Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt's Thought 3031108760, 9783031108761

Citation preview

Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought Karin Fry

Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought

Karin Fry

Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought

Karin Fry Philosophy and Religious Studies Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-10876-1    ISBN 978-3-031-10877-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For William

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Georgia Southern University and the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point for providing the time and support for this project. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Georgia Southern University for their encouragement. Beth Butterfield and Dan Pioske offered valuable advice in the project’s final stages. Janet Goodman provided much appreciated clerical help. Further, I thank my colleagues from Arendt Studies: J. Barry, Jennifer Gaffney, Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen, Ned Curthoys, and Michael Portal, who continue to cultivate my interest in Arendt’s work. I am grateful to Kei Hiruta, who took the time to provide valuable comments on the manuscript. Chapter 4 has been published previously in Volume 50 Issue 2 of Research in Phenomenology. I thank my mother, who did not live to see this project completed. Finally, I thank Rogue for the extra support while I took on this project and William for his patience.

vii

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Life and Theory  9 3 Remembering and the Archive 35 4 Holes of Oblivion: Hannah Arendt’s Silence 67 5 Jaspers, Heidegger, and Philosophical Influence 87 6 Political Action and Group Action107 7 Arendt’s Identities, Identity Politics, and the Social131 8 Authenticity, Identity, and Politics147 9 Conclusion177 Index187

ix

About the Author

Karin  Fry  is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Georgia Southern University. She is the managing editor and founding member of Arendt Studies. Her previous publications include Hannah Arendt: A Guide for the Perplexed (2009) and Beyond Religious Right and Secular Left Rhetoric: The Road to Compromise (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). She has research interests in nineteenth- and twentieth-century continental philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of art, public philosophy, and especially the work of Hannah Arendt.

xi

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Hannah Arendt had a remarkable life. As a young Jewish woman, she obtained a PhD in Philosophy prior to the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Having documented Nazi activity for the Zionists, she escaped from Berlin to Paris. There, she helped raise funds for Jewish children to immigrate to Israel. She was interned in France and escaped to the United States. Even though she spoke almost no English upon her arrival, within a couple of years she was published in both German and English. She returned to Germany after the War to help restore art and cultural objects to Jewish families, libraries, and museums. After ten years of American residency, she published  The Origins of Totalitarianism in her new language, which propelled her to fame.  She participated in the intellectual discussion surrounding the formation of the state of Israel. She continued to lecture and write, and was pivotal in getting her friends translated and published in English. She taught at several universities and had an academic career, despite avoiding a permanent post until she was nearing retirement. She attended the Adolf Eichmann trial as a correspondent for The New Yorker and caused controversy because of her writing. She had numerous contacts in the publishing world and was friendly with many well-known intellectuals, writers, and philosophers. She had a Zelig-like quality of being in the right place at the right time to witness amazing philosophical seminars as well as events of political and historical significance. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_1

1

2 

K. FRY

Arendt was trained academically as a philosopher and, over time, specialized in political theory. In philosophical writing, the story of the individual circumstances of one’s life is usually put on hold. Fundamental to the discipline of philosophy is the idea that theory stands alone, particularly years ago when Arendt was trained in the field. The life events of an individual were viewed as being not particularly significant to the theory on the page, which must be measured objectively and contested if the arguments were weak. While there were some exceptions to this rule as time has passed, such as Martin Heidegger’s decision to join the Nazi party and its implications for his theory, the study of philosophy has often grounded itself in the pursuit of distanced objectivity in isolation from the facts of the writer’s life. Though this is changing, traditionally, theory was often viewed in abstract isolation, regardless of the person who wrote it or the historical or cultural circumstances that formed its creation. Typically, the history that mattered in philosophical research was the discussion between the current theorist and what they had read from philosophers of the past. It was as though these thinkers existed in some philosophical universe floating above and in isolation from the world and its events. What mattered more philosophically was which philosophers were read and who informed their academic theories, not how they lived their lives or what daily events they lived through. Perhaps the greatest example of this more traditional philosophical method was Arendt’s fellow Königsberger: Immanuel Kant. Arendt returned again and again to Kant’s theory, even though she contested aspects of it, including its ethical universality. Kant believed the same moral rules applied no matter the year, place, or culture. Ethics were universal for all human beings and there were no exceptions to the rule. Certainly, within his theory, there was no need to know the biographical details of the person facing an ethical dilemma because the answer for what the individual should do was the same regardless. Kant’s theory was a model of a dispassionate and objective approach to theory in which the theory stood on its own. When contemplating an approach to Kantian theory, no biographical knowledge of its author was necessary, other than to acknowledge what other theories Kant may have read or been influenced by. Amusing anecdotes about Kant exist and are frequently told in the classroom but are not considered to be central to understanding his thought. While stories were told as an aside about an author’s life, it was not viewed as integral to the development of a theory. In fact, Kant’s sexism and racism, which was littered throughout his work, has been ignored

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

by some Kant scholars as an instance of Kant violating his own theory and was sometimes not considered to be significant. The categorical imperative was understood to be above all of that. Just as Kant’s theory was often understood in isolation from his world and life, so too, the life circumstances of the individual ethical actors were also irrelevant because ethics  was based solely upon abstract principles, rather than facts on the ground. In 1926, Alexander Knox White summed up the matter in the following way by stating that the philosopher (who is understood to be masculine) attempts to give an account of his facts and problems unbiased by his private feelings and opinions. It is the discipline that he has to undergo in order to become a philosopher. What he is in search of is the Truth, and at his best he regards himself as simply its medium or vehicle. We are therefore doing him no injustice when we judge his theory impersonally or simply as a theory.1

Surprisingly, White rejected this idea to some degree, but his view illustrated a prevailing notion throughout the history of philosophy. While there were figures and moments that may have explored the life of a thinker more, such as in the case of Socrates (for which there is no writing), or in the case of some existentialists whose work was focused centrally on the lived human life, there was still a hesitancy about taking this method too far and a need to examine the theory dispassionately, objectively, and without regard for the practical circumstances of its creation. To do otherwise would introduce a risky subjective approach that may cloud the objectivity of the theory. Arendt discussed this problem directly in Men in Dark Times in her laudatio to her mentor, Karl Jaspers. She made the point that unlike philosophers who understand their craft as being done in solitude and concerned with abstract universal truths, Jaspers approached things differently. Jaspers thought that philosophy was most importantly communication among people. This could happen even if one’s interlocutor was no longer living. What was important was that a different point of view was expressed. Arendt stated that it was essential for Jaspers to “abandon the chronological order hollowed by tradition, in which there appeared to be a 1  Alexander Knox White, “The Philosophical Significance of Biography,” Journal of Philosophical Studies 1, no. 4 (1926): 481.

4 

K. FRY

succession, a consistent sequence with one philosopher handing the truth on to the next.”2 Jaspers turned the temporal sequence into a spatial juxtaposition in which the nearness and distance depend no longer on the centuries which separate us from a philosopher, but exclusively on the freely chosen point from which we enter this realm of the spirit, which will endure and expand as long as there are men on the earth.3

For Jaspers, philosophy was for everyone, and he did not present the canon as a sequential discussion, but as past and present lives communicating together in a living discussion to gain insight and meaning concerning the world. Breathing life back into the philosophical canon was important to Jaspers and important to Arendt as well. The life stories of individuals were relevant in this task by connecting the theory to the world and the context from which it arose. In The Human Condition, Arendt stated that we know more about who Socrates was more so than Plato or Aristotle, even though Socrates did not write his philosophy down and Plato and Aristotle did. She stated: “we know much better and more intimately who he was, because we know his story,” which she contrasted to Aristotle, whose scholarly work was well known, but only told us what he produced.4 To know the significance of “who” someone was to be aware of the story. In fact, Arendt’s first work after her dissertation, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman, had some philosophical conclusions, but only through connecting them directly to Rahel’s life experience. In this work, Arendt focused directly on the biographical story as her starting place. The theoretical conclusions connect to the world by grounding them in Rahel’s story and experiences. Following Arendt’s lead, I have found that researching the life of a thinker like Hannah Arendt, the documentary, biographical, and historical evidence of Arendt’s life and times, or the fragments of it that have remained, provide insight into her overall theory and in different ways than was typically understood. Moreover, the various gaps and absences are meaningful, particularly since she believed that archiving material was so important and maintained an extensive archive of her own work. In  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), 79.  Ibid., 79–80. 4  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 2 3

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

taking the life events of Arendt’s world more seriously, I am not trying to do a psychoanalysis of Arendt, which is a methodology that Arendt rejected. Nor am I trying to suggest that her life impacted her theory in ways in  which she was not aware. Furthermore, in a superficial way, Arendt’s life, like the fact that she was a Jewish refugee and that fact that she was romantically involved with Martin Heidegger was often referred to by scholars when understanding her theory. Yet, a deeper analysis of the overall biographical and historical facts of authors’ lives could be used to glean even greater insight into most philosophical texts, not just Arendt’s. Philosophical texts are not written in isolation from the world in which they were created. Viewing philosophical texts ahistorically and impersonally as if they were created in a vacuum can be misleading, particularly when dealing with political theory. Theory can be explored dispassionately and impersonally to delve vigorously into the arguments at play, but it can also be examined in light of the historical evidence and archive, which may produce equally important results. At a conference when I presented a portion of this work, I was asked whether what I was doing was philosophy. From a typical understanding of the profession, I suppose it is not considered to be philosophy except for any arguments that I propose from the evidence gathered. However, if philosophy concerns the search for truth and accuracy of arguments, it seems useful to connect and inform theory with personal and historical data to have a greater understanding of what the person who wrote the theory meant, and why certain topics were of interest, and why others were not. I am not suggesting that all philosophy must occur this way and that there is no use for the traditional approach. Merely, I am suggesting that sometimes the archival evidence can help readers gain insight into the various theories in unexpected and significant ways. While philosophers may have read a biography of someone in their specialty, usually, its significance was relegated to the background and was viewed as being supplementary. In this text, it is the exploration of Arendt’s life that will provide the central clues for insights into Arendt’s theory. It is true that Arendt’s biographical story has been examined thoroughly, perhaps more so than most theorists. There are several biographies, films, plays, and even a graphic novel that explore the extraordinary events of her life. Yet, most of the conclusions drawn from these events have been very straightforward connections. Her experiences as an immigrant, a refugee, and someone fleeing Nazi Germany clearly impacted her interest in exploring totalitarianism and politics in her theory. Her

6 

K. FRY

relationship with Martin Heidegger has also been investigated intensely to understand his philosophical influence, but also, whether Arendt was correct in forgiving him. These issues are important but well worn. In this volume, I make conclusions related to her life story in areas that have not been investigated extensively. Typically, each chapter begins with a biographical exploration followed by a discussion of how it affects her theory. Chapter 2 describes a new approach by exploring Arendt’s life and its relationship to her theory. I examine the moments within Arendt’s own thought that took a similar view and moved the biographical and historical data to the fore. In works like Rahel Varnhagen and Men in Dark Times, Arendt rejected the traditional philosophical method that focused on ideas alone. She brought in biographical, archival, literary, and cultural influences that inspired some of the later theoretical claims in these works. This chapter also discusses Arendt’s theory of storytelling, how it related to history, and how historical and cultural forces affected one’s life in Arendt’s view. I conclude that there is some justification for using a similar methodological approach to Arendt’s work, given that she used it herself at times. Chapter 3 examines remembering and the role of the archive in preserving and documenting lives by contributing to the fragmentary, individual narratives of history. I compare Arendt’s theory to her friend, Walter Benjamin’s, and consider the role of the archive in remembering and recapturing experience in both their projects. Arendt emphasized capturing the narrative of an individual life story, while Benjamin focused on collecting individual material objects. Despite their differing foci, they largely agreed about what constituted history during modernity, which they considered to be broken. They played key roles in archiving each other’s work and saw archiving as a political and historical task that allowed individuals, material objects, and experiences to be remembered. While Chap. 3 concerns remembering, Chap. 4 concerns forgetting and the biographical and historical instances that are missing from Arendt’s archive that she did not discuss publicly. The destruction of her hometown, Königsberg, and her days within the Gurs internment camp were some key events that make virtually no appearance in the archive. Even though archiving and telling narratives was important to Arendt, there were some events for which there were no words. Chapter 5 uses resources from personal letters to challenge the view that Arendt was overwhelmingly influenced by Martin Heidegger, and not as influenced by Karl Jaspers. This provides one example in which the

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

biographical archive can highlight facts in a new way, leading to new insights about Arendt’s philosophical influences as well as her influence upon other thinkers. I also suggest that the typical way of understanding philosophical influence is mistaken, particularly when it comes to women thinkers, by not addressing evidence of facts on the ground and how thinkers influence one another. In Chap. 6, I discuss Arendt’s refrain from political action and the fact that one of her reasons for not participating politically was that she rarely joined political groups. I contrast this with Arendt’s interpretations of the category of political action as an individual agonistic act or as a discursive or communicative act. I argue that the possibilities for political action for Arendt are broader, involving a variety of types of action based on the circumstances, which included cause-oriented collective action involving group membership as an example. The seventh chapter examines Arendt’s statements about her own identity and how she urged that if one is attacked as a Jew, one should fight back as one. Despite these claims, Arendt’s work is often understood as excluding all issues of identity politics as social and not political. Refraining from judgment about whether this is an effective political strategy, I argue that identity politics issues could be public and political for Arendt and were not always relegated to the social. It was possible for political groups to form that focused on identity issues. The last chapter investigates Arendt’s description of her experience as an immigrant in “We Refugees,” and notes the ambivalence she felt between acting politically and the desire to assimilate to gain safety. I relate this personal experience to the controversies surrounding Arendt’s work from Eichmann in Jerusalem and her essay on Little Rock. These controversies connect to how Arendt understood what authentic political action was for oppressed minorities. Unfortunately, she ignored her own experiences as a stateless person when making some of these claims and, especially in the Little Rock essay, lacked narratives and experiences in which to ground her claims. I conclude that Arendt is rightly criticized for looking at identity questions through the lens of authentic political action and that she was unable to see multiple possibilities for action connected to these issues. Yet, her work continues to provide resources for addressing some of these issues, despite her failings. Clearly, Arendt had more traditional writings that focused exclusively upon theory and did not delve into the culture or history of individual lives. Prioritizing the life story and historical circumstances of Arendt’s life

8 

K. FRY

is a method that has its dangers. First, it may betray her theory to bring private issues into the discussion about her public, academic work. Second, it is difficult to follow the academic “rules” of reliability and objectivity when dealing with individual life events that are difficult to describe and fully comprehend. Yet, just because this is a difficult task does not mean it is not worthwhile. Understanding the biographical and historical circumstances of Arendt’s life can shed light on her theory in a way that has been largely ignored. Unlike Arendt, who sought to tell the story of Rahel Varnhagen as she might have told it, I make no claims to be able to do such a thing. However, by examining Arendt’s life and recounting biographical details that may have been obscured, I draw new conclusions based upon a different kind of evidence.

Bibliography Hannah, Arendt. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958. ———. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. ———. Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. White, Alexander Knox. “The Philosophical Significance of Biography.” Journal of Philosophical Studies 1, no. 4 (1926): 481–496.

CHAPTER 2

Life and Theory

Hannah Arendt’s approach to theory is difficult to classify. Though most of her written works concerned topics in political theory or philosophy and fit into those genres, there were other works like The Origins of Totalitarianism that crossed disciplinary lines and used historical and political science approaches among others. Furthermore, her books Rahel Varnhagen and Men in Dark Times were largely biographical. Arendt did not have an interest in discussing methodology, though her work clearly crossed methodological boundaries at times.1 Complicating the issue further, Arendt famously denied being called a philosopher and preferred to be called a political theorist. In her 1964 interview with Günter Gaus, she claimed: “In my opinion I have said good-bye to philosophy once and for all. As you know, I studied philosophy, but that does not mean I stayed with it.”2 Her reasons for this disavowal had partly to do with the fact that she often worked as a lecturer in political science departments, but also concerned what she perceived as the uneasy relationship between

1  Ernst Vollrath, “Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking,” Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977):162. 2  Hannah Arendt. The Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (USA: Penguin Books, 2000), 3–4.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_2

9

10 

K. FRY

philosophical theory and politics.3 The typical philosophical approach to politics denied that people could legitimately disagree, and it treated politics as something that was as predictable and universal as the factual information of science. This was tyrannical for Arendt, rather than democratic, by failing to acknowledge a plurality of valid viewpoints. Additionally, Arendt believed that many philosophers, including Heidegger, failed to question and criticize the National Socialist regime. During the Second World War, Arendt felt the collaborating philosophers had made up ideas about Hitler, in part terrifically interesting things! Completely fantastic and interesting and complicated things! Things far above the ordinary level! I found that grotesque. Today I would say that they were trapped by their own ideas.4

Arendt concluded that she wanted “nothing to do with that lot,” and spent several years outside of academia altogether.5 Over time, Arendt transitioned back into academia, taught courses at a variety of universities, and wrote several books on political theory. She sought to avoid the problems of the tradition of philosophy by focusing on the importance of plurality, free discussion, and legitimate disagreement. Despite her disavowal of the field, a tension remained with Arendt’s denial of the label “philosopher,” and the fact that most of her work was classified as “philosophy.” Arendt’s graduate training and most of her writings betrayed how seriously she took philosophy and how its concerns were important to her. In a letter to Gershom Scholem when she denied coming from Leftist politics, she admitted that “if I hailed from anywhere

3  Arendt’s article “Philosophy and Politics” provides a potential motive for her rejecting the title of “philosopher.” Arendt rejected the title of “philosopher,” but considered herself to be a political theorist, because she did not advocate that the philosopher’s truth should dominate the political realm. For Arendt, politics concerned plurality and the legitimate different opinions between people depending upon their differing situations in the world. Arendt saw tyrannical and non-democratic tendencies in universal philosophical theory that did not tolerate differing opinions. Therefore, Arendt may have abandoned the title of philosopher to critique its traditional approach to politics (Hannah Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990): 73–103). 4  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 12. 5  Ibid., 11.

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

11

at all, it is from German philosophy.”6 In her courses and throughout her academic books, she taught and wrote far more about philosophical texts than any other subject. Often, she reconstructed the philosophical history of a particular concept of interest as a starting point. In fact, when she approached any problem, she claimed to make distinctions in much the same way as Aristotle did.7 She complained that in the fields of history and political science, there was a “growing incapacity for making distinctions,” that was problematic and that certain political terms like totalitarianism, nationalism, and imperialism were effectively meaningless because of their indiscriminate usage.8 In a way, many of her writings concerned trying to work out the ways philosophy was or was not compatible with politics and she sought to find a new approach to theory that allowed us to “think what we are doing.”9 Arendt did not reject theory altogether and her philosophical training remained with her throughout her career. Today, Arendt’s work is understood to be part of the philosophical canon despite her ambiguous relationship to it. Her training and her general approach have been understood to be philosophical. Yet, unlike traditional philosophers, Arendt often took the biographical and historical circumstances of life much more seriously than others trained in the field. Particularly, in Rahel Varnhagen and Men in Dark Times, Arendt dwelled on the life stories of her subjects. Rather than viewing these details as subjective, extraneous, or meaningless to the overall study, Arendt valued the insights she gleaned from the life stories of individuals. This suggested that she might support a methodology that examined the circumstances of her own life in a similar way to gain insight into her theory. Admittedly, this is a somewhat speculative conclusion. However, in this chapter, I will discuss the areas of Arendt’s work that closely connect to the biographical in order to show that Arendt’s examination of biography and the historical circumstances of life was intentional and had a profound relationship to her overall method, including some of her theoretical conclusions. For Arendt, sometimes political and historical conclusions were better understood when connected to the 6  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, July 20, 1963, in The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, ed. Marie Luise Knott, trans. Anthony David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 206. 7  Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, ed. Melvyn A. Hill (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 337–338. 8  Hannah Arendt, Portable Arendt, 162. 9  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 5.

12 

K. FRY

life stories of those who lived through them. Therefore, biographical data and historical circumstances are important avenues to understand Arendt’s own work, in addition to other methods.

Without an Umbrella: Rahel Varnhagen and The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt’s interest in the significance of biography appeared throughout the course of her career. Arendt moved in this direction relatively quickly after completing her philosophical dissertation on St. Augustine. Though Augustine’s work was ripe for biographical exploration since he discussed his life and faith journey candidly in his autobiographical Confessions, Arendt’s thesis did not explore this biographical material. However, even though she did not discuss his autobiography at length, Arendt’s interest in Augustine might not be completely unrelated to his life story. According to Arendt’s friend, Hans Jonas, Augustine’s Confessions was considered to be a “crucial and pivotal text,” particularly appealing to students of Existenz philosophy in Germany during the 1920s.10 Augustine’s Confessions could be understood as a precursor to an existential text because it dealt with life experience and struggle in a philosophical way. Furthermore, according to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Arendt was partially inspired by Augustine’s autobiography when she began her biographical work on Rahel Varnhagen and the Romantics. Young-Bruehl stated: [T]he dimension of Augustine she had left in the background of her dissertation—the confessional, personal, individual Augustine—emerged in a portrait of the modern heirs to his consciousness, the Romantics, who followed Goethe. “Autonomous self-transformation” was the theme of Arendt’s work, though her question was: What can this mean for a Jew?11

Arendt moved toward the biographical by examining how self-­ transformation, which was possible for Augustine in becoming a Christian, could occur for someone Jewish in an antisemitic context.12 Perhaps, living in Berlin during the rise of National Socialism sparked this interest in 10  Hans Jonas in Hannah Arendt, Love and St. Augustine, eds. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), xv. 11  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press 1982), 82. 12  I follow Hannah Arendt’s spelling of the term antisemitism.

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

13

biography as an avenue for understanding how one could survive through such times. Biography became crucial to grasping the contours of this problem. Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman was completed before Arendt left Berlin in 1933, aside from the last two chapters, which were written in 1938.13 Arendt sought external funding for a project on German Romanticism and was successful. She won a grant award from the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft on her proposal concerning Rahel Varnhagen’s life and relationship to assimilation.14 Arendt was drawn to Rahel Varnhagen, who was known for starting the Goethe cult in her attic garret salon. This salon drew famous intellectuals, many artists, and welcomed people from all walks of life. Inspired more by Romanticism than the Enlightenment, what mattered in the salon was not what one was, but who one was. The power of the personality outweighed class and religious differences and provided a semblance of increased equality among its members. Arendt had been familiar with the figure of Varnhagen for quite some time since her friend Anne Mendelssohn had mentioned reading Varnhagen’s letters to Arendt many years before.15 Arendt also suggested to Martin Heidegger that he read Varnhagen’s letters in 1925.16 Samir Gandesha noted that the book foreshadowed ideas that would emerge in greater detail later in Arendt’s work, such as the difference between the social and the political, the importance of political thought and judgment, and the significance of unique individuals.17 Though Arendt’s work on Rahel (whom she referred to with her first name throughout the book) contained theories and political commentary, a great deal of the main thrust of the work was biographical and historical. In fact, it certainly did not read as a work of political theory or philosophy at all, but rather, as a strange kind of biography. To approach issues in the life of a nineteenth-century Jewish woman was a great departure from her training in philosophy and the emphasis upon biographical data was not 13  Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), xiii. 14  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 77. 15  Ibid., 56. 16  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, March 21, 1925, in Letters 1925–1975: Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, ed. Ursula Lutz, trans. Andrew Shields (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2004), 9. 17  Samir Gandesha, “Rahel Varnhagen,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 193–194.

14 

K. FRY

within the norm of the field, particularly about someone like Rahel, who was not a professional philosopher. Though clearly trained in philosophy, Arendt did not rigorously examine all the philosophical work on the Jewish Question to wrestle with the problems of antisemitism, but rather, chose the life of a Jewish woman without formal philosophical education as a touchstone to work out her own views.18 This was quite a departure from her philosophical training. Instead of examining philosophical texts, a great deal of  Arendt’s research was archival. She went to the Varnhagen Collection of the Manuscript Division of the Prussian State Library to understand Rahel’s life and world and was one of the last scholars to view much of this material.19 Arendt also used the letters and diary entries that Rahel’s husband, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense published in Buch des Andenkens. Arendt was skeptical of Rahel’s husband’s text for its selective choice of materials as well as his apparent editing of them.20 As part of the project, Arendt intended to publish an appendix of Rahel’s unpublished letters, but unfortunately, these letters were lost or destroyed during the Second World War.21 In the preface, Arendt stated that the point of the book was not to write an objective portrait of Rahel’s life or to understand the significance of the Berlin salons or Romanticism in a traditionally historical way. Arendt did not focus on listing facts and events in Rahel’s life like most traditional biographies or histories. The chapters of the book were largely in chronological order, but each chapter was themed by the significant existential state or life event that occurred during those years, sometimes using materials that were not written during that time period, but from reflection upon the events written years later. This made it a very curious type of biography since the facts, events, and timelines were clearly secondary. Furthermore, there was discussion interspersed throughout the text of ideas from thinkers like Rousseau, Lessing, Mendelsohn, and many others, 18  Hans Jonas described her knowledge of German/Jewish history as limited, starting at the end of the eighteenth century, and he doubted that she had ever read the Jewish Bible (Hans Jonas, Brian Fox, and Richard Wolin, “Hannah Arendt: An Intimate Portrait,” New England Review 27, no. 2 (2006):137). 19  Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, xiii. 20  Arendt was frustrated by the fact that Karl August Varnhagen von Ense’s description of his wife had been up until this point largely uncontested and she accused him of “stereotyping and embellishing of her portrait, and his deliberate falsification of her life” (Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, xv). 21  Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, xiii.

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

15

rather than sticking to discussions of Rahel’s life experience or even Rahel’s understanding of these philosophical ideas. Arendt acknowledged her approach was “unusual in biographical literature” and Arendt described her method as rejecting the typical biographical approach which suggested secret knowledge or insights about the person beyond her self-­ understanding.22 She stated: [T]he point was not to assume to know more than Rahel herself knew, not to impose upon her a fictional destiny derived from observations presumed to be superior to those she consciously had. That is to say, I deliberately avoided that modern form of indiscretion in which the writer attempts to penetrate his subject’s tricks and aspires to know more than the subject knew about himself or was willing to reveal.23

This was not an attempt to reveal a secret meaning to Rahel’s life for which she was unaware, but Arendt tried to describe Rahel’s personal point of view. She wanted to tell Rahel’s “life as she herself might have told it.” 24 As Annabel Herzog noted, Arendt was seeking to write an autobiography of Rahel by proxy.25 Arendt wrote a quasi- autobiography, but in the biographical form, with various theoretical insights and side notes included. Arendt had a strong writing voice, so the degree to which she was able to capture Rahel’s self-narrative is debatable. Arendt acknowledged that she may have failed at moments to follow this method.26 Nonetheless, her goal was to find an expression of Rahel’s self-experience through the data available, including her diary entries, her correspondence, other writings, and at one point, dream analysis. Capturing this data by reflecting on Rahel’s life experience was the main thrust of the book, with Arendt’s theoretical conclusions interspersed throughout. Arendt believed that the main theme of Rahel’s life was her struggle with her Jewish identity. The chapters were organized around the transitions that occurred in Rahel’s approach to assimilation and her self-­relation to her Jewishness. The first chapter of the book began with a jump to the conclusion. Arendt quoted Rahel, who said the “thing which all my life  Ibid., xv.  Ibid., xviii. 24  Ibid., xv. 25  Annabel Herzog, “Illuminating Inheritance: Benjamin’s influence on Arendt’s Political Storytelling,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 26, no. 5 (2000): 9. 26  Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, xvii. 22 23

16 

K. FRY

seemed to me the greatest shame, which was the misery and misfortune of my life—having been born a Jewess—this I should on no account now wish to have missed.”27 Arendt used this biographical and archival evidence to describe Rahel’s transforming relationship with her Jewish identity. It was Rahel’s existential attitudes that drove the transition between chapters. The biographical data of Rahel’s life was mined and by extension, it documented how antisemitism functioned at that time and place. Though Arendt believed the book was more biographical than historical, Arendt felt it contributed to the history of the German Jews as well by documenting “the manner in which assimilation to intellectual and social life of the environment works out concretely in the history of an individual life, thus shaping a personal destiny.”28 Arendt did not believe individuals were destined by forces of a universal History progressing toward a goal, but she also knew that the context and the particular circumstances of a person’s life were important, especially when one was affected by political conditions. Rahel’s life and relationship with her Jewish identity could not be understood in exclusion from the external forces affecting her. Furthermore, assimilation was better understood in the context of a concrete example. By examining Rahel’s life, Arendt wanted to show how assimilation into a culture’s intellectual and cultural environment concretely affected an individual’s life in some negative ways. Arendt stated that in times of political uproar, history became more definitive in its impact on a person’s life, and it concentrated “its whole force upon an individual’s destiny.”29 If the circumstances were against them, “the pain, the grief, is overwhelming.”30 Arendt returned to the theme of history affecting the individual life throughout her career. In fact, she had a running joke with her husband, Heinrich Blücher, about how “History” kept affecting them and others that they knew. Given that they were both interned and forced to emigrate more than once, it was clear to them that external political and historical conditions did affect individual lives significantly. Arendt discussed the external events that shaped Rahel’s life. It was the culture’s preconceived understanding of what it meant to be Jewish that deeply affected Rahel’s life and caused her so much suffering. It was  Ibid., 3.  Ibid., xvii. 29  Ibid., 4. 30  Ibid. 27 28

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

17

only through considering Rahel’s life and circumstances carefully that the evidence concerning these forces could be shown and theoretical conclusions about the negative effects of pursuing assimilation could be drawn. When Arendt’s mentor, Karl Jaspers, read her original version of the book he cautioned her about what an antisemite might do with the material, though he continued to support its publication.31 Jaspers was concerned that Arendt’s work promoted the idea that if one “is a Jew he cannot really live his life to the full.”32 Arendt did not find this issue problematic, because she thought that it was the central point of the book. She told Jaspers that what intrigued her about Rahel was “the phenomenon of life striking her like ‘rain pouring down on someone without an umbrella.’”33 It was the fact of the rain, or the disastrous cultural and historical circumstances of life, that could not be ignored. It was difficult for Rahel to find an adequate defense against the negative culture. She did not have an umbrella to protect her from the rain. The umbrella metaphor was also used within the text itself when Arendt described Rahel’s inability to hide behind “moralities and conventions as if these were an umbrella for rainy weather.”34 Rahel could not fully choose or act, but Arendt believed she became a “mouthpiece” for this experience.35 For some who felt at home in the world, they could thrive, but this was a matter of luck or chance.36 She thought that human nature was dependent upon “luck as seed is upon good weather.” 37 For those who did not feel at home, it hindered their development.38 They were stuck in a storm without adequate protection. To understand this fact, Arendt realized that it must be shown in connection to the life story of an existing person. The evidence from Rahel’s life related to Arendt’s theoretical conclusions, including the ideas of the pariah and parvenu, which she borrowed from Bernard Lazare and discussed more thoroughly in the sections of the 31  Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, August 23, 1952, in Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence,  1926–1969, eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992), 196. 32  Ibid., 194. 33  Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, September 7, 1952, Correspondence, 198 (emphasis mine). 34  Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, 4. 35  Ibid., xvi. 36  Ibid., 4. 37  Ibid. 38  Ibid.

