Hanna Fenichel Pitkin

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (July 17, 1931 – May 6, 2023) was an American political theorist best known for her seminal study The Concept of Representation.

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 and gender in political and social theory. Due to her various publications and mentorship, Pitkin is a recipient of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science and has been recognized as Professor Emerita at UC Berkeley.

Biography Pitkin was born on July 17, 1931 to Otto Fenichel, and Clare (née Nathansohn). In 1940, Otto Fenichel married Hanna Fenichel, a psychoanalyst, who became Pitkin's stepmother.

Born in Berlin, Pitkin and her parents fled Nazi Germany in 1933 to Oslo, later moving to Prague in 1935. At nearly seven years old, Pitkin's family emigrated to Los Angeles with other German-Jewish refugees. In 1982, Pitkin received UC Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award. Pitkin retired as a professor in 1997 while remaining a mentor for graduate students.

Pitkin died on May 6, 2023, at the age of 91.

Books Pitkin's books were The Concept of Representation (1967), Wittgenstein and Justice (1972, 1984, 1992), and Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (1984, 1999), in addition to numerous articles and edited volumes. In 1998 she published The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt's Concept of "the Social". A wide selection of her writings is collected and thematized in Hanna Fenichel Pitkin: Politics, Justice, Action (2016).

The Concept of Representation The Concept of Representation (1967), Pitkin's first book and most notable publication, is derived from her dissertation. Although modern "representation" is associated with democracy, Pitkin believes its historical, political, linguistic, and philosophical contexts must be studied to understand how the concept has evolved. Despite arguments to discard the word due to its ambiguity, Pitkin advocates accepting representation as a large concept with various meanings. Pitkin uses Machiavelli's works The Prince and The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius to create a relationship between Machiavelli's thought and human political life. Manhood and autonomy are the two main points of controversy through which Pitkin evaluates Machiavelli's political teachings. In the book, Pitkin first seeks to answer questions of threatening women and later evaluates Machiavelli's misogyny in the book's final section. Additionally, Pitkin's criticisms of Thomas Hobbes are argued against, as she believes that Hobbes offers only partial representation through authorizing one sovereign to act for its people. In these political explanations, it is believed that Pitkin relies on mistaken assumptions: Pitkin first assumes the parallel between British and American political experiences and also neglects the role of workers' unions in modern societies as a means for representation. This has been awarded to twenty five recipients since its creation in 1995. As of 2025, only eight of these twenty five recipients have been women. 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).