What We Get Wrong about Hannah Arendt. Photo: AP Images Within months of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, a political investigator with the Berlin police detained twenty-six-year-old scholar Hannah Arendt and politely interrogated her for more than a week. Upon her release, she devised a plan to leave Germany and headed east with her mother. Taking refuge in the Erzgebirge Mountains, the two women approached the Czech border without travel papers. Arendt had already helped other Jews escape the country, sheltering some in her own apartment, and was familiar with escape networks. She soon left for France, where she lived and worked through the end of the decade before winding up in detention again in the spring of 1940, interned this time by French authorities as an enemy alien after the German invasion. Arendt’s mind had developed in the hothouse realm of philosophy, but under the weight of circumstance, she reoriented herself toward political considerations.
Yet Arendt sometimes disappointed. Are we on the road to fascism? Tumultes 2008. “il n’y a pas d’ersatz à la langue maternelle”. Sur un entretien d’Hannah Arendt. On trouve sur Youtube la vidéo d’un entretien entre Hannah Arendt et Günter Gaus. Document extraordinaire à bien des égards : pour ce qu’Arendt y dit de sa vie, de l’écriture de Eichmann à Jérusalem, de l’opportunité – de l’inopportunité, en l’occurrence, pour elle – d’aimer des peuples plutôt que des personnes. Et Arendt parle de la langue : de la langue maternelle, de ce que c’est que d’écrire en anglais. C’est encore par un coup de Serendip[1] que je suis tombée sur cette vidéo. Le fait est qu’elle colle bien à mes préoccupations du moment, notamment pour ce qu’Arendt dit de la langue. Apparemment, si j’en crois Le malin génie des langues de Marc Crépon, cet entretien est transcrit et traduit en français, du moins en partie[2].
Avant d’en citer des extraits, une parenthèse. J’ai donc essayé de retranscrire des passages de l’entretien, et de les traduire. . – L’Europe d’avant l’époque d’Hitler, je n’ai pas de nostalgie, je ne peux pas dire ça. Gabriel Piterberg: Zion's Rebel Daughter. New Left Review 48, November-December 2007 Principally known for works on totalitarianism and the Eichmann trial, Hannah Arendt’s powerful and prophetic critiques of the Zionist project, written in the 1940s, have rarely been discussed. Gabriel Piterberg tracks the evolution of this brave and independent thinker. Hannah Arendt on Palestine and Jewish Politics Both during her lifetime (1906–1975) and posthumously, Hannah Arendt’s reputation has been based largely on The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963); perhaps supplemented by The Human Condition (1958), for a more specialist readership.
The first book, which shot her to fame, remains an enormously powerful but uneven work, lacking any introductory overview or methodological statement. What has been largely hidden hitherto, however, is her body of work on antisemitism, Jewish politics and the Zionist project, mainly written during the 1930s and 40s, long before Eichmann in Jerusalem appeared. Palestine. RM02-Amiel-p-119-138.pdf. L’identité nationale, une question européenne. Tous patriotes, gloires nationales et arrangements avec l’histoire Au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, un conflit sur les délimitations de communautés nationales a traversé toute l’Europe. Communautés de combattants ou de patriotes ou bien communauté incluant tout le monde y compris les juifs, les immigrés, toutes les victimes de la guerre. En intervenant sur le plateau du Vercors pour consolider la décision politique de faire débattre en France de l’identité nationale, Nicolas Sarkozy rouvre de fait ce conflit.
En France ne vouloir appeler « Français » que les combattants ou patriotes, c’était affirmer que la nation n’avait pas failli. Or la défaite de 1940 avait été à l’évidence « nationale », l’occupation une humiliation « nationale » et pour pouvoir s’approprier 1945 comme une victoire, elle aussi nationale, il fallait beaucoup d’imagination, nous a rappelé il n’y a pas si longtemps (2003) Pieter Lagrou. Le christianisme comme racines idéologiques des nations occidentales. The origins of totalitarianism. The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Search by Keyword | Browse by Series The papers of the author, educator, and political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) are one of the principal sources for the study of modern intellectual life.
Located in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, they constitute a large and diverse collection reflecting a complex career. With over 25,000 items (about 75,000 digital images), the papers contain correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, book manuscripts, transcripts of Adolf Eichmann's trial proceedings, notes, and printed matter pertaining to Arendt's writings and academic career.
