One of the mainstay courses at the recently newsworthy Evergreen State College is an all-year course entitled “The Human Condition.” This 36-credit course has its inspiration from a book of the same name written by Hannah Arendt (1906-75). Arendt was an assimilated German Jewess student in the Weimar Republic before the rise of National Socialism. In the 1930s she was forced to move around Europe before finally leaving for America in 1941 as World War II initially exploded in Germany’s favor. Considered one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century, much of Arendt’s worldview was absorbed from German existentialism that was presaged by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), but essentially rooted in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Karl Jaspers (1883-1969). While Kant himself often blew a gasket when he started to talk about Jews in his lectures, both Schopenhauer...(Read Full Article)