Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (July 17, 1931 – May 6, 2023) was an American

political theorist A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be academics or independent scholars. Ancient * Aristotle * Chanakya * Cicero * Confucius * Mencius * ...

. She was best known for her seminal study ''The Concept of Representation'', published in 1967. Pitkin's diverse interests ranged from the history of European political thought from ancient to modern times, through ordinary language philosophy and textual analysis, to issues of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

and gender in political and social theory.

Biography

Pitkin was born on July 17, 1931.''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Hanna Fenichel Pitkin." Accessed March 5, 2008. Daughter of

Otto Fenichel Otto Fenichel (; 2 December 1897, Vienna – 22 January 1946, Los Angeles) was an Austrian psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation". He was born into a prominent family of Jewish lawyers. Education and psychoanalytic affiliations Otto ...

, Pitkin was born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

and emigrated to the United States in 1938; her family had fled

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

for Oslo and Prague in the interim. She received her

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree from UC Berkeley in 1961. In 1982, she was granted the Distinguished Teaching Award from UC Berkeley. Pitkin died on May 6, 2023, at the age of 91.

Political representation

In ''The Concept of Representation'' Pitkin described four types of representation: formalistic, descriptive, symbolic and substantive.

Books

Pitkin's books were ''The Concept of Representation'' (1967), ''

Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

and Justice'' (1972, 1984, 1992), and ''Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of

Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise '' The Prince'' (), writte ...

'' (1984, 1999), in addition to numerous articles and edited volumes. In 1998 she published ''The Attack of the Blob:

Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...

's Concept of "the Social"''. A wide selection of her writings is collected and thematized in ''Hanna Fenichel Pitkin: Politics, Justice, Action'' (2016).

Awards and legacy

In 2003, she was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science "for her groundbreaking theoretical work, predominantly on the problem of representation".Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science
, official website. She was married to political theorist John Schaar. Some of her students are noteworthy political scientists such as David Laitin (Stanford University), Dan Avnon (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Lisa Wedeen (University of Chicago), and Mary G. Dietz (Northwestern University).

References

External links