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Phenomenology

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Hannah Arendt and Philosophical Influence

Karin Fry
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Georgia Southern
University, Statesboro, GA, USA
kfry@georgiasouthern.edu

Abstract

Over the years, many scholars have focused on the hierarchical and overpowering
influence of Martin Heidegger upon Hannah Arendt’s thought. This view follows the
stereotype concerning philosophical influence in which an all-knowing teacher affects
the thought of the student, particularly if the student is a woman. In this paper, I argue
that the story of philosophical influence is more complicated. In this case, the bio-
graphical archive establishes how Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt
mutually influenced one another throughout their lives and careers. This evidence
contests the typical view of philosophical influence which is hierarchical and often
gendered and suggests a new model for understanding philosophical influences as dy-
namic and reciprocal.

Keywords

Arendt – Jaspers – Heidegger – influence – philosophy – education

Martin Heidegger wrote to Hannah Arendt shortly after their reunion in 1950
that the “… real ‘and’ between ‘Jaspers and Heidegger’ is only you.”1 This state-
ment sums up a great deal concerning the complicated relationships between
Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger. Arendt studied with
both, but the relationship that has dominated Arendt scholarship is the one
with Heidegger. This is due to Heidegger’s philosophical importance, the pub-
lic knowledge of the love affair between Heidegger and Arendt, Heidegger’s

1  Martin Heidegger, “To Hannah Arendt,” 16 May 1950. Letters 1925–1975: Hannah Arendt and
Martin Heidegger, ed. Ursula Lutz, trans. Andrew Shields (Orlando: Harcourt, 2004), 89.

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membership in the Nazi party, and Arendt’s choice to initiate contact with him
again after the War.2 Questions concerning whether she should have renewed
contact with him and the degree to which her thought is sympathetic or critical
of his views have dominated the discussion for years. Several scholars, includ-
ing Richard Bernstein, have argued that Arendt was blind to Heidegger’s error,
and at fault for renewing contact with him. Others like Natalie Nenadic have
suggested that Arendt’s theory is grounded in a Heideggerian methodology.3
Jacques Taminiaux and Dana Villa have seen more criticism of Heidegger’s
philosophy in Arendt’s work than acceptance of it. Since Heidegger was her
teacher and her lover, the assumption is that most of her knowledge is rooted
in his influence. However, to understand Arendt’s relationship with what her
husband, Heinrich Blücher, has called “her philosophers,” one needs to exam-
ine the relationships between Heidegger, Jaspers, and Arendt to recognize the
mutual influence of thinkers upon one another. The biographical evidence
from their correspondence sheds great light on how these thinkers viewed one
another and contests the view that solely Heidegger was the guiding force in
Arendt’s intellectual development.
Typically, philosophical narratives about how teachers influence their stu-
dents focus on the all-knowing teacher transferring knowledge to the student.
If the student also becomes famous, it is usually understood as a both the in-
fluence of and rebellion against the teacher. This is the case as far back as nar-
ratives concerning Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. However, when the student
is a woman, especially one who had romantic entanglements with her men-
tor, the narrative tends to favor the tremendous influence of the mentor, even
when the student achieves high levels of notoriety. For example, even though
Simone de Beauvoir edited and gave comments on much of Sartre’s work and
although she was of the same generation as Sartre and not his student, Sartre’s
influence has been understood as the dominant force on her work for many
years. Often, her contributions to his progress have been ignored. As Christine
Daigle and Jacob Golomb note, Beauvoir has stood generally in the shadow
of Sartre for some time and Beauvoir’s “work has not been treated with the
same academic seriousness as that of other philosophers, notably Sartre’s.”4
Of course, Beauvoir may have contributed to this assessment of her work by

2  This is further complicated by the publication and translation of Heidegger’s notebooks

which display overt antisemitism on Heidegger’s part.
3  Natalie Nenadic, “Heidegger, Arendt, and Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Comparative & Continental
Philosophy, 5.1 (May 2013): 36–48.
4  Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb, eds., Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 1, 7.

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viewing it as being less important than Sartre’s. Nonetheless, Sartre’s signifi-

cance has been understood as hierarchically impacting Beauvoir’s work and
her work has not been understood as influencing his. Similarly, Arendt’s great-
est influence has been largely understood to be by Heidegger. Since he was her
more famous teacher and since they were involved romantically, his influence
upon her thought has taken precedence. Even though she was an important
part of his life, biographies about Martin Heidegger often ignore her almost
entirely, while her work is viewed through the lens of his overwhelming in-
fluence. This stereotype of how philosophical knowledge is transferred is not
only hierarchical, but it tends to reinforce a gendered view of how the transfer
of philosophical knowledge occurs between students and their mentors. This
view prioritizes the all-knowing teacher upon the less knowing student which
does not alter over time or circumstance. Yet, the biographical archive contests
this view and provides evidence for a model of understanding philosophical
influence generally as mutual and changing over time.

