Key Arguments

• Arendt proposes historical analysis to understand contemporary social reality by uncovering the roots of alienation.
• She identifies two linked trajectories of alienation that define the modern predicament.

Source Quotes

I confine myself, on the one hand, to an analysis of those general human capacities which grow out of the human condition and are permanent, that is, which cannot be irretrievably lost so long as the human condition itself is not changed. The purpose of the historical analysis, on the other hand, is to trace back modern world alienation, its twofold flight from the earth into the universe and from the world into the self, to its origins, in order to arrive at an understanding of the nature of society as it had developed and presented itself at the very moment

Key Concepts

• to trace back modern world alienation, its twofold flight from the earth into the universe and from the world into the self, to its origins

Context

Prologue: Programmatic statement of the historical-diagnostic task of the book.