18 

K. FRY

book written later, in 1938. Most of the book traced Rahel’s various attempts to escape her heritage through seeking to be a parvenu. Arendt described a parvenu as someone who sought to escape discrimination through the force of individual personality and talents, seeking to be an exception. For Rahel, this occurred in several ways. Rahel sought approval through her intellectual conversation at the Salon, she adopted a Romantic viewpoint, she tried to gain status through love, marriage, travel, and converting to Christianity. Later, Rahel realized the pointlessness of this attempt that did nothing to change the public world outside of one’s private life.39 According to Richard J. Bernstein, Arendt was not blaming the victims of inequality by criticizing the parvenu, but promoting the need for a political and public venue for this battle, rather than a politically naïve concern with private, social assimilation.40 As Paulina Sosnowska stated, Rahel had to choose between preserving her “national identity at the price of social exclusion,” or striving “for social acceptance by becoming an exception at any cost.”41 Reading Rahel’s private letters and documenting her suffering provided evidence for Arendt about how being a parvenu did not solve the problem of living in an antisemitic world. Eventually, Rahel became closer to a pariah who was proud of her heritage and confronted antisemitism, even though she was not fully political like the conscious pariah. The pariah had an outsider status and did not seek the privileges of the parvenu. Though Arendt thought all Jews in Europe began as outsiders, the conscious pariah took this a step further by rejecting antisemitism and refusing to assimilate and conform. To be consciously a pariah, was to take a political position against inequality and rebel against one’s pariah status. To a certain extent, Rahel also embodied this response, particularly at the end of her life. She began to write in Hebrew again and declared that she would not have wanted to miss being a Jewess, which marked a shift in her attitude that occurred when she was closer to death.42 Tracing how Rahel’s attitude toward her identity changed over time and how her various attempts at assimilation were unsuccessful gave Arendt data from which to confidently make broader theoretical conclusions. These conclusions were not written in isolation from a particular  Ibid., 14.  Richard Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 38. 41  Paulina Sosnowska, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger: Philosophy, Modernity, and Education (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019), 48. 42  Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen, 227. 39 40

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

19

instance of Rahel’s life or in abstraction like a traditional philosopher or political theorist might do. It was the rain pouring down on Rahel and Arendt’s recalling of the downpour that contributed to the theoretical conclusions. Obviously, there were some similarities between Rahel’s, and Arendt’s lives. Examining Rahel’s life allowed Arendt the occasion to reflect on her own identity, at the time when outside political conditions were worsening for Arendt and many of her friends and relations. Arendt understood that she was living through a situation in which external events were profoundly affecting her own life as well. Scholars saw the parallels between Arendt’s life and Varnhagen’s experiences as Jewish women interested in academics and living in places with worsening antisemitism. In her preface, Arendt acknowledged that the book was shaped by the knowledge of the doomed nature of German Judaism while she was writing, but since the book was largely written by 1933, Arendt did not have full awareness yet of the full horror of Hitler’s reign.43 It was clear that Arendt could identify with Rahel in some respects. They were both drawn to intellectual life in Berlin, and consequently, socialized with Jews and Gentiles alike. Further, when they were young, they both suffered from too much introspection and were attracted to poetry, theater, philosophy, and culture, and paid less attention to politics.44 In fact, Arendt described Rahel as “my very closest woman friend” though she had been “dead a hundred years now.”45 Arendt’s life experience at the time of writing this text, shaped her conclusions and how she understood what was happening in Rahel’s life. Kimberly Maslin called what Arendt did in the Rahel Varnhagen book a type of experiential ontology. Maslin carefully laid out the similarities with Heidegger’s thought and showed the connections between Heidegger’s categories such as thrownness and projection and Rahel’s demonstration of some of them.46 Maslin’s point was that Arendt was making these phenomena concrete by showing them in an actual existing person. Maslin was correct to show how Arendt could be seen as concretizing some of Heidegger’s views. However, while the category of  Ibid., xvii.  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 88. 45  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, August 12, 1936, in Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968, ed. Lotte Kohler, trans. Peter Constantine (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1996), 10. 46  Kimberly Maslin, The Experiential Ontology of Hannah Arendt (London: Lexington Books, 2020), 40. 43 44

20 

K. FRY

experiential ontology is useful in describing how Arendt’s approach was different from the norm, it could lead to an underestimation of how Arendt broke radically with traditional philosophy in these texts. Other than instances in which thinkers write their own autobiographies, such as Augustine, Rousseau, and Nietzsche, there was typically no use of biographical texts in traditional philosophy, including Heidegger’s. Retrospectively, Arendt’s biographical texts were understood as philosophical because Arendt became known for her more philosophical writings at a later date. Yet, Rahel Varnhagen was written in a way that was so alien from the traditional study of philosophy that the radicality of focusing centrally on the life stories of individuals and the experiences they lived through should also be underscored. Arendt’s interest in the cultural and historical circumstances affecting lived lives continued in her next book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in a more limited form. This book perplexed many who delved into it since it was not easily labeled. Susannah Gottlieb noted Arendt’s heterogeneous assortment of genres coupled with tonal issues often resulted in Arendt’s work being criticized in this book.47 Once again, Arendt did not use the typical methodology of philosophy and political theory. It was written many years after Rahel Varnhagen and published in 1951, once Arendt had immigrated to the United States. While the Rahel Varnhagen book loosely fit into the biographical genre, The Origins of Totalitarianism did not fit entirely into any typical academic field of writing. The book itself was dense, long, and difficult to classify because it uses a mixture of philosophy, sociology, and history. According to Hans-Jörg Sigwart, it did not conform to any methodological approach popular in the twentieth century.48 Given the length, there was very little philosophical theory and more descriptions of circumstances that led to the rise of totalitarianism from a variety of sources, including literary ones. Arendt did not spend time describing her methodological approach in this book, but she did mention that it described the elements from nineteenth-century history that contributed to the origins of totalitarianism generally, recognizing that a more comprehensive history of antisemitism was yet to be written.49 47  Susannah Gottlieb, “Arendt’s Alteration in Tone,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 537. 48  Hans-Jörg Sigwart, “Political Characterology: On the Method of Theorizing in Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism,” American Political Science Review 1, No. 2 (2016): 265. 49  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973), xv.

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

21

Initially, she saw the book as a kind of pre-history of totalitarianism, and she used a combination of history and political science to “try to tell and to understand what had happened.”50 When she completed the text in 1949, she said it was the first chance to “articulate and to elaborate the questions with which my generation had been forced to live for the better part of its adult life: What happened? Why did it happen? How could it have happened?” 51 Like with the Rahel Varnhagen book, the description of the data appeared to be most important, with the primary theoretical conclusions emerging later. “Ideology and Terror,” the last chapter of the book, was the most philosophical section of the book and did not appear at all in the first edition, indicating that her view possibly emerged later when she published it as a separate article in 1953. In comparison to Rahel Varnhagen, The Origins of Totalitarianism was more straightforwardly historical and tried to trace the sociological and historical factors that allowed totalitarianism to emerge and take hold. Nonetheless, it shared a similar historical concern about the development of external factors that affected how individual lives were lived. While some of the “evidence” that Arendt used was problematic and she herself understood that it was unbalanced in design and lacked proper documentation at times, it displayed Arendt’s interest in events on the ground.52 In the preface to the first edition, Arendt asserted one should not resist actualities or abstract to the extent that the reality of them was no longer felt when trying to understand.53 Describing lived events was important to Arendt. Using this data, she pushed toward philosophical conclusions about the structure of totalitarianism. Even though it was not the main thrust of the book, some biographical data of significant historical figures was scattered throughout the work as well. There were sections on figures such as Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Dreyfus, Cecil Rhodes, Lord Cromer, Lawrence of Arabia, the Rothschild family, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Nikita Khrushchev, and Joseph Stalin, and she also mentioned figures such as Rahel Varnhagen, Bernard Lazare, and Edmond Burke. Further, Hans-Jörg Sigwart pointed out that Arendt included what she called biographical “types” in the book, such as  Ibid., xxiii.  Ibid., xxiv. 52  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 211. See also, Peter Staudenmaier, “Hannah Arendt’s Analysis of Antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Critical Appraisal,” Patterns of Prejudice 46, no. 2 (2012: 154–179). 53  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, viii. 50 51

22 

K. FRY

the parvenu, the pariah, the bourgeois, the bureaucrat, imperialist character, and mass man.54 Though The Origins of Totalitarianism was significantly less biographical than the work on Rahel, it did not leave the story of individual life completely behind. Sigwart described these individual stories as being like biographical case studies that illustrated the development and functioning of totalitarian regimes in the lives of individuals.55 Like Rahel’s example, these short discussions considered the cultural and historical circumstances and their effect on lived lives as important in trying to understand any theoretical conclusions about the phenomenon of totalitarianism. Understanding the rise of totalitarian regimes could not be done in complete isolation from the individual lives that endured its development. As Sigwart described it, Arendt’s “biographical miniatures” ought to be understood “as integral parts of the analysis itself.”56 The Origins of Totalitarianism had an unusual and unclassifiable method which Sigwart called highly experimental.57 Once again, Arendt’s work was radically different from traditional philosophy by taking lived narratives and events on the ground so seriously and connecting them to the theoretical claims made in the books.

Prism of History Men in Dark Times was perhaps the best example of Arendt’s work which braided together biographical life stories and theories of various thinkers.58 This book was published in 1968 and was composed of previously published articles written over the course of twelve years, showing how often Arendt returned to the significance of life narratives in her work. Arendt knew some of these individuals personally, like Karl Jaspers and Randall Jarrell, while others she had not met like Rosa Luxemburg. Several of the articles were straightforward biographical pieces, while other articles were tributes, produced as introductions, or were book reviews of biographies. Overall, Men in Dark Times showed Arendt’s sustained interest in 54  Hans-Jörg Sigwart, 267. Interestingly, these biographical vignettes end in Section 3 on totalitarianism except for a short chapter on the secret police, who are not discussed as individuals, but rather, the role they fulfilled for the state. It is as though the life stories disappear under such a regime, leading toward total domination. 55  Ibid. 56  Ibid., 267–269. 57  Ibid., 275. 58  The title of the book is very dated since it includes biographies of women as well as men.

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

23

biography and in the significant factors of individual lives as well as the historical circumstances in which they lived. In short pieces of writing that her friend, Mary McCarthy, compared to German fairy tales, Arendt explored central themes in the life and writing of these authors, scholars, and activists.59 Arendt did not describe the essays as fairy tales, but instead, as silhouettes of these individual lives.60 Arendt claimed that this book was “primarily concerned with persons—how they lived their lives, how they moved in the world, and how they were affected by historical time.”61 They were not meant to be representatives of an era or of “History (spelled with a capital H),” but were examples of individual lives struggling with the circumstances given to them.62 Throughout the book, Arendt returned to the metaphor of light to represent the lives of her subjects. Although the individuals suffered, they provided a flicker of illumination within the darkness of the world. Arendt downplayed the role of theory in her analyses and claimed that the kind of illumination discussed in Men in Dark Times may well come less from theories and concepts than from uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth—this conviction is the inarticulate background against which these profiles were drawn.”63

It was this flickering light of their lives that was the primary focus for Arendt’s insights and these conclusions related directly to the historical and political circumstances of the troubling world. The historical and cultural background affected these individuals and their political situations greatly and their lives were illuminated against this backdrop. There were some common themes throughout Men in Dark Times that underscored Arendt’s understanding of the relation between life and theory. First, there were statements downplaying the role of solitary abstract theory, while emphasizing the importance of discussing ideas with others 59  Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, December 16, 1968, in Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975, ed. Carol Brightman (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), 225. 60  Hannah Arendt to Mary McCarthy, December 21, 1968, Between Friends, 232. 61  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), vii. 62  Ibid., viii. 63  Ibid., ix.

24 

K. FRY

and understanding the reality of lived circumstances. For example, Arendt praised Karl Jaspers for being a “Citizen of the World,” which was a piece that was written as an introduction to a book about Jaspers’ philosophy. Arendt noted that philosophy functioned typically according to eternal and unwritten universal laws, but she admired Jaspers for emphasizing communication between people of diverse views rather than as the solitary contemplation of Truth without regard for others.64 He connected philosophy to dialogue with other people. Similarly, Arendt claimed that Rosa Luxemburg was much more concerned with the reality of the world than abstract truth of Marxist theory. Luxemburg thought her friends should read Marx, not to follow his conclusions religiously, but merely to expose themselves to the daring of his thoughts.65 Arendt maintained that for Luxemburg, the revolution would not come about from theoretical insights or political organization from elites above, and there was consequently, no need to intellectually police interpretations of Marxist theory. The revolution would result from the spontaneous pressure for action from below.66 Therefore, Luxemburg was not an “orthodox Marxist,” and did not focus stringently on the theory, but instead, stressed the reality of lived conditions.67 Katherine Arens asserted that even though Arendt did not use Hegelian terminology and would not call her subjects in Men in Dark Times “world-historical” individuals, what was similar to the Hegelian approach was that Arendt emphasized the concrete rather than the abstract.68 Arens described this as Arendt understanding public life as “engagements with the immediate” and de-emphasized “abstract patterns” since this falsified the understanding of action by making it seem as if it went according to an abstract plan.69 Luxemburg and Jaspers shared a concern for the lived conditions and for communicating and including other people in the discussion of politics and philosophy. Those whom Arendt admired paid close attention to the things of the world and to politics. They did not get lost in the realm of abstract thought uninformed by these circumstances. Arendt stated:

 Ibid., 90.  Ibid., 39. 66  Ibid., 52. 67  Ibid., 38. 68  Katherine Arens, “Hannah Arendt Translates Culture: Men in Dark Times,” Monatshefte 108, no. 4 (2016): 537. 69  Ibid. 64 65

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

25

[N]o matter how abstract our theories may sound or how consistent our arguments may appear, there are incidents and stories behind them which, at least for ourselves, contain as in a nutshell the full meaning of whatever we have to say.”70

Arendt continued that thought itself came from actual incidents in lived experience and had to use these experiences as guideposts to avoid getting lost in “the heights to which thinking soars.”71 Therefore, examining incidents and stories were important sources for evidence and claims in political theory for Arendt and the full meaning of history was not possible without them. The experience preceded theoretical conclusions at times. A second theme within the biographical stories in Men in Dark Times was Arendt’s discussion of the melding together of the subjective and the objective through a biographical narrative. Arendt commented on this phenomenon directly in her laudatio of Karl Jaspers for the German Peace Prize Award. Arendt thought the notion of a “laudatio” harkened back to a more accurate sense of the public realm that required “the human person in all his subjectivity who needs to appear in public in order to achieve full reality.”72 Through the telling of Jaspers’ story in a public forum, the subjective and private appeared in the public realm and gained a quasi-­ objective status. Given her focus on the public/private distinction, this discussion was interesting because it highlighted a way for the subjective to appear in public, which means that the realms were not so sharply separated. The fact of the private and subjective life rising to the level of publicity and being heard by all conferred “upon it an illuminating power that confirms its real existence.”73 Consequently, Arendt said that in this case, as well as in politics generally, the personal could not be equated sharply with the subjective and the objective could not be equated with the factual.74 These distinctions were appropriate for the scientific realm in which subjective and objective could be easily distinguished, but were “meaningless in politics … personality is anything but a private affair.”75 Politics 70  Hannah Arendt, Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2018), 201–202. 71  Ibid., 202. 72  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 72. 73  Ibid. 74  Ibid. 75  Ibid.

26 

K. FRY

should not be understood as scientific and universally “objective,” but something in which the so-called subjective details of an individual’s life were particularly relevant. By making the personality public, humanitas showed through. Arendt did not go into detail about this phenomenon but described humanitas as the height of humanness because the personality was seen as valid without being merely subjective.76 This occurred when individuals opened their life to the public.77 This idea mirrored Arendt’s discussion in The Human Condition, which described how action disclosed an individual through words and deeds in public. Therefore, the subjective and objective were brought together through the judgments about the action made by the audience which extended its validity beyond the individual personality. Lisa Disch thought that Arendt used storytelling to solve the disjunct between lived experience and critical understanding of something in abstraction.78 For Arendt, abstract theories began as particular experiences and therefore, abstract universals were grounded in individual experiences. Third, and most importantly, throughout Men and Dark Times Arendt claimed that the story of the life of an individual could yield more than what a more traditional text of history might achieve. As Julia Kristeva noted, Arendt did not write an autobiography herself, which is unusual given how she stressed the importance of storytelling.79 Furthermore, as Taran King discussed, Arendt did not have a consistent theory of narrative that she articulated in detail.80 Still, many facets of Arendt’s ideas can be gleaned through examining what Arendt said about storytelling in Men in Dark Times. Storytelling was an important feature of how Arendt understood individual histories. On the occasion of reviewing J.P Nettl’s biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Arendt appreciated the English style of biography that was heavily documented, annotated, and described the historical period in relation to the person’s life because it focused on the vivid story of a person’s life, rather than a list of historical facts and

 Ibid., 73.  Ibid. 78  Lisa J.  Disch, “More Truth than Fact: Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt,” Political Theory 21, no. 4 (1993): 666. 79  Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt, trans. Ross Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 48. 80  Taran King, “Origin and Essence: The Problem of History in Hannah Arendt,” Journal of the History of Ideas 74, no. 1 (2013): 140. 76 77

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

27

achievements.81 Arendt claimed that it “tells more” than “all but the most outstanding history books.”82 The biography contrasted to the standard historical text because history was not treated as the inevitable background of a famous person’s life span; it is rather as though the colorless light of historical time were forced through and refracted by the prism of a great character so that in the resulting spectrum a complete unity of life and world is achieved.83

The metaphor of the prism and how it related to historical knowledge was important. History was displayed as it was lived in the light of the individual life that illuminated the “dark” times. It crystalized history by showing history in a living state of an individual’s life. Arendt illustrated the idea that history was better understood once it was concentrated and forced through the prism of an individual life in her Rahel Varnhagen book as well. To understand the cultural and historical forces at play during a particular time required that it be shown in and through the context of an actual life. Only then did the colorful light of history show itself. Only then was history understood as constitutive of and occurring for individual lives. Otherwise, the historical discussion had no color and there was disunity between the academic study of historical facts and how life was lived. When history was pushed through the prism of a life, the objective and subjective came together and theoretical conclusions could be made that connected directly to the world and lived experience. In The Human Condition, Arendt went a bit further describing her understanding of history that prioritized individual life stories and rejected grand narratives of systematic universal theories of history like Hegel’s and Marx’s that attributed specific destinies to the human species. For Arendt, political action could not achieve its “purpose” or “aim” like in teleological theories of history because actors could not control how their action would be understood by others.84 Arendt claimed that teleological theories of history mistook human action for fabrication in which history was considered to be like an object that was created according to a preordained plan.85 For Arendt, History, as the total of human actions, could  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 33.  Ibid. 83  Ibid (emphasis mine). 84  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 184. 85  Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1961), 78. 81 82

28 

K. FRY

not be controlled by the makers but was judged after the fact by the community. One way that history was preserved for Arendt was through narrative. Arendt understood history as being composed of individual narratives of events, in which biographical renderings were significant. The stories were told and retold and preserved in art or were recorded in documents. Arendt called that fact that every individual life could be told as a story as the “prepolitical and prehistorical condition of history.”86 Graham MacPhee stated that Arendt’s view of history should not be understood primarily in terms of epistemology because the historical events are not to be understood absolutely.87 Arendt was quite clear that interpretations can change over time as the stories were told and retold. For MacPhee, what was important about narratives was that they had the “power to enable individuals and collectives to experience—and not just intellectualize,” and that this produced a sense of responsibility for the world.88 Similarly, Annabel Hertzog emphasized that these life stories in Men in Dark Times had political importance, just as all life stories had to a degree.89 In fact, Arendt asserted that “no philosophy, no analysis, no aphorism be it ever so profound, can compare in intensity and richness of meaning with a properly narrated story,” and that was why history and politics were crucially connected to narrative for Arendt.90 According to Adrianna Cavarero, Arendt thought it was through their action that human beings express a “narratable self” which came from what action left behind.91 Therefore, biographical information was not irrelevant and subjective, but crucial to understanding political and historical events. Perhaps Arendt’s most illuminating essay on the function of storytelling was her essay on the author Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) in Men in Dark Times. Arendt was fascinated by Dinesen’s love of storytelling and of life. Though Dinesen came to professional storytelling late, merely in order to provide herself a living, Dinesen told stories to her friends on a  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 184.  Graham MacPhee, “Escape from Responsibility: Ideology and Storytelling in Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day,” College Literature 38, no. 1 (2011): 178. 88  Ibid. 89   Annabel Herzog, “The Poetic Nature of Political Disclosure: Hannah Arendt’s Storytelling.” Clio 30, no. 2 (2000): 189–190. 90  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 22. 91  Adriana Cavarero, “Narrative,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 603–604. 86 87

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

29

regular basis and referred to herself as Scheherazade.92 For Arendt, Dinesen’s stories began with using “life and the world” as inspiration.93 Arendt explained that a life story was essentially a retelling and repeating of a life in the imagination allowing an individual’s significance to be remembered through the narrative.94 In fact, Arendt believed Dinesen thought storytelling was so important that “without repeating life in imagination you can never be fully alive.” 95 For Arendt, Dinesen was loyal to the story and to life by remembering it, pondering it, and repeating it.96 Unlike universal theories of history that presented history as an objective and external science, Arendt described Dinesen’s stories as revealing “meaning without committing the error of defining it,” which allowed for multiple types of interpretations.97 By extension, the rendering of a historical event through the life story gave it shape and meaning, but without conclusively defining it and without being the last word on the event. Future and different renderings were possible. There has been much debate concerning Arendt’s belief in the effectiveness of storytelling and its relationship to history. George Kateb disagreed with Arendt’s view of history and its connection with storytelling because it severed the truth from the meaning of the event.98 He argued that this approach was no different from the ideologies that Arendt was critiquing in totalitarian regimes that told “stories” and had no concern for truth, but sought to make political events meaningful.99 However, theorists in literature who focused on the creation of biographies acknowledged that biography is shaped, created, and that objective “facts” outside of a narrative context were elusive. For Edward Saunders, the relationship between fictionality and historicity pervaded all academic discussions of non-fiction genres, including biography as well as documentary film.100 Questions concerning the reliability of narrative were at the core of the  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 100.  Ibid., 97. 94  Ibid. 95  Ibid 96  Ibid. 97  Ibid., 104. 98  George Kateb, “Ideology and Storytelling,” Social Research 69, no. 2 (2002): 328. 99  Ibid., 355. 100  Edward Saunders, “Introduction: Theory of Biography or Biography in Theory?” in Biography in Theory: Key Texts with Commentaries, eds. Wilhelm Hemecker and Edward Saunders (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 4–5. 92 93

30 

K. FRY

biography for many literary scholars. In contrast to Kateb, Arendt scholars like Seyla Benhabib and Lisa Disch found value in Arendt’s use of narrative. Benhabib thought narrative had some advantages, one of which was that it did justice to the memory of the dead by emphasizing the fragmentary nature of historiography which ruptured the historical event.101 Disch agreed that a well-crafted story could have more critical force than a theoretical analysis of a political situation.102 Disch connected Arendt’s idea of “situated impartiality” as discussed in Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy to narrative. What Disch called “situated impartiality” allowed someone to put themselves in the position of another person and helped tell a story that engaged the critical thinking of the audience. 103 For Disch, Arendt’s use of storytelling taught spontaneous critical thinking by rejecting abstraction and dealing with new scenarios.104 Allowing people to “visit” a different point of view encouraged them to become more involved in politics than an abstract discussion of political principles would.105 One of Arendt’s most popular classes at the New School for Social Research in New  York was called “Political Experience in the 20th Century,” and it was a memorable course for her students, who continued to comment about it over the years. The way Arendt described the course in her notes explained her interest in biographical experiences, the need for life story to be addressed, and how the literary or historical descriptions of events could be a precursor to the theoretical findings concerning the time period. The course syllabus was organized around time periods like World War I, Aftermath of WWI in the West, and Aftermath of Revolution, and included literary, historical, and political texts concerning these events. The syllabus for this course included literary figures such as Faulkner, Lawrence, Sartre, Orwell, Heller, and Hemingway, in addition to historical books, political theory, and philosophy.106 In her lecture notes, she wrote that the aim of the course was for students to be 101  Seyla Benhabib, “Redemptive Power of Narrative: The Politics of Memory and the Morality of Historiography,” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1992): 181–2. 102  Lisa Disch. “More Truth than Fact: Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt,” Political Theory 21, no. 4 (1993): 665. 103  Ibid., 666. 104  Ibid., 670. 105  Ibid., 687. 106  Hannah Arendt, Subject File, 1949–1975: Courses; New School for Social Research, New York, NY “Political Experiences in the Twentieth Century,” lectures, 1968. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 023612.

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

31

“confronted with direct experience, to relive this period vicariously,” and to “forget all theories.”107 She did not mean that one should stop thinking philosophically altogether, which she reiterated, but she was emphasizing the need for the imagination to recapture the experiences of those who lived through the swift change of these years.108 Arendt thought that any theoretical conclusions had to engage with those experiences. Her main goal was for the students to understand “the way events affected people” and what meaning these events had for the people who experienced them. 109 Past events were thought about and put into a story, but Arendt claimed that “out of the story comes the Theory.”110 In some instances, the beginning point of the theory was life and experience of sufferers of history. The literature in the course helped with this insight and allowed one to see the connection between the two.111 The purpose of reading the literature was not to get raw experiences, but to get experiences “without theoretical overtones,” and she wanted students to write about the difference between literary and theoretical insights.112 The way Arendt described the content of the course was that she was inspired by “a Biography—Let us assume somebody is born at the end of the last century, he is still a contemporary, and let us assume that he travels or is forced to travel extensively—First World War, Breakdown of Class system, of Nation-State the rise of the international movement.”113 At the New School, she let her students know that the life timeline was that of her husband, Heinrich Blücher and that his life experience was the model for the course.114 According to her student Jerome Kohn, who attended the seminar in 1968, Arendt wanted her students to experience vicariously the major calamitous events of the twentieth century and the vast majority of the seminar involved Arendt telling stories of these painful events, but also supplementing her own stories with descriptions by the poets and the historians.115 This allowed students to disrupt the political ideologies of left, right, and center and  Ibid., 023609.  Ibid., 023609. 109  Ibid., 023610. 110  Ibid., 023762. 111  Ibid. 112  Ibid., 023764 113  Ibid., 023762. 114  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 420. 115  Jerome Kohn in Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), xxii–xxiii. 107 108

32 

K. FRY

encourage political spontaneity. 116 Overall, she claimed that the course was trying “to recapture experiences but not those of the makers of history but those who were its ‘sufferers,’ by which I mean no more than: those who were not in charge.”117 Arendt’s insight was that sufferers of history were impacted greatly by historical events, and it was necessary to try to engage with those experiences prior to producing cohesive theories to explain them. Their lives were the prism through which the history was concentrated and reflected. Theories produced in the abstract or without reference to how individuals suffered paled in comparison by ignoring the significance of individual lives and failing to connect directly with the world. In the same spirit, I seek to illuminate Arendt and her time without finding some sort of destiny behind her life, but to show how historical time and culture affected her life and her theory. By focusing on the detail and evidence that emerged in her personal correspondence and archived materials, different interpretations are revealed. While this is not the only way to understand Arendt’s thought and there is value in exploring her concepts alone, it seemed that Arendt’s discussion of narrative and history and her lengthy exploration of various biographies and life stories throughout her career would give tacit permission for a similar examination of Arendt’s own life for similar purposes. Rather than seeing her work as being created in supreme abstraction, our understanding of her work becomes richer. Arendt’s story can be pushed through the prism of history for new insights, so that her theory is not explained as forgone conclusion to the canonical philosophical discussion preceding her, but the ideas can be contextualized within her life and with an understanding of how they emerged. The candlelight of Arendt’s life can flicker against the dark times that she lived through and can illuminate her theory.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1961. ———. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., n.d.-a ———. Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World. Ed. Melvyn A.  Hill. New York: St., n.d.-b  Ibid., xxiii.  Hannah Arendt, Subject File, 1949–1975: Courses; New School for Social Research, New York, NY “Political Experiences in the Twentieth Century,” lectures, 1968. Hannah Arendt Papers, 023610. 116 117

2  LIFE AND THEORY 

33

———. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. ———. Love and St. Augustine. Edited by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ———. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973. ———. “Philosophy and Politics.” Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990): 73–103. ———. The Portable Arendt. Edited by Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000. ———. The Promise of Politics. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New  York: Schocken Books, 2005. ———. Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman. Translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. ———. Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953–1975. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2018. Arendt, Hannah and Blücher, Heinrich. Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968. Edited by Lotte Kohler. Translated by Peter Constantine. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1996. Arendt, Hannah and Heidegger, Martin. Edited by Ursula Lutz. Translated by Andrew Shields. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2004. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers, 1926–1969. Edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992. Arendt, Hannah and McCarthy, Mary. Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975. Edited by Carol Brightman. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995. Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Arens, Katherine. “Hannah Arendt Translates Culture: Men in Dark Times.” Monatshefte 108, No 4 (2016): 535–559. Benhabib, Seyla. “Redemptive Power of Narrative: The Politics of Memory and the Morality of Historiography.” Social Research 57, No. 1 (1992):167–196. Bernstein, Richard. Hannah Are Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Cavarero, Adriana. “Narrative.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari London, 601–611. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Disch, Lisa J. “More Truth than Fact: Storytelling as Critical Understanding in the Writings of Hannah Arendt.” Political Theory 21, No. 4 (1993): 665–694. Gandesha, Samir. “Rahel Varnhagen.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 191–198. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