1 Arendt and Jaspers: From Student to Friend

What is interesting in the scholarship about Arendt’s philosophical influences

is often a failure to recognize the importance of Karl Jaspers. Hannah Arendt
was one of Karl Jaspers’s first supervisees and she worked with him while he
was writing his important three volume set entitled Philosophy. She had the
luck to be studying with both Jaspers and Heidegger while they were creating
historically significant works in philosophy. According to her future student,
Jerome Kohn, Arendt gained what she would call a “philosophical shock” by
studying with Heidegger and Jaspers whose philosophies evoked a sense of
wonder at sheer existence.5 Both professors opened a new kind of thinking for
her and in those early years, helped her develop her own theory.
Arendt’s respect for Karl Jaspers is readily apparent in her correspondence
with him and in her essays that she wrote about him. There can be no doubt
that Arendt treasured the friendship she had with Karl Jaspers and his wife,
Gertrud. They exchanged over 400 letters even though they were not in touch
during much of the 1930’s and early 1940’s because of the War. Jaspers said that
tears came to his eyes when he got a letter from Arendt in 1945 and realized

5  Jerome Kohn, ed., Essays in Understanding 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, Totalitarianism.

(New York: Schocken Books, 1994), xi.

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that Hannah had survived.6 In 1964, when Arendt was asked to reflect upon
Jaspers’s influence, she said she had read Jaspers’s work as early as 1920 and
it was part of what inspired her to pursue philosophy. Often, she saw him as
a kind of light in the darkness, particularly during the War years. She stated:

Where Jaspers comes forward and speaks, all becomes luminous. He has
an unreservedness, a trust, an unconditionality of speech that I have
never known in anyone else. This impressed me when I was young.7

Furthermore, Jaspers made Kant’s work come alive for her in a different way.
Before coming to Heidelberg, Arendt did not understand how freedom could
be linked to reason and action, which was implicit in Kant’s theory, but was for-
eign to her reading of Kant’s work.8 Jaspers allowed her to see how reason could
affect action and how philosophy could be political.9 When asked to speak
about Jaspers when he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
in 1958, Arendt stated that she particularly admired Jaspers’s engagement in
human affairs and his proper response to Nazism.10 Jaspers understood that
“both philosophy and politics concern everyone.”11 This was something that
Arendt took to heart in her own work.
Initially, what drew Arendt and Jaspers closer were the several care pack-
ages per month that Arendt sent from the United States to him as well as their
common concern over the political implications of the aftermath of Nazi
Germany. Beginning in about 1945, once Arendt was able to return to Europe
on a somewhat regular basis, their letters attest to the intellectual significance
of their meetings. So profound and constant were these visits that Arendt
was considered to be one of Jaspers’s family. Intellectually, she claimed the
conversations she had with Jaspers were “really my most powerful post war
experience.”12 When Arendt travelled to Europe, she planned her trip around
visiting Jaspers, often seeing him more than once. She described one visit as

6   Karl Jaspers, “To Hannah Arendt,” 2 December 1945, Hannah Arendt Karl Jaspers Corre-
spondence 1926–1969, Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, eds., trans. Robert and Rita Kimber
(San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992), 25.
7   Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (New York: Penguin, 2000), 21.
8   Ibid.
9   Ibid.
10  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), 78.
11  Ibid., 74.
12  Ibid.

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“…  a single conversation that went on for 10 days.”13 Arendt asked her hus-
band, Heinrich Blücher, to send various books from home, to further deepen
their academic discussions.14 She enjoyed the freedom of the conversations
which were like “an oasis in the desert of time” because the conversations were
seemingly unending and enriching.15 Both Arendt and Jaspers saved up topics
of conversation until they saw each other once more. Arendt wrote “I keep
thinking of what we will discuss. The list starts with politics in America and
ends with Plato.”16 They did not agree about everything, but neither of them
thought that necessary or beneficial. Each respected the other and no intellec-
tual disagreement interfered with their close friendship. When Jaspers began
to age and have health problems, Arendt made sure to visit as frequently as she
could, for fear that each visit would be the last. She claimed more than once
that he was “… the only person who educated me.”17 Arendt herself understood
the major influence of Jaspers on her scholarship, especially with his focus on
politics. She claimed that he was the only one that she could recognize as her
teacher.18 It is clear that he influenced her life and her theory greatly.
It seems natural that those interested in Arendt’s philosophical influences,
might begin with her own assertions. Yet, Jaspers’s intellectual influence is in
some ways more difficult to discern as his philosophical importance has faded
over the years and many of his works have not been translated broadly. In many
letters and interviews, Arendt is on record attesting to the fact that he was the
teacher who influenced her the most. When she was out of contact with him
during the War, she confessed that she did not do anything professionally with-
out thinking how she would justify it to him.19 She wrote to Jaspers more than
Heidegger, wrote longer letters to him, and visited him more often. She thought
of him and his wife, Gertrud, as very dear friends and never failed to see them
whenever she was in Europe. Yet, because of the Heidegger controversy, the
scholarship concerning the influence of Karl Jaspers on Arendt’s thought is
vastly underdeveloped. Arendt understood that it was Jaspers’s work that

