book for understanding the frightful barbarity of the twentieth century. Suspicious of the inevitability so often imposed by hindsight, Hannah Arendt was not interested in detailing the causes that produced totalitarianism. Nothing in the nineteenth century—indeed, nothing in human history—could have prepared us for the idea of political domination achieved by organizing the infinite plurality and differentiation of human beings as if all humanity were just one individual. Arendt believed that such a development marked a grotesque departure from all that had come before.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt sought to provide an historical account of the forces that crystallized into totalitarianism: The ebb and flow of nineteenth-century anti-Semitism (she deemed the Dreyfus Affair a dress rehearsal for the Final Solution) and he rise of European imperialism, accompanied by the invention of racism as the only possible rationalization for it. For Arendt, totalitarianism was a form of governance that eliminated the very possibility of political action. Totalitarian leaders attract both mobs and elites, take advantage of the unthinkability of their atrocities, target “objective enemies” (classes of people who are liquidated simply because of their group membership), use terror to create loyalty, rely on concentration camps, and are obsessive in their pursuit of global primacy. But even more presciently, Arendt understood that totalitarian solutions could well survive the demise of totalitarian regimes.

The Origins of Totalitarianism remains as essential a book for understanding our times as it was when it first appeared more than fifty years ago.