The entire collection has been digitized and is available to researchers in reading rooms at the Library of Congress, the New School University in New York City, and the Hannah Arendt Center at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. The Library of Congress presents these documents as part of the record of the past. Misreading 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. The movie “Hannah Arendt,” which opened in New York in May, has unleashed emotional commentary that mirrors the fierce debate Arendt herself ignited over half a century ago, when she covered the trial of the notorious war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
One of the pre-eminent political thinkers of the 20th century, Arendt, who died in 1975 at the age of 69, was a Jew arrested by the German police in 1933, forced into exile and later imprisoned in an internment camp. She escaped and fled to the United States in 1941, where she wrote the seminal books “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “The Human Condition.” It is easy to cite the ‘banality of evil.’ It is much more difficult to make sense of what Arendt actually meant. When Arendt heard that Eichmann was to be put on trial, she knew she had to attend. Tyrone Dukes/The New York TimesHannah Arendt in her Manhattan apartment, 1972.
When Israel compensated Germans for land in Palestine. Last month marked the 65th anniversary of the Nakba — the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, during which Israeli forces expelled some 800,000 Palestinians from their homeland and seized their properties. In total, 536 cities, towns and villages — 78 percent of the land of historic Palestine — were taken during the 1948 war. The Nakba is not just a historical event, however. It remains an ongoing trauma. Palestinian human rights are assaulted daily; Palestinians still live under occupation or are barred from their homeland. Meanwhile, Israeli land and water confiscation continue — particularly in the West Bank and the Naqab (Negev) desert. Palestinians worldwide remain excluded and uncompensated, despite Israel’s admission to the United Nations in 1949 being preceded by its expressed willingness to abide by Resolution 194, calling for the Palestinian refugees’ repatriation and compensation. Model for settlers The Templers maintained their German citizenship in Palestine.
Fate diverges Tags. Hannah Arendt, compassion et politique. « Generally speaking, the role of the ‘‘heart’’ in politics seems to me altogether questionable. »- Hannah Arendt [1] Dans son ouvrage In Defense of Sentimentality, Robert Solomon affirme que dans la politique contemporaine, la compassion est un sentiment « ridiculisé » voire abhorré[2]. Selon l’auteur, une attitude franchement ambivalente face à la compassion définit non seulement notre vie politique, mais aussi, de façon plus générale, la philosophie morale et politique — où le statut de la compassion serait « anything but obvious »[3].
Cette thèse offre un contraste frappant avec celle de Myriam Revault d’Allones — qui soutient, dans L’homme compassionnel, qu’un violent « déferlement compassionnel » caractérise nos sociétés contemporaines[4]. Le constat de Revault d’Allones rejoint donc, partiellement du moins, celui du philosophe politique Clifford Orwin — qui est l’un des critiques de la compassion les plus chevronnés dans le milieu universitaire aujourd’hui[5]. Is Hannah Arendt a Jewish Thinker? « Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities. Is Hannah Arendt A Jewish Thinker? On one level, the answer is obvious. Arendt was indeed Jewish, raised in Germany during the first three decades of the 20th century.
True, Arendt was non-religious and in much of her writing was deeply critical of Jews and Jewish leaders. Yet she was arrested twice as a Jew, once in Germany and once in France, escaping both times. If one is attacked as a Jew, she said, one must respond as a Jew. That she did. She led Jewish Youth to Palestine and wrote essays during the war calling for a Jewish army. But to ask if she was a Jewish thinker is something else. For some Arendtian scholars, her thinking is a distillation of the work of her first teacher and youthful lover, Martin Heidegger. In all such arguments seeking Arendt’s true source, there is painfully little tolerance for letting Arendt be Arendt, for recognizing her to be the original thinker she is.
In her work for the JCR, Arendt compiled inventories of Jewish cultural artifacts. Videos. “La politique a-t-elle encore un sens ?” (I) “La politique a-t-elle encore un sens ?” (II) Panim-Pnim, visage et intériorité (14/15) : Hannah Arendt: la perte du monde commun, actualité Panim/Pnim : l’exil prend-il au visage?
The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress. Judith Butler reviews ‘The Jewish Writings’ by Hannah Arendt, edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron Feldman · LRB 10 May 2007. ‘You know the left think that I am conservative,’ Hannah Arendt once said, ‘and the conservatives think I am left or I am a maverick or God knows what. And I must say that I couldn’t care less. I don’t think the real questions of this century get any kind of illumination by this kind of thing.’ The Jewish Writings make the matter of her political affiliation no less easy to settle.
In these editorials, essays and unfinished pieces, she seeks to underscore the political paradoxes of the nation-state. If the nation-state secures the rights of citizens, then surely it is a necessity; but if the nation-state relies on nationalism and invariably produces massive numbers of stateless people, it clearly needs to be opposed. If the nation-state is opposed, then what, if anything, serves as its alternative? Arendt refers variously to modes of ‘belonging’ and conceptions of the ‘polity’ that are not reducible to the idea of the nation-state. Hannah Arendt's challenge to Adolf Eichmann | Judith Butler. Fifty years ago the writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt witnessed the end of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major figures in the organisation of the Holocaust. Covering the trial Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil", a phrase that has since become something of an intellectual cliche. But what did she really mean?
One thing Arendt certainly did not mean was that evil had become ordinary, or that Eichmann and his Nazi cohorts had committed an unexceptional crime. Indeed, she thought the crime was exceptional, if not unprecedented, and that as a result it demanded a new approach to legal judgment itself. There were at least two challenges to legal judgment that she underscored, and then another to moral philosophy more generally. The first problem is that of legal intention. Did the courts have to prove that Eichmann intended to commit genocide in order to be convicted of the crime? What had become banal – and astonishingly so – was the failure to think. Débat: Judith Butler ou Levinas trahi? Dans ce post, le blogueur invité Bruno Chaouat universitaire aux Etats-Unis critique en français et en anglais (voir ci-dessous) le dernier livre de la philosophe Judith Butler consacré au sionisme et au judaïsme.
Judith Butler, philosophe américaine, professeure de littérature comparée à l'université de Californie à Berkeley, est une figure de proue des études de genre (qui analysent la culture abordée sous l'angle de la différence sexuelle). Elle soutient par ailleurs des positions pro-palestinienne sur le conflit du Moyen Orient, tout en revendiquant sa judéité. Récemment une polémique émanant de la communauté juive allemande a entouré le fait qu'on lui ait attribué le prix Adorno, le 11 septembre 2012 à Francfort-sur-le-Main (Allemagne). Une parole aberrante La question est évidemment légitime, elle fut d’ailleurs posée à Levinas lors d’un entretien radiophonique sur Radio Communauté au lendemain même des événements de Sabra et Chatila, par Shlomo Malka et Alain Finkielkraut. Levinas trahi? La réponse de Judith Butler. Nous publions ci-dessous, en français et en anglais, la réponse de la philosophe Judith Butler à la tribune de Bruno Chaouat postée sur ce blog: J’espère clarifier ici des phrases qui ont occasionné quelque inquiétude.
Elles se trouvent dans mon livre récemment publié, Parting Ways : Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (Columbia University Press, 2012), à paraître en français chez Fayard à l’automne 2013. La phrase qui a causé la confusion commence ainsi, page 23 : "Bien sûr, il [Levinas] a déclaré dans un entretien que le Palestinien n’avait pas de visage…" J’insère alors une note de bas de page qui renvoie à la traduction anglaise de cet entretien publié en français sous le titre "Israël, éthique et politique, entretiens avec S. Malka (avec Alain Finkielkraut)", Les Nouveaux Cahiers, n° 71, 1983, p. 1-8. Il y a dans mon livre une autre formulation qui a aussi suscité une attention critique : Le passage le plus souvent discuté de cet entretien est le suivant : Levinas répond :
Levinas, Butler, Eric Fassin: du bon usage des guillemets. La question du mal chez Hannah Arendt: rupture ou continuité? | Sophie Cloutier. PhaenEx I. Le totalitarisme ou le mal radical Dans Les origines du totalitarisme , Arendt a tenté de comprendre ce qui pu se produirepour que l’Allemagne en arrive à un système de domination totale. Bien que le totalitarisme soitun événement sans précédent, ses germes proviennent de notre modernité et de son incapacité àrésoudre le problème du vivre-ensemble, un problème attesté par l’antisémitisme etl’impérialisme. Sur l’antisémitisme L’impérialisme et Le système totalitaire , est la « marche descendante vers la “désolation” »(Enegrén 208) et l’apparition du mal politique, c’est-à-dire la superfluité des hommes .Dans le chapitre « From Radical Evil to the Banality of Evil » de son ouvrage Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question , Richard J.
Partisan Review , qui sera revu pour être inclus dans Les origines dutotalitarisme . The fear of the absolute Evil which permits of no escape knows that this is the end of dialectical evolutions and developments. . (748)Dans la première édition des » (Arendt, 140).