13  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher,” 17 October 1939, Within Four Walls: The Correspon-
dence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968, trans. Lotte Kohler (New
York: Harcourt 1996), 50.
14  Ibid., 113.
15  Hannah Arendt, “To Gershom Scholem,” The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and
Gershom Scholem, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 170.
16  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher,” 24 May 1952, Within Four Walls, 179.
17  Ibid., 331.
18  Hannah Arendt, “To Karl Jaspers,” 19 February 1953, Correspondence, 206.
19  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher,” 25 November 1936. Within Four Walls, 23.

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“prepared me for politics,” and consequently, Jaspers’s influence cannot be

underestimated.20
Nonetheless, Jaspers’s influence was not one-sided and hierarchical. Arendt’s
relationship with Jaspers began formally, with deference to her supervisor, but
it changed over time to a friendship of equals. This transition is documented
in their salutations to each other in their letters. The correspondence begins
with the addresses of “Dear Professor Jaspers,” and “Dear Frau Arendt,” and
end with “Dear Revered” or “Dearest Friends,” and “Dear Hannah,” or “Beloved
Hannah.” Initially, the relationship was more distant and professional, but
not without social interactions including parties with other students at the
Jaspers’s home as his advisee.21 As time went on and the friendship and trust
between them deepened, the relationship changed. Jaspers thrived on his con-
versations with Arendt and was sometimes persuaded by her point of view.
First, he admired the fact that she had foreseen the direction of Nazism more
quickly than he had, and for that reason, often trusted her political instincts.
He raved about Origins of Totalitarianism, On Revolution, and helped to publish
her Sechs Essays. He read every piece that she wrote in German and many that
were only available in English, despite lacking skills in that language. He as-
sisted in the publication of her work in German, particularly in the early years.
Alternatively, she had exclusive rights to the English translations of his work,
and she helped to get his work translated. In 1946, Gershom Scholem wrote to
Arendt about how proud Jaspers was of her and stated that Jaspers “… cites
you a lot,” in his book focusing on the guilt of the German people.22 Jaspers
thought Arendt’s essay on the Hungarian Revolution was “… brilliant …” and
used it in his classroom with his students.23 Jaspers felt he learned a great deal
from Arendt about freedom and totalitarianism. He claimed in his philosophi-
cal autobiography that

I learned from her to see this world of the greatest attempts at political
freedom and, on the other hand, the structures of totalitarianism … With
her I was able to discuss once again in a fashion which I had desired all my
life … complete unreservedness which allows of no mental reservation.24

20  Hannah Arendt, “To Karl Jaspers,” 11 March 1949. Correspondence, 133.
21  Elisabeth Young Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: for the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1982), 66.
22  Gershom Scholem, “To Hannah Arendt,” 6 November 1946, The Correspondence of Hannah
Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 60.
23  Karl Jaspers, “To Hannah Arendt,” 23 November 1957, Correspondence, 333.
24  Karl Jaspers, “Philosophical Autobiography,” The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. Paul
Arthur Schilpp (La Salle: Open Court, 1981), 67.

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He appreciated her friendship and their philosophical conversations.

Jaspers claimed that Hannah Arendt-Blücher’s “… long-time affection had not
waned through the decades,” and that her “philosophical solidarity remains
among the most beautiful experiences of those years.”25 Jaspers urged her
to visit at least once a year because the visit had “become indispensable.”26
On her 50th birthday, Jaspers stated “you are one of those people I count among
the great gifts of the world.”27 Arendt visited Jaspers and his wife whenever she
was in Europe, as her top concern. When making plans for visits, the Jaspers’s
accommodated her and agreed that “… Hannah has priority over everything
else.”28 Their relationship grew to include Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blücher,
and was solidified further when Blücher finally agreed to travel back to Europe
to meet Jaspers. Blücher wrote to Jaspers that meeting him was one of the cru-
cial joys of his life.29 The philosophical stories of influence are often one sided,
particularly if the former student is a woman, seeing the intellectual father as
one who passes instruction on to the student without reciprocation. Over the
years, Arendt was no longer viewed as a student, but as an intellectual equal
and it is quite clear that their philosophical discussions were significant. They
affected one another’s lives and scholarship mutually and profoundly.