34 

K. FRY

Gasché, Rudolphe. Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust. Albany: State University of New York Press, n.d. Gottlieb, Susannah. “Arendt’s Alteration in Tone.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 537–544. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Hill, Melvyn A, ed. Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979. Hertzog, Annabel. ““Illuminating Inheritance: Benjamin’s influence on Arendt’s Political Storytelling.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 26, no. 5 (2000): 1–27. ———. “The Poetic Nature of Political Disclosure: Hannah Arendt’s Storytelling.” Clio 30, no. 2, 2001, 169–194. Jonas, Hans, Fox, Brian, and Wolin, Richard. “Hannah Arendt: An Intimate Portrait.” New England Review, 27, no. 2 (2006): 133–142. Kateb, George. “Ideology and Storytelling.” Social Research 69, No. 2 (2002): 321–357. King, Taran. “Origin and Essence: The Problem of History in Hannah Arendt.” Journal of the History of Ideas 74, No. 1 (2013): 139–160. Kristeva, Julia. Hannah Arendt. Translated by Ross Guberman. New  York: Columbia University Press, 2001. MacPhee, Graham. “Escape from Responsibility: Ideology and Storytelling in Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.” College Literature 38, No. 1 (2011): 176–201. Maslin, Kimberly. The Experiential Ontology of Hannah Arendt. London: Lexington Books, 2020. Saunders, Edward. “Introduction: Theory of Biography or Biography in Theory?” In Biography in Theory: Key Texts with Commentaries, edited by Wilhelm Hemecker and Edward Saunders Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. Sigwart, Hans-Jörg. “Political Characterology: On the Method of Theorizing in Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism.” American Political Science Review 1, No. 2 (2016): 265–277. Sosnowska, Paulina. Arendt and Martin Heidegger: Philosophy, Modernity, and Education. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019. Staudenmaier, Peter. “Hannah Arendt’s Analysis of Antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Critical Appraisal.” Patterns of Prejudice 46, No. 2 (2012): 154–179. Vollrath, Ernst. “Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking.” Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977): 160–182. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982

CHAPTER 3

Remembering and the Archive

Saving the Story Life stories were very important to Arendt to make sense of politics and history. One way to tell the story of the “sufferers of history” was to use archival information to collect data. Arendt had a wide-ranging archive of letters, works, drafts, teaching materials, and all kinds of paperwork. The process of archiving began early for her. As a student, she kept her personal correspondence, and as the situation in Europe became more unstable, she worked on preserving what she could of her scholarship and her letters despite her emigrations, first to France, then the United States. In fact, Arendt left many possessions, including boxes of books and furniture in Paris, which she struggled to get back many years later.1 With the assistance of her friend Anne Mendelsohn Weil, the boxes were mailed in 1950, roughly nine years after she moved to the United States.2 Though Arendt’s archive is not complete since many letters were lost, or perhaps left out intentionally, there was still a large amount of material, especially from after she settled in the United States. Arendt documented most of 1  Arendt, Hannah, Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, mag ich mir nicht vorstellen: Briefwechsel mit den Freundinnen Charlotte Beradt, Rose Feitelson, Hilde Fränkel, Anne WeilMendelsohn und Helen Wolff, eds. Ingeborg Nordmann and Ursula Ludz (Frankfurt am Main: Piper, 2017), 82. 2  Anne Mendelsohn Weil to Hannah Arendt, February 18, 1950, in Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, 116.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_3

35

36 

K. FRY

her professional correspondence and academic work and clearly found value in doing so. Arendt’s interest in archiving extended beyond her own work and life, to her friends and their scholarship as well. Some of this began during the War when she smuggled works across borders to save and protect them and make sure they could be shared in the future. She smuggled her first husband Günther Anders’ manuscript of fiction from Germany.3 Years later, she smuggled Walter Benjamin’s work out of France and to the United States. Throughout her academic career, she was a strong advocate of free speech and she thought quality texts should be widely available. Her advocacy of free speech stemmed from the fact that totalitarian regimes were able to stay in power by preventing citizens from discussing dissenting ideas. In academia, intellectual works also needed to be shared widely. Arendt had a passion to share information and made sure important works were published and translated into as many languages as possible. She worked hard to get German writers translated into English. She found English translators for Karl Jaspers’ and Martin Heidegger’s work. She found publishers and translators for Walter Benjamin’s work, even though it took years to accomplish. She was listed as co-executor for the literary estate of Karl Jaspers among several others. She was either in charge of or listed in case of death to be the executor for so many people that when Mary McCarthy asked Arendt to be the executor of her literary estate as well, she said she pitied Arendt for being everyone’s executor.4 Arendt had further professional experiences directly related to preserving texts and artifacts. From 1946 to 1948, she was a senior editor for Schocken Books, which gave her a significantly more active role in making sure that manuscripts she thought were worthy were published. Schocken Verlag publishing house was founded by Salman Schocken in Germany in 1933. Schocken was a Zionist with an interest in books and culture and he 3  The partially finished novel was at the publishers when the Gestapo raided it in 1933. Since it had a fantastical cover of a utopia on the front, the Nazis did not realize what it was, and it was returned to Bertolt Brecht. It was then passed on to Arendt’s friend Anne Mendelssohn, who wrapped it up and hid it among her smoked bacon in her attic. Arendt then carried it disguised as cured meat from Berlin to Prague, Geneva, and finally to Paris and gave it back to Anders. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982): 115–116. 4   Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, October 20, 1969, in Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975, ed. Carol Brightman (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), 251.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

37

sought out German-language publications related to Jewish issues.5 During the War, he moved the publishing business to offices in Palestine and New  York, and Arendt’s friend Gershom Scholem worked at the Palestine branch.6 Arendt was introduced to Schocken by her friend Kurt Blumenfeld and she was invited to join the New York branch.7 Being an editor allowed her the chance to edit Kafka’s diaries, which was a delight since she was a huge fan of Kafka’s work. Though she tried vigorously and failed to get Walter Benjamin’s work published through Schocken, she did work on a second edition of a book by Gershom Scholem dedicated to Benjamin.8 She also made many important contacts in the publishing world of New  York  through the editing job, allowing her to get works published and translated more easily. If one publisher refused a work by Jaspers, for example, she had a list of other possibilities. Through Salman Schocken, Arendt gained further opportunities to protect and restore cultural objects and texts by serving as the executive director of the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. In the early 1940s, Schocken worried about the Jewish collections of books and artifacts that were absconded during the War and he wanted the Conference on Jewish Studies to work with Hebrew University to recover them to their original owners.9 Arendt became the head of research from 1944 to 1946 and composed a list of items owned by various Jewish institutions prior to 1938.10 Later, Arendt directed the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction organization, or the JCR, from 1948 to 1952.11 She and her colleagues interviewed émigrés and questioned them about the last seen locations of various cultural treasures.12 According to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, it was these investigations that gave Arendt insight into the onion-like totalitarian regimes which had layers and layers of bureaucracy, 5  Stephen M. Poppel, “Salman Schocken and the Schocken Verlag: A Jewish Publisher in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” Harvard Library Bulletin 21, no. 1 (1973): 21. 6  Ibid., 46–7. 7  Anthony David, The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003), 131. 8  Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 189. 9  Ibid., 187. 10  Marie Luise Knott, in Hannah Arendt, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, ed. Marie Luise Knott, trans. Anthony David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), xxvi. 11  Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 188. 12  Ibid., 187.

38 

K. FRY

concealing the power at the center of the regime.13 Only through tracing cultural treasures through several agencies did it become apparent that the real power of the Nazis was attached to the Gestapo. Arendt took trips to Europe to track down items and worked extensively with libraries to distribute collections around the world. Books and artifacts poured in and the sorters at the Depot of Operations handled 30,000 books per day.14 Arendt helped to recover over a million Judaic and Hebraica volumes, thousands of scrolls of law, ceremonial, and artistic objects.15 When possible, these objects were returned to their previous owners. Otherwise, they were returned to the countries of origin or given to various Jewish institutions, including the library of Hebrew University.16 Arendt spent roughly four years returning to Europe and tracking down items so they would be restored to previous owners or put in public places for all. Arendt’s early letters to Gershom Scholem captured the struggles related to this project as they worked to find book collections, ceremonial pieces, and other valuable Jewish artifacts. She made sure they were cataloged and given to the appropriate parties. According to Marie Luise Knott, Arendt and Scholem mourned through action. They knew how much their work was a race against time, and they shared the fear that much of what survived could disappear forever.17

The immensity of the task was overwhelming, but Arendt proved to be a capable manager. She was able to make decisions that were fair and guided by the interest in dispersing and sharing the documents as broadly as possible. Even though it was often not feasible due to funding, Arendt pushed for documents to be microfilmed so that they could be shared between more than one library or institution. Devoting so many years of her life to archival activities illustrated how significant it was to her. Arendt’s own archive is digitized and officially housed at the Library of Congress, the New School for Social Research, and the University of Oldenburg. It is very dense and includes notes from all sorts of things, not just scholarly events. Her archive extends beyond her academic correspondence and includes private letters, medical records, photos, scraps, poetry,  Ibid., 188.  Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, figure 6b. 15  Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 188. 16  Ibid. 17  Marie Luise Knott, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, xix. 13 14

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

39

and postcards from her travels. She seemed to have kept every letter that solicited funds for contribution, even the ones that she did not contribute to. The purpose may have been to show that she didn’t contribute to those organizations. She kept her notes, both lecture notes and drafts of writing. She had a cut-and-paste style of editing long before the invention of computers. She would cut out typed text and move it around in her writing process. She kept her syllabi, class lists, and all sorts of minutia. She also kept hundreds if not thousands of letters as well as the typed copies of her responses. In fact, she had letters from students who may have written her once in admiration or from people who asked her to serve on a committee whether or not she chose to do so. It seemed that she kept almost every business document that passed over her desk. Though Arendt died unexpectedly of a heart attack, the archiving process was apparently already well at hand and many of the documents were organized in alphabetized folders. Archiving was an intentional decision by Arendt and she thought that it was important to save these documents. One puzzle about Arendt’s propensity for saving documents is how earlier documents were able to survive, given her harrowing escape stories. She escaped illegally from Berlin with almost no notice (even though she expected to leave at some point) and she left France after being displaced and escaping the camp at Gurs. However, she had a plan in place to help the documents survive. Some of the scholarly work and earlier letters either must have traveled with her, her mother, her husband,  or were mailed or brought afterward by trusted friends. In Paris, she arranged for storage for her belongings with the Quakers in Paris and regained some of that property in 1950.18 If Arendt carried her letters to the United States when she immigrated, much of her luggage space was devoted to documents and letters. There was a long list of documents that Arendt managed to save from Europe that originated prior to immigrating. The User Kind or notebook of her childhood that her mother created traveled with her or with her mother when she emigrated, along with many letters from relatives  and friends, unless they were in storage. By the time Arendt moved to the United States, she had at least 11 letters from Jaspers, 45 from Heidegger, over 50 from Blücher, 2 from Gershom Scholem, 30 documents from Benjamin and some of his essays, including “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Elizabeth Young-Bruehl described the Benjamin writings alone as fitting in a suitcase when Arendt dropped a  Anne Mendelsohn Weil to Hannah Arendt, February 18, 1950, Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, 116. 18

40 

K. FRY

copy of the materials to Theodore Adorno at the Institute after moving to New York. Arendt also preserved some of her own academic work up until that point. Perhaps there were other works and papers that traveled with her as well. Despite her passion for saving documentary evidence, Arendt thought her book on Rahel Varnhagen was destroyed, so the plan she had in place to save it had failed. The book was written except for the last two chapters by 1933. In the summer of 1938, Arendt finished the final two chapters because of the insistence of Heinrich Blücher and Walter Benjamin, who “kept pestering me about it,” though it was clear that there was no possibility of publication at the time.19 In a letter to Blücher in 1941, she commented that she was “depressed,” and “furious,” when she found out it was lost.20 Later, she became aware of a copy that Walter Benjamin had sent to his friend Gershom Scholem in Palestine in 1939 which Scholem mailed back to Arendt in 1945.21 Benjamin said the book had made an impression on him and he had recommended the book to Scholem because it swam “with powerful strokes against the current of edifying and apologetic Judaic studies.”22 When it was ultimately published in English, Arendt and Scholem agreed it was 20 years too late.23 Nonetheless, Walter Benjamin helped this text survive when the previous plan failed. This was even more significant in an archival sense since Rahel Varnhagen’s letters were destroyed during the War and Arendt was one of the last scholars to look at them. Benjamin’s decision helped to save both Arendt’s work and information from Varnhagen’s letters, allowing a piece of Rahel’s archive to survive.

19  Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, September 7, 1952, in Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence,  1926–1969, eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992),197. 20  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, July 25, 1941, in Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, 1936-1968, ed., Lotte Kohler, trans. Peter Constantine (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1996), 63. 21  Ibid., August 1945, 78. 22  Walter Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, February 20, 1939  in Walter Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940, eds. Gershom Scholem, Theodor W.  Adorno, trans. Manfred R.  Jacobson, Evelyn M.  Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 596. 23  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, July 29, 1959, in The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, ed. Marie Luise Knott, trans. Anthony David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 195.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

41

The question remained: what was Arendt trying to accomplish by preserving all this material and how does it relate to her overall theory? Although she did not state outright what the purpose of her collection was, investigating her work to save the memory and writings of her friend Walter Benjamin sheds light on Arendt’s understanding of history and the significance of archival data in saving the story of a person’s life. Walter Benjamin serves as a useful foil to Arendt’s approach in that they shared similar criticisms of universal theories of history and questions about how meaning could be found in a world in which tradition was weakened. Even though they differed in their archival methodology, each developed a method for saving what otherwise would have been lost. Certainly, their views were shaped by their war experiences and by the pain and losses they suffered as exiles.

Bad Luck and the Loss of a Friend Arendt and Benjamin shared a passion for archiving and collecting letters, quotations, and artifacts, but the irony was that their own relationship was not very well documented since most of their intellectual conversations occurred in person in France. Only eight of their letters survived in Arendt’s archive and most of the content was pragmatic concerning travel plans, short postcards, and the like.24 Arendt and Benjamin initially met through her first husband, Günter Anders (formerly Stern), who was a distant cousin of Walter Benjamin’s. Arendt met Benjamin in Berlin and then attended one of Benjamin’s lectures in Paris in 1934.25 Both left Berlin under extreme political circumstances. Benjamin left Berlin shortly before Arendt in response to the Enabling Act of 1933 which gave Hitler the ability to arrest Communists and left-wing intellectuals. Benjamin assumed it was only a matter of time before he was arrested and chose to escape on his own. Arendt chose to act politically first and left shortly after her arrest for the work she was doing for the Zionists.26 This was archival work as well since she had been enlisted by the Zionists to collect evidence of antisemitism from the library that could be distributed to the rest of 24   Detley Schöttker and Erdmut Wizisla eds., Arendt und Benjamin: Texte, Briefs, Dokumente (Germany: Suhrkamp, 2006), 123–141. Interestingly, the later letters between Benjamin and Arendt were in French, despite both being native German speakers. 25  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 116. 26  Ibid., 105.

42 

K. FRY

Europe to show what was really happening in Germany. She was arrested and held for eight days.27 Luckily, she was released, but it was the trigger for her leaving Germany altogether. As German exiles in Paris, Arendt maintained ties with Benjamin in France. The friendship between Arendt and Benjamin didn’t end when Anders immigrated to the United States and Arendt was no longer married to Benjamin’s relation. The friendship continued and deepened throughout the time both lived in Paris. Arendt attended the meetings about Marxist thought and political action that often took place at Benjamin’s Paris apartment. It was there that Arendt met her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, who also attended these meetings.28 Benjamin was very close to Heinrich Blücher and became one of the couples’ best friends. Arendt and Blücher referred to him as “Benji.”29 Intellectually, Benjamin, Arendt, and Blücher had common interests in politics, literature, and philosophy. As the War worsened, they ended up in southern France, trying to get away from the German invasion. After Arendt escaped from the camp for German nationals at Gurs and Benjamin fled from Paris, they spent two weeks together in Lourdes, playing chess and obsessively reading newspapers.30 Arendt left the location to track down Blücher, who was let go from his internment during the confusion with the Nazis arriving  in France. Later, they all ended up near Marseille as they tried to battle the bureaucracy of obtaining exit visas and making arrangements for immigration to the United States.31 It was here that Benjamin was able to leave some of his academic work with Arendt in case his escape from France did not go well. Lisa Fittko was an anti-fascist activist who helped Arendt escape from Gurs by organizing the breakout of a large group of women during the confusion when the Germans were coming to take over the French camp.32 Fittko gave everyone forged passes and they were not checked after the first few people went through the line. After Gurs, Fittko’s political work continued. She investigated mountain routes to Spain to help smuggle  Ibid., 106.  Ibid., 122. 29  Arendt to Gertrude Jaspers. 30 May 1946. Correspondence, 41. 30  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, October 17, 1941, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 6. 31  Ibid., 198. 32  Lisa Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, trans. David Koblick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 49. 27 28

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

43

people out of Vichy France and made the return trip often, despite lacking adequate food for such arduous travel. Benjamin knew Fittko’s husband from their stay at the Château de Vernuche internment camp for men.33 Fittko’s husband, Hans, advised Benjamin to not give up smoking while at the camp, but Benjamin decided to give up smoking anyway to give him something to think about other than being interned.34 Lisa Fittko helped Walter Benjamin with his escape attempt in September of 1940, despite the fact that Benjamin wanted to wait and travel with Arendt and Blücher. Benjamin got an emergency visa to the United States through his friend Max Horkheimer, who had already tried to find other arrangements for Benjamin in San Domingo and Cuba that had failed. Arendt advised Benjamin to leave because his visa would expire before she and Blücher were given the paperwork to travel with him.35 Unfortunately, the attempt to escape France did not turn out well for Benjamin. Benjamin suffered from heart problems and the idea of escaping through the mountains was stressful and daunting. Benjamin had to rest every 10 minutes and insisted on taking his heavy manuscript with him so that his intellectual work would survive. Fittko, however, maintained that Benjamin’s physical health did not seem too bad.36 According to Fittko, Benjamin said that “the manuscript must be saved. It is more important than I am, more important than myself.”37 When he and his group tried an exploratory hike the day before they were meant to leave, they acted like tourists out for a stroll. Benjamin carried his manuscript with him and decided to sleep on the mountain, thinking that the hike down and up again the next day would be too much for him, and seemingly unconcerned about the wild bulls in the area.38 Benjamin made it to Spain, despite his heart problems. Benjamin passed through the border, having the proper travel visa into Spain, but he was shocked by the fact that a new decree arrived from Madrid that very day requiring the Spanish sentries to check French exit visas as well, which they had not been doing up until this point. Benjamin  Ibid., 108.  Andy Marino, A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 198. 35  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, October 17, 1941, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 8. 36  Brian Britt, “The Aura of Benjamin’s Untimely Death: An Interview with Lisa Fittko,” Continuum 2, no. 2 (1993): 372. 37  Lisa Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, 106. 38  Lisa Fittko in Britt, “The Aura of Benjamin’s Untimely Death, 375. 33 34

44 

K. FRY

had an American entry visa and a Spanish transit visa to get to Portugal for the boat to the United States. He did not have a French exit visa.39 The authorities notified Benjamin that he would be returned to the authorities in France the next day. Benjamin was bitterly disheartened and was more concerned about his manuscript than his life. Walter Benjamin committed suicide that night in his hotel room at Portbou, Spain by taking 15 morphine pills that he carried with him, anticipating potentially dire circumstances.40 Apparently, the pills were given to him by Arthur Koestler in the 1930s and he carried them for over seven years.41 Lisa Fittko was surprised by the suicide because she did not see any signs of it, but knowing Benjamin over those days, she was convinced that it must have been well thought out and planned as a contingency.42 Benjamin did not know that the border would open again a few weeks later, and had he left a day earlier he would have made it and a day later he would have known to wait for another time. As Arendt later wrote, “only on that particular day was the catastrophe possible.”43 Under pressure and extreme anxiety, Benjamin killed himself, rather than let himself be rounded up again, or suffer through what he thought was going to be a catastrophic and potentially lost War. Earlier, he had discussed the possibility of suicide as a “way out” with Arendt, though Arendt pleaded at the time that they were not close to it being necessary.44 His greatest concern was that his intellectual work would survive. Unfortunately, this version of his manuscript was lost, since none of the authorities realized its significance as anything other than papers written in German. His black leather suitcase was entered on the death register with “papers of unknown content.” Benjamin’s suicide sent shock waves through the group of displaced persons who knew him, especially since typically, he had a controlled and composed temperament. Arendt and Blücher looked for his grave when they traveled through Spain to Portugal to get the boat to

 Lisa Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, 113.  Andy Marino, A Quiet American, 199. 41  Lee Siegel in Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship (New York: New York Review of Books, 1981) xiv. 42  Lisa Fittko in Britt, “The Aura of Benjamin’s Untimely Death,” 375. 43  Hannah Arendt, ed. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (Boston: Mariner Books, 2019), xxvii. 44  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, October 17, 1941, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 7–8. 39 40

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

45

New York, but they were unable to find it. 4546 He was lost to the world, as was his precious manuscript, save for the material he had carefully distributed to his friends to survive beyond his death. Arendt was quite troubled by Benjamin’s loss and worked for years to make sure the manuscripts he left with her not only survived but found audiences worldwide. Initially, Arendt brought the work to Theodor Adorno in New York, since Benjamin had already sent Adorno the first copies of this material, but his package had gotten lost in the mail. Adorno was thrilled that Arendt had another copy of Benjamin’s manuscripts and Arendt felt obligated to notify Adorno since Benjamin had already sent his work to him once.47 However, Arendt had a bad history with Adorno. He had denied her first husband, Günther Anders (formally Stern), a post at university before the War.48 As time went by, she was incensed that Benjamin’s friends from the Institute appeared to be suppressing the publication of Benjamin’s work because it was not Marxist enough.49 Lars Rensmann and Samir Gandesha suggested that Arendt’s antipathy toward Adorno was not only because of the history with Anders, but because of Adorno’s role in  ending Benjamin’s stipend from the Institute, which caused financial hardship and may have contributed to Benjamin’s suicide.50 Arendt’s frustration with Adorno’s failure to publish Benjamin’s work in a timely enough manner was displayed throughout her personal letters. Arendt blamed Adorno for suppressing the publication of Benjamin’s work, was outraged, and in a letter to Heinrich Blücher, called them “bastards,” was so angry that she “could murder the whole lot of them,” and noted that “we certainly won’t be able to lecture them on loyalty to a dead friend.”51 Blücher called them a “gaggle of clerics squabbling,” when Benjamin was dead and couldn’t defend himself.52 Arendt 45  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, October 1941, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 9. 46  Today, there is a monument to Benjamin in the cemetery that was established many years later. 47  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 166. 48  Ibid., 80. 49  Ibid., 166–167. 50  Lars Rensmann and Samir Gandesha, eds. Arendt & Adorno (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 4–5. 51  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, August 2, 1941, Within Four Walls, 72. 52  Heinrich Blücher to Hannah Arendt, August 4, 1941, Within Four Walls, 73.

46 

K. FRY

found the situation truly unjust and began thinking about how to remedy it. She moved behind the scenes to try to secure another publisher and to confirm who held the rights to the material. Even though what she brought to the New School was unavailable for publication, the rest of his literary estate was controlled by Benjamin’s son. When mail to Palestine resumed, Arendt wrote to Benjamin’s friend Gershom Scholem, who she thought might be able to publish Benjamin’s work through Schocken Books. A plan was in place for a time, including permissions from Benjamin’s son and promises from Schocken. Arendt worked to gather together the correct materials for a volume.53 For a time, they thought they could secure permissions for some of the pieces owned by the Institute by allowing Adorno to write an introduction to the volume, but this was viewed as a last case scenario.54 Arendt was particularly sour toward Adorno and she later claimed that working with the people at the Institute made her “physically ill.”55 The Schocken volume began as a German volume, but due to what appeared to be permissions difficulty, it switched to an English volume.56 Ultimately, the deal fell through because Salman Schocken was no longer interested in publishing it.57 Arendt stated that the official reason given was that Schocken thought Benjamin’s work wasn’t easily accessible and did not represent Jewish culture enough.58 When Scholem showed Schocken Benjamin’s work in the late 1930s while Benjamin was still alive, Schocken did not appreciate it then either.59 The failure to publish Benjamin’s work was a crushing setback for Arendt, who stated she was “so enraged, that it’s robbing me of all my joy,” and it paralyzed her momentarily toward taking the next step.60 After many years, the Institute acquired the Arcades material that was left in a library in Paris by 53  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, January 7, 1947, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 69. 54  Gershom Scholem to Hannah Arendt, March 16, 1947, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 70. 55  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, November 8, 1946, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 72. 56  Arendt to Scholem, February 25, 1947, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 69. 57  Arendt to Scholem, January 26, 1948, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 85. 58  Ibid. 59  Gershom Scholem. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, 272. 60  Arendt to Scholem. April 4, 1948, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 88.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

47

Benjamin and Arendt really wanted to publish it herself with Benjamin’s essay on Baudelaire, but felt that Adorno was the obstacle.61 Though mimeographed unbound copies from the Institute circulated of Benjamin’s work, it would take years to be published properly.62 The first articles were published in the Institute’s journal in 1945, four years after Arendt’s arrival with the material. Gershom Scholem edited a German two-volume set that appeared in 1955. This was 14 years after Arendt left France with some of Benjamin’s work. In 1968, Arendt made sure that the English version of Benjamin’s work was published as Illuminations and was working on a second volume called Reflections at the time of her death in 1975. Preserving, documenting, and publishing Walter Benjamin’s work was a lifelong and passionate pursuit for Arendt. Arendt was impressed with Benjamin’s work and thought it deserved an audience. Moreover, it was all that was left of him and the only way for his ideas and life to have a lasting impact on the world. It was a way for him not to be lost, and for much of his intellectual work to be remembered. Archiving documents and texts was important to this process. The only other projects aside from her own work to command this level of attention from her was her English translation work for Jaspers and Heidegger, but they were less difficult situations since all the parties were agreed upon publication. For a time, Arendt felt as if she could not write an introduction to Benjamin’s work because she was so troubled by Benjamin’s death. She refused to write the introduction for the earlier Schocken edition that was never published. Her reasoning was that she felt disqualified because she only knew Benjamin in the later years of his life, but she also realized that she hadn’t come to terms with his death and was unable to take what she felt like was the appropriate distance to be able to write about him.63 Years later, she agreed to write the introduction after Gershom Scholem elected not to. Benjamin’s tragic death propelled her to continue to make sure that his life was saved in some measure. He was lost to the world, as was his precious manuscript, save for the material he had carefully distributed in advance to survive beyond his death.

61  Arendt to Scholem, June 21, 1942, March 19, 1947. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 14, 72 62  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, For the Love of the World, 167. 63  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, March 19, 1947, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 72.

48 

K. FRY

When Arendt later wrote about Benjamin in a piece that appeared in The New Yorker, Men in Dark Times, as well as in her introduction to his work Illuminations, she noted an “element of bad luck,” that seemed to plague Benjamin throughout his life.64 Arendt referenced a childhood story of the hunchback which Benjamin had discussed with her and had included in his writings on Kafka. The little hunchback or the bucklicht Mannlein was the figure that Benjamin’s mother claimed was responsible for all the little bungles in life, including tripping on something or shattering an item that accidentally dropped out of one’s hand.65 Arendt recalled many instances in Benjamin’s life which were plagued with the bad luck of the little hunchback. His chance for an academic career was ruined by choosing a project that criticized thinkers who were popular at the time and able to keep him out of academia.66 Because he could not get academic approval for his work, his finances dried up. His father withdrew his financial support when Benjamin could not get respect for his academic work.67 Sometimes Benjamin refused to publish something because he needed more pay for it and failed in his negotiations.68 Many of these so-­ called bungles prevented Benjamin’s work from being well known until after his death. For Arendt, his main problem was his ingenuity and uniqueness. She wrote: The problem with everything Benjamin wrote was that it always turned out to be sui generis. Posthumous fame seems, then, to be the lot of the unclassifiable ones, that is, those whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre that lends itself to future classification.69

For Arendt, posthumous fame was another one of these “bungles” that would have brought him so much relief during his life but was not to be. His premature death was an additional instance of unfortunate luck because he arrived in Spain on the wrong day.70 Arendt could not picture  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, xii.  Ibid., xii–xiii. 66  Ibid., xvi. 67  Ibid., xxxiv. 68  Ibid., xviii. 69  Ibid., ix. 70  Gershom Scholem disagreed with Arendt on this point. He thought the suicide was a result of Benjamin’s conscious decision to not go to Palestine when he had the chance (Lee Siegel, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, xiii). 64 65

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

49

Benjamin living in the United States and she thought that fact played into his decision the night he died. When Arendt, Benjamin, and Blücher approached the American consulate and were told that gaining papers was a long shot and may take between two and ten years, they decided to take English lessons anyway, and Benjamin wished to learn only enough English to say that “he absolutely didn’t like the language.”71 He had told friends that he would rather have a shorter life in France, instead of a longer one in the United States.72 However, Benjamin’s being remembered and surviving his “bad luck,” in some fashion was something Arendt could play a role in and gladly pursue as a goal. Were it not for some of her efforts, some of the work would have been lost or at the very least, not been as well known. Arendt’s introduction to Illuminations was lengthy, but most of it was devoted to details about Benjamin’s life and death, rather than his theory or ideas. Arendt once again focused on the biographical and cultural circumstances of his life as being pivotal to understanding Benjamin’s theoretical conclusions. The theory and the life were completely intertwined. Arendt recounted Benjamin’s bad luck, including his posthumous fame, his financial problems, his academic problems, and his inability to navigate the academic professional world, as well as how being a German Jew affected his life, and the details of his tragic death. In addition to his “bad luck,” Arendt also discussed Benjamin’s great gifts as a literary critic, his various friendships with other famous figures, his love of Paris, and his way of moving through the world. For example, Arendt described Benjamin’s kinship with the era of the nineteenth century rather than the twentieth century. She stated: His gestures and the way he held his head when listening and talking; the way he moved; his manners, but especially his style of speaking, down to his choice of words and the shape of his syntax; finally, his idiosyncratic tastes— all this seemed so old-fashioned, as though he had drifted out of the nineteenth century into the twentieth the way one is driven onto the coast of a strange land.73

71  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, October 17, 1941, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 7. 72  Ibid. 73  Ibid., xxviii.

50 

K. FRY

Arendt described the way Benjamin walked on the streets of Paris, much like his character of the flâneur.74 The fact that he was of another age impacted what he thought for Arendt. To show his affection for the nineteenth century, Arendt not only included his theoretical beliefs, but included a description of the details of his life, his personal mannerisms, and how he moved through the world. Archiving the past through testimony, letters, biographical materials, as well as academic texts became a way of preserving what otherwise would be lost and helping to remember those who had come before.

