Every now and then, I am asked why Hannah Arendt? (I am doing PhD in Political science. I work on Hannah Arendt). At first, this question seemed insignificant to me but over a period of time, I have realized the question is not so simple. It says something about the world we live in. The more I read Arendt, the more I realize she is the thinker for our times. But why does she matter so much to me? Why devote a PhD, years of struggle to her thought?

Well, I didn’t choose Arendt just to get a PhD degree. I chose her because her questions are my questions. She speaks to something deep and restless in me, something many of us feel today but don’t always have the language for to think clearly and carefully. I don’t read her just as a political philosopher, but as a companion who walked through the darkest chapters of the 20th century and still held on to thinking resolutely.

She lived through Nazi Germany, lost her homeland, her identity, her friends and family, yet she never surrendered to despair. Instead, she chose to engage with the world. She chose to think. She showed us that the act of thinking is a political and moral responsibility.

In an age where thinking has been outsourced to AI, Arendt reminds us that to think is to act and resist. This is one of the reasons I am doing PhD, not just to get a degree but to participate in a tradition of thinking with great thinkers and engaging deeply with them. PhD is not just about producing research papers,........

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