In her subsequent work, Arendt reflected at length about the revival of a politics of human dignity, autonomy and active citizenship. This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth it is indeed every man.” Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. In her preface, Arendt envisions a new form of transnational governance, insisting that “human dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth, whose validity this time must comprehend the whole of humanity while its powerful must remain strictly limited, rooted in and controlled by newly established territorial entities.” And in her conclusion she insists that there is always the possibility of renewal: “But there remains also the truth that every end in history also contains a new beginning this beginning is the promise, the only ‘message’ which the end can ever produce. It is a dark book, written in a dark time and reflecting on the darkest moment of modern European (and arguably world) history. There is almost no politics in “Origins” beyond the decisions and processes that eventuated in total domination. The lesson: Freedom is fragile, and when demagogues speak, and others start following them, it is wise to pay attention.
One reason the book resonates so strongly today is its fixation on the way many “bads” long taken for granted can come together to generate a maelstrom of evil and horror foreseen by no one, perhaps not even the protagonists themselves. “Origins” charts the “grotesque disparity between cause and effect,” which made the horrors of the 1940s so surprising, and shocking, to so many. While her account of these “elements” is bracing, even more disturbing is the way she links them to the monstrous outcome to which they gave rise. But their “crystallization” into the horrific outcome that was totalitarianism was neither predictable nor inevitable. As Arendt made clear, her interest is in understanding the origins of totalitarianism, not explaining its “causes.” The elements that together made its rise possible - anti-Semitism, imperialism, racism, the post-World War I crises of multinational empires, the displacement of peoples by war and by technological change - were important. “Origins” centers on the rise of totalitarianism, especially its Nazi variant, out of the ashes of World War I and the Great Depression.
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