The Need to Remember: Storytelling and Collecting Arendt’s and Benjamin’s approach to theory had some things in common. They were trained in German philosophy, but neither of them quite fit into the traditional mold. They also shared their Jewish heritage, even though they did not practice the religion, and both suffered in a world that was increasingly being shut off from them. Benjamin’s friendship was important to Arendt’s work during her years in France and they discussed the history of antisemitism extensively together which influenced her writings years later in The Origins of Totalitarianism. As secular Jews, both came late to examining the politics of the Jewish question. According to Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blücher, Benjamin decided to begin studying Jewish issues in 1938 because “I’ve finally come to the realization that I am one.”75 As things got worse, they struggled being German Jews without finding a major philosophical school of thought as a home to make sense of the situation. Arendt rejected the most popular alternatives of Marxism and Zionism. Benjamin was more sympathetic, particularly when he was younger, but as Laura Marcus and Lynda Nead noted, Benjamin possessed a “quietly determined failure to belong—to a specialty, to an institution, to an easily specifiable tradition of thought.”76 Arendt claimed that Benjamin vacillated between Marxism and Zionism and never embraced either fully, though others have claimed that he belonged more 74  Gershom Scholem thought Benjamin’s distinctive walk might be due to his nearsightedness (Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, 13). 75  Heinrich Blücher quoting Walter Benjamin to Hannah Arendt, October 22, 1938, Within Four Walls, 44. 76  Laura Marcus and Lynda Nead, eds. The Actuality of Walter Benjamin (London: Lawrence &Wishart, 1998), 9.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

51

strongly to one or the other movements.77 Arendt noted that the hesitancy to fully embrace Zionism for some German Jewish intellectuals was not due to them being alienated from their Jewish heritage, but because “all traditions and cultures as well as all ‘belonging,’ had become equally questionable to them.”78 Arendt described the reason for Benjamin’s vacillation between Marxism and Zionism as “probably due to his bitter insight that all solutions were not only objectively false and inappropriate to reality, but would lead him personally to a false salvation, no matter whether that salvation was labeled Moscow or Jerusalem.”79 As justification for her view that Benjamin was further away from Marxism than typically assumed, Arendt pointed to his fascination with the figure of the flâneur aimlessly observing the city, rather than someone who was politically active and rising up for the workers.80 They were both unclassifiable and rejected the popular solutions available. Neither Arendt nor Benjamin established a traditional academic career during the time of their friendship which was impossible given the political situation, but they continued to write and shared intellectual conversations on many different topics. Lacking a philosophical home to explain the worsening politics of the day prompted each of them to find their own unique answers. Scholars are just beginning to appreciate what Arendt and Benjamin shared intellectually, raising the possibility that they may have influenced each other more than is typically recognized. One agreement that they shared was the profound sense that the tradition had been broken and that something had been lost with the arrival of modernity.81 Each discussed a fundamental break in authority and tradition that led to modern alienation and understood this as a new phenomenon that was acute in the twentieth century. Partially, the break was due

77  Gershom Scholem believed that Benjamin had inclinations toward Zionism at some points throughout his life, while those at the Institute thought that he was more devoted to Marxism. 78  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, xlvii. 79  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), 189–90. 80  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, xx. 81  Both Arendt and Benjamin understood this critique as a breakdown of Western civilization and were not reflective about how the concept could be understood to be imperialistic.

52 

K. FRY

to the rise of technology and secularization that led to a loss of meaning.82 It was also connected to the growth of capitalism and the mass production and accumulation of goods, especially for Benjamin, who had also lived through the severe sense of meaninglessness following the First World War. In Illuminations, Arendt discussed how the break in tradition and loss of authority of the truth meant that the wisdom of a culture no longer appeared to have a universal acceptance or validity for Benjamin. Arendt thought Benjamin “knew that the break in tradition and the loss of authority which occurred in his lifetime were irreparable” and this caused him to seek a different way of understanding the past.83 Similarly, Arendt also investigated the past differently since the universal theories guiding truth and meaning passed down through the philosophical tradition were faulty. Both Arendt and Benjamin believed that historical understanding was affected by the sense of loss and alienation common to modernity. They shared a skepticism of teleological theories of history that promoted the idea that history was universal and concerned the human species that progressed toward a more enlightened state. Modern alienation contested the enlightenment narrative of historical universal progress since modernity seemed “broken,” rather than the pinnacle of all that came before. Furthermore, living in the cruel world in which they did, it was easy to understand why both rejected these kinds of views. Their dire circumstances continued to worsen throughout the time of their friendship, which left the long-standing German philosophical belief in the improvement of morality, politics, and history from thinkers like Kant and Hegel utterly unconvincing. Having trained in academia in Germany prior to this time, it must have been disorienting to notice the cognitive dissonance between the high-minded ideals espoused by the philosophical tradition and the actuality of events on the ground. In “The Concept of History,” in Between Past and Future, Arendt discussed how dangerous beliefs in teleological theories of history could be in her view. For Arendt, teleological theories of history, like Marx’s, supposed that history could be controlled and was destined for a goal. Therefore, it was assumed that political actors could operate to make the goal happen, despite the fact that human 82  Andrew Benjamin argued that Arendt’s understanding of Benjamin’s view of this concept was superficial and did not consider the radicality of Walter Benjamin’s view of the break, but also the hopefulness that may arise out of it (Andrew Benjamin. “Walter Benjamin and Arendt: A Relation of Sorts,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari eds. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 152). 83  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, xlix.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

53

beings could not be controlled in the same way as fabricated objects for Arendt.84 This was even more problematic in totalitarian regimes like Nazism and Stalinism in which the “goals” of history, like enacting a racially pure society or creating a bourgeois-free Communist state, could not be fully attained since new categories of enemies would be found, pushing the “goals” infinitely into the future.85 This meant that violence was justified in perpetuity to attained these “goals.” In “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” which was one of the documents that Arendt smuggled out of Europe for him, Benjamin discussed the Angel of History whose back was to the future and who saw the destruction of humanity pile up at his feet, stressing the chaos and horror of the world which was in ruins. Benjamin thought that the “concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe.” Referencing the playwright August Strindberg, Benjamin noted that the belief in progress was too future-­ oriented and ignored the hell which was not “something that awaits us, but [is in] this life here and now.”86 The problem with stories of historical progress was that they were told from the point of view of the victors, which for Benjamin, could just as easily be a record of “barbarism.”87 Benjamin thought history should be told from the point of view of those who lost, similar to Arendt’s views about the sufferers of history. In fact, Benjamin thought the belief in historical progress caused a large number of civilizations to perish in blood and horror and he thought no “enlightened” civilization had abandoned violence in the name of progress fully.88 The reason why Fascism had a chance in Benjamin’s view was “that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as the historical norm.”89 So it was the very theories of history that proclaimed high-minded improvement for humanity that could be used to normalize and justify the terror of the regime. As Annabel Hertzog described it, Benjamin constructed history from the position of the defeated and the dead, not by overturning the defeat, but by showing the absence of the defeated in collective memory

 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1961). 77.  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973), 461–467. 86  Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 473. 87  Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 200. 88  Hannah Arendt quoting Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, xlviii. 89  Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 200. 84 85

54 

K. FRY

and displaying the horror of the past as it was.90 Similarly, Arendt sought to preserve individual stories of action to combat the anonymous deaths and the total loss of life stories in totalitarianism. Ultimately, Benjamin had a messianic view of history involving rupture and was much more focused on the negative in history prompting an immediate change in the state of things. This contrasted with Arendt’s notion of history as being composed of individual narratives. Of course, Arendt’s position was written after the War was over, whereas Benjamin never saw past the end of the War and suspected the defeat of the Allies. Yet, both rejected and saw dangerous implications in the enlightenment narratives so popular in German philosophy. In contrast to sweeping theories of universal history, Arendt and Benjamin gravitated toward individualities connected to a fragmented view of history that articulated individual lives, specific events, or took on more humble and individual lenses from which to view history. Early on, both Arendt and Benjamin showed an interest in the significance of smaller histories and were engaged in this kind of academic work prior to the time of their increasingly difficult experiences in Nazi Germany and Vichy France. Arendt wrote her biography of Rahel Varnhagen in the early 1930s which involved using Varnhagen’s archive of letters from the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Benjamin was collecting his book library and stressing the significance of storytelling and collecting objects while doing his research for the Arcades Project. He described the Arcades Project as a “primal history,” of the nineteenth century.”91 As things got worse politically for them in Germany, both Arendt and Benjamin devoted their academic energy to the nineteenth century, perhaps to understand how the state of things emerged. In 1927, Benjamin began his project as a newspaper article on the Parisian Arcades but continued to work on gathering materials at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris for 13 years.92 Benjamin took on a much broader slice of history than Arendt and researched his project in a non-traditional way. His method involved gathering enormous amounts of clippings, quotations, and materials together to begin to compose what he thought of as a material history of the nineteenth century. In 1939, Benjamin introduced the project with reference to 90  Annabel Herzog, “Illuminating Inheritance,” “The Poetic Nature of Political Disclosure: Hannah Arendt’s Storytelling,” Clio 30, no. 2 (2000): 10–11, 15. 91  Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 463. 92  Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin in Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ix.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

55

s­ omething he thought Schopenhauer said: “to seize the essence of history, it suffices to compare Herodotus and the morning newspaper.”93 Particularly, he appreciated the gathering of artifacts which were not meant to establish a universal type of historical narrative, but rather, to make sure that history involved the material elements of reality. This collection was fragmentary, lacked cohesion, and was ripped out of context to capture the history of what was lost. What Arendt and Benjamin had in common was a rejection of an abstract view of universal history and thought the only way to construct meaning in an alienated world was by focusing on individual life stories or materialities which could be gathered to provide historical meaning. Arendt agreed with Benjamin’s reference to Pascal that no one dies so poor “that does not leave something behind,” but Arendt was more focused upon the narrative and life story of the individual person that remained in the memories of the community through writing, monuments, and artworks after one was gone. Her view was more linear and contrasted with Benjamin’s method of concentrating on the materiality of the objects by ripping fragments from material history.94 In The Human Condition, Arendt described history and the memory of political actions as stories or narratives. She understood history as the “storybook of mankind,” and suggested that modern theories of history failed because humanity was treated as “an abstraction which never can become an active agent.”95 Narratives of individuals avoided this kind of abstraction by telling who someone was and connected directly with the material world.96 Constructing a narrative allowed a community to remember the importance and meaningfulness of individuals. Unlike Hegelian history that saw individual events as insignificant parts of some larger whole, Arendt’s stories meant to preserve, respect, and highlight the memories of their individual lives. The narratives were largely textual or spoken for Arendt. In contrast to Benjamin’s view, the only objects considered were things such as monuments and artworks that preserved and told individual stories.97

 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 14.  Walter Benjamin quoting Pascal in Illuminations, 43. 95  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 184–5. 96  Ibid., 186. 97  The exception to this would be the artifacts such as ceremonial objects and scrolls that she helped distribute as the executive director of the JRC. 93 94

56 

K. FRY

Benjamin’s view of fragmentary and individual history differed greatly. In “Unpacking my Library,” Benjamin outlined his view of what it meant to be a collector of books, which was something he took very seriously and revealed a great deal about how he thought archiving worked. Benjamin’s personal library did not grow quickly at first, because for a book to become part of his collection he could not have read it yet.98 However, once books became harder to come by due to the inflation after the First World War, Benjamin dismissed this self-imposed rule and collected more books by ordering them through catalogs.99 For Benjamin, the collector who chose a book or some other kind of object saw that object as something that was beautiful, unique, material, and individual. Benjamin was quite clear that collecting had nothing to do with investing or making money and it was not a means to an end. The objects were appreciated outside of their economic value, and the most precious object to a collector may be of no value on the market. Like Jae Emerling described, Benjamin’s collector divested the objects of their utilitarian value by taking possession of them within a collection, making them serve as a type of ethico-political memory, rather than as commodities.100 Benjamin admired the instinct of children to collect which had nothing to do with commodifying objects. Benjamin thought that children had a natural affinity for collecting and grouping objects together carefully. Children collected constantly and in some senses were better able to appreciate the individual objects that were part of their collections, certainly more so than a person who collected for profit. Benjamin described collecting as being like an enchantment with a particular item. That item was “within a magic circle” with all facets of it becoming part of the knowledge of an epoch. 101 Benjamin mourned the fact that he couldn’t take his entire library with him when he tried to escape from Europe. He had spent so much time carefully constructing it and the idea of it was central to his thought. Arendt wondered “how can he live without his library?” as if this loss was a contributing factor in his death.102 For Benjamin, the most important fate of a book was the encounter with the collector. The collector had a responsibility toward the book and  Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 4.  Ibid., 5. 100   Jae Emerling. “An Art History of Means: Arendt-Benjamin.” Journal of Art Historiography 1 (2009): 1–20, 16. 101  Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 205. 102  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, xxvi. 98 99

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

57

had the “attitude of an heir,” in seeking to safeguard it. Benjamin described the relationship between the collector and the book as intimate.103 The collector loved his or her collection and it went all the way down to the exact copy of the book that one owned and its specific history.104 Part of what was included in the collection was the historical factors that allowed a particular copy to survive. This attunement to materiality went beyond collecting books and extended to all kinds of objects for Benjamin. Arendt noted that the smaller the object, the more significant it seemed to be for Benjamin in his passion for the small and unnoticed things as instances of material history.105 This contrasted with a typical Marxist interpretation of the epic of history in which the collected object was inconsequential and only part of a larger whole. Arendt believed Adorno hit the nail on the head when he criticized Benjamin for his emphasis on smaller actualities, accusing him of being less focused on traditional Marxist goals of history.106 Arendt thought this focus on actualities was exactly what Benjamin intended to do. While the established Marxists focused on the superstructure of the Communism as a whole, Benjamin was much more interested in the small material actualities. In general, Benjamin’s collector, whether it involved books or other objects, sought to weed through the confusion and scatter of things of the world to group items together and make them meaningful.107 The individual items were carefully chosen by the collector and thought of in connection to one another.108 The meaning came from what was selected and how it was related to the other objects around it. The process allowed the collection to become “an encyclopedia of all knowledge of the epoch, the landscape, the industry, and the owner,” from which the objects came.109 Arendt credited Benjamin’s interest in specific and material actualities to the influence of surrealism on his work.110 For surrealists, the scraps and insignificant minutia of the world captured a great deal. The surrealists used a type of montage by tearing items from their context which created

 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 9.  Ibid., 3. 105  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, xix. 106  Ibid. 107  Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 211. 108  Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 2. 109  Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 205. 110  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, lix. 103 104

58 

K. FRY

new meaning that was like a rebirth.111 This rebirth occurred because the collector dislodged objects from their context and put together what “belongs together.”112 Rather than passively recounting the past, collectors constructed a history based on the fragments of material left behind and it was arranged in a way that was new. Annabel Hertzog explained that Benjamin’s method allowed the past to flash up in a moment.113 In contrast to Benjamin, Arendt saw material things generally as fabrications made according to a blueprint or plan and used as a means to an end. In Arendt’s view, fabrications built a world of permanence and stability, allowing for the time and space for politics, but for the most part, were strictly utilitarian in terms of usefulness.114 Arendt’s view of history was less concerned with material objects, aside from those that were created to tell stories of actions that had come before. Herzog argued that instead of narrating a story like Arendt, it was the objects themselves that showed history for Benjamin.115 In her writings on Benjamin, Arendt noted that Benjamin initially collected books and then moved onto quotations. His archive contained small black notebooks carefully categorized according to the topic and cross-referenced. He even documented lists like the words that his son first used when he was growing up. Arendt also collected quotations of an academic and historical nature and her archive contains many index cards of quotations. Oftentimes, she used them in teaching, by starting a class session with a quote. Arendt thought that Benjamin understood the power of quotations was that they could be listed and could explain reality without the need for any further text. Benjamin believed it was possible to transmit the past through citation alone and Arendt thought his research was moving in this direction toward the end of his life.116 Arendt noted that Benjamin boasted that his collection of 600 quotations could be a manuscript if it was carefully arranged and only needed some commentary secondarily.117 With this method, Benjamin wanted to produce a work of all quotes and plumb the depths of language by drilling deeply into it  Ibid.  Walter Benjamin. The Arcades Project, 211. 113  Annabel Herzog, “Illuminating Inheritance,” 8. 114  The exception to this was artworks which were fabrications that were not meant to be used according to Arendt. 115  Annabel Herzog, “Illuminating Inheritance,” 8–10. 116  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, lix. 117  Ibid. 111 112

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

59

rather than excavating the surface.118 Arendt referenced Benjamin’s Schriften I when she described his quotations as being “like robbers by the roadside who make an armed attack and relieve an idler of his convictions.”119 For Arendt, Benjamin’s quotations were the only way to preserve the “shards of wisdom and guidance that tradition can afford us.”120 According to Gaye Ilhan Demiryol, Arendt thought that Benjamin switched to quotations as a response to the loss of authority in the tradition. These quotations contained both the sense of the past and a dissatisfaction with the present since linking them together with narrative was rejected.121 The story had failed for Benjamin, but the quotation had some potential. Demiryol thought that quotations captured the “smallest but intense form of the spirit of an epoch,” and connected to messianic time with their alien, fragmentary nature that interrupted the flow of thought.122 Benjamin’s quotes were not meant to communicate to the receiver or produce any sense of empathy but tried to bring the truth to light through naming alone.123 Arendt agreed that quotations were torn out of their context for Benjamin. It was not the narrative that Benjamin was interested in, but naming, to save the past and bring its truth to light. 124 While both Arendt and Benjamin agreed that preserving history involved the individual and fragmentary, they differed on what was the primary source of historical evidence. Arendt focused on storytelling to preserve the lives and actions of those who were gone, but Benjamin focused more on the material side of history and how the collections of objects could tell “stories” nonverbally and in an instant. Yet, Benjamin did not dismiss stories entirely and often began articles with a parable, but unlike Arendt, believed that storytelling was dying out and no longer able to instill wisdom. The most effective stories for Benjamin had a wisdom to them and a parable-like quality that was almost impossible to achieve in an

 Ibid.  Hannah Arendt quoting Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, xlix. 120  Gaye Ilhan Demiryol, “Arendt and Benjamin: Tradition, Progress, and Break with the Past.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (2018): 156. 121  Ibid. 122  Ibid. 123  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, lx. 124  Ibid., lx. 118 119

60 

K. FRY

alienated, secular world.125 Kai Evers believed that for Benjamin, one of the reasons that stories could no longer capture the wisdom of tradition was because of the unprecedented violence of the modern age.126 External violence shattered the meaningfulness and power of stories. Martin Jay, alternatively, attributed the influx of mass media for the failure of storytelling in the modern era for Benjamin.127 Mass media cheapened the story and drained it of its wisdom. For Benjamin, it was not the story, but material objects that had a greater importance because they could capture not only the stories of individuals, but the history of culture, and the material world. Benjamin collected objects, books, quotations, all of which he understood as involving a material aspect in addition to any ideal element. What took precedence was Arendt’s and Benjamin’s disagreement concerning the importance of the Marxist approach. For Benjamin, focusing on the human life story alone was missing the materiality of the world and culture. One could have both for Benjamin. For Arendt, focusing on the material objects was less meaningful than the individual human life which mattered more, and she was more of a humanist to that extent. The way Rodolphe Gasché contrasted their approaches was to say that Arendt’s account of narrative was a type of anthropo-political account, while Benjamin’s interest in materiality was framed by historico-theological concerns.128 Just as Benjamin was critical of the success of narrative, Arendt was also critical of Benjamin’s collector. She warned that the collector’s activity could be chaotic since it defied any systematic classification and underscored the holes in the tradition.129 Rather than providing stability, the collector valued uniqueness and the ability to defy classification.130 Most importantly, she blamed collectors for withdrawing into the private and taking historical treasures with them.131 125   The parable-like quality of Franz Kafka’s writings was an important reason for Benjamin’s interest in his work. Arendt also admired Kafka’s work and thought that what drew Benjamin to it was the way Kafka could change traditional parables or invent new ones allowing him to both preserve and destroy the past (Hannah Arendt. Illuminations, lii–liii). 126  Kai Evers, “The Holes of Oblivion: Arendt and Benjamin on Storytelling in the Age of Totalitarian Destruction,” Telos 132 (2005): 110. 127  Martin Jay in Marcus and Nead, The Actuality of Walter Benjamin, 196. 128  Rodolphe Gasché, Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018), 38. 129  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, lv. 130  Ibid. 131  Ibid.

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

61

Some theorists noted other differences between Arendt’s and Benjamin’s approaches. Ralph Shain argued that Arendt was dismissive of Benjamin because she criticized him for spending money on collecting books when he was in dire financial circumstances and Arendt thought that it was irresponsible for him to do.132 While Shain argued that Arendt did not believe that Benjamin’s thoughts on collecting were essential to his thought and consequently, treated them as an extravagant private hobby, there was ample evidence to suggest that Arendt did admire Benjamin’s approach though she ultimately disagreed with certain aspects of it.133 It was true that Arendt thought Benjamin was of a different time, would have been more comfortable in the nineteenth century than the twentieth. She felt Benjamin’s desire to be supported as a gentleman/ scholar was too outdated to be practical. Arendt saw his willingness to spend on books despite being poverty-stricken as a destructive force in his life at times, but she did not disregard his passion for his collection or what he sought to achieve with it. In her introduction  to Illuminations, she used his views about collecting as a way for the reader to understand Benjamin, acknowledging it was his central passion. Further, Arendt described Benjamin’s collected objects in similar terms as Kant’s objects of the beautiful, in that no concept captured the collected object adequately in universal terms. This was not a negative comparison for Arendt since she modeled her theory of political judgment on Kant’s theory of judging the beautiful. She was drawn to Kant’s description of beauty because action involved the instance of something that was so individual, it could not be categorized universally. She thought that collecting for Benjamin also involved disinterested delight and included the intrinsic value of a thing as opposed to its market value.134 There was a way in which Benjamin was able to make the Kantian experience of the beautiful, which applied to political actions for Arendt, true for various physical objects as well, regardless of their status as art objects. What the collection did was raise objects to a unique type of glory. Collecting was the “redemption of things” that Arendt compared to being like a revolutionary who was connected to a remote and bygone world, but dreamed of a better one, removing objects from the “drudgery of usefulness.”135 Arendt  Ralph Shain, “Benjamin and Collecting,” Rethinking History 20, no. 1 (2016): 53.  Ibid. 134  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, liii. 135  Hannah Arendt quoting Benjamin, Illuminations, liii. 132 133

62 

K. FRY

appreciated the beautiful and perhaps, she would classify Benjamin’s collected objects as being similar to beautiful artworks. It was doing some of the same work as her political theory, but rather than highlighting human actions, displayed beauty in a private and nonpolitical way. Regardless of the focus and method, remembering, saving, and collecting were important to both Arendt and Benjamin and significant in the face of the utter loss and meaninglessness of the violence surrounding them. Preserving the stories or collecting the objects saved the individual and fragmentary from oblivion. While intellectually investigating topics inspired by the fragmentary nature of history, Arendt and Benjamin needed individual plans for preserving their historical legacy to allow documents, letters, and academic work to survive the War. Consequently, archiving gained a personal and political importance for both, far beyond a sterile impersonal record documenting the past. Arendt’s archive was somewhat traditional in approach and in line with her emphasis on narratives preserving individual life stories. Likely, Arendt viewed archives as preserving materials to provide evidence for historical accuracy and to share among scholars in the future. This was the evidence from which future narratives could be constructed. She kept her letters, academic writings, drafts, teaching materials, correspondence with publishers and universities with a view for the accuracy of the scholarly record and preserved the textual story of herself and others that she knew that could be reviewed and reconstructed in the future. Benjamin’s notion of the archive was non-traditional, though equally voluminous and involved not only his own book collection, but also the academic materials he deposited with friends to help them survive. Regarding his personal book collection, Benjamin managed to get most of the important books in his library out of Germany, before the rest of his library was confiscated by the Gestapo. His collection was incomplete which was surely a significant loss for him, but he was pleased that many of the important volumes did survive. However, Benjamin’s academic archive was different. He gave his notes on his Arcades manuscript to George Bataille, who placed them in the Bibliothèque Nationale prior to his escape to unoccupied France.136 These notes oddly resembled Arendt’s Denktagebuch in that they were a fragmentary collection of ideas. One could suspect, given Benjamin’s affinity for quotes ripped from the context, this was much closer to the finished project than Arendt’s thought notebook was. Of course, Benjamin also  Ibid.

136

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

63

distributed some of his work to friends like Arendt and Adorno, among others. Arendt was given a second copy of materials that were sent originally to Adorno, suggesting that Benjamin had contingency plans in place for his scholarship. While Arendt’s archive was meant to be public because she donated it to the Library of Congress, Benjamin’s collected objects tended toward the private in that it could be owned by someone who may or may not share it publicly. Yet, he preserved his scholarly archive and hoped to make his works  public. In a letter to Gershom Scholem from 1940, Benjamin stated: “Every line we succeed in publishing today—no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it—is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness.”137 It was clear that he wanted his academic work publicized, saved, and found it to be a political act. He distributed academic books, articles, and research materials to enough places so they would outlive him and be accessible to the public. Not only was this true of his academic work, but of his personal letters as well. Hundreds of Benjamin’s letters survived because his friends like Gershom Scholem, Theodor Adorno, Rainer Maria Rilke, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht elected to keep and preserve them. So many letters survived that it was difficult for Adorno and Scholem to make decisions about what to include in their edited volume of his letters published in 1966.138 There was one area of comparison scholars have consistently drawn between Arendt and Benjamin. When Arendt described Benjamin’s method, she stated that unlike the devout Marxist, who may see a universal pattern driving history, Benjamin was like a pearl diver who dove down into the bottom of the sea to find the rich and the strange, preserving the past ideas but in isolation from a predetermined pattern. She said: What guides this thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depth of the sea, into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things “suffer a sea-change” and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to

137  Walter Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, January 11, 1940, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910–1940, 623. 138  Theodor w. Adorno, in Walter Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910–1940, xviii.

64 

K. FRY

them and bring them into the world of the living- as “thought fragments,” as something “rich and strange”. 139

Many scholars have suggested that Arendt’s description of Benjamin’s methodology also referred to her own methodology as well. She agreed with Benjamin, in preserving the individual and special, rather than seeing huge, predetermined forces in history. Arendt described history as being crystallized through the life of an individual in Men in Dark Times and it was the crystalized forms that the pearl diver retrieved  from the sea. Certainly, collecting and archiving had a role in preserving the rich and the strange. Benjamin and Arendt were pearl divers and part of the process of being able to collect the pearls was to recognize that the historical context, narratives, and objects were part of the story and the bits and pieces of material culture needed preservation. In other words, there needed to be a sea of materials preserved in archives for the pearls to emerge. Annabel Herzog argued that there was a deep affinity between Benjamin and Arendt, who agreed fundamentally about how history should be understood. Herzog believed Benjamin and Arendt sought to show the crystalized version of a forgotten person’s life to make present what was absent. Arendt chose to narrate lives, while Benjamin allowed the materials to speak for themselves. In both ways, they wrested the past from the sea and put it toward a political future. Yet, for Arendt, the human story and how it was narrated would always be the most significant aspect to history and the one that thwarted the aims of totalitarianism. Alternatively, Arendt thought that Benjamin believed one could speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten them. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it not be forgotten, that predicate would not contain a falsehood but merely a claim that is not being fulfilled by men, and perhaps also a reference to a realm in which it is fulfilled: God’s remembrance.”140

Pointing toward his messianism, Benjamin thought historical events could survive without human witnesses. Jae Emerling described Benjamin’s collector as trying to “recollect the irretrievability of the what-has-been,” rather than collecting souvenirs of the past.141 In contrast, Arendt focused  Hannah Arendt, Illuminations, lxiii.  Hannah Arendt quoting Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, lx. 141  Jae Emerling, 5. 139 140

3  REMEMBERING AND THE ARCHIVE 

65

more on the world, human memories, friendships, and the meaning of events by a community. By doing so, she helped to save the memory of Benjamin. When some of his collection was scattered to the wind and his suitcase with his manuscript lost, her memories of him and her efforts toward making his intellectual work public allowed him to be remembered and his rich and strange pearls and corals to be found. Though both acknowledged the fragmentary nature of history and how meaning had been lost in modern times, they agreed that meaning could be revived by accumulating a sea of materials so the possibility of raising future pearls could occur. Archiving materials was the condition for the possibility of those discoveries being made in the first place. As the world around them fell apart, Arendt and Benjamin put their energies toward preserving and archiving the sea so that pearls could be found in the future.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1961. ———. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. ———. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973. ———. Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, mag ich mir nicht vorstellen: Briefwechsel mit den Freundinnen Charlotte Beradt, Rose Feitelson, Hilde Fränkel, Anne Weil-Mendelsohn und Helen Wolff. Edited by Ingeborg Nordmann and Ursula Ludz. Frankfurt am Main: Piper, 2017. Arendt, Hannah and Blücher, Heinrich. Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968. Edited by Lotte Kohler. Translated by Peter Constantine. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1996. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969. Edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Sander. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992. Arendt, Hannah and McCarthy, Mary. Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975. Edited by Carol Brightman. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995. Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Benjamin, Andrew. “Walter Benjamin and Arendt: A Relation of Sorts.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 149–158, London: Lexington Books, 2020.