2 Arendt and Heidegger: Ebbs and Flows

Arendt’s relationship with Martin Heidegger was quite different from the one
with Karl Jaspers and transitioned from a love affair, to estrangement, to re-
newed friendship, to a more distant friendship, and then finally, to a more intel-
lectual friendship after Jaspers’s death. Arendt respected much of Heidegger’s
intellectual work and continued to read all his major writings as they were
published. In some ways, she respected his intellect more than Jaspers, since
she tended to criticize Jaspers’s writing more in private letters to others.
However, she did note that Jaspers was much better speaking in person than in
writing.30 Blücher agreed with Arendt that Heidegger’s philosophy displayed
quality, but that was its seduction. Though she respected Heidegger’s intellect,

25  Ibid., 66.

26  Karl Jaspers, “To Hannah Arendt,” 5 March 1950. Correspondence, 388.
27  Ibid., 300.
28  Ibid., 134.
29  Heinrich Blücher, “To Karl Jaspers,” 5 September 1961, Correspondence, 450.
30  Hannah Arendt, “To Kurt Blumenfeld,” 14 October 1952, Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld
“… in keinem Besitz verwurzelt” Die Korrespondenz, eds. Ingeborg Nordmann and Iris
Pilling (Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995), 68–69, 106.

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she respected Jaspers as a person more and did not shy away from saying so.
When writing to her husband about her invitation to speak for Jaspers’s award,
she acknowledged that Heidegger would understand it as picking Jaspers over
him. Ultimately, she accepted the opportunity and discussed Karl Jaspers as a
model European humanitarian.
The relationship between Heidegger and Arendt involved private, personal
feelings, but also a great deal of philosophical discussion. His scholarly influ-
ence upon her thought is most apparent in her dissertation on St. Augustine.
In it, she analyzes Augustine’s description of different kinds of love through a
Heideggerian lens, though she is critical of both thinkers on political grounds.
Arendt worried that Augustine’s focus on the afterlife led to a de-emphasis on
the political state of the temporal realm. Many of her criticisms of Augustine
apply to Heidegger’s philosophy as well. Heidegger’s focus on authentic being-
towards-death seemed largely solitary. His fascination with what he called
“fundamental ontology” may cause one to ignore significant political matters.
The seeds for her later criticisms of Heidegger’s work lie here. She completed
the thesis on Augustine with Jaspers after she transferred to Heidelberg to
study with him. Perhaps the political emphasis of the critique was inspired by
working with Jaspers.
Despite Heidegger’s influence on her work, she rarely mentions him by
name in her academic books and articles. There were certainly concepts and
ideas that connected to Heideggerian theory in her writings, but little outright
discussion. The most famous work about her understanding of Heidegger was
an article she published in 1971 called “Heidegger at Eighty” which was a tribute
to him on the occasion on his eightieth birthday. Though she praised his intel-
lectual skill and ability to ponder philosophical ideas, she also criticized him as
well. Comparing Heidegger to Plato, she criticised both for using abstract phil-
osophical reasoning to address politics that ignored the validity of different
points of view. In that sense, it was undemocratic. Both Plato and Heidegger
were used to thinking philosophically, not politically, and each made serious
errors when trying to think practically. Heidegger’s theory was an example of
how philosophical thinking had lost its way by failing to see the political impli-
cations of theory.31 Jacques Taminiaux, a scholar who knew Heidegger, focused
on this idea in his book called The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker:
Arendt and Heidegger. The title for this book is based on a story that Arendt
told in her last work The Life of the Mind, but also in the article written for
Heidegger’s birthday. Arendt told the story from Plato’s Theaetetus, in which
the Thracian maid laughed at the philosopher Thales, who was so caught up

31  Heinrich Blücher, “To Hannah Arendt,” 2 March 1950. Within Four Walls, 140.

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in thinking about the stars that in his obsession of looking up, he tripped and
fell into a pit. Plato states “in his eagerness to know about the heavens, he
could not see what lay at his feet.”32 Taminiaux contrasted this approach with
Arendt’s love of this world which she called amor mundi. Arendt was focused
on practical politics, people in relationship, and life in community.
It is quite unclear to what extent, if any, Arendt’s ideas had an influence
on Heidegger, but he did write to her about scholarly lectures he was devel-
oping, and he discussed philosophical topics with her.33 Also, Heidegger’s de-
scriptions of their love relationship in his early letters to her mirrors how he
described authentic living from Being and Time which was the book he was
writing at the time. In 1925, Heidegger writes:

And what can we do but only—open ourselves—and allow what is to be.

