Claiming that the 20th century was the most terrifying in human history would probably not be wrong. Yet, what made this century so terrifying was that not only did its means of destruction reach a power beyond the imagination of those who fabricated them, but also the fact that totalitarianism radically destroyed all former institutions and structures that had evolved and shaped humanity for centuries. Hannah Arendt’s work The Origins of Totalitarianism is one of the most sophisticated studies that strikingly reveal the origins that characterize Nazi totalitarianism. What appears to be new and surprising, she contends, are in fact “present” in our ordinary world. These structures, relations, and situations that continue in the form of “subterranean streams” were not removed with the defeat of Nazism. In this context, it is almost inevitable to reflect upon the origins and investigate the “elements” and “conditions” that allowed totalitarianism to be made “possible,” as the experience of totalitarianism—which in itself is unique and cannot be explained “directly” by any idea or fact of the past—broke all connections and traditions of the Western world. I believe Arendt offers a multi-faceted view of totalitarianism. On the one hand, she explores the human “condition” which allows “totalitarian domination” to emerge. In other words, she explores the conditions in which humanity faced such forms of domination. On the other hand, in association with the former, she describes the relationship between human condition and totalitarian domination. In her later writings, she also points out the conditions of humanity after the experience of totalitarianism. What she proposes is a new way of thinking about the “thoughtlessness” that is “the heedless recklessness or hopeless confusion,” and how this has become the most prominent feature of modern humanity. For such a reason, Arendt states: “It is nothing more than to think about what we are doing.”

The powerful work that constitutes the second part of Arendt’s research, The Human Condition, gives a phenomenological analysis of three forms of activity that underlie the human condition: (i) “labor,” corresponding to the biological life of humans as animals; (ii) “work,” corresponding to the artificial world of objects that people build; and (iii) “action” or “praxis,” corresponding to individual pluralism. One of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from reading this work is the relation between “doing,” i.e., the activity of homo faber, and the processes of “utilitarianism” and “instrumentality,” i.e., the motivating principles of all work and production. This is done in order to wrap up all human relations, and to create a social climate under which totalitarian forms of governance may emerge. It appears possible to detect the existence of such a relationship. However, the conditions of totalitarian governance cannot solely be explained by the world and philosophy of homo faber. When all of Arendt’s works are examined, the “instrumentality” of homo faber includes activities such as “planning” and “accounting,” which have been used extensively in bureaucratic processes of totalitarian rule. Yet, at the same time Arendt’s observations of the world of animal laborans manifest humans as feeling more “useless” or “homeless” and reminds us of people under totalitarian domination, especially those in “concentration camps” (even though the “living corpses” in the camps indicate a radicalized version of this state). Moreover, we are aware that everything is “planned” to eliminate any kind of “thinking” activity in our daily lives or in the concentration camps. In this case, it would not be wrong to say that we are confronted with a regime that has “considered” every subtle detail to ensure complete obedience of its “citizens” (by destroying all meanings the word itself implies), and the destruction of all thinking ability. There exists a kind of “uselessness” and “loneliness” where traces of the life of animal laborans on community level can be found, while a full reason for homo faber working among the administration and the bureaucratic staff (even there, everyone can easily be relocated or exterminated, except the Führer!). One of the most striking and tragic feature of Arendt’s work on the world of animal laborans is that it sheds light on what happens in today’s postcapitalist world. On the one hand, “consumer society” is based on the “utilitarian” mind that drives all kinds of human relations and actions—and its individual who mobilizes the activity of “thinking,” according to the instrumentality of homo faber only to meet the needs of “making a living” and “consuming”—belong to the “world of necessities” but are simultaneously alienated from the world. On the other hand, “modern science,” which has gained power beyond what was ever imagined, functions in a manner that is alienating and moving away from public discourse. Arendt regards these processes as totalitarian qualities that continue to exist in the modern world “now” and “here” as subterranean streams.

A society made up of consumers cannot “know how to take care of a world and the things belongs to the space of worldly appearances” because the attitudes of consumption that are valid in society “spells ruin everything it touches.” The collapse of the public sphere, the only area where a common sense of well-being can emerge, brings with it the loss of reality to the human mind. If “reality is what is seen and heard by everybody” we cannot talk about common reality in a form where such union cannot exist. Instead, we may have to think that every sophisticated thing can be true, or that nothing can be true or real. In a life where permanence is abolished, Arendt points out how the desire for immortality has become an empty ambition. She further argues “modern man, when he lost the certainty of a world to come, was thrown back upon himself and not upon this world; far from believing that the world might be potentially immortal, he was not even sure that it was real.” We cannot know whether scientific and technological developments after Arendt indicate that the world is also mortal (and this would be a source of consolation) or whether it is a valid excuse for humans who try to forget the evanescence of life (with the frenzy of consumption in the form of hedonistic philosophy). Nevertheless, Arendt’s thesis for this new human condition is extremely tragic, as only the consumer who is able to spend his labor can maintain his family life. What remains of the human who is thrown back upon himself is the motives of the body directed to the passions devoid of meaning? And, if there is an ultimate goal, this is the power of the life cycle to maintain the permanence of human species. Individual life has become part of this cycle. Animal laborans is not only immediately under the urgency of meeting the necessity of life, but also alienated from all the anxieties and sensitivities that do not emerge directly by the course of life. 

It is precisely the environment where the human is homeless, i.e., insecure. An individual not without a place in divine order, nature, or history, has a longing to find himself “at home” as opposed to being alienated. This desire and longing is precisely what can be employed through totalitarian ideologies. However, because of the absence of a world, they have established together through word and action, the individuals, who are isolated from each other, believe that they have overcome the suffering of homelessness through the supremacy of totalitarian ideology, and in turn become practitioners of the worst of schemes in the world. Whether through a party or state over the whole society, what distinguishes the power of totality and totalitarianism from dictatorship or absolutism is the ideologies. In this context, totalitarianism is never the power of a single person or a group, but at the same time, it is the power of a doctrine, of an ideology whether it allegedly implements the laws of either nature or history, or of what is being regarded as the “truth.” For citizens and for Haw political institutions—which provide relative reliance to the public and political world by their persistence over individual mortality, which in turn are expected to resist this totalitarian wave and to defeat it—it is impossible to stand out against this domination, if they have lost the ground that make them citizens and institutions. For this reason, it is the human conditions, which a totalitarian domination seeks to find, include citizens who have lost their ability to distinguish fact from fiction, and right from wrong, and the institutions that have lost their constitutional grounds and human action to protect them.