66 

K. FRY

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. 149 ———. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940. Edited by Gershom Scholem, Theodor W. Adorno. Translated by Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. ———. Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. Boston: Mariner Books, 2019. Britt, Brian. “The Aura of Benjamin’s Untimely Death: An Interview with Lisa Fittko.” Continuum 2, no. 2 (1993): 368–376. David, Anthony. The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. Demiryol, Gaye Ilhan. “Arendt and Benjamin: Tradition, Progress, and Break with the Past.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 12 (2018):142–163. Emerling, Jae “An art history of means: Arendt-Benjamin.” Journal of Art Historiography 1, (2009): 1–20. Evers, Kai. “The Holes of Oblivion: Arendt and Benjamin on Storytelling in the Age of Totalitarian Destruction.” Telos 132 (2005): 109–120. Fittko, Lisa. Escape Through the Pyrenees. Translated by David Koblick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. Gasché, Rudolphe. Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018. Hertzog, Annabel. ““Illuminating Inheritance: Benjamin’s influence on Arendt’s Political Storytelling.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 26, no. 5 (2000): 1–27. Marcus, Laura and Nead, Lynda, eds. The Actuality of Walter Benjamin. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998. Marino, Andy. A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Poppel, Stephen M. “Salman Schocken and the Schocken Verlag: A Jewish Publisher in Weimar and Nazi Germany.” Harvard Library Bulletin 21, no. 1, (January 1973): 20–49. Rensmann, Lars and Gandesha, Samir eds. Arendt & Adorno. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. Scholem, Gershom. Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. New  York: New York Review of Books, 1981. Schöttker, Detley and Wizisla, Erdmut eds., Arendt und Benjamin: Texte, Briefs, Dokumente. Germany: Suhrkamp, 2006. Shain, Ralph. “Benjamin and Collecting,” Rethinking History 20, no. 1 (2016): 52–79. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982

CHAPTER 4

Holes of Oblivion: Hannah Arendt’s Silence

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt described totalitarianism as seeking to create “holes of oblivion” by obliterating the existence of a person so that there was not even a body or a grave.1 Unlike her own theory of history which sought to preserve individual narratives, totalitarian regimes sought to destroy them. Arendt stated that one of the distinctive facets of totalitarianism was that the murder of the victims was not enough for the regime. The goal of the concentration camps was to expunge the fact that the person existed at all by erasing the victim “from the memory of the surviving world.”2 To accomplish this goal, Arendt believed that the regimes did not confirm the deaths of the victims and the graves were not individualized. Death was impersonal to the killers, like the “squashing of a gnat.”3 Arendt described this effort as organized oblivion.4 The organized oblivion perpetrated by totalitarian regimes robbed the victims of their deaths by trying to make them anonymous and by forbidding any type of public expression of grief.5 Later, Arendt changed her view because she thought this quest for oblivion could not be

 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973), 434.  Ibid., 434, 435. 3  Ibid., 443. 4  Ibid., 452. 5  Ibid. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_4

67

68 

K. FRY

fully successful in its aims. It was impossible to remove the memory of someone from every person they knew. She stated the holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story.6

So even though the camps sought to obliterate individuals from the earth, Arendt later thought that the effort did not fully succeed. The possibility for storytelling and archiving memories remained. Arendt’s private tragedies could not be compared with the direct horror of the death camps that affected so many individuals, but the phrase “holes of oblivion” could extend metaphorically to important personal and historical traumas that Arendt suffered, but rarely discussed publicly. The record of her history and her archive is wide-ranging, but it was as if some events were lost. As Susannah Gottlieb noted, Arendt was persistently reticent to discuss the matters that obviously connect to her life experience in her public writings.7 However, for the most part, this did not pertain to her archive filled with private letters and materials. Compared to her relative openness about many private aspects of her life in the extensive archival data, including letters with her husband and medical paperwork, and given her interest in preserving documentation, these traumas were unusual in their absence from the record, though there may be other absences in the archive as well.8 In this chapter, I examine two areas of Arendt’s private life which I claim are significant, but are rarely mentioned by Arendt in the papers and documents that have survived. The first “hole” is the radical destruction of her hometown of Königsberg during the Second World War. The second “hole” is her experience of being interned within the camp at Gurs, France. Arendt discussed many events of her life with her friends and colleagues and documented a great deal, but these two significant and important traumas are unusually absent from her correspondence and academic work. Using commentary from historical sources and eyewitnesses, I document information about the lived  Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), 212.  Susannah Gottlieb, “Arendt’s Alteration of Tone,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt. eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 539. 8  There may be other “holes” such as the death of her father and the fact that her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, had affairs with other women. The two absences from this chapter are more related to her political theory. 6 7

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

69

horror of these two events to show the significance of these events for Arendt and examine their absence from the archive.

Never Going Home Again: Königsberg Hannah Arendt grew up in the trading town of Königsberg in the German province of East Prussia. Though she was born in Hannover, Germany, Hannah Arendt moved to the Eastern Prussian city of Königsberg when she was four and grew up as part of two established Jewish families, the Cohn’s and the Arendt’s. Königsberg was a port city on the Baltic Sea and despite its remote location, which was over 300 miles from Berlin, Arendt was exposed to diverse populations, languages, and traditions. This was a historically rich city, originally founded in 1255 as a fortress by Teutonic Knights, and had active trade, industry, and a university. It drew merchants from all over Europe and had an international flavor. Germans, Poles, Scandinavians, Russians, and a community of Jews who had immigrated from Russia and Lithuania lived there. By the 1850s it became an important center for tea because of its access to Russian teas. In fact, Hannah’s mother’s family, the Cohn’s, had a famous trading company that specialized in tea.9 As a center for trade, Königsberg was prosperous due to it being the closest route from South Russia to the Baltic Sea, as well as being a main center for Prussian exports as well. Culturally, Königsberg was understood to be an important location for the German-­ Jewish enlightenment and Jews were allowed to attend its university, the Albertina, in 1712.10 Because of its close proximity to the Jewish areas of Russia, Königsberg was a natural choice for immigration by those escaping persecution. Hannah’s mother’s family had emigrated from Lithuania in 1852.11 At its height, Königsberg was home to nearly 5000 Jews, largely from Russian descent, and of this group, the educated middle-class Jews had assimilated for the most part.12 This was not as true of the Eastern Jews, the lower-class Jews known as Ostjuden. Arendt experienced relatively little antisemitism in Königsberg when she was growing up and she did not even know that she was Jewish, until some antisemitic remarks 9  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press 1982), 6. 10  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 6. Isabel Denny, The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City: The Battle for Königsberg, 1945 (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007), 65. 11  Ibid., 5. 12  Isabel Denny, 64.

70 

K. FRY

were made to her in the street.13 She grew up interested in culture, literature, music, and philosophy and the historical city provided many cultural influences, contacts, and opportunities. Eventually, Arendt attended university at Marburg, Germany. Hannah moved away from Königsberg before antisemitism became a significantly more serious threat there. When she left in 1924, it was still the town of her youth that was proud of its liberal, tolerant attitude. It wasn’t until the late 1920s that antisemitic incidents dramatically rose there.14 The political attitude in that area swung and Adolf Hitler was elected due in part to the high level of East Prussian vote. The Jews were blamed for the economic strife associated with the creation of the Polish Corridor, which was part of the settlement from the First World War. The creation of the Polish Corridor cut off the export potential of Königsberg and other eastern Prussian locations from the rest of Germany. There was a great deal of economic suffering in the area because of export problems, inflation, and the additional economic effects of the Great Depression, which caused high levels of unemployment in Königsberg.15 Hitler promised to get rid of the Polish Corridor, to reduce taxes, and to increase tariffs on imports, which were popular ideas for the area that was depressed economically.16 He also capitalized on the local fears of the spread of Communism from Russia.17 The town that had previously prevented Hitler from speaking there in 1924 and had refused to publish antisemitic newspapers eventually changed.18 In 1928, the Nazi party received only 0.8% of the East Prussian vote, but by 1933, had received 56.5% of it, which was the largest percentage throughout the Reich.19 By infusing the local economy with money, Hitler had a stronghold in East Prussia with many townspeople thankful to him for work. Hitler chose to announce the formation of the Nuremberg Laws, the Citizenship Law, and the Law for the Protection of

13  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 10. Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (USA: Penguin Books, 2000), 8. 14  Sabine Thiem, “Kurt Sabatzky: The C.V. Syndikus of the Jewish Community in Königsberg during the Weimar Republic,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book (January 1999): 191–204. 15  Isabel Denny, 43–4, 45–7, 56. 16  Ibid., 51, 63. 17  Ibid., 52. 18  Ibid., 66. 19  Ibid., 52, 58.

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

71

German Blood and Honor in a speech made from Königsberg in 1935.20 There were book burnings, censorship, attacks on Jewish homes and businesses, as well as on Communists and Social Democrats. Hitler appointed a district leader of East Prussia named Erich Koch who was renowned for his Jew-hatred and who enacted anti-Jewish laws in Königsberg and throughout the region.21 Dissidents were murdered as early as 1932.22 By 1938, the Jews from Königsberg were beginning to be marched to concentration camps. Arendt did not describe first-hand experience of these atrocities, perhaps because she had already moved away when the worst of it happened, but no doubt, she knew many who suffered there. Likely, the majority of those she knew either died or were forced to leave, including her mother, who escaped in April of 1939.23 It is inconceivable that Arendt did not know some of the problems there, given that she had so many ties to the area and that the anti-Jewish violence was particularly extreme there. Arendt’s first-hand difficulties probably began in full force mainly in Berlin, but she had to have been aware of some of the suffering occurring in Königsberg for her friends and relations. Unfortunately, Arendt’s hometown of Königsberg was destroyed during the Second World War. Königsberg was first aligned with the Nazis and drew Allied bombs, and then it was overrun by the Stalinists. Since it was bombed virtually to ruin, very little remained of the town and the architecture that Arendt once knew. Most of the architecturally significant buildings were destroyed by Allied British bombings or Russian artillery, which left the town in shambles. The castle that once housed the capital of East Prussia and dominated the city square was bombed and eventually demolished. The cathedral and the old and new universities were also ruined. In 1938, both synagogues were destroyed and the larger one, which had seating for 1500 as well as an adjacent Jewish school, was burned up in flames on Kristallnacht.24 The total population of the city which in 1939 was 372,164 was reduced to 73,000 by the end of the War. Jews were sent to concentration camps, Poles and Russians were forced to labor, and many froze to death, died from illness, or were shot trying to escape Königsberg. Conditions were so dire that many committed ­suicide  Ibid., 64.  Ibid., 67. 22  Sabine Thiem, 201–2. 23  Isabel Denny, 66, 67, 72. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 149. 24  Michael Wieck. A Childhood under Hitler and Stalin: Memoirs of a “Certified Jew (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 42. 20 21

72 

K. FRY

rather than face the invading Russians, who raped and attacked the women and killed the old men.25 Not knowing that the territory would eventually become Soviet, the Red Army looted and burned the city.26 At the end of the War, the city endured starvation and fuel shortages during one of the coldest winters on record, and suffered diseases that worsened once the Stalinists arrived. The city suffered from typhoid, malaria, and typhus from using impure water and was overrun with lice and rats.27 There were also rumors of cannibalism.28 In 1946, Königsberg became Kaliningrad and part of the Soviet Union. By the War’s end, over 90% of the original buildings were destroyed and ultimately replaced with unattractive Soviet architecture.29 What was left of the university that was founded in 1544 was closed and re-opened under Soviet rule, the square became unrecognizable without its castle, and Arendt never returned to her hometown, since she became an American citizen and died before the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, there was no one left to visit. During her time in the United States, Arendt seldom discussed her childhood in her letters and documents, most likely because of the pain involved.30 A Jewish survivor from Königsberg commented when he returned to Kaliningrad in 1992 that the old Königsberg he knew from his childhood was gone and had not survived the War.31 The sad outcome of her hometown and its inhabitants could not be foreseen, judging by the peaceful, pleasant, historical city of Arendt’s youth, where she was surrounded by a large extended family. Arendt spent her holidays from university in Königsberg and after moving to Berlin, she visited her mother there. The last time she visited was most likely in the late 1920s or early 1930s. By the end of 1933, she had escaped from Berlin and could no longer legally visit home. She lacked citizenship for over 17 years and lacked the documentation to travel, even if it was possible. She visited Europe on a roughly yearly basis after the War, but she never visited the town that became Kaliningrad, Russia. She and Blücher had a particular affection for Paris, which was where they met, but there is  Ibid.  Nicole Eaton, “Provisional Redemption and the Fate of Kaliningrad’s Germans,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol. 21, No.1 (2020): 41–72, 45. 27  Isabel Denny, 235. 28  Ibid. 29  Isabel Denny, 225. 30  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 3 31  Michael Wieck, A Childhood under Hitler and Stalin, 249. 25 26

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

73

no evidence of similar nostalgia for Königsberg. There is a letter from a friend of Arendt’s who wrote to her in 1969 reporting on what became of his family members, recalling Königsberg, Kaliningrad, and how his mother was shot in the Königsberg train station by the Gestapo, but there is no record of Arendt’s reply.32 When she worked to reunite Jewish books and artifacts to their previous owners, she worked with some materials that had originally been housed in Königsberg. These materials were distributed elsewhere since there were no longer Jewish communities in Königsberg to use them and it was part of Soviet territory. Interestingly, Arendt did not publicly discuss the fate of Königsberg, though it must have affected her. The two forms of totalitarianism from The Origins of Totalitarianism, Nazism and Stalinism, both had profound influences upon Königsberg. The Nazis took over early in the War and the area became part of the Soviet Union at the end of the War. The fact that the Jewish community no longer existed, and the local language changed, must have produced challenging memories. Officially incorporated into the Soviet Union in late 1946, it was unlike other Soviet occupied areas since the civilian population of 150,000 spoke German initially. The Germans remained second-class citizens in Königsberg, were forced to labor, were forbidden to leave, and over one third succumbed to execution, starvation, or disease.33 In 1947, the mass transports began to remove the native Germans left in the city. During the Günther Gaus interview, Arendt was asked whether she missed pre-Hitler Europe, what she thought remained, and what was “irretrievably lost.”34 She replied: “The Europe of the pre-Hitler period? I do not long for that, I can tell you.”35 So it is possible that she did not long nostalgically for Königsberg or any part of Germany when so many of the people she had known were gone and so many tragic events occurred there. In an article written for Commentary in 1950, she noted how Germans recovering from the War were shockingly indifferent to the rubble, could not face up to the ruins, and still

32  Pedro Luis Heller to Hannah Arendt. January 31, 1969. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. oc.gov/resource/mss11056di g.020640/?sp=68&r=0.206,0.058,0.844,0.519,0. 33  Nicole Eaton, 41–42. 34  Günther Gaus, The Portable Arendt, 12. 35  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 12.

74 

K. FRY

mailed postcards of the sites that no longer existed.36 She aligned this with the absence of mourning for the dead and the lack of concern for how the refugees and other victims of the War suffered, which certainly disgusted Arendt.37 Perhaps she had no concern for the land of her youth. However, when asked what remained she responded: “What remains? The language remains.”38 Gaus asked if the German language meant a great deal to her and she said: “A great deal. I have always consciously refused to lose my mother-tongue. I have always maintained a certain distance from French, which I then spoke very well, as well as from English, which I write today.”39 She said that it “wasn’t the German language that went crazy,” and she reiterated there was no substitution for one’s first language.40 She described the indescribable feeling of joy she felt when she returned to Germany after the War and heard German spoken on the streets after living for so many years in countries that spoke a foreign tongue.41 From her comments in this interview, there is no indication that place, even the town of one’s upbringing, was particularly significant to Arendt. However, Königsberg not only lost its historical buildings and people, but its language became Russian. The language remains, but in Königsberg, it did not. Today, Kaliningrad residents speak Russian.

Internment at Gurs Another incident from Arendt’s life that she rarely discussed was when she was interned by the Vichy-French government. During the spring of 1940, Hannah Arendt was interned at a camp in Gurs, France. Arendt had traveled to Paris to escape National Socialist Germany and lived there for almost seven years. With the rise of the Vichy-French government elected in 1940, the situation for the Jews in France worsened, and it was no longer a place of refuge that it had been when she arrived in 1933. Paris had millions of foreigners living there, but the Jews were among the groups that were specifically targeted. Once the Nazis attacked France, the 36  Hannah Arendt, “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule: Report from Germany.” Commentary, October 1950, https://www.commentary.org/articles/hannah-arendt/the-aftermath-ofnazi-rulereport-from-germany/. 37  Ibid. 38  Ibid. 39  Ibid., 12–13. 40  Ibid., 13. 41  Ibid., 14.

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

75

sentiment was that eventually the Jews and Communist exiles could be handed over to the Nazis to pacify them. By September of 1940, Jews were required to register with the police and carry a stamped card that marked their status as Jewish.42 Shops owned by Jews had to display posters signifying that fact.43 By October of 1940, there were laws that forbade Jews from working in government service, public education, or owning businesses.44 Eventually, they were banned from cafes, restaurants, theaters, cinemas, music halls, markets, libraries, public parks, swimming pools, and forbidden from using telephones, radios, and bicycles without special permission.45 All that Arendt fled from in Berlin began again in France. There was a hierarchy among the Jews as well. The French made a distinction between French nationals and foreign national Jews, and the French Jews were protected for longer. With the increased number of immigrants, Paris became increasingly antisemitic, but it was not until January of 1941 that France would actively participate in the final solution and send Jews to their deaths in concentration camps. Arendt escaped this fate, by leaving Gurs and France in 1940. Hannah Arendt was interned at Gurs along with other female German nationals in May of 1940 for roughly four weeks. Though it was clearly a traumatic experience, Arendt rarely discussed the details and seemingly downplayed what she suffered there. In a letter to Gershom Scholem in 1942, she stated it was during the summer, so it was “no big deal.”46 This contrasted with her husband Heinrich Blücher’s first internment, which occurred in the winter without adequate clothing or heating. No doubt, the fact that it was for a relatively short period of time and that she was able to escape, contrasted sharply with those who died at the hands of the Nazis. Perhaps in comparison to what others suffered, she believed what occurred there was negligible. However, the details were quite dire. The puzzle of what occurred there can be reconstructed by examining the memoir of Lisa Fittko, who was also at the camp and who knew Arendt. 42  Allan Mitchell, Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation 1940–1944 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 38. 43  Ibid. 44  Ibid., 39. 45  Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 1998), 181. 46  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, April 25, 1942, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, ed. Marie Luise Knott, trans. Anthony David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 13.

76 

K. FRY

Lisa Fittko was an anti-fascist activist with Jewish ancestry who knew Arendt through Blücher’s political involvement and wrote a memoir which included her experience at Gurs. Fittko described the awful living conditions at Gurs and how disturbing the experience was. Like Arendt, Fittko was also brought to Gurs from the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris. The journey to Gurs began with the round-up of foreign nationals in Paris. Men or childless women between the ages of 17 and 55 from Germany, the Saar, or Danzig were required to report, which meant both Arendt and Blücher needed to go to their respective locations.47 Arendt’s mother, Martha, was excluded from the call because she was above the age limit.48 Arendt was required to report to the Vélodrome d’Hiver on May 15, 1940 and she took the metro there with a small group of friends who were also required to report.49 Arendt was part of an odd group of women gathered there. Among the Germans, some were living in France because they escaped their homelands due to anti-fascist or Marxist political activity, while others were in France because they were Jewish. Still others were pro-Nazi Germans who happened to be living in France, and the group also included German prostitutes working on the streets of Paris.50 They were collected as undesirable enemies to the state. In the Vélodrome d’Hiver, detainees were not allowed to bring in cigarettes, which must have been torture for the chain-smoking Arendt.51 They were told to bring food for two days and the detainees were later fed with food packets provided by the American government and given straw to help them sleep on the concrete floor.52 The women were worried about air attacks, since France was in the process of being invaded by the Nazis. Air raid alarms were quite common during the day and at night around this time, but the Vélodrome didn’t have an air raid shelter, but only a glass ceiling.53 The women were not told what was to be done with them and the unease and anxiety grew. After several days of not really knowing what would happen to them, the women were transferred to a more permanent camp in Gurs, France  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 152.  Ibid. 49  Ibid., 153. 50  Lisa Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, trans. David Koblick (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 12–13, 23. 51  Ibid., 10. 52  Ibid., 10, 12. 53  Ibid., 11. 47 48

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

77

along the Spanish border. They were transported by bus across Paris and were locked into train compartments and not told where they were going, so the women tried to read the signs that passed too quickly outside of the window. They were hungry because they weren’t being fed enough, and they were only allowed to use the restrooms on the train once in the morning and once at night. The camp at Gurs had been built initially to hold Spanish Republicans fleeing the Spanish Civil War. The French government was now using it for far too many women for the primitive facilities. Fittko described the disagreeable conditions at Gurs, and how the women arrived on roughly May 25, 1940, and were sent to the barracks. There were 25 barracks with 60 women sleeping in each of them on pads of straw, some of which had bed bugs.54 The camp was built on clay soil that became soggy in the rain and on rainy days, women were up to their ankles in mud.55 There were not enough latrines to accommodate the large numbers and there were long lines to use them with stairs that some of the older women were unable to climb without assistance.56 There was access to water only in the morning, and not enough soap or water for all to wash, if one was willing to tolerate the leering of the French guards while washing up.57 Mail or newspapers covering the latest war news were forbidden, as was talking to women across the barracks. Eventually, the women managed to secretly reorganize themselves into barracks of like-­ minded groups.58 The food was inadequate. The daily meal was one piece of bread and roughly 14–16 uncooked chickpeas per person with an occasional cabbage leaf or carrot.59 They soaked the chickpeas in water and had a kind of “soup” with them, but often they had to be swallowed whole.60 Some detainees fought over food, arguing over the sizes of the pieces of bread and some stole unattended bread.61 Lisa Fittko claimed that the political detainees didn’t fight about food and bore up better under the conditions, since they were used to going underground and had a sense of

 Ibid., 22–23.  Ibid., 28. 56  Ibid., 38. 57  Ibid., 37. 58  Ibid., 22. 59  Ibid., 34. 60  Ibid. 61  Ibid. 54 55

78 

K. FRY

solidarity to give more to the weakest who needed it.62 The nuns from Alsace who were also prisoners in the camp showed similar behavior.63 There were over 6000 detainees in all, roughly 2300 from the area around Paris.64 Arendt encouraged her barrack mates to keep up appearances and keep themselves and their barracks clean as a way to sustain morale.65 Yet, she admitted in a letter to Kurt Blumenfeld many years later that she contemplated suicide while in the camp, but decided against it.66 This act was to be done as a political protest, but she did not see the sense in it, since it was exactly what their captors wanted.67 Ultimately, it was the progressing Nazi invasion that provided the opportunity to escape the camp. As the Nazis moved toward the camp at Gurs, the camp fell into chaos. By June 14, 1940, the Germans had made it to Paris and camp discipline fell apart.68 The commissaire was drunk.69 Everyone knew that the political dissidents and the Jews would be turned over to the Nazis once they arrived. Lisa Fittko and the other political anti-fascists forged liberation papers which allowed them to escape the camp.70 Arendt was included in the group, even though she was in a different barrack, because of her connection to Blücher.71 Some of the women were scared to leave, fearful that they would not be able to find their husbands and families, or worried about traveling without money, but they put these fears aside.72 Though the group of women planned to travel together and meet up after their escape, Arendt chose to leave the larger group because she thought it was safer to travel alone than in a group. About 60 women waited for the time when the switch would occur from French to German occupation of the camp and they posted lookouts, since they did not have news of the outside world.73 The time came when the Germans arrived, but had not  Ibid., 36.  Ibid. 64  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 153. 65  Ibid., 153–4. 66  Hannah Arendt to Kurt Blumenfeld, August 6, 1952, Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld: Die Korrespondenz (Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995), 62. 67  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H.  Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 268. 68  Fittko, Escape Through the Pyrenees, 43. 69  Ibid., 44. 70  Ibid., 48–9. 71  Ibid., 49. 72  Ibid., 54. 73  Ibid., 50, 54. 62 63

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

79

f­ormally taken over. What they didn’t know was the camp would remain in French-Vichy hands for quite some time. The women believed they needed to reach unoccupied French ground before the Gestapo got to the camp to round them up. In the chaos and confusion, they walked out of the camp with only the first couple of people getting their papers scrutinized.74 They walked out between the French and the German tanks, hitching rides and making their way to a  meeting point for the larger group which was 74 kilometers away in Pontacq.75 The Nazis didn’t stop them because the French sentries were still standing around and the official transfer had not yet occurred. Arendt left the group. The French locals assisted the larger group of women and Fittko thought they would not have survived otherwise. They were fed and hidden in the small towns around the area. Later, Fittko recalled seeing Arendt walking in a meadow near a town where she was hiding.76 Arendt told Fittko that her group intended to travel to Lourdes and once again, Arendt refused the offer and stated that she felt safer alone.77 Later, Arendt described how the group had chosen the right timing to escape because once the Germans arrived, normalcy returned and escape would have been impossible.78 Only 200 chose to stay at the camp in Gurs, but they were eventually sent to the death camps in 1942 or 1943, if they survived that long.79 In October of 1940, a few months after Arendt left the camp, the Vichy French used the camp to imprison a large number of German Jews, including nearly 6000 who had been smuggled from Baden, Saar, and Pfalz to the camp.80 Gurs had the highest number of deaths of all the French internment camps. It required a cemetery expansion to accommodate 1250 graves.81 Arendt did not discuss the details of her internment often, even though the experience was most likely unforgettable. Since it was difficult to correspond with anyone outside the Camp, this may be the reason why few documents from that time were included in Arendt’s archive. In “We Refugees,” she described her experience as a German Jew who had to leave two  Ibid. 54.  Ibid., 51, 55–7. 76  Ibid., 66. 77  Ibid. 78  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 155. 79  Ibid. 80  Ibid. 81   Scott Soo, “From International Origins to Transnational Commemoration: The Cemetery of the Gurs Camp, 1939–1963,” French History 34, No. 1 (2020): 86. 74 75

80 

K. FRY

countries, was stateless for many years, and knew the state could come to threaten the rights of an individual with unexpected ease. These experiences inspired much of her theoretical writing and interests. In fact, her writing from 1928 until 1958 was dominated by politics, examinations of totalitarianism, and Jewish issues connected to what she and others she knew suffered. Yet, she almost never mentioned Gurs, and when she did, it was a general remark lacking any detail. Perhaps Arendt avoided the topic of Gurs because she understood that her experiences paled in comparison to those who suffered and died at the death camps. She stated that the year that was decisive for her politically, was not 1933 when events in Berlin became so grave and she knew she would have to leave, but 1943, when she learned about Auschwitz. This was after she, Blücher, and her mother had emigrated to the United States. At first, she and her husband did not believe the final solution and dismissed it as a rumor. Blücher had studied military history and thought that mass death camps were unnecessary and harmful to achieving military victory. Militarily, he thought it made no sense because the victims could be better used laboring for the military, building munitions, and working to support the military effort. Eventually, Arendt and Blücher were convinced. Arendt said it was “as if an abyss had opened.” She stated, “This ought not to have happened,” and she thought it was something for which amends could not be made. The abyss of the death camps was more significant than the “holes” of the loss of her hometown and her internment.82 Scholars have argued that there was something about the Holocaust that prevented narrating it or making meaning from it. Arendt’s adversary, Adorno, was famous for suggesting that poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. Rudolphe Gasché argued in relation to Arendt’s work specifically, that storytelling about the Holocaust was in some ways, impossible. Gasché referenced Arendt’s discussion of the horrors of the death camps from The Origins of Totalitarianism to give insight into why storytelling was so difficult. Arendt thought that the camps dehumanized people in three different ways by killing the juridical person and making it seem as if they were outside of the protections of the law, killing the moral person and making martyrdom impossible because the deaths were anonymous, and killing the individuality of a person so they appeared no different from

 Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 13.

82

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

81

beasts.83 Since the victims were completely dehumanized, their deaths were denied, and funerals were prohibited, the story of the life became difficult, if not impossible, to narrate. For Gasché, stories were inadequate to tell the tale of the Holocaust because the senselessness of the events alluded all form.84 Yet, even though Arendt believed that an abyss had opened up with the death camps, she asserted in her later work that she did not think that the Nazis were fully successful in erasing the existence of someone. Alternatively, Kai Evers argued that Arendt saw possibilities in storytelling and the ability to communicate catastrophe through stories that became more pronounced in her later work.85 Citing Arendt’s essay titled “The Concentration Camps,” from 1948, which is an earlier article  on these issues, Evers pointed to the fact that initially, Arendt did not think that the appropriate storyteller was the one who lived through the experiences, but one needed proper distance from the events to better relay the story.86 In this essay, Arendt discussed three approaches to describing the events in the concentration camps. The first two, the inmate’s direct experience and the survivor’s recollection of it later, Arendt dismissed as not communicating adequately what occurred. The inmate’s report communicated facts but left the reader cold. The survivor’s recollections may romanticize the phenomenon as being incommunicable or claim to understand the event psychologically which did not capture adequately the significance of the experience according to Arendt. Although these descriptions are quick and vague, they illustrated that Arendt thought these kinds of writings were inadequate. This left the writing of those who were worried about it happening again. Those without direct experience, but fearfully anticipating the possibility of totalitarianism in the future, were described by Arendt as being able to provide insights into the phenomenon.87 This may be a clue as to why Arendt kept her own internment to herself, not believing she could productively communicate the experience of the internment camp to others, since it was something she directly 83  Hannah Arendt. The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973), 447–455. 84  Rodolphe Gasché, Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust (Albany: SUNY Series Literature … In Theory, SUNY Press, 2018), 116. 85  Kai Evers, “The Holes of Oblivion: Arendt and Benjamin on Storytelling in the Age of Totalitarian Destruction,” Telos 132 (2005):113. 86  Ibid., 115. 87  Ibid., 117.

82 

K. FRY

experienced.88 One who suffered had difficulty understanding the significance of the event objectively, and it is perhaps why Arendt felt she was qualified to discuss the concentration camps and tried to discern the historical forces that led to them, but not necessarily her direct experience in the internment camp. Arendt thought concentration camps were significantly different from the internment camps and drawing a comparison between them created confusion.89 Since she did not suffer directly in the concentration camps, it was perhaps why she believed she was able to examine this phenomenon publicly. Surprisingly, as Susannah Gottlieb noted, Arendt wrote about Gurs a couple of times when it arose in the Eichmann trail, but she did not mention that she was interned there.90 She did not disclose that she had a personal connection to the location, which Gottlieb found to be odd. Gottlieb saw a tension that could not be resolved in Arendt’s work. On the one hand, Arendt insisted that atrocities should not be forgotten, but on the other hand, she also refrained from discussing her connection to them to avoid her private experience from overshadowing the political discussion.91 At other times Arendt mentioned her connection to Gurs in writing, though without extensive detail, and often prompted by others. In a letter to the editor to Midstream Magazine, who had asked her to comment on an article by Bruno Bettelheim, Arendt described some of the aspects of her escape from Gurs to correct what Bettelheim had said about it.92 Bettelheim argued that the Jews should have been less passive and feigned ignorance about the true reality of the political situation in Europe. Arendt believed in the need to act but insisted that the Jews could not have had full knowledge of the state of things. In the final paragraph of her letter, she corrected the facts concerning her escape that was used 88  Evers noted the reversal in Arendt’s view in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt noted a witness in the trial, Zyndel Grynszpan, who was able to tell of his experience in a story that gave insight into the experience because of his purity of soul and his righteousness. 89  Hannah Arendt, “The Concentration Camps,” in A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the Nazi Extermination, ed. Michael L.  Morgan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 47–63, 51–52. 90  Susannah Gottlieb, “Arendt’s Alteration in Tone,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 541. 91  Ibid. 92  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 155, 509, Hannah Arendt Papers: Correspondence, 1938–1976: Publishers, 1944–1975; Midstream, 1957–1970. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 030465. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023760/?sp=17.

