What friends were doing: Hannah Arendt and philosophy

The text presents an attempt to understand, within the framework of Hannah Arendt's thought, her refusal to be called a philosopher, and relates this circumstance to her experiences in Germany during Nazism and her intention to reflect on politics in a context in which traditional responses are no longer able to provide guidance. Taking into account the relationship, identified by Arendt, between the absence of thought and evil, it investigates whether the faculty of judgment, released by thought, can be affected not only by thoughtlessness, but by the radicalization of the very conditions of thinking.