Making the Desert Bloom: Hannah Arendt and Zionist Discourse

This article discusses an aspect of Hannah Arendt’s treatment of the conflict between the Zionists and the Palestinians that has thus far been overlooked in scholarship: her justification of Zionism through the achievements of the Jewish pioneers in cultivating the land, in contrast to the Palestinians’ failure to do so. The inability of natives to cultivate their land was a familiar argument in the history of colonialism, used to legitimize the colonialists’ right to settle a land and often to displace the natives. How should we understand Arendt’s use of this argument? I show that Arendt’s argument should be understood in the context of, first, the recurrence of this argument in Western political thought and practices. Second, the Zionists’—Arendt included—need of legitimizing Jewish settlements in Palestine. And third, the influence of Arendt’s own political philosophy on her understanding of culture in general, and Palestinian culture in particular.     

Judging appearances: The continuing legacy of Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics. Edited by Craig Calhoun and John McGowan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), viii + 362 pp. $54.95 cloth $21.95 paper.

Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigrés and American Political Thought after World War II. Edited by Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Horst Mewes, and Elisabeth Glaser‐Schmidt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), x + 208 pp. $49.95/£35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.

Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later. Edited by Larry May and Jerome Kohn (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), viii + 384 pp. $40.00 cloth, $17.50 paper.     

Atavistic Novelty: Questioning Hannah Arendt’s Understanding of Totalitarianism

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critique of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of totalitarianism as formulated in her magnum opus—The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). It argues that, to comprehend totalitarianism, Arendt forged a heterodox method of historical analysis. Employing that method, she conceived totalitarianism as a form of transcendence of historical context. In doing so, however, she ignored crucial historical contexts that were in fact related to the history of totalitarianism. Subverting her interpretation of totalitarianism as transcendence, these elided contexts erupted inadvertently and repeatedly into her analysis—revealing that totalitarianism was solidly embedded in them. The Origins of Totalitarianism thus exhibits a conceptual contradiction that confuses its attempt to understand totalitarianism.     

From Rosa Luxemburg to Hannah Arendt: Socialism,Barbarism and the Extermination Camps

The relationship between Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt has occasionally been noted but rarely systematically discussed. In fact, there is a profound sense in which Arendt's continuing preoccupation with the significance of the extermination camps owes much to Luxemburg's earlier expressed concern that barbarism was a real possibility. Luxemburg first raised this in the context of the First World War, which she saw as a catastrophe marking a fundamental break with the past and opening the way to terrible new possibilities. The terms that Luxemburg used to describe this catastrophe apply better to subsequent events that Arendt was to analyse, particularly the extermination camps (“hell” on earth). In explaining how barbarism could occur, Arendt drew extensively on Luxemburg, emphasising the impact of world wars, imperialism and nationalism, though she was of course then to go further in analysing what barbarism meant when it took place.     

Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt: criticisms on the development of a German messianic

A discussion of the influence of Martin Buber is not easily limited to the philosophical anthropology he espoused. Nor is the political thinking of Hannah Arendt easily removed from criticism of the philosophies (and -phers) that informed her. Both Buber and Arendt attacked the beastly shoulders of a misapplied messianism as it emerged in modern Germany. Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and to some degree Nietzsche would affect this misplacement, and Arendt and Buber for their part would enter into a shared critique that is often neglected, despite promising attempts in a comparative direction made by Ellis, Engel and Riker. In this essay, I make the case that the contributions of Buber and Arendt – their shared assessments of the viability of the public realm, the need for common responsibility and the recurrent decision to engage with otherness in practical terms – point to an innovative critique of the forcible abstraction of a more traditional messianic made by German views of history. In the midst of the crises identified as correlates of a misapplied messianic, the hope as Buber and Arendt see it lies in the capacity for reflective and courageous identification and education between human individuals as they live towards one another.     

Between Athens and Jerusalem: Western otherness in the thought of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt

In understanding the meaning of the West, twentieth‐century political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss called for a return to “Athens” (classical political philosophy) in order to address the “crisis of the West,” a loss of a sense of legitimate and stable political authority which, in their view, constitutes a nihilistic threat to Western democracy. The only way for the West to escape this nihilistic crisis is to return to Plato and Aristotle. Implicit in this critique is the belief that the other tradition of the West, “Jerusalem” (the Bible) has contributed to this nihilism, by undermining the authority of the Greeks. Is Jerusalem, then, the fatal “Other” for the West? Which tradition—Athens or Jerusalem—is best prepared to alleviate the crisis of the West, especially the survival of democracy? As I address these questions, I shall contend that it is Jerusalem, not Athens, which is the true source of Western democracy.     

Hannah Arendt on the Power of Creative Making in a World of Plural Cultures

Since culture is a form of poēsis and thus carries the danger of monologism and domination, and since today political “conflicts are increasingly defined from a cultural standpoint,” the question this paper addresses is whether culture can affect politics other than as a form of conflict and political aestheticism. Put differently: can culture become a source of communication and dialogue in politics? The answer this paper proposes is that culture can do so not by uncompromisingly divorcing praxis from any association with poēsis, but by making a distinction between two forms of poēsis. I argue that there are good grounds in Hannah Arendt's conception of the human condition and of the life of the mind to think that a distinction is possible between, on the one hand, technical, and thus non-creative, making and, on the other hand, metaphorical, imaginative, and creative making. It is the work of art that, through the joint employment of taste and polyphonic authorship, brings culture into politics in a manner that creatively and dialogically serves the purpose of augmenting the world. Through taste one is receptive to particulars and thus capable of judging their worldly suitability, while keeping one's mind open. Through polyphonic authorship one anticipates the unfinalized and open character of ideas and thus, the ongoing need to speak with other ideas, with the ideas of others.     

Hannah Arendt's Political Theology of Democratic Life

Abstract

In this essay, I explore Hannah Arendt's suggestion that we conceptualize human power and freedom polytheistically if our aim is to understand the challenges and requirements of democratic self-governance. Although it is not clear that politics must always be understood through theological grammars, if it is to be, polytheism affirms that there may be multiple sources of value and of right, offering both a metaphysical counterpart to value pluralism and a vision of how to create political practices and institutions that mirror and honor both the equality and distinction of human beings.     

"The Human Condition" as social ontology: Hannah Arendt on society, action and knowledge

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from "society," and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt's most important insights concerning the constitution of "society" and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt's distinctions between labor, work, and action, as these are discussed in "The Human Condition" and elsewhere, are best understood as a set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt's work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt's conception of "society," and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order.     

Hannah Arendt's Mythology: The Political Nature of History and Its Tales of Antiheroes

Current scholarship has focused on analyzing how Arendt's storytelling corresponds to her political arguments. In following up this discussion, I offer a closer examination of the unusual myth Arendt uses to explain the condition of the modern age, a myth she refers to as the “political nature of history.” I employ literary terms along with the standard vocabulary of political theory in shaping this reading of Arendt. Following Robert C. Pirro, I also consider Arendt's story as a tragedy, but in the broadest sense, that of a collision of two goods, freedom and security. By describing Arendt's thought in this manner, I hope to reveal another way in which Arendt represents the call to action that she believes so crucial to humanity, as a summons to we flawed antiheroes through the device of a heroic myth.