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

83

as evidence for the possibility of action and heroism in his piece.93 He had claimed Arendt’s  escaped from Gurs after two days in the camp, rather than five weeks.94 What this showed was that by 1962 Arendt or someone she knew was discussing the incident in some venue and Bettelheim had misunderstood or heard an altered version of the story. In “We Refugees,” Arendt discussed Gurs briefly in three parts of the essay. First, she mentioned it in the context of a discussion of suicide and recounted a tale of some in the camp who thought mass suicide might be a political act. She did not recount her own participation in this discussion except by using the pronoun “we” which indicated that she was part of a group that was against it. The second reference to internment camps, though not to her experience at Gurs specifically, occurred in the next paragraph, which discussed being under pressure to forget the experience of internment in order to assimilate. She stated, “We were told to forget; and we forgot quicker than anybody ever could imagine.”95 She described how immigrants felt discouraged from discussing concentration or internment camps because it might lead people to question their loyalty to the new homeland and she stated that no one wanted to “listen to all that,” in her new country.96 The last instance in this essay occurred when Arendt described how those who were interned in France did not contest the order to report and showed up to be imprisoned, because they were trying to be accepted as French citizens.97 Arendt reported that “we played the ridiculous role of trying to be Frenchmen,” and “declared it was all right to be interned.”98 Gurs, or French internment camps generally, were written about by Arendt in these instances, but from a distance. “We Refugees,” pointed out that this was a story that the broader public did not want to hear, and since it jeopardized assimilation and citizenship, there were motivations to master it artificially by the immigrants, or at least keep quiet. 93   Bruno Bettelheim, “Freedom from Ghetto Thinking,” Midstream Magazine, Spring 1962, 23. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023760/?sp=1 2&r=-0.717,-0.196,2.435,1.496,0. 94  Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 030465. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023760/?sp=17. 95  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H.  Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 265. 96  Ibid. 97  Ibid., 270. 98  Ibid.

84 

K. FRY

In Men in Dark Times, Arendt attributed to Dinesen the statement “All sorrows can be born if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”99 Forming narratives about events helped the community remember the significance of events and to grieve. However, the “story” of Europe during the War was different for Arendt in that it required more time to come to terms with what had occurred. In Arendt’s essay on Lessing from the same book, Arendt cautioned that there was a cliché about the mastering of the past and that some Germans sought to master the past of Hitler’s Germany too quickly. Arendt denied that the events of Hitler’s Germany could ever be mastered.100 She said the “best that can be achieved is to know precisely what it was, and to endure this knowledge, and then to wait and see what comes of knowing and enduring.”101 This type of experience may never be able to be mastered, but the only possibility of making sense of it was when enough time had passed.102 Arendt claimed that the narrative process could begin when “indignation and just anger, which compel us to action, have been silenced—and that needs time.”103 She gave an example of a successful narrative with Faulkner’s A Fable, that described events from the First World War 30 years later. Arendt called it a tragic work of art that avoided completely mastering the past but was able to capture the tragedy of what had occurred by turning the actor into a sufferer.104 This echoed her position that history should be studied from the point of view of the sufferer. However, these types of narratives did not master the past once and for all and persisted so long as the “meaning of the events remains alive.”105 Perhaps Arendt never got past the indignation and anger with her internment in Gurs and, therefore, could not adequately describe it. Or, perhaps she thought that compared to what others suffered, her story of that time was not particularly important. Alternatively, because she suffered directly there, she may have thought that it was not possible to describe the events objectively. This was different from her inclusion of biographical evidence in other works since she had suffered it directly and 99  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), 104. This is misquoted by Arendt. 100  Ibid., 20. 101  Ibid. 102  Ibid., 21. 103  Ibid. 104  Ibid., 20. 105  Ibid., 21.

4  HOLES OF OBLIVION: HANNAH ARENDT’S SILENCE 

85

it was her own story. Or, maybe this event was private, and she did not want to revisit it in detail. For Arendt, the historian or storyteller gave the story a permanence that survived and lived on as one story among many, since narratives were not conclusive, and stories could be told and retold in many ways.106 She stated: There is no meaning to these stories that is entirely separable from them— and this, too, we know from our own, non-poetic experience. No philosophy, no analysis, no aphorism, be it ever so profound, can compare in intensity and richness of meaning with a properly narrated story.107

The meaningfulness of life and political events were captured in a story, but Arendt did not tell the story of these events. We are reliant on others, like Lisa Fittko, to tell the tale and give some meaning and context to the internment of those who resided there, including Hannah Arendt.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule: Report from Germany.” Commentary, October 1950, https://www.commentary.org/articles/hannah-­ arendt/the-aftermath-of-nazi-rule report-from-germany/. ———. “The Concentration Camps.” In A Holocaust Reader: Responses to the Nazi Extermination, edited by Michael L.  Morgan, 47–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000a. ———. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on Knowledge. New York: The Viking Press, 1963. ———. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ———. The Jewish Writings. Edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H.  Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. ———. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. ———. The Portal Arendt. Edited by Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000b. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973. Arendt, Hannah and Blumenfeld, Kurt. Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld: Die Korrespondenz. Edited by Ingeborg Nordmann and Iris Pilling. Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995.

106 107

 Ibid., 21–22.  Ibid., 22.

86 

K. FRY

Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Denny, Isabel. The Fall of Hitler’s Fortress City: The Battle for Königsberg, 1945. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007. Eaton, Nicole. “Provisional Redemption and the Fate of Kaliningrad’s Germans.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 21, no.1 (2020): 41–72. Evers, Kai. “The Holes of Oblivion: Arendt and Benjamin on Storytelling in the Age of Totalitarian Destruction.” Telos 132 (2005): 109–120. Fittko, Lisa. Escape through the Pyrenees. Translated by David Koblick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. Gasché, Rudolphe. Storytelling: The Destruction of the Inalienable in the Age of the Holocaust. Albany: SUNY SERIES Literature … in Theory, State University of New York Press, 2018. Gottlieb, Susannah. “Arendt’s Alteration of Tone.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 537–544. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Mitchell, Allan. Nazi Paris: The History of an Occupation 1940–1944. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. Ousby, Ian. Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940–1944. New  York: Cooper Square Press, 1998. Soo, Scott. “From International Origins to Transnational Commemoration: The Cemetery of the Gurs Camp, 1939-1963.” French History 34, no. 1 (2020): 82–104. Thiem, Sabine. “Kurt Sabatzky: The C.V. Syndikus of the Jewish Community in Königsberg during the Weimar Republic.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (January 1999): 191–204. Wieck, Michael. A Childhood under Hitler and Stalin: Memoirs of a “Certified Jew”. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982

CHAPTER 5

Jaspers, Heidegger, and Philosophical Influence

Martin Heidegger wrote to Hannah Arendt shortly after their reunion in 1950 that the “real ‘and’ between ‘Jaspers and Heidegger’ is only you.”1 This statement summed up a great deal concerning the complicated relationships between Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, and Martin Heidegger. Arendt studied with both, but the relationship that dominated Arendt scholarship was the one with Heidegger. This was due to Heidegger’s philosophical importance, the public knowledge of the love affair between Heidegger and Arendt, Heidegger’s membership in the Nazi party, and Arendt’s choice to initiate contact with him again after the War. Questions concerning whether she should have renewed contact with him and the degree to which her thought is sympathetic to or critical of his views have dominated the discussion for years. It was assumed that Arendt was blind to Heidegger’s errors, despite not having spoken to him for years, and she was at fault for renewing contact with him. Others like Natalie Nenadic suggested that Arendt’s theory was grounded in a Heideggerian methodology.2 Jacques Taminiaux and Dana Villa saw more criticism of Heidegger’s philosophy in Arendt’s work than acceptance of it. Since 1  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, May 16, 1950, Letters 1925–1975: Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, ed. Ursula Lutz, trans. Andrew Shields (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 2004), 89. 2  Natalie Nenadic, “Heidegger, Arendt, and Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Comparative & Continental Philosophy 5, No. 1 (2013): 36–48.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_5

87

88 

K. FRY

Heidegger was her teacher and her lover, the assumption was that most of her knowledge was rooted in his influence. However, to understand Arendt’s relationship with what her husband, Heinrich Blücher, has called “her philosophers,” the relationships between Heidegger, Jaspers, and Arendt should be examined to reveal the mutual influence of thinkers upon one another. The biographical evidence from their correspondence shed light on how these thinkers viewed one another and contests the view that solely Heidegger was the guiding force in Arendt’s intellectual development. This instance is one example in which the examination of the biographical material of a thinker could undermine what common philosophical interpretations had suggested. Typically, philosophical narratives about how teachers influence their students focused on the all-knowing teacher transferring knowledge to the student. If the student also becomes famous, it was usually understood as both the influence of and rebellion against the teacher. This was the case as far back as narratives concerning how Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle passed on knowledge. However, when the student was a woman, especially one who had romantic entanglements with her mentor, the narrative tended to favor the tremendous influence of the mentor, even when the student achieved high levels of notoriety. For example, even though Simone de Beauvoir edited and gave comments on much of Sartre’s work and although she was of the same generation as Sartre and not his student, Sartre’s influence was understood as the dominant force on her work for many years. Often, Beauvoir’s contributions to Sartre’s progress were ignored. As Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb noted, Beauvoir stood generally in the shadow of Sartre for some time and that Beauvoir’s “work has not been treated with the same academic seriousness as that of other philosophers, notably Sartre’s.” 3 Of course, Beauvoir may have contributed to this assessment of her work by viewing it as being less important than Sartre’s. Nonetheless, Sartre’s significance was understood as impacting Beauvoir’s work hierarchically and her work was not understood as influencing his significantly. Edward and Kat Fullbrook have shown that there is documentary evidence that Sartre served as a midwife to Beauvoir’s philosophy some of the time and that she was not the passive handmaiden

3  Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb eds., Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 1, 7.

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

89

to his thought as is often presumed.4 Similarly, Arendt’s greatest influence was largely understood as Heidegger. Since he was her more famous teacher and since they were involved romantically, his influence upon her thought took precedence. Even though Arendt was an important part of his life, biographies about Martin Heidegger often ignored Arendt’s existence almost entirely, while her work was viewed through the lens of his overwhelming influence. This stereotype of how philosophical knowledge was conveyed is not only hierarchical, but tended to reinforce a gendered view of how the transfer of philosophical knowledge occurs between students and their mentors. This view prioritized the all-knowing teacher’s influence upon the less knowing student which did not alter over time or circumstance. Yet, the biographical archive contests this view and provides evidence for a model of understanding philosophical influence generally as a kind of mutual influence that changed over time.

Arendt and Jaspers: From Student to Friend Scholarship about Arendt’s philosophical influences often failed to recognize the importance of Karl Jaspers. Hannah Arendt was one of Karl Jasper’s first supervisees and she worked with him while he was writing his important three-volume set titled Philosophy. She had the luck to be studying with both Jaspers and Heidegger while they were creating historically significant works in philosophy. According to her future student, Jerome Kohn, Arendt gained what she would call a “philosophical shock” by studying with Heidegger and Jaspers whose philosophies evoked a sense of wonder at sheer existence.5 Both professors opened a new kind of thinking for her and in those early years, helped her develop her own theory. Arendt’s respect for Karl Jaspers was readily apparent in her correspondence with him and in her essays that she wrote about him. There was no doubt that Arendt treasured the friendship she had with Karl Jaspers and his wife, Gertrud. They exchanged over 400 letters even though they were not in touch during much of the 1930s and early 1940s because of the War. Jaspers said that tears came to his eyes when he got a letter from

4  Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking de Beauvoir and Sartre (London: Continuum, 2008), xii-xiii. 5  Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohn (United States of America: Schocken, 1994), xi.

90 

K. FRY

Arendt in 1945 and realized that Hannah had survived the War.6 In 1964, when Arendt was asked to reflect upon Jaspers’ influence, she said she had read Jaspers’ work as early as 1920 and it was part of what inspired her to pursue philosophy. Often, she saw him as a kind of light in the darkness, particularly during the War years. She stated: Where Jaspers comes forward and speaks, all becomes luminous. He has an unreservedness, a trust, an unconditionality of speech that I have never known in anyone else. This impressed me when I was young.7

Furthermore, Jaspers made Kant’s work come alive for her in a different way. Before coming to Heidelberg to study with Jaspers, Arendt did not understand how freedom could be linked to reason and action, which was implicit in Kant’s theory, but was foreign to her reading of Kant’s work.8 Jaspers allowed her to see how reason could affect action and how philosophy could be political.9 When asked to speak about Jaspers when he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1958, Arendt stated that she particularly admired Jaspers’ engagement in human affairs and his proper response to Nazism.10 Jaspers understood that “both philosophy and politics concern everyone.”11 This was something that Arendt took to heart in her own work. Initially, what drew Arendt and Jaspers closer were the several care packages per month that Arendt sent from the United States to him as well as their common concern over the political implications of the aftermath of Nazi Germany. Beginning in about 1945, once Arendt was able to return to Europe on a somewhat regular basis, their letters attested to the intellectual significance of their meetings. So profound and constant were these visits that Arendt was considered to be one of Jaspers’ family. Intellectually, she claimed the conversations she had with Jaspers were 6  Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, December 2, 1945, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969, eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1992), 25. 7  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 21. 8  Ibid. 9  Ibid. 10  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), 78. 11  Ibid., 74.

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

91

“really my most powerful post war experience.”12 When Arendt traveled to Europe, she planned her trip around visiting Jaspers, often seeing him more than once. She described one visit as “a single conversation that went on for 10 days.”13 Arendt asked her husband, Heinrich Blücher, to send various books from home, to further deepen their academic discussions.14 She enjoyed the freedom of the conversations which were like “an oasis in the desert of time” because the conversations were seemingly unending and enriching.15 Both Arendt and Jaspers saved up topics of conversation until they saw each other once more. Arendt wrote: “I keep thinking of what we will discuss. The list starts with politics in America and ends with Plato.”16 They did not agree about everything, but neither of them thought that necessary or beneficial. Each respected the other and no intellectual disagreement interfered with their close friendship. When Jaspers began to age and have health problems, Arendt made sure to visit as frequently as she could, for fear that each visit would be the last. She claimed more than once that he was “the only person who educated me.”17 Arendt herself understood the major influence of Jaspers on her scholarship, especially with his focus on politics. She stated that he was the only one that she could recognize as her teacher.18 Clearly, he influenced her life and her theory greatly. To determine Arendt’s philosophical influences, one may want to begin with her own assertions about it, yet these have been ignored for the most part. Partly, this was because Jaspers’ intellectual influence is more difficult to discern as his philosophical importance has faded over the years and many of his works have not been translated broadly. However, in many letters and interviews, Arendt was on record attesting to the fact that he was the teacher who influenced her the most. When she was out of contact with him during the War, she confessed that she did not do anything  Ibid.  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, 17 October 1939, Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968, Ed. and Trans. Lotte Kohler (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1996), 50. 14  Arendt to Blücher, 28 December 1949, Within Four Walls, 113. 15  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, April 5, 1952, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. ed. Marie Luise Knott. trans., Anthony David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 170. 16  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, May 24, 1952, Within Four Walls, 179. 17  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, June 29, 1958, Within Four Walls, 331. 18  Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, February 19, 1953, Correspondence, 206. 12 13

92 

K. FRY

professionally without thinking how she would justify it to him.19 She wrote to Jaspers more than to Heidegger, wrote longer letters to him, and visited him more often. She thought of him and his wife, Gertrud, as very dear friends and never failed to see them whenever she was in Europe. Yet, because of the Heidegger controversy, the scholarship concerning the influence of Karl Jaspers on Arendt’s thought is vastly underdeveloped. Arendt understood that it was Jaspers’ work that “prepared me for politics,” and consequently, Jaspers’ influence cannot be underestimated.20 Nonetheless, Jaspers’ influence was not one-sided and hierarchical. Arendt’s relationship with Jaspers began formally, with deference to her supervisor, but it changed over time to a friendship of equals. This transition was documented in their salutations to each other in their letters. The correspondence began with the addresses of “Dear Professor Jaspers,” and “Dear Miss Arendt,” and ended with “Dear Revered” or “Dearest Friends,” and “Dear Hannah,” or “Beloved Hannah.” Initially, the relationship was more distant and professional, but not without social interactions including parties with other students at the Jaspers’ home as his advisee.21 As time went on and the friendship and trust between them deepened, and the relationship changed. Jaspers thrived on his conversations with Arendt and was sometimes persuaded by her point of view. First, he admired the fact that she had foreseen the direction of Nazism more quickly than he had, and for that reason, he often trusted her political instincts. He raved about The Origins of Totalitarianism, On Revolution, and helped to publish her Sechs Essays. He read every piece that she wrote in German and many that were only available in English, despite lacking skills in that language. He assisted in the publication of her work in German, particularly in the early years. Alternatively, Arendt had exclusive rights to the English translations of Jaspers’ work, and she helped to get his work translated. In 1946, Gershom Scholem wrote to Arendt about how proud Jaspers was of her and stated that Jaspers “cites you a lot,” in his book focusing the guilt of the German people.22 Jaspers thought Arendt’s essay on the Hungarian Revolution was “ brilliant” and used it in  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, November 25, 1936, Within Four Walls, 23.  Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, March 11, 1949, Correspondence, 133. 21  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 66. 22  Gershom Scholem to Hannah Arendt, November 6, 1946. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 60. 19 20

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

93

his classroom with his students.23 Jaspers felt he learned a great deal from Arendt about freedom and totalitarianism. He claimed in his philosophical autobiography that I learned from her to see this world of the greatest attempts at political freedom and, on the other hand, the structures of totalitarianism … With her I was able to discuss once again in a fashion which I had desired all my life … complete unreservedness which allows of no mental reservation.24

Jaspers appreciated her friendship and their philosophical conversations as much as she did. Jaspers claimed that Hannah Arendt-Blücher’s “long-­ time affection had not waned through the decades,” and that her “philosophical solidarity remains among the most beautiful experiences of those years.”25 Jaspers urged her to visit at least once a year because the visit had “become indispensable.”26 On her 50th birthday, Jaspers stated: “you are one of those people I count among the great gifts of the world.”27 Arendt visited Jaspers and his wife whenever she was in Europe, as her top concern. When making plans for her visits, the Jaspers agreed that “Hannah has priority over everything else.”28 Their relationship grew to include Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blücher, and was solidified further when Blücher finally agreed to travel back to Europe to meet Jaspers. Blücher wrote to Jaspers that meeting him was one of the crucial joys of his life.29 The philosophical stories of influence are often one-sided, particularly if the former student is a woman, seeing the intellectual father as one who passes instruction on to the student without reciprocation. Over the years, Arendt was no longer viewed as a student, but as an intellectual equal and it is quite clear that their philosophical discussions were significant. They affected one another’s lives and scholarship mutually and profoundly.

 Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, November 23, 1957, Correspondence, 333.  Karl Jaspers, “Philosophical Autobiography,” in The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open Court Pub. Co., 1981), 67. 25  Ibid., 66. 26  Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, March 5, 1950, Correspondence, 388. 27  Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, October 13, 1956, Correspondence, 300. 28  Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, March 15, 1949, Correspondence, 134. 29  Heinrich Blücher to Karl Jaspers, September 5, 1961, Correspondence, 450. 23 24

94 

K. FRY

Arendt and Heidegger: Ebbs and Flows Arendt’s relationship with Martin Heidegger was quite different from the one with Karl Jaspers and transitioned from a love affair to estrangement, to renewed friendship, to a more distant friendship, and then finally, to a more intellectual friendship after Jaspers’ death. Arendt respected much of Heidegger’s intellectual work and continued to read all his major writings as they were published. In some ways, she thought his contributions to philosophy unparalleled in contrast to Jaspers, since she tended to criticize Jaspers’ writing more in private letters to others, though she did note that Jaspers was much better speaking in person than in writing.30 Blücher agreed with Arendt that Heidegger’s philosophy displayed quality, but that was its temptation. Though she respected Heidegger’s work, she respected Jaspers as a person more and did not shy away from saying so. When writing to her husband about her invitation to speak for Jaspers’ Peace Prize of the German Book Trade  award she acknowledged that Heidegger would understand it as picking Jaspers over him.31 Ultimately, she accepted the opportunity and discussed Karl Jaspers as a model European humanitarian. The relationship between Heidegger and Arendt involved private, personal feelings, but also a great deal of philosophical discussion. His scholarly influence upon her thought was most apparent in her dissertation on St. Augustine. In it, she analyzed Augustine’s description of different kinds of love through a Heideggerian lens, though she was critical of both thinkers on political grounds. Arendt worried that Augustine’s focus on the afterlife led to a de-emphasis on the political state of the temporal realm. Many of her criticisms of Augustine applied to Heidegger’s philosophy as well. Heidegger’s focus on authentic being-toward-death seemed largely solitary. His fascination with what he called “fundamental ontology” may cause one to ignore significant political matters. The seeds for her later criticisms of Heidegger’s work sprouted here. She completed the thesis on Augustine with Jaspers after she transferred to Heidelberg to study with him. Perhaps the political emphasis of the critique was inspired by working with Jaspers as she completed her dissertation. 30   Hannah Arendt to Kurt Blumenfeld, October 14, 1952, Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld Die Korrespondenz, eds. Ingeborg Nordmann und Iris Pilling (Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995), 68–69, 106. 31  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, May 25, 1958, Within Four Walls, 321.

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

95

Despite Heidegger’s influence on her work, she rarely mentioned him by name in her academic books and articles. There were certainly concepts and ideas that connected to Heideggerian theory in her writings, but little outright discussion referencing his name. In “What is Existenz Philosophy,” Arendt summarized both Jaspers’ and Heidegger’s theories, and favored Jaspers’ view for allowing for communications with others, rather than Heidegger’s promotion of the authenticity of Dasein that produced an isolated picture of humanity.32 Arendt also discussed Heidegger’s view of the will in The Life of the Mind. Yet, the clearest picture of her understanding of Heidegger was an article she published in 1971 titled “Heidegger at Eighty” which was a tribute to Heidegger on the occasion on his 80th birthday. Though she praised his intellectual skill and ability to ponder philosophical ideas, she also criticized him as well. Comparing Heidegger to Plato, she criticized his using abstract philosophical reasoning to address politics because it ignored the validity of different points of view. In that sense, it was undemocratic. Both Plato and Heidegger were used to thinking philosophically, not politically, and each made serious errors when trying to think practically. Heidegger’s theory was an example of how philosophical thinking had lost its way by failing to see the political implications of theory.33 Jacques Taminiaux, a scholar who knew Heidegger, focused on this idea in his book titled The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. The title for this book is based on a story that Arendt told in her last work The Life of the Mind, but also in the article written for Heidegger’s birthday. Arendt told the story from Plato’s Theaetetus, in which the Thracian maid laughed at the philosopher Thales, who was so caught up in thinking about the stars that in his obsession of looking up, he tripped and fell into a pit. Plato stated, “in his eagerness to know about the heavens, he could not see what lay at his feet.”34 Taminiaux contrasted this approach which was similar to Heidegger’s with Arendt’s love of this world which she called amor mundi. Arendt was focused on practical politics, people in relationship, and life in community.

 Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954, 186–187.  Heinrich Blücher to Hannah Arendt, March 2, 1950, Within Four Walls, 140. 34  Plato quoted by Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger, ed. and trans. Michael Gendre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 1. 32 33

96 

K. FRY

It was quite unclear to what extent, if any, Arendt’s ideas had an influence on Heidegger, but he did write to her about scholarly lectures he was developing, and he discussed philosophical topics with her.35 Also, Heidegger’s descriptions of their love relationship in his early letters to Arendt mirrored how he described authentic living from Being and Time which was the book he was writing at the time of their relationship. In 1925, Heidegger wrote: And what can we do but only—open ourselves—and allow what is to be. Let it be so that it is pure joy to us and the wellspring of every new living day. Elated about being who we are.36

In later life, Heidegger claimed that his years in Marburg from 1923 to 1928 were the most stimulating and eventful of his life.37 This was particularly interesting since during the time he was living in Marburg, his letters to Karl Jaspers showed dissatisfaction with the place, a frustration with his students, and a perpetual interest in jobs at other universities. He later confessed to Arendt that his fond memories of Marburg had something to do with their relationship.38 Despite this admission, most biographies of Heidegger have minimal coverage of Arendt, whereas discussions of Arendt’s life and thought are permeated with Heidegger’s influence. Once Arendt heard of Heidegger’s acceptance of the rector position at Freiburg and his decision to join the Nazi party, their conversations ended for 17 years until she returned to Europe once more. This was a large gap in communication and a very troubled one, since Arendt did not feel like she could trust Heidegger or his political judgment. Years later, Arendt traveled to Freiburg three months into her European trip to trace some essential leads for the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction organization she was heading. She was indecisive about meeting Heidegger again, but wrote a note to him from her hotel, with the unsigned message “I am here.”39 Heidegger came to the hotel immediately. Heidegger romanticized about this visit for years to come, writing her a great deal of poetry, and referring to the date specifically in letters. Over the course of the  Ursula Lutz, Letters 1925–1975, 222.  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, May 9, 1925, Letters, 19. 37  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 50. Walter Biemal, Martin Heidegger: An Illustrated Study (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 15. 38  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 50. 39  Derwent May, Hannah Arendt (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986), 76. 35 36

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

97

following year, Heidegger sent her more than 25 poems, gushing about their reunion. According to Hans Jonas, Heidegger said to Arendt “I came to turn myself in.”40 For Heidegger, it was significant that Arendt used the informal Du in their first meeting.41 Arendt asserted that this meeting was important to her as well, what she called “the confirmation of an entire life”.42 She reported to Blücher that she thought that they had a “real talk, I think, for the first time in our lives.”43 The next day, Arendt visited Heidegger at home and exchanged words with his wife, Elfride. Elfride had been told about the affair after some time of silence on Heidegger’s part.44 The meeting ended well from Heidegger’s perspective and he thought there was a “spontaneous harmony” between his wife and Arendt, but Arendt understood it very differently and complained about Elfride’s antisemitism.45 In a letter to Blücher, Arendt explained that Elfride conducted their first discussion as if 25 years had not passed and she was very jealous that Arendt was the passion of Heidegger’s life and the inspiration for his work.46 What kind of influence this was upon his academic work was unclear but the parties involved seemed to think it was significant. Arendt said that Elfride Heidegger hated her and would be ready to drown any Jew in sight. Unfortunately, she is absolutely horrendous. But I’m going to try to diffuse things as much as I can.”47

She was successful in this task. Heidegger’s memory of the same encounter was: That you came, that what grew close in us became the closest closeness; that Elfride was helpful with all of it, that our love needs her love; that everything, including your safe return home is reflected, clarified, and validated in everything else.48 40  Hans Jonas, Brian Fox, and Richard Wolin, “Hannah Arendt: An Intimate Portrait,” New England Review 27, No. 2 (1990):136. 41  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, March 19, 1950, Letters, 71. 42  Hannah Arendt to Martin Heidegger, February 9, 1950, Letters, 59. 43  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, February 8, 1950, Within Four Walls, 128. 44  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, February 8, 1950, Letters, 58. 45  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, February 15, 1950, Letters, 65. Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, February 8, 1950, Within Four Walls, 128. 46  Ibid. 47  Ibid. 48  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, April 12, 1950, Letters, 74.

98 

K. FRY

Heidegger was pleased that his wife knew the truth and he thought that with Arendt’s assistance, his marriage had improved.49 Many of Heidegger’s letters to Arendt after this point included best wishes from his wife. Arendt arranged a second visit to see Heidegger again before leaving for the United States. Despite being pleased to reconnect with Heidegger, she had reservations and noted to Blücher that Heidegger was a notorious liar, but he had claimed she was the passion of his life, despite his problematic political associations.50 Throughout the spring and summer of 1950, Heidegger’s letters to Arendt were very intimate. Arendt enclosed some pages of her essay on the guilt of the German people for the couple to read, which Heidegger called “fierce and courageous.”51 Despite the renewed connection between Heidegger and Arendt, Heidegger’s notebooks from the early 1930s show that Heidegger had overt antisemitic beliefs, yet Arendt’s understanding of how deeply this went was limited.52 Arendt stayed in correspondence with Heidegger for the rest of her life, including sending him photographs, books, and records of classical music, and he also sent her pictures and copies of his academic writings. Arendt helped in the process of getting Heidegger’s works translated into English which affected the reach of his work. Eventually, their correspondence became less passionate, less frequent, and more straight forwardly friendly by the fall of 1950. Yet, unlike her friendship with Jaspers which was a constant and deepening force in her life, the Heidegger relationship went through many ebbs and flows. Many of Heidegger’s early letters and the letters right after their meeting again in 1950 were intimate and filled with passionate poetry. Then, years would go by without contact or visits between them. Partly, this was due to the antisemitism and jealousy of Heidegger’s wife Elfride. For some years, Arendt refused to be around her, though they became more cordial later. But there were other complications as well. Heidegger discussed his work with Arendt, but rarely expressed interest in hers. Heidegger’s comments about her work on the guilt of the German people as being courageous and fierce was a rare compliment. Heidegger made sure she got copies of his books as they came out, but Arendt sensed that Heidegger was not happy that she had had  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, August 2, 1941, Within Four Walls, 71.  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, February 8, 1950, Within Four Walls, 128. 51  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, February 15, 1950, Letters, 64. 52  Peter Trawny, Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy, trans. Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), 13. 49 50

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

99

some success. Writing to Blücher regarding an offer for a visiting lectureship at Princeton in 1958, she stated: “Jaspers will be pleased and Heidegger less pleased but I don’t care.”53 Perhaps what best exemplifies her intellectual relationships with her former teachers was the fact that Jaspers wrote the preface to the German version of The Origins of Totalitarianism, while Arendt doubted that Heidegger would ever read it.54 As her fame grew, she partially blamed herself for Heidegger’s ambivalence toward her because she was not intellectually honest with Heidegger about her own abilities.55 She admitted to Gertrud and Karl Jaspers that she pretended to be less intellectually talented than she actually was during their time together in Marburg. When she tired of the game and refused to pretend, she felt Heidegger’s bad reaction was understandable.56 After Jaspers died in 1969, and Blücher died in 1970, the contact between Arendt and Heidegger picked up again, as if Arendt needed a German philosopher to talk to who had shared her past. They wrote each other more often and she visited him more frequently. The letters were largely philosophical and intellectual at this time. They often discussed details of Heidegger’s works being translated into English and she wrote to him of her work on The Life of the Mind which included an examination of the will in Heidegger’s work. They recommended books to one another. Heidegger seemed to partially replace the role of Jaspers in her life at this time, by sharing intellectual ideas with her. Although it is difficult to disentangle how each influenced the other, they shared a friendship that involved philosophical discussions and impacted the intellectual and scholarly pursuits of each other to some degree.