Let it be so that it is pure joy to us and the wellspring of every new living
day. Elated about being who we are.34

In later life, Heidegger claimed that his years in Marburg from 1923–1928 were
the most stimulating and eventful of his life.35 This is particularly interesting
since during the time he was living in Marburg, his letters to Karl Jaspers show
dissatisfaction with the place, a frustration with his students, and a perpetual
interest in jobs at other universities. He would later confess to Arendt that his
fond memories of Marburg had something to do with their relationship.36
Despite this admission, most biographies of Heidegger have minimal cover-
age of Arendt, whereas discussions of Arendt’s life and thought are permeated
with Heidegger’s influence.
Once Arendt heard of Heidegger’s acceptance of the Rector position at
Freiburg and decision to join the Nazi party, their conversations ended for
17 years until she returned to Europe once more. This is a large gap in com-
munication and a very troubled one, since Arendt did not feel like she could
trust him or his political judgment. Arendt travelled to Freiburg three months
into a European trip to trace some essential leads for the Jewish cultural re-
construction organization she was heading. She was indecisive about meeting
Heidegger again, but wrote a note to him from her hotel, with the unsigned

32  Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger,
trans. Michael Gendre (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 1.
33  Letters, 222.
34  Martin Heidegger, “To Hannah Arendt,” 9 May 1925. Letters, 19.
35  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 50. Walter Biemel, Martin Heidegger: An
Illustrated Study (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 15.
36  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 50.

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message “I am here.”37 Heidegger came to the hotel immediately. Heidegger

romanticized about this visit for years to come, writing her a great deal of
poetry and referring to the date specifically in letters. Over the course of the
following year, Heidegger sent her more than 25 poems, gushing about their
reunion. According to Hans Jonas, Heidegger said to Arendt “I came to turn
myself in.”38 For Heidegger, it was significant that Arendt used the informal
Du in their first meeting.39 Arendt asserted that this meeting was important
to her as well, what she called “… the confirmation of an entire life”.40 She re-
ported to Blücher that she thought that they had a “…  real talk, I think, for
the first time in our lives …”41 The next day, Arendt visited Heidegger at home
and exchanged words with his wife, Elfride. Elfride had been told about the
affair from the 1920’s very recently. The meeting ended well from Heidegger’s
perspective and he thought there was a “… spontaneous harmony …” between
his wife and Arendt, but Arendt understood it very differently and complained
about Elfride’s antisemitism.42 In a letter to Blücher, Arendt explained that
Elfride conducted their first discussion as if 25 years had not passed and she
was very jealous that Arendt was the passion of Heidegger’s life and the inspi-
ration for his work.43 What kind of influence this was upon his academic work
is unclear but the parties involved seemed to think it was significant. Arendt
said that Elfride Heidegger hated her and would be

ready to drown any Jew in sight. Unfortunately, she is absolutely horren-

dous. But I’m going to try to diffuse things as much as I can.44

She was successful in this task. Heidegger’s memory of the same encounter was:

That you came, that what grew close in us became the closest closeness;
that Elfride was helpful with all of it, that our love needs her love; that
everything, including your safe return home is reflected, clarified, and
validated in everything else.45

37  Derwent May, Hannah Arendt. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986, 76.
38  Hans Jonas, Brian Fox, and Richard Wolin. “Hannah Arendt: An Intimate Portrait.” New
England Review, Vol 27, No 2, 1990, 133–142, p. 136.
39  Martin Heidegger, “For Hannah Arendt.” Letters, 71.
40  Hannah Arendt, “To Martin Heidegger.” 9 February 1950. Letters, 59.
41  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher.” 8 February 1950. Within Four Walls, 128.
42  Martin Heidegger, “To Hannah Arendt,” 15 February 1950, Letters, 65. Hannah Arendt, “To
Heinrich Blücher,” 8 February 1950, Within Four Walls, 128.
43  Ibid.
44  Ibid.
45  Martin Heidegger, “To Hannah Arendt,” 12 April 1950. Letters, 74.

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Heidegger was pleased that the secret of his affair was out in the open and
he thought that with Arendt’s assistance, his marriage had improved.46 Many
of Heidegger’s letters to Arendt after this point included best wishes from
his wife. Arendt arranged a second visit to see Heidegger again before leav-
ing for the United States. Despite being pleased to reconnect with Heidegger,
she had reservations and noted to Blücher that Heidegger was a notorious liar,
but she still believed that he had loved her, despite his political convictions.47
Throughout the spring and summer of 1950, Heidegger’s letters to Arendt were
very intimate. Arendt enclosed some pages of her essay on the guilt of the
German people for the couple to read, which Heidegger called “… fierce and
courageous.”48 Heidegger also disclosed to Arendt his anxiety that Jaspers had
not answered his letters.49 Despite the renewed connection between Heidegger
and Arendt, Heidegger’s notebooks from the early 1930’s show that Heidegger
had overt antisemitic beliefs, yet Arendt’s understanding of how deeply this
went was limited.50
Arendt stayed in correspondence with Heidegger for the rest of her life, in-
cluding sending him photographs, books, and records of classical music, and
he also sent her pictures and copies of his academic writings. Arendt helped
in the process of getting Heidegger’s works translated into English which af-
fected the reach of his work. Eventually, their correspondence became less
passionate, less frequent, and more straight forwardly friendly by the fall of
1950. Yet, unlike her friendship with Jaspers which was a constant and deepen-
ing force in her life, the Heidegger relationship went through many ebbs and
flows. Many of Heidegger’s early letters and the letters right after their meet-
ing again in 1950 were intimate and filled with passionate poetry. Then, years
would go by without contact or visits between them. Partly, this was due to the
antisemitism and jealousy of Heidegger’s wife Elfride. For some years, Arendt
refused to be around her, though they became more cordial later. But there
were other complications as well. Heidegger discussed his work with Arendt,
but rarely expressed interest in hers. Heidegger’s comments about her work on
the guilt of the German people as being courageous and fierce was a rare com-
pliment. Heidegger made sure she got copies of his books as they came out, but
Arendt sensed that Heidegger was not happy that she had had some success.
Writing to Blücher regarding an offer for a visiting lectureship at Princeton in

46  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher.” 2 August 1941. Within Four Walls, 71.
47  Ibid., 128.
48  Martin Heidegger, “To Hannah Arendt,” 15 February 1950. Letters, 64.
49  Ibid., 89.
50  Peter Trawny, Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy, trans. Ian Alexander Moore and
Christopher Turner (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), 13.

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1958, she stated “Jaspers will be pleased and Heidegger less pleased but I don’t
care.”51 Perhaps what best exemplifies her intellectual relationships with her
former teachers was the fact that Jaspers wrote the preface to the German ver-
sion of Origins of Totalitarianism, while Arendt doubted that Heidegger would
ever read it.52 As her fame grew, she partially blamed herself for Heidegger’s
ambivalence toward her because she was not intellectually honest with
Heidegger about her own abilities.53 She admitted to Gertrud and Karl Jaspers
that she pretended to be less intellectually talented than she actually was dur-
ing their time together in Marburg. When she tired of the game and refused to
pretend, she felt Heidegger’s bad reaction was understandable.54
After Jaspers died in 1969, and Blücher died in 1970, the contact between
Arendt and Heidegger picked up again, as if Arendt needed a German phi-
losopher to talk to who had shared her past. They wrote each other more often
and she visited him more frequently. The letters are largely philosophical and
intellectual at this time. They often discussed details of Heidegger’s works
being translated into English and she wrote to him of her work on Life of the
Mind which included an examination of the will in Heidegger’s work. They
recommended books to one another. Heidegger seemed to partially replace
the role of Jaspers in her life at this time, by sharing intellectual ideas with
her. Although it is difficult to disentangle how each influenced the other, they
shared a friendship that involved philosophical discussions and impacted the
intellectual and scholarly pursuits of each other to some degree.

3 Jaspers and Heidegger: Friendship Disintegrated

The missing piece that is often ignored in Arendt scholarship is the close
friendship that Jaspers and Heidegger shared before the War and before ei-
ther of them knew Hannah Arendt. The two friends often visited each other
and spent stretches of time discussing each other’s theories. Heidegger and
Jaspers valued this personal and intellectual friendship. They exchanged
roughly 120 letters between the years of 1920 and 1935. When visiting Jaspers,
Heidegger wrote to his wife that “I get on well with J[aspers]. I am acquiring
new insights & learning a lot—in terms of material.”55 At this time, Heidegger

51  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher,” 18 May 1952. Within Four Walls, 173.
52  Ibid., 273.
53  Hannah Arendt, “To Gertrud and Karl Jaspers,” 1 November 1961, Correspondence, 457.
54  Ibid.
55  Martin Heidegger, “To Elfride Heidegger,” 11 September 1922, Letters to His Wife: 1915–1970,
ed. Gertrud Heidegger, trans. R.D.V. Glasgow (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 104.

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respected Jaspers for his modesty and the fact that he was a man of action.56
Intellectually, they saw commonality in their work. Jaspers’s limit situations,
or experiences that pushed people to higher levels of insight through height-
ened guilt, anxiety, or despair clearly influenced Heidegger’s understanding of
being-towards-death.57 In particular, Jaspers’s interpretation of Kierkegaard
affected Heidegger, though both were also critical of each other’s work at
times. Heidegger wrote a critical review of Psychologie der Weltanschauungen,
in the 1920’s, but did not allow it to be published until 1973 out of friendship.
Personally, they shared details of the politics of academia and the struggle to
gain appointment at more prestigious universities. In the beginning, Jaspers
was so enthusiastic about meeting Heidegger that he loaned him travel money
to make the trip to discuss their work.58 After their friendship deteriorated,
Heidegger hoped to renew ties with Jaspers and asked Arendt’s advice about
how to manage it. Arendt encouraged reunion on both sides, but over time, she
realized it was not going to happen.
The main source of trouble was why Heidegger had severed contact with
Jaspers in 1933 leading to the downfall of their friendship. Heidegger had
spread the rumor that he had cut off contact because Jaspers had plagiarized
from historian Paul Böckmann. Jaspers considered the situation quite differ-
ently, knowing it had nothing to do with suspected plagiarism.59 Jaspers wrote
to Heidegger that he did not suspect the reason for cutting off relations was
because Jaspers’s wife, Gertrud, was Jewish, but the fact of the matter was that
Jaspers had no explanation and clearly wanted a more truthful answer from
Heidegger.60 In a letter to his wife Elfride from 1933, Heidegger did commu-
nicate that he thought Jaspers was able to see our work and “destiny” in “a
thoroughly German way” and yet was “tied down by his wife,” suggesting that
perhaps this was the reason that he broke off contact.61 Nonetheless, Heidegger
sought forgiveness in later years and continued to follow Jaspers’s work. Jaspers
compared Heidegger to a dreaming boy, so caught up with National Socialism
that he didn’t know what he was doing. Heidegger agreed with this assessment

56  Ibid., 86.

57  William D. Blattner, “Heidegger’s Debt to Jaspers’ Concept of the Limit-Situation,” in Alan
Olson, ed., Heidegger & Jaspers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 155.
58  Karl Jaspers, “To Martin Heidegger,” 24 November 1922 and 20 June 1923. The Heidegger-
Jaspers Correspondence, ed. Walter Beimel and Hans Saner, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth
(Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), 42, 45.
59  Ibid., 277.
60  Karl Jaspers, “To Martin Heidegger,” 19 March 1950, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence,
86, 186.
61  Martin Heidegger, “To Elfride Heidegger,” 19 March 1933, Letters to His Wife, 141.

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of his behavior.62 After the War, Jaspers’s letter to Freiburg’s de-Nazification

commission recommended that Heidegger be suspended from teaching, but
Jaspers suggested a pension for continued research. Jaspers clearly valued
Heidegger’s intellectual work, but worried about his presence in the classroom.
However, Jaspers was suspicious of Heidegger’s philosophical work, wondering
in a letter to Arendt whether

someone with an impure soul—that is, a soul that is unaware of its

own impurity and isn’t constantly trying to expel it but continues to live
thoughtlessly in filth—can someone lying in that kind of dishonesty per-
ceive what is purest?63

In 1950, Heidegger tried to defend his actions and explained to Jaspers that he
was caught up in the power of being Rector, did not understand the implica-
tions on the ground, and stressed that he had made the Nazi blacklist by the
end of the war.64 Jaspers was not satisfied with these excuses and waited two
years to respond. He wrote back in 1952. Jaspers was angered by Heidegger’s ex-
planation and stated that Heidegger’s philosophy was implicated by failing to
take the political seriously. In this letter, Jaspers referenced Hannah’s outstand-
ing book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and contrasted it to Heidegger’s poetic
philosophizing making the way for Hitler.65 Heidegger asked Arendt for advice
concerning this letter and how to respond.66 After this point, Heidegger and
Jaspers exchanged only the occasional birthday greeting. What was once a sig-
nificant intellectual, personal, and profession relationship had disintegrated
into a distant and fraught one.
In her letters, Heidegger and Jaspers were often thought of together in
Arendt’s mind, nicknaming them “Freiburg” and “Basel,” and she was not the
only one of the three for whom this was true. Heidegger remained a central
topic of discussion for Jaspers and Arendt throughout the 1950’s, just as Jaspers
was discussed in letters between Heidegger and Arendt. Arendt and Jaspers
wrote about their broken friendships with Heidegger frequently and both felt
betrayed. Jaspers worried about whether he had facilitated Heidegger’s turn to
National Socialism by not considering it more seriously at the time. The letters

62  Martin Heidegger, “To Karl Jaspers,” 8 April 1950, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence,
188.
63  Karl Jaspers, “To Hannah Arendt,” 1 September 1949, Correspondence, 140.
64  Martin Heidegger, “To Karl Jaspers,” 8 April 1950, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence,
188–192.
65  Ibid., 197.
66  Martin Heidegger, “To Hannah Arendt,” 13 December 1952. Letters, 113.

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are haunted by the one who was no longer there. Arendt’s letters mention the
two together, as “the philosophers.” Jaspers did not see Heidegger again after
1933 and their friendship was forever broken. Arendt, on the other hand, initi-
ated contact with Heidegger in 1950. Consequently, when dealing with her for-
mer teachers, Arendt was often in the middle. At first, she tried to bring the two
together, but lamented that “my philosophers cause me much grief.”67 Later,
she gave up, understanding there was no hope. In 1956, when she was close
to being presented with an ultimatum by Jaspers to no longer see Heidegger,
she reacted with anger and told him that she did not respond to ultimatums.68
Jaspers backed away from his threat. Her husband, Blücher, thought it was a
pity that the philosophers didn’t get along better. He wrote to Arendt in 1952,
“Life is short, and philosophy is long.”69 Arendt was able to tolerate Heidegger
more than Jaspers. When asked by her friend, Hans Jonas, how she could for-
give Heidegger, he claims she responded that “… love can forgive a great deal.”70
However, intellectually and personally, she spent more time with Jaspers who
was a more constant in her life.

4 Influences

Overall, Arendt scholarship tends to focus on the hierarchical and overpower-

ing relationship between Heidegger and Arendt, though this is beginning to
change.71 Nonetheless, many more articles and books seek out the intellectual
influence of Heideggerian concepts on Arendt’s work, reinforcing a model of in-
tellectual influence in which the famous teacher infects the student with one’s
views, which is only exacerbated when the figures involved were romantically
entangled.72 However, the private letters of Heidegger, Jaspers, and Arendt sug-
gest a mutual influence. Rather than picking Jaspers as a primary factor on

67  Hannah Arendt, “To Heinrich Blücher,” 24 April 1952, Within Four Walls, 162.
68  Ibid., 309.
69  Ibid., 177.
70  Hans Jonas, Memoirs, ed. Christian Wiese, trans. Krishna Winston (Waltham: Brandeis
University Press, 2008), 63.
71  Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, “Existentialism Politicized: Arendt’s Debt
to Jaspers.” The Review of Politics 53.3 (1991): 435–468. Antonia Grunenberg, “Arendt,
Heidegger, Jaspers: Thinking through the Breach in the Tradition,” Social Research, 74.4
(2007): 1003–1028.
72  Tom Rockmore points out in Heidegger & Jaspers that there is a connection between
Heidegger and Jaspers and their student Hannah Arendt, but it has been “studied in de-
tail, is interesting, but not apparently important philosophically.” “Jaspers and Heidegger:
Philosophy and Politics.” Heidegger & Jaspers, 97.

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Arendt’s work, which would be easy to do as she asserts this herself, it is clear
that both thinkers affected her, but she also had an influence upon them as
well. This is not to mention the countless others who impacted Arendt’s ideas
or who she affected over the course of her career. Furthermore, Jaspers and
Heidegger had a great effect on one another, at least initially. Instead of rein-
forcing the common view that philosophical influence concerns a progenitor
from philosophical parent to child, particularly when the parent is male and
the student female, a better model recognizes mutual influence. While teach-
er/student relationships begin hierarchically, often they transition over time,
particularly when the figures involved remain in each other’s lives and con-
tinue to grow philosophically. At least in this case, philosophical influence was
dynamic and reciprocal. These three thinkers affected one another personally
and professionally. To suggest that knowledge flows in one direction from the
more powerful teacher to the forever weaker student is simplistic and perpetu-
ates a myth about how philosophical talent arises that is often gendered. As
their private letters show, each person influenced the lives and philosophies
of the others deeply. The influence occurred in different ways, but was mutual,
and a better model of philosophical influence would recognize this fact.

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