Jaspers and Heidegger: Friendship Disintegrated The missing piece that is often ignored in Arendt scholarship is the close friendship that Jaspers and Heidegger shared before the War and before either of them knew Hannah Arendt. The two friends often visited each other and spent stretches of time discussing each other’s theories. Heidegger and Jaspers valued this personal and intellectual friendship. They exchanged roughly 120 letters between the years of 1920 and 1935.  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, May 18, 1952, Within Four Walls, 173.  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, Mid-September, Within Four Walls, 273. 55  Hannah Arendt to Gertrud and Karl Jaspers, November 1, 1961, Correspondence, 457. 56  Ibid. 53 54

100 

K. FRY

When visiting Jaspers, Heidegger wrote to his wife that “I get on well with J[aspers]. I am acquiring new insights & learning a lot—in terms of material.”57 At this time, Heidegger respected Jaspers for his modesty and the fact that he was a man of action.58 Intellectually, they saw commonality in their work. Jaspers’ limit situations, or experiences that pushed people to higher levels of insight through heightened guilt, anxiety, or despair clearly influenced Heidegger’s understanding of being-toward-death.59 In particular, Jaspers’ interpretation of Kierkegaard affected Heidegger, though both were also critical of each other’s work at times. Heidegger wrote a critical review of Psychologie der Weltanschauungen in the 1920s but did not allow it to be published until 1973 out of friendship. Personally, they shared details of the politics of academia and the struggle to gain appointments at more prestigious universities. In the beginning, Jaspers was so enthusiastic about meeting Heidegger that he loaned him travel money to make the trip to discuss their work.60 After their friendship deteriorated, Heidegger hoped to renew ties with Jaspers and asked Arendt’s advice about how to manage it. Arendt encouraged reunion on both sides, but over time, she realized it was not going to happen. The main source of trouble was the reason Heidegger had severed contact with Jaspers in 1933 leading to the downfall of their friendship. Heidegger had spread the rumor that he had cut off contact because Jaspers had plagiarized from him.61 Jaspers considered the situation quite differently, knowing it had nothing to do with suspected plagiarism. Jaspers wrote to Heidegger that he did not suspect the reason for cutting off relations was because Jaspers’ wife, Gertrud, was Jewish, but Jaspers had no explanation and clearly wanted a more truthful answer from Heidegger.62 In a letter to his wife Elfride from 1933, Heidegger communicated that he thought Jaspers was able to see our work and “destiny” 57  Martin Heidegger to Elfride Heidegger, September 11, 1922, Letters to His Wife: 1915–1970, ed. Gertrud Heidegger, trans. R.D.V. Glasgow (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 104. 58  Martin Heidegger to Elfride Heidegger, October 22, 1925, Letters to His Wife, 86. 59  William D.  Blattner, “Heidegger’s Debt to Jaspers’ Concept of the Limit-Situation,” Heidegger & Jaspers, ed. Alan M. Olson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 155. 60  Karl Jaspers to Martin Heidegger, November 24, 1922, and June 20, 1923, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence (1920–1963), eds. Walter Biemel and Hans Saner, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), 42, 45. 61  Walter Biemel and Hans Saner in The Heidegger Jaspers Correspondence, 277. 62   Karl Jaspers to Martin Heidegger, March 19, 1950, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence, 86.

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

101

in “a thoroughly German way” and yet was “tied down by his wife,” suggesting that this may have been the reason that Heidegger broke off contact.63 Heidegger sought forgiveness in later years and continued to follow Jaspers’ work. Jaspers compared Heidegger to a dreaming boy, so caught up with National Socialism that he didn’t know what he was doing. Heidegger agreed with this assessment of his behavior.64 After the War, Jaspers’ letter to the Freiburg’s de-Nazification commission recommended that Heidegger be suspended from teaching, but Jaspers suggested a pension for continued research. Clearly, Jaspers valued Heidegger’s intellectual work, but worried about his presence in the classroom. However, Jaspers was also suspicious of Heidegger’s philosophical work at times, wondering in a letter to Arendt whether someone with an impure soul—that is, a soul that is unaware of its own impurity and isn’t constantly trying to expel it but continues to live thoughtlessly in filth—can someone lying in that kind of dishonesty perceive what is purest?65

In 1950, Heidegger tried to defend his actions and explained to Jaspers that he was caught up in the power of being rector, did not understand the implications on the ground, and stressed that he had made the Nazi blacklist by the end of the War.66 Jaspers was not satisfied with these excuses and waited two years to respond. Jaspers wrote back in 1952. Jaspers was angered by Heidegger’s explanation and stated that Heidegger’s philosophy was implicated by failing to take the political seriously. In this letter, Jaspers referenced Hannah’s outstanding book The Origins of Totalitarianism and contrasted it to Heidegger’s poetic philosophizing making the way for Hitler.67 Heidegger asked Arendt for advice concerning this letter and how to respond.68 After this point, Heidegger and Jaspers exchanged only the occasional birthday greetings. What was once  Martin Heidegger to Elfride Heidegger, March 19, 1933, Letters to His Wife, 141.   Martin Heidegger to Karl Jaspers, April 8, 1950, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence, 188. 65  Karl Jaspers to Hannah Arendt, September 1, 1949, Correspondence,140. 66  Martin Heidegger to Karl Jaspers, April 8, 1950, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence, 188–192. 67   Karl Jaspers to Martin Heidegger, July 24, 1952, The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence, 197. 68  Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, December 13, 1952, Letters, 113. 63 64

102 

K. FRY

a significant intellectual, personal, and profession relationship had disintegrated into a distant and fraught one. In her letters, Heidegger and Jaspers were often thought of together in Arendt’s mind, nicknaming them “Freiberg” and “Basel,” and Arendt’s letters mention the two together, as “the philosophers.” Arendt was not the only one of the three for whom this was true. Heidegger remained a central topic of discussion for Jaspers and Arendt throughout the 1950s, just as Jaspers was discussed in letters between Heidegger and Arendt. Arendt and Jaspers wrote about their broken friendships with Heidegger frequently and both felt betrayed. Jaspers worried about whether he had facilitated Heidegger’s turn to National Socialism by not considering his connection to it more seriously at the time. The letters were haunted by the one who was no longer there. Jaspers did not see Heidegger again after 1933 and their friendship was forever broken. Arendt, on the other hand, initiated contact with Heidegger in 1950. Consequently, when dealing with her former teachers, Arendt was often in the middle. At first, she tried to bring the two together, but lamented that “my philosophers cause me much grief.”69 Later, she gave up, understanding there was no hope. In 1956, when she was close to being presented with an ultimatum by Jaspers to no longer see Heidegger, she reacted with anger and told him that she did not respond to ultimatums.70 Jaspers backed away from his threat. Her husband, Blücher, thought it was a pity that the philosophers didn’t get along better. He wrote to Arendt in 1952, “Life is short, and philosophy is long.”71 Arendt was able to tolerate Heidegger more than Jaspers was able to. When asked by her friend, Hans Jonas, how she could forgive Heidegger, he claims she responded that “love can forgive a great deal.”72 However, intellectually and personally, she spent more time with Jaspers who was more of a constant in her life.

 Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, April 24, 1952, Within Four Walls, 162.  Hannah Arendt to Heinrich Blücher, October 31, 1956, Within Four Walls, 309. 71  Heinrich Blücher to Hannah Arendt, May 24, 1952, Within Four Walls, 177. 72  Hans Jonas, Memoirs: Hans Jonas, ed. Christian Wiese, trans. Krishna Winston (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2008), 63. 69 70

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

103

Influences Overall, Arendt scholarship tends to focus on the hierarchical and overpowering relationship between Heidegger and Arendt, though this is beginning to change.73 Nonetheless, many more articles and books sought out the intellectual influence of Heideggerian concepts on Arendt’s work, reinforcing a model of intellectual influence in which the famous teacher infected the student with one’s views, which was only exacerbated when the figures involved were romantically entangled.74 However, the private letters of Heidegger, Jaspers, and Arendt suggested a mutual influence. Rather than picking Jaspers as a primary factor on Arendt’s work, which would be easy to do as she asserted this herself, it was clear that both thinkers affected her, but she also had an influence upon them as well. This was not to mention the countless others who impacted Arendt’s ideas or whom she affected over the course of her career. Furthermore, Jaspers and Heidegger had a great effect on one another, at least initially. Instead of reinforcing the common view that philosophical influence concerned a progenitor from philosophical parent to child, particularly when the parent is male and the student female, a better model recognizes mutual influence. While teacher/student relationships began hierarchically, often they transitioned over time, particularly when the figures involved remained in each other’s lives and continued to grow philosophically. At least in this case, philosophical influence was dynamic and reciprocal. These three thinkers affected one another personally and professionally. To suggest that knowledge flowed in one direction from the more powerful teacher to the forever weaker student was simplistic and perpetuated a myth about how philosophical talent arose that was often gendered. As their private letters showed, each person influenced the lives and philosophies of the others deeply. The influence occurred in different ways, but was mutual, and a better model of philosophical influence would acknowledge this fact.

73  Lewis P.  Hinchman and Sandra K.  Hinchman, “Existentialism Politicized: Arendt’s Debt to Jaspers,” The Review of Politics 53, No. 3 (1991), 435–468. Antonia Grunenberg, “Arendt, Heidegger, Jaspers: Thinking Through the Breach in the Tradition,” Social Research 74, No. 4 (2007): 1003–1028, Shmuel Lederman “Philosophy, Politics and Participatory Democracy in Hannah Arendt’s Thought,” History of Political Thought 37, no. 3 (Autumn 2016), 480–508. 74  Tom Rockmore pointed out in Heidegger & Jaspers that there was a connection between Heidegger and Jaspers and their student Hannah Arendt, but it had been “studied in detail, is interesting, but not apparently important philosophically” (Tom Rockmore, “Jaspers and Heidegger: Philosophy and Politics,” in Heidegger & Jaspers, ed. Alan M. Olson [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994], 97).

104 

K. FRY

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, Totalitarianism. Edited by Jerome Kohn. United States of America: Schocken, 1994. ———. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. ———. The Portable Arendt. ed. Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000. Arendt, Hannah and Blücher, Heinrich. Within Four Walls: The Correspondence Between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968. Edited by Lotte Kohler. Translated by Peter Constantine. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1996. Arendt, Hannah and Blumenfeld, Kurt. Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld: Die Korrespondenz. Edited by Ingeborg Nordmann and Iris Pilling. Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995. Arendt, Hannah and Heidegger, Martin. Letters: 1925–1975. Edited by Ursula Lutz. Translated by Andrew Shields. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2004. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969. Edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992. Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Biemal, Walter. Martin Heidegger: An Illustrated Study. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Blattner, William D. “Heidegger’s Debt to Jaspers’ Concept of the Limit-­ Situation.” In Heidegger &Jaspers. Edited by Alan M.  Olson, 153–165. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. Daigle, Christine and Golomb, Jacob, eds. Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Fullbrook, Edward and Fullbrook, Kate. Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking de Beauvoir and Sartre. London: Continuum, 2008. Heidegger, Martin. Letters to His Wife: 1915–1970, Edited by Gertrud Heidegger. Translated by R.D.V. Glasgow. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Heidegger, Martin and Jaspers, Karl. The Heidegger-Jaspers Correspondence (1920–1963), Edited by Walter Biemel and Hans Saner. Translated by Gary E. Aylesworth. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003. Hinchman, Lewis P. and Hinchman, Sandra K. “Existentialism Politicized: Arendt’s Debt to Jaspers.” The Review of Politics 53, No. 3 (1991): 435–468. Jaspers, Karl. “Philosophical Autobiography.” In The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 5–94. La Salle, IL: Open Court Pub. Co., 1981. Jonas, Hans. Memoirs: Hans Jonas. Edited by Christian Wiese. Translated by Krishna Winston. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2008.

5  JASPERS, HEIDEGGER, AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE 

105

Jonas, Hans, Fox, Brian and Wolin, Richard. “Hannah Arendt: An Intimate Portrait.” New England Review, 27, no.2 (2006): 133–142. Lederman, Shmuel. “Philosophy, Politics and Participatory Democracy in Hannah Arendt’s Thought,” History of Political Thought 37, no.3 (Autumn 2016): 480–508. May, Derwent. Hannah Arendt. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986. Nenadic, Natalie. “Heidegger, Arendt, and Eichmann in Jerusalem.” Comparative & Continental Philosophy 5, no 1 (2013): 36–48. Rockmore, Tom. “Jaspers and Heidegger: Philosophy and Politics.” In Heidegger & Jaspers. Edited by Alan M.  Olson, 92–110. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Taminiaux, Jacques. The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. Edited and translated by Michael Gendre. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Trawny, Peter. Freedom to Fail: Heidegger’s Anarchy, Translated by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner. Cambridge: Polity, 2015. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

CHAPTER 6

Political Action and Group Action

Hannah Arendt was known for her interest in politics, political theory, and philosophy, but her thought was not easily categorized or labeled. In 1972, Arendt attended a conference on her work organized by the Toronto Society for the Study of Social and Political Thought. The question-and-­ answer period discussion was documented. Arendt was asked directly if she was a conservative or a liberal. She responded that she didn’t know and that she didn’t have an interest in the topic. She added: I don’t belong to any group. You know the only group I ever belonged to were the Zionists. And this was from 1933 to 1943. And after that I broke. This was only because of Hitler, of course. The only possibility was to fight back as a Jew and not as a human being—which I thought was a great mistake, because if you are attacked as a Jew you have got to fight back as a Jew.1

She concluded that she was never a socialist, Communist, or a liberal either.2 In an interview with Roger Errera in 1973, she stated that her overall political philosophy could not be summed up in an ism.3 Throughout her life, Arendt did not have an affinity for joining political groups, identifying as a member of a political group, and she did not think 1  Hannah Arendt, Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding 1953–1976, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2018), 470. 2  Ibid., 471. 3  Ibid., 497.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_6

107

108 

K. FRY

her political theory was easily categorized into a school of thought. She also rejected being a Zionist after the War. She told Gershom Scholem in a letter that if she “hailed from anywhere at all, it was from German philosophy.”4 Arendt not only avoided political group membership, but also claimed she was not suited for politics. While it is true that her overall theory promoted the idea that people should be politically active and it was dangerous to avoid politics, puzzlingly, she did not think everyone should be political, and in fact, understood herself as someone who was not temperamentally suited for politics. Arendt stated: “I have acted in my life a few times because I couldn’t help it. But that is not what my primary impulse is.”5 She claimed that by nature she was not an actor, but a thinker, and she described thinking as being very different from acting.6 In The Life of the Mind, Arendt described thinking as speculative, motivated by wonder, and connected to philosophy and eternal questions which pursued meaning and answers that could not be attained conclusively.7 Thinking was a solitary activity which required a withdrawal into oneself and differed greatly from action which was done in public and required others.8 Given her interest in politics and its urgency, the fact that she was not drawn to acting was surprising. Certainly, she fought against political oppression throughout her life. This included documenting antisemitism in Berlin for the Zionists, helping fund youth immigration with Youth Aliyah, recovering artifacts and books after the War, chairing the Spanish Refugee Aid organization in 1960, and she was a founding member of the National Committee for an Effective Congress that was part of the anti-McCarthy movement, but she did not think of herself as a direct political actor or

4  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, July 20, 1963, in The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, ed. Marie Luise Knott, trans. Anthony David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 206. 5  Ibid., 444. Emphasis mine. 6  Ibid., 447. 7  Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1978), 61, 143. 8  Ibid., 92.

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

109

professional activist.9 The closest she came to being a political actor was her work with Judas Magnes Foundation seeking a bi-national solution to the Palestine issue in 1948, but this did not last long. She participated in some of the discussions about the formation of the state of Israel and was asked to lead the organization after Magnes died, but she stated she could not. She said she was easily disgusted, lacked the patience needed for political maneuvering, and did not have the discipline to remain aloof, which she thought was required for politics.10 Furthermore, she believed it would interfere with her written work.11 She also disliked the glare of publicity and the inability to retreat to her private world. Once the Eichmann controversy was in full swing, she told Jaspers that she was labeled a “celebrity” and that she felt like “an animal with all routes of access blocked off—I can’t be myself any longer, because no one will take me as I am. Everyone knows better.” 12 Arendt believed there was a difference between thinking and acting and she felt more comfortable with thinking. In fact, she stated that she hated faculty meetings because of their political overtones.13 Her friend Jack Blum asserted that instead of politics, “she was much more focused on academics.”14 Mary McCarthy discussed that even though Arendt talked about politics all the time, she wasn’t politically active in the sense of “going to meetings, signing petitions and manifestos, or marching in demonstrations,” particularly after Hitler was defeated.15 In general, Arendt felt more inclined to theoretical work and acted only at

9  Alexander R. Bazelow and Ursula Ludz, “On Hannah Arendt as Political Actor: Some Findings and a Proposition,” HannahArendt.Net 8, no. 1 (2016): 192, https://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/350. Roger Berkowitz, “Remembering Hannah: An Interview with Jack Blum,” in Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics, eds. Roger Berkowitz, Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Keenan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 263. 10  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 233. 11  Ibid. 12  Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, February 19, 1965, in Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969, eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1985), 583. 13  Jack Blum in “Remembering Hannah: An Interview with Jack Blum.” Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. Roger Berkowitz, Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Keenan, eds. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 265. 14  Ibid., 264. 15  Mary McCarthy, “Hannah Arendt and Politics,” Partisan Review 1 (1985): 729, 731.

110 

K. FRY

times when she felt “forced” to do it because of the importance or urgency of the situation. For the most part, Arendt was not a member of a group and not political. These two facts about her life are not often considered by scholars, but when viewed together, provide insight into how Arendt understood political action overall.16 At the conference in Toronto, Arendt stated: I really believe that you can only act in concert and I really believe that you can only think by yourself. These are two entirely different—if you want to call it so—existential positions.17

Given that action involved joining with others and thinking required being alone, it made sense that she did not view herself as political. Yet, Arendt was not asocial. She entertained all the time and had countless numbers of friends, but this did not involve her having to organize them into a group to participate politically. The solitary world of thought was where Arendt devoted her time. Writing occurred mainly alone though it could be fueled by conversations with other scholars like Jaspers and responses to public presentations of her work. Politics was different because it often involved committing to working with others in engaged action which sometimes required joining a group. Interestingly, these comments connecting political action so directly to group membership have not been examined extensively by Arendt scholars. Understandably, scholars relied more heavily on Arendt’s formal written texts, which as Lenka Ucnik explained, did not have a particularly fixed notion of political action other than it being a space of free debate and disagreement among people with multiple perspectives.18 Arendt’s descriptions of political action were relatively open and allowed scholars to stress different emphases when trying to understand what political action was for her. Though most scholars acknowledged that political action occurred in public and among others, many scholars prioritized the individual actor 16  Bazelow and Ludz have a good article on this topic and call Arendt a “subversive” intellectual whose academic work could agitate politically, making her more political than she was given credit for. They also note the fact that for a time, she was under surveillance by the FBI (188, 198–200). 17  Hannah Arendt, Thinking Without a Banister, 445. 18  Lenka Ucnik, “Hannah Arendt’s Action and Contemplation: Two Sides of the Same Coin.” Journal of Social Philosophy July 16, 2021: 6, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.1111/josp.12431

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

111

who agonistically became a “who” through words and deeds in the public realm as representing action for Arendt. This gave the impression that the actor initiated action alone, was alone when acting, and that others related to action mainly as audience members or witnesses, rather than as fellow actors participating in group action. Certainly, The Human Condition gave this impression. Alternatively, some have stressed the importance of speech and acting in concert with others. While this second view more clearly included people engaging in politics together rather than alone, it also sometimes downplayed the possibility that people may have gathered for an explicit purpose and were united in action regarding a cause or issue prior to acting together. These scholars often suggested  that politics involved people who wanted to discuss political issues generally and were engaged to do so no matter what issues were at play. What is often underemphasized in scholarly literature was the idea that politics could also be connected to group membership and collective action, and the role of the group was a potentially an important facet of politics. There are some isolated instances of scholars relating Arendt’s work to collective action.19 For example, Anthony F. Lang, Jr. examined Arendt’s theory in relationship to the political protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. Lang argued that the protests cohered with Arendt’s ideas about political action since individuals and groups were able to create new forms of identity during this action, but this kind of analysis of collective action  was rare.20 One of the reasons Arendt did not think she was suited for politics had to do with her lack of desire to join, manage, and work within groups. Acknowledging the significance of the political group for Arendt broadens our understanding of action in Arendt’s theory and expands our understanding of the political possibilities within her work.

Arendt and Action Often, scholars focused on The Human Condition to understand Arendt’s concept of political action. In this book, Arendt explained the political action of individuals who were plural or were different from one another, 19  See also Dowdy, Michael “Live Hip Hop, Collective Agency, and ‘Acting in Concert,’” Popular Music and Society 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 75–91. 20  Anthony F.  Lang, Jr., “Governance and Political Action: Hannah Arendt on Global Political Protest,” in Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Readings Across the Lines, eds. Anthony F.  Lang, Jr. and John Williams (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 179–198.

112 

K. FRY

but still equal. Political actors disclosed themselves and their uniqueness through the words and deeds of political action. Particularly, when Arendt discussed the disclosure of the agent or the fact that one becomes a “who” instead of being a “what” through acting politically, she used a singular subject noun, and gave the impression that the actor acted alone and distinguished oneself alone.21 She equated acting to being like a second birth and grounded it in natality, or the miraculous potential of each individual life. This implied singularity in action since the individual began something new alone in much the way birth begins alone.22 The actor was described as a hero, an agent, and the action could be told in a story, just like “every individual life between birth and death can eventually be told as a story.”23 Arendt also used Achilles as the example of the hero who chose a short life of greatness by disclosing himself in his action.24 This model of a heroic Greek actor implied that action was agonistic and individualistic. Given these types of descriptions, it was understandable why action was discussed as primarily an individual event by many. Yet, even though action was much more commonly considered in the singular in The Human Condition, Arendt also presented the possibility of group action with the occasional use of the plural verb “men.” As jarring as it is from a feminist point of view to see the plural masculinized, the word “men” is plural and introduced the prospect of people acting together. Arendt stated that in “acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world.”25 Also in The Human Condition, Arendt described people acting together in concert, or in other words, as part of a group with common interests that created power.26 Typically, Arendt discussed action from the point of view of an individual actor in The Human Condition, but the possibility of action occurring in groups was not excluded entirely in this book. Because the passages from The Human Condition contained the most detail about Arendt’s concept of political action, Arendt scholars tended 21  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 186. 22  Ibid., 176–7. 23  Ibid., 184. 24  Ibid., 193. 25  Ibid., 179. After this statement, Arendt moved quickly back to the singular noun to discuss the disclosure of the actor. 26  Ibid., 244.

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

113

to emphasize the self-disclosive nature of action and often described it whether intentionally or not, as occurring by an individual alone and without commitment to a political group. For example, Margaret Canovan focused on Arendt’s model of Achilles and described political action as bestowing “significance upon the life of man as a unique individual.”27 Doomed to mortality, Canovan thought that action allowed someone to be remembered beyond the individual life.28 Further, Canovan raised the issue about how this political model could work large scale and worried about whether it was stretching Arendt’s categories too far by including public spaces that involved direct group action.29 Dana Villa acknowledged other people were present to witness action, but stressed the virtuosity and performance of the individual actor.30 He stated that “[a]ction, performance, initiation, virtuosity, greatness” pointed to a required agonal spirit in which the actor distinguished himself, which according to Villa, was far from a model of deliberative politics.31 Jacques Taminiaux described action as “that by which a singular individual exhibits who he or she is,” though he thought it was interpersonal to the extent that it involved speech.32 Anna Yeatman asserted that action involved individuality for Arendt and claimed that individuality could not be applied to collectivities or groups.33 George Kateb also stressed the authenticity of political action and described it as emphasizing individual virtues, memorability, and distinctiveness, implying that it concerned primarily what could be attained by an individual actor on her own.34 In Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts, Paul Voice described action as “something undertaken by a person,” and

27  Margaret Canovan, The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), 60. 28  Ibid. 29  Ibid., 76–77. 30  Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 31, 45, 54–55. 31  Ibid., 54. 32  Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Political Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 85. 33  Anna Yeatman, “Individuality and Politics: Thinking with and Beyond Hannah Arendt,” in Action and Appearance: Ethics and the Politics of Writing in Hannah Arendt, eds. Anna Yeatman et al. (New York: Continuum, 2011), 75. 34  George Kateb, “Political Action: Its Nature and Advantages,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. Dana Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 130–148.

114 

K. FRY

stressed how action individualized people.35 While these scholars acknowledged that action took place in public and related to others through speech and as audience members, they nonetheless often described political action itself as occurring individually and outside of group membership. The various facets of action in The Human Condition like it being heroic, involving immorality, being like a second birth, and being able to be told in a story, just like “every individual life between birth and death can eventually be told as a story,” lent credence to the view that action was done by a stellar individual who acted alone and without membership in a group.36 The most important feature seemed to be the fact that action disclosed a person in his or her uniqueness and therefore, seemed to occur alone. What these types of descriptions ignored was that Arendt also had very positive things to say about group action and the possibility of political action occurring with others and in group. Further, this interpretation might suggest a picture of action involving rugged and stellar individuals participating politically, rather than acknowledging other modes of politics involving more cooperation and joint action between people. Other scholars who investigated Arendt’s theory stressed a deliberative or communicative model of action like Seyla Benhabib and Jürgen Habermas. These scholars highlighted the spoken and communicative aspects of action in Arendt’s theory.37 Habermas stressed that action for Arendt produced a common will that reached agreement between people through communication.38 Politics involved attaining this agreement through speech. Benhabib, noted that Arendt thought action was “linguistically structured,” and it was crucial that it be able to be narrated in speech.39 For Benhabib, action occurred in public, which allowed people to build cohesion around the interpretation of an event, which she called the holistic function of action.40 She stated that the public space of action also had an epistemic function in judgment and allowed individuals to give 35  Paul Voice, “Labour, Work and Action,” in Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts, ed. Patrick Hayden (Durham: Acumen, 2014), 44, emphasis mine. 36  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 184. 37  Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power,” in Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, eds. Lewis P.  Hinchman and Sandra K.  Hinchman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 224. 38  Ibid., 212. 39  Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 199. 40  Ibid., 201.

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

115

reasons for their viewpoints and the space to entertain another person’s point of view.41 Stressing narrative, Benhabib acknowledged that people participated politically together and believed action concerned mainly face to face discussions.42 All action was narrative for Benhabib, but she made a distinction between agonal singular performance-oriented actions that occurred on the occasions when a principle or virtue shines forth in a person’s action and discussion-oriented actions involving more than one actor and mutual deliberation.43 Benhabib’s description of action included a wider variety of options for action with the potential for people to discuss political issues and problems in addition to the stellar activity by individuals. However, the picture described by Benhabib was not one of collective group action particularly but one that focused on deliberation. While Benhabib’s description of action did not exclude collective action inspired by group membership, it also did not describe it as an overt possibility. Benhabib’s interpretation of Arendt stressed negotiation, discussion, and promise making as people worked toward a consensus about politics, rather than action being inspired by people who joined a group and were united behind a cause from the beginning. Though political group members must also discuss their aims and purposes to build consensus as well, the action described by Benhabib tended to focus on group discussions about politics in general. The scholars who stressed the communicative aspects of action for Arendt did not typically discuss group members working collectively through direct action united behind a cause, but rather, described exchanging viewpoints with others, seemingly about politics in general, including ideas about the common good, discussing the ways past action should be judged for the community, or perhaps discussing the establishment of or alterations to a constitution. In my view, individual action, action through deliberation about politics in general, discussion about judging past actions, deliberation about the fundamentals of a constitution, and group collective actions are among the possibilities for political action for Arendt. Political action could take place in a variety of ways. To emphasize one form of action to the extent that it seemed to exclude or overshadow the others entirely narrows the field too much and limits the breadth of political action possible in Arendt’s theory.

 Ibid.  Ibid. 43  Ibid., 129–30. 41 42

116 

K. FRY

Maurizio Passerin D’Entrèves discussed the contrasting interpretations of Arendt’s idea of political action by dividing scholars into those who viewed action as expressive and performative and those who emphasized a deliberative or communicative interpretation. In general, the scholars from the performance position stressed individual action as described in The Human Condition while those in the deliberative camp stressed action as deliberation and discussion from Arendt’s On Revolution. D’Entrèves believed that Arendt was not able to reconcile these two views, though he preferred the communicative interpretation as a starting point.44 Interestingly, D’Entrèves tended to discuss even the performative aspects of action in the plural and was one of the few scholars to do so.45 However, this view involving two interpretations of action that cannot be reconciled was not entirely convincing, nor was it necessary. First, there was ample evidence that Arendt thought action entailed both words and deeds, or discussion and performance throughout her career. Second, there was no real need to divide these aspects of action because it could be possible for them to coexist at the same time or complement one another by describing different types of action. Shmuel Lederman argued convincingly, that “to discuss things with others and to cooperate with them is essentially not at all different from appearing and trying to excel before them.”46 For Lederman, Arendt did not change her view but had a consistent view throughout her writings since action involved both aspects. Rather than focusing on these two interpretations of action, Arendt’s concept of political action could be understood more broadly, stressing different emphases depending upon what is taking place. Certainly, a political situation involving the creation of a new constitution is different from a more performative action within an already established political system. Arendt’s discussion of political group membership adds collective and cause inspired action as a possibility that did not seem to be able to be addressed entirely by views that stress individual performance or discussion. Though action may occur individually or include discussion and 44  Maurizio Passerin D’Entrèves, The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt (London: Routledge, 1994), 166. 45  Ibid., 73. Kei Hiruta also emphasizes the fact that action always occurs in concert with others, stressing that the “performer” of the action is one among a company (Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics, and Humanity [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021], 68). 46   Shmuel Lederman, “Agonism and Deliberation in Arendt,” Constellations 21 (2014): 334.

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

117

debate about politics and how it should function, there was an equally important tendency within Arendt’s work to describe action as springing from political group membership, which has been largely ignored in relation to Arendt’s thought. Sometimes, actors may have committed to a cause that bound them together as the source or origin of their action that occurred collectively.

Arendt and the Group Before discussing the potential for political group action in Arendt’s work, it is worthwhile to examine the types of groups that Arendt criticized precisely because they failed to be political in the correct way. Not all groups counted as political ones for Arendt. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt discussed “the mob,” or mass men who allowed totalitarianism to thrive. The totalitarian “mob” was a particular kind of non-political group for Arendt. They were not individuals with genuine differing political opinions based on principle, but followed propaganda and were only likely to be politically engaged during tyrannical or totalitarian regimes. Unlike political groups, the masses did not have common interests for any cause, but blindly supported the propaganda of the party. They did not seek to persuade others of the value of their views, they were not open to other viewpoints, nor were they concerned for the common good. She stated: The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties or municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions. Potentially, they exist in every country and from the majority of those large numbers of neutral, politically indifferent people who never join a party and hardly ever go to the polls.47

When discussing the Nazis, Arendt stated that usually, the masses consisted of people who had not participated politically before and were not interested in politics. Totalitarians did not try to persuade citizens through speech or argument but used methods that were not political in Arendt’s view and involved terror that “ended in death rather than persuasion.”48 47  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1973), 311. 48  Ibid., 312.

118 

K. FRY

Whereas Western democracy tended to promote the illusion that the indifferent masses were in the minority in most societies and were neutral parties, what Nazi Germany exposed for Arendt was the larger than expected numbers of the normally indifferent and how the totalitarian movements could organize and manipulate them. She believed that totalitarians capitalized on mob mentality by organizing these “atomized, isolated individuals,” into units that supported the regime.49 Their loyalty was “total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable.”50 The groups of opinion-­ less isolated individuals were loyal to the cause and unlike actors who disclosed themselves, the masses yearned to be a cogs in the machine.51 Whereas disclosure of uniqueness occurred in political action for Arendt, this did not occur for the mass men. Political group membership differed from these cases since free speech and diversity of opinion remained in political groups despite being committed to a particular cause. The mass men were mere puppets of the regime, rather than people who displayed plurality or committed to anything outside of the uncritically accepted demands of the regime. Another group Arendt criticized were those inhabiting the “social,” which was described most notably in The Human Condition. For Arendt, the category of the social involved the overlapping of the realms of the private and the public realms. Arendt claimed that the social excluded “the possibility of action,” because of the expectations of behavior, conformity, and the emphasis on society normalizing citizens rather than allowing them to be the distinct individuals of action.52 As Hanna Fenichel Pitkin noted in her work that was critical of Arendt’s idea of the social called The Attack of the Blob, Arendt did not clearly define the category of the social.53 The social seemed to focus on biological necessity that was once restricted to the private, and which, over time, overran the public realm. In contrast to the social, the public realm was once “reserved for individuality; it was the only place where men could show who they really and inexchangeably were.”54 With the social, there was a political emphasis on private needs rather than public goods which increased with the development of  Ibid., 322.  Ibid., 323. 51  Ibid., 329. 52  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 40. 53  Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 10. 54  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 41. 49 50

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

119

industry and commercialization. This drove human plurality into the private realm for Arendt. In On Revolution, Arendt gave an example of what she meant by the social. Arendt claimed that the French Revolution was social, since it focused on the poverty, hunger, and needs of the people. The American Revolution, in contrast, was deemed to be political, since it focused on the formation of a new government and constitution. Arendt’s analysis of the French Revolution ignored the reality of everyday suffering of the masses, idolized the American Republic that involved legal slavery, and her view has been criticized rightly for these problems.55 Nonetheless, the contrast displayed a difference between the social and the mass men. While it appeared that political action was eclipsed by the social realm which focused on private, rather than public needs, this was different from totalitarian regimes in which political action and free expression of ideas were excluded entirely to the point of not even occurring privately. The rise of the social occurred in democracies and differed from the mass men of totalitarianism who were unable to act at all. Given Arendt’s description of the plurality inherent in political action and the negative attributes of groups in totalitarian regimes and in the social, clearly, Arendt valued individuality displayed in action and was suspicious of the conformity, lack of distinction, and lack of concern for the common good displayed in certain types of groups that were not properly political. Arendt also had a distain for party politics generally because she felt they did not allow plurality to flourish, but rather, prescribed how members should think and functioned hierarchically from above. Despite these concerns, however, Arendt had very positive things to say about the political action possible within political groups and critiqued instances that quelled group action. As Katrin Meyer commented, despite acknowledging the dangers of conformism possible in some forms of politics, Arendt did not believe that groups always entailed conformism as it was with Heidegger’s concept of das Man.56 As early as The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt stated that one of the reasons totalitarianism continued was because political groups could not function and political actions as group actions were impossible. Citizens could not trust each other enough to know 55   For example, see Kathryn T.  Gines, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). 56  Katrin Meyer, “Ambivalence of Power, Heidegger’s das Man and Arendt’s Acting in Concert,” in From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity: Heidegger’s Anyone and Contemporary Social Theory, eds. Hans Bernhard Schmid and Gerhard Thonhauser (Cham: Springer 2017), 163.

120 

K. FRY

whether they would be reported if they gathered in a political group to contest the regime. With reference to Stalin, she asserted that “the transformation of classes into masses and the concomitant elimination of all group solidarity are the condition sine qua non of total domination.”57 Therefore, one of the key definitions of totalitarianism for Arendt was that meaningful group political activity ceased and group solidarity was impossible. Consequently, positive political action must allow for group actions of some kind involving free expression based in solidarity. In 1972, Arendt was asked how she would instruct an individual to be a political actor. She responded that she would not instruct the individual since politics happened when people came  together around a table and exchanged opinions with their peers to decide how the group would act. This activity was not possible with the mass men or in the social. Arendt found it presumptuous to try to instruct a single individual, since politics occurred in a group setting where opinions were exchanged.58 She contrasted this to some teachers who wanted their students to believe just as they did. She stated: We are not in the nursery! Real political action arises as a group act. And you join that group or you don’t. And whatever you do on your own, you do not as an actor but as an anarchist.59

Interestingly, she categorized single, individual action in this instance as anarchy, and not even properly political. This statement was probably an exaggeration since individual action did not seem to be excluded altogether from Arendt’s politics. However, a key component to action seemed to be  the decision and intention to join a group and to work within a group politically. These were not the only instances in Arendt’s work that discussed the significance of group political action. Both in her published and unpublished writings, Arendt included references to political groups being very important for politics, though the type of engagement varied. For example, in her essay “Introduction into Politics,” which was a German book project that was published partially in Between Past and Future and On Revolution, she underscored the way in which politics involved groups of  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, xxxii.  Hannah Arendt, Thinking Without a Banister, 450. 59  Ibid., 450. 57 58

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

121

people engaged together. She distinguished philosophy and theology from politics, since philosophy and theology focused on man whereas politics focused on men.60 Arendt believed the category of man was apolitical because “politics arises between men, and quite outside of man.”61 Moreover, she asserted that action could “never occur in isolation, insofar as the person who begins something can embark upon it only after he has won over others to help him.”62 Even though action may be initiated alone, it required that others help actualize it. She claimed that in a sense, “all action is action ‘in concert,’” and she referenced Burke, who believed action was impossible without reliable friends and comrades.63 Therefore, it seemed that most action involved gathering groups of people together to initiate action together. Another reference to group action was in her essay “On Violence,” from Crises of the Republic. In this essay, Arendt contrasted power and strength. Arendt defined strength as something that belonged to the individual person.64 Whereas strength involved an individual, Arendt defined power as corresponding to the ability of people to act in concert with one another.65 Political power was created when people came together and she did not consider it to be the property of an individual.66 This political power remained with the group so long as the group was together.67 As Patrick Hayden described it, power was relational, collective, occurred when people are gathered.68 In contrast, political violence emerged, according to Arendt, when power was in jeopardy and the ruling person or party no longer had the consent of the people.69 Violence destroyed power because it was mute and prevented groups of people from gathering. Being able to gather in political groups was the key to creating power

60  Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 93. 61  Ibid., 95. 62  Ibid., 127. 63  Ibid. 64  Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972), 143. 65  Ibid. 66  Ibid. 67  Ibid. 68  Patrick Hayden, “Power,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 476. 69  Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic, 155.

122 

K. FRY

and an important component of political action for Arendt. Power could not be created in isolation but needed others to occur at all. Arendt reiterated the significance of group action for politics when she discussed the topic of civil disobedience. Written during the height of the protests against the Vietnam War, the protesters were often viewed as anarchists who disobeyed the law, but Arendt disagreed. Arendt contrasted the protesters’ actions with the acts of Socrates and Thoreau, who were imprisoned for their conflicts with the state and understood largely as committing acts of civil disobedience. Arendt did not believe that Socrates and Thoreau were practicing civil disobedience, but rather, she thought they were conscientious objectors. Arendt argued that Socrates and Thoreau’s situations involved conflicts between the individual moral conscience and the state. She claimed that acts of individual conscience were not political because they did not engage with or try to persuade a group of people. She stated that “conscience is unpolitical,” since it did not engage with the world or the political consequences for the community.70 Since Socrates and Thoreau clashed as individuals with the law, Arendt considered them to be conscientious objectors, rather than people engaged in civil disobedience. In contrast, the interests of civil disobedients, which were notably discussed in the plural by Arendt, were political because the disagreement with the state was extended out to a group of people who agreed with one another about the problem. She described them as “organized minorities, bound together by common opinion, rather than by common interest,” and this common opinion was based on an agreement with each other.71 Arendt used the Freedom Riders as an example of a group of like-minded individuals who protested unjust laws and organized together to act, rather than appealing to a singular law of conscience.72 They proposed group action and combatted unjust laws. Arendt considered them to be participating in action rather than reacting with individual and personal issues of conscience. Their action sprung from an agreement with each other, which Arendt said “lends credence and conviction to their opinion.”73 In contrast, contentious objectors could easily slide into a personal or subjective view which Arendt called a philosophy of subjectivity that allowed anyone for whatever reason to  Ibid., 60.  Ibid., 56. 72  Ibid. 73  Ibid. 70 71

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

123

disobey the law.74 For Arendt, civil disobedients were justified in breaking laws because a number of people agreed that the normal channels for political change no longer worked correctly, so they worked as a group for change.75 One distinguishing difference between a conscientious objector and the civil disobedients was that the civil disobedients were members of a committed group and the conscientious objector operated alone.76 Joining with others helped dissuade action grounded in subjective opinion but rather, involved a community that coalesced around a position that was agreed upon by more than one person. Therefore, Arendt said it was fallacious to understand Vietnam protesters as isolated individual lawbreakers who failed to follow the law over individual issues of conscience since they were participating in collective action.77 Arendt argued that it would be beneficial for civil disobedience to be included as part of the structure of political institutions in the United States. She thought this would involve the official recognition of the various minority political groups by registering them in the same way as lobbyists register to give them access to Congress.78 She thought it would be useful to persuade Congress of the value of these groups and amend the Constitution to protect their rights.79 Though civil disobedience was a particular type of action that occurred when present laws were deemed to be unjust, it remained an example of a type of joint action requiring a group of like-­ minded people who agreed in advance and came up with strategies for combatting the unjust law. Another significant area of Arendt’s thought that stressed the importance of group action was in her descriptions of the council system which was often understood as her preferred mode of government. Arendt did not describe the council system in detail in her main essay on the topic from Crises of the Republic because she thought others were already doing it in France and Germany, and frustratingly, she did not reference those studies directly.80 Therefore, the more practical details of her position are not known. In part, Arendt believed the council system was meant to remedy problems with representational democracy. Arendt acknowledged  Ibid., 57.  Ibid., 74. 76  Ibid., 98. 77  Ibid. 78  Ibid., 101. 79  Ibid. 80  Ibid., 232. 74 75

124 

K. FRY

that it was impossible to have a direct democracy because of the number of people in nation states was too large, but she advocated for more public spaces for people to be able to express their opinions and engage more directly in political action.81 The councils worked on a smaller level that allowed for local communities to have a say in politics. She discussed a similar idea in On Revolution, when she noted that Thomas Jefferson regretted not including a ward system within the U.S. Constitution. For Arendt, what Jefferson regretted was not giving the populace more of an opportunity to act as citizens on a local level.82 Councils or wards involved the exchange of opinions and they worked to present their views to the next level of representatives.83 Arendt acknowledged that this mode of government was not successful in the past because of the bureaucracy or political party machines that sought to destroy them, but she hoped that it would be successful one day.84 Though not everyone would want to be a member of the councils, it was Arendt’s view that they should have the opportunity to participate more directly in politics than was currently practiced. She claimed that the power structure was not vertical in the councils, but horizontal, and everything depending on the discussion among their members.85 She stated in Crises of the Republic that the councils signified: We want to participate, we want to debate, we want to make our voices heard in public, and we want to have a possibility to determine the political course of our country. Since the country is too big for all of us to come together and determine our fate, we need a number of public spaces within it. The booth in which we deposit our ballots is unquestionably too small, for this booth has room for only one. The parties are completely unsuitable; there we are, most of us, nothing but the manipulated electorate. But if only ten of us are sitting around a table, each expressing his opinion, each hearing the opinions of others, then a rational formation of opinion can take place through the exchange of opinions. There, too, it will become clear which one of us is best suited to present our view before the next higher council,

 Ibid.  Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 256. 83  Notably, Arendt did not include the hippie communes because she thought they were renouncing the world, rather than working together to obtain political goals (Crises in the Republic, 232). 84  Ibid., 231. 85  Ibid., 233. 81 82

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

125

where in turn our view will be clarified through the influence of other views, revised, or proved wrong.86

Some of her discussion of council activities did not seem to function like a political group engaging in collective action, but rather as members of the community sifting through their opinions and passing the revised views to the higher level of representatives.87 This was similar to the communicative view of action, but her example of the Hungarian Revolution showed how this type of action could be more like collective group action. Arendt based her limited discussion of the council system on various historical instances, but she focused particularly on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which functioned more like a direct group action. Though there is debate concerning the historical accuracy of her position, Arendt admired the councils from the Hungarian Revolution, even though they did not attain their goals. She claimed the revolution sparked by the councils was spontaneous and the participants joined together and were united in groups. According to Arendt, in Hungary the councils were “born exclusively of communal action, and the spontaneous demands of the people that arose in this action.”88 Arendt described the resistance that she thought began spontaneously when a student demonstration grew into a huge crowd and was followed the next day by a radio broadcast of the student manifesto.89 Afterward, the police joined the revolution and “no programs, points, or manifestos played any role,” since according to Arendt, the demands against the Russian troops were so obvious.90 Rather than debating freedom of speech, thought, and assembly, the focus was on how to stabilize the freedom that was already accomplished.91 In Hungary, Arendt claimed that the councils included all kinds of people who acted together spontaneously.92 What Arendt admired about these councils was  Ibid., 232–233.  Andreas Kalyvas noted that it was difficult to reconcile Arendt’s discussion of representative government with the council system and how she describes freedom elsewhere, since the councils seemed to add an additional layer of representation to government and the “real” action may occur with the representatives rather than the council members. Andreas Kalyvas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 272. 88  Arendt, Thinking Without a Bannister, 136. 89  Ibid., 131. 90  Ibid. 91  Ibid. 92  Ibid., 138. 86 87

126 

K. FRY

that they came from the people without reference to organized parties or politicians. Those who were elected to leadership positions were not selected by the political party, but from the bottom up, by the people directly.93 The councils varied in membership because some arouse in neighborhoods with people living near one another, while others joined together from fighting in the revolution.94 There were worker councils in factories, councils of civil servants, councils composed of writers and artists, student councils, and there were also military councils.95 Joined together, the councils formed into a political institution for Arendt.96 People in the councils were bound together with the common goal of freedom and a rejection of the Soviet influenced Hungarian government.97 Since there were Communists and non-Communists in the councils, Arendt thought they were not bound to party politics, much more flexible, and less hierarchical in their approach.98 She stated they were not bound together by party, class interest, or ideology, nor did they partake in discussions “about the best form of government.”99 Arendt called the councils a space of freedom, which meant that she saw them as participating in political action.100 She said they were “organs of action,” and contrasted them with party interests who sought to administer the state and gain power.101 Politics run by a party often sought to consolidate power, were hierarchical, and did not tolerate diversity of opinion well. In contrast, the councils were more free thinking and open to a diversity of opinion without reference to a power structure. The councils gathered based upon a shared opposition to the regime. Shmuel Lederman pointed out that if Arendt’s work is completely individualistic and agonistic, then her discussion of the councils made little sense.102 Councils provided a space of freedom in which groups of people worked together on issues and collective action was included as part of political participation.  Ibid., 137.  Ibid., 138. 95  Ibid. 96  Ibid. 97  Arendt rejected the term Soviet and used the term Russian instead. See Arendt, Thinking Without a Bannister, 134. 98  Ibid., 139. 99  Ibid. 100  Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, 268. 101  Ibid., 277. 102  Shmuel Lederman, Hannah Arendt and Participatory Democracy: A People’s Utopia (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 56. 93 94

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

127

Overall, Arendtian scholarship has underemphasized the variety of ways political action could occur in Arendt’s theory and in particular, group action achieved through group membership. Though Arendt’s references to group action are not especially voluminous, they are substantive enough to show that political action could begin with joining a group and entail a variety of types of group action, such as conscientious objection, council membership, and direct action. Political action may be agonistic and performative or involve discussions toward consensus, but political action may also occur by joining a group and working together in concert because of an agreed upon concern. Arendt did not explain how individual disclosure occurred within the group, how groups worked together, or what the various features were that guided successful collective action. How collective group action is related to Arendt’s ideas of political action is complicated and not particularly clear, especially in terms of disclosing identity and how this could occur from within a group. However, she did make plain that not all group activity would be included. Groups motivated by sheer self-interested reasons, or those that limited diversity of opinion or speech such as in the social, or those guided hierarchically by party politics, or at the extreme, the mass men who followed uncritically without the possibility for free expression were not involved  in political action. None of these examples sought out a public good encouraging free expression of their members. The precise mechanisms of group political action were not described in detail, but Arendt did acknowledge that acting with other people created power and was more powerful than acting alone. Action could coalesce around particular causes that inspired direct action, even though the meaning of the action could not be controlled in advance, nor could the precise goal be controlled like in the work needed to create an object. The possibility of group membership was an important reason that the political life did not appeal to Arendt personally and why she chose the life of the thinker over the life of the actor. She could not join groups easily, and she described politics as involving the need to join a group, at least some of the time. Yet, exploring the significance of group membership-based action broadens our understanding of what counted as political action for Arendt and better accommodates the diversity of political options as they exist in the world.

128 

K. FRY

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Crises of the Republic. New  York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1972. ———. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. ———. The Life of the Mind. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1978. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973. ———. The Portable Arendt. Edited by Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000. ———. The Promise of Politics. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2005. ———. On Revolution. New York: The Viking Press, 1963. ———. Thinking Without a Banister: Essay in Understanding, 1953–1975. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2018. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969. Edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992. Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Bazelow, Alexander R. and Ludz, Ursula. “On Hannah Arendt as a Political Actor: Some Findings and Proposition.” HannahArendt.Net 8, no. 1 (2016):187–201, https://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/350. Benhabib, Seyla. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000. Berkowitz, Roger. “Remembering Hannah: An Interview with Jack Blum.” Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. Edited by Roger Berkowitz, Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Keenan, 261–266. New  York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Canovan, Margaret. The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. D’Entrèves, Maurizio Passerin. The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt. London: Routledge, 1994. Dowdy, Michael. “Live Hip Hop, Collective Agency, and ‘Acting in Concert.’” Popular Music and Society 30, no. 1 (February 2007): 75–91. Gines, Kathryn T. Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. Habermas, Jürgen. “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power.” In Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays. Edited by Lewis P.  Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, 211–229. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Hayden, Patrick. “Power.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 475–480. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

6  POLITICAL ACTION AND GROUP ACTION 

129

Hiruta, Kei. Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics, and Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. Kalyvas, Andreas. Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Kateb, George. “Political Action: its Nature and Advantages” In The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Edited by Dana Villa, 130-148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Lang, Andrew F., Jr. “Governance and Political Action: Hannah Arendt on Global Political Protest.” In Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Readings Across the Lines. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 179–198. Lederman, Shmuel. “Agonism and Deliberation in Arendt.” Constellations 21 (2014): 328–336. Hannah Arendt and Participatory Democracy: A People’s Utopia. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. McCarthy, Mary. “Hannah Arendt and Politics.” Partisan Review 1 (1985): 729–738. Meyer, Katrin “Ambivalence of Power, Heidegger’s das Man and Arendt’s Acting in Concert.” In From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity: Heidegger’s Anyone and Contemporary Social Theory, eds. Hans Bernhard Schmid and Gerhard Thonhauser, 157–178. Cham: Springer, 2017. Pitkin, Hannah Fenichel. The Attack of the Blob: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Sigwart, Hans-Jörg. The Wandering Thought of Hannah Arendt. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Sitton, John F. “Hannah Arendt’s Argument for Council Democracy.” Polity 20, no. 1 (Autumn 1987): 80–100. Taminiaux, Jacques. The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker: Arendt and Heidegger. Edited and translated by Michael Gendre, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Ucnik, Lenka. “Hannah Arendt’s Action and Contemplation: Two Sides of the Same Coin.” Journal of Social Philosophy. July 16, 2021. https://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josp.12431 Villa, Dana. Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Voice, Paul. “Labour, Work and Action.” In Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts, Ed. Patrick Hayden, 36–51. Durham: Acumen, 2014. Yeatman, Anna. “Individuality and Politics: Thinking with and Beyond Hannah Arendt.” In Action and Appearance: Ethics and the Politics of Writing in Hannah Arendt. Edited by Anna Yeatman et  al., 69–86. New  York: Continuum, 2011. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982

CHAPTER 7

Arendt’s Identities, Identity Politics, and the Social

Arendt had many identities, which included being an academic and writer, a woman, a German national, an immigrant, an American citizen, and many of them were important to her. Perhaps there were other ways that she self-identified. Yet, her Jewish identity was particularly important to her and the one she discussed publicly in her written work. It was the identity that caused her to emigrate twice, and it was the identity that she intellectually engaged with in books like Rahel Varnhagen and The Origins of Totalitarianism as well as many of her articles and academic essays. Hannah Arendt’s friend Mary McCarthy stated that it was the fact that Arendt was born a Jew and that other people had a problem with it that drove Arendt to explore politics in her writing.1 While she did not discuss directly how identity related to politics, it is useful to examine what Arendt thought about her own identity, to gain insight into how identity functions in Arendt’s vision of politics as a whole. In 1964, Arendt gave a televised interview with Günter Gaus on West German Television, which included discussion of her childhood in Königsberg as well as how she was taught to deal with antisemitic attacks. She stated that in her earliest memories, her Jewish identity was not part of her awareness. When asked what it was like to be a Jew in this Prussian city, she said that her Jewishness was not a focus of her childhood in the least. In fact, she reported: “I did not know from my family that I was  Mary McCarthy, “Hannah Arendt and Politics,” Partisan Review 1 (1985): 733.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_7

131

132 

K. FRY

Jewish. My mother was completely a-religious.”2 Her father died when she was young, but her parents were more interested in left-leaning secular politics, than in religion. Even though her grandfather, Max Arendt, was the president of a liberal Jewish community group, she never heard the word “Jew” until some antisemitic remarks passed on the street. When it occurred, it was not shocking to her. As she grew, she believed she looked Jewish, but she did not think this was negative. Her upbringing was unconventional compared to other families and she understood intuitively that she was special, which helped with the hostility in the external world. Arendt stated that the Jewish question became much more important to her later because of external events, with the rise of National Socialism. Being Jewish wasn’t a focus for Hannah’s mother either, who was more interested in socialism and was a secular Jew. Martha’s life was not as affected by the fact that she was Jewish until she was middle-aged. Nonetheless, Arendt credited her mother, who provided various coping mechanisms to deal with antisemitism that began in her childhood.3 Martha Arendt insisted that her daughter, even as a child, should not let antisemitism get to her and that she must defend herself against it. It seemed that Martha’s approach was two pronged. First, there was antisemitism that occurred in public institutions by people in authority. When antisemitic events occurred by adults at school, Martha stepped in. One of Arendt’s teachers made antisemitic remarks during class, not referencing the middle-class Hannah, but mainly about the lower class eastern Jewish girls. Martha advised her daughter that when antisemitism occurred at school by teachers, she was “to get up immediately, leave the classroom, come home, and report everything exactly.” Following, Martha Arendt wrote one of her many registered letters and, as Hannah recalled, the matter was completely settled. Hannah remembered: “I had a day off from school and that was marvelous!” This aspect allowed Hannah to feel completely protected.4 But when antisemitism came from other children in the school yard, Martha conveyed that the response was different:

2  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 7. 3  Ibid., 7–9. 4  Ibid., 9.

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

133

I was not permitted to tell about it at home. That didn’t count. You defended yourself against what came from children. Thus these matters never were a problem for me. There were rules of conduct by which I retained my dignity, so to speak, and I was protected, absolutely protected, at home.5

What was crucial to this second approach, and would appear in Arendt’s later theoretical work on these issues, was that one should not deny being Jewish, that one should not apologize for being Jewish, that one should not seek to escape Jewish stereotypes by being an “exception” Jew. To do so would be to accept the negativity of the stereotype and perpetuate it. For Hannah, if one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. This was her most basic approach to the antisemitism that she suffered. When she was at university, her friend Hans Jonas recalled how she met with Professor Bultmann, who was teaching a New Testament seminar, to let him know that she would not put up with antisemitic remarks in class.6 She proudly embraced her Jewish identity and spoke up in defense of it. Arendt rejected seeking equality by superseding one’s Jewish identity, as a German, as a world citizen, or as an upholder of the rights of humanity.7 Only through demanding equality for Jews with full acknowledgment and acceptance of Jewish identity could it be achieved. The identity could not be left behind. This belief affected many of Arendt’s political claims later in life. For example, Arendt advocated for the use of a fully Jewish army under a Jewish flag during the Second World War as a tactic to fight against the Nazis without leaving identity behind. In a series of articles published in Aufbau in the early 1940s, Arendt supported the idea of a Jewish army fighting against Hitler.8 These articles were partly written in response to an incident in which a Jewish flag was raised shortly after a hard-won battle among some Jewish soldiers in Europe, but those in authority removed the flag quickly. For Arendt, the covering up of the Jewish identity of the soldiers was a problem. Moreover, even though Arendt used the last name Blücher for her private life and correspondence, her professional works retained the last name “Arendt” intentionally, to indicate that she  Ibid.  Derwent May, Hannah Arendt (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986), 26. 7  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 12. 8  Hannah Arendt. The Jewish Writing, eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 134–173. 5 6

134 

K. FRY

was a Jew. Interestingly, Arendt did not consider herself to be German. She considered herself to be a German citizen prior to the War, but she did not consider herself to be part of the German people. When Jaspers insisted that she was German, she responded: “One can see that I am not!”9 She felt an affinity for the German language, literature, and poetry, but she did not self-identify as German. While her approach to her own Jewish identity was documented, her approach to being a woman was less clear. Arendt famously denied being a feminist and did not fight for the rights of women as a group. In her private letters she admitted to enjoying the “advantages” that she thought accompanied being a woman by gaining access to special treatment. When she was the first woman who taught at Princeton University as a full professor, she was uncomfortable with the label. She actively tried to kill the newspaper story covering it.10 She did not want to be an exception woman any more than an exception Jew.11 According to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Arendt did not view herself as a feminist and was skeptical about politics revolving around a single issue, particularly if it did not maintain the public/private distinction.12 It is for this reason, that many scholars have thought that she rejected identity politics altogether. According to Hans Jonas, Arendt “considered men on the whole the weaker sex” because they were farther from reality, and more prone to illusion and the deception of intellectual ideas.13 This was corroborated by her letter to Gershom Scholem in which she called him a member of the masculine generis and stated: “and for this reason perhaps you are naturally vulnerable.”14 Nonetheless, she believed in economic equality for women and realized  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 9.  Hannah Arendt to Karl and Gertrud Jaspers, November 16, 1958, Hannah Arendt/ Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926-1969, eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner., trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1992), 357. 11  Hannah Arendt to Kurt Blumenfeld. November 16, 1953, Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld Die Korrespondenz, eds. Ingeborg Nordmann and Iris Pilling (Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995), 94. 12  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, “Hannah Arendt Among the Feminists,” in Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later, eds. Larry May and Jerome Kohn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 307. 13   Hans Jonas, “Acting, Knowing, Thinking: Gleanings from Hannah Arendt’s Philosophical Work,” Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977): 26. 14  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, April 21, 1946, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, ed. Marie Luise Knott, trans. Anthony David (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 50. 9

10

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

135

that women suffered from unequal pay coupled with increased childcare and household duties, which she thought was unfair, but she did not engage politically around this inequity.15 Arendt acknowledged this in a somewhat negative book review she  wrote on a book arguing for the equality of women on Marxist grounds, but Arendt did not write positive essays about the oppression of women. At other times, she said she was old fashioned and believed there were professions that were “improper” for women because they would lose their femininity. She stated in her Gaus interview that it “just doesn’t look good when a woman gives orders,” but at the same time, she claimed she did not suffer from being a woman and more or less did whatever she wanted to do.16 Though academia was rife with sexism at the time, for whatever reason, Arendt did not feel like she was harmed by her status as a woman to the point that it would limit her options. According to Young-Bruehl, her former student, Arendt was much more self-identified as a Jew than a woman and her theory reflected that emphasis. There is no record of her defending herself as a woman when attacked as one. It is possible that she did not feel particularly attacked for being a woman and felt the antisemitic attacks much more strongly, even though academia was quite sexist when she participated in it. Even more obscure was any discussion of her class or interest in class issues in general. She rejected Marx’s theory, so it is possible that she did not take class issues particularly seriously. She was certainly elitist when it came to university education and admired the study of traditional, canonical texts. Throughout her life, it was clear that Arendt’s Jewish identity was the most important to her and she sought ways to change the world and politics in relation to that identity. Since being Jewish was the most significant identity to her, it may provide insight into how identity in general functioned politically for Arendt.

The Group and the Possibility of Identity Politics As argued in Chap. 6, group political action was possible for Arendt, so it raises the question about the relationship between Arendtian politics and identity politics. In Rahel Varnhagen and essays organized in The Jewish Writings, as well as her “We Refugees,” Arendt embraced Jewish identity 15  Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930-1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 68. 16  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 4.

136 

K. FRY

to fight oppression. Nonetheless, various scholars commonly categorized Arendt as viewing identity categories as private issues that would contaminate the political realm and transform it into the social. Many scholars argued that political action for Arendt excluded identity politics. For example, Richard King asserted that Arendt was generally “very suspicious of any entity that was organized by the claims of race, ethnicity, or religion, that … demanded absolute loyalty based on biology or ideologically fixed principles.”17 Samantha Rose Hill called identity politics, “a contradiction in terms for Arendt, who drew a sharp distinction between who a person is and what a person is.18 Further, feminists like Hanna Fenichel Pitkin argued that the notion of the social was gendered for Arendt, and that Arendt aligned the social with biology, the household, and the “women’s realm,” making questions concerning some women’s issues outside of the realm of the politics for her.19,20 Other feminists, including Adrienne Rich, took issue with Arendt’s agonistic model of the “hero” who acts as being a masculine model for politics.21 The more common view among feminists, however, was how the feminist slogan “the private is political” could not be accommodated in Arendt’s theory because it would be excluded as social and as improperly mixing the public and the private. Furthermore, Kathryn Sophia Belle, Robert Bernasconi, Anne Norton, and other scholars have seen anti-Black racist tendencies in Arendt’s work, including issues concerning race and racism against Blacks as being relegated to the social. As illustrated in her essay “Reflections on Little Rock,” Arendt believed that some issues concerning identity politics were “properly” political, like the ability to marry interracially. Other issues, like those

17  Richard King, “Arendt in America,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (Great Britain: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 135. 18  Samantha Rose Hill, Hannah Arendt (Critical Lives) (London: Reaktion Books, 2021), 164. 19  Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, “Conformism, Housekeeping, and the Attack of the Blob: The Origins of Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, ed. Bonnie Honig (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1995), 78. 20  Mary G. Dietz agreed that women are tied to biology, the private realm, and the work of labor, but Dietz thought this gendered negativity could be overcome in the concept of action which would allow persons to break free of these norms (“Feminist Receptions of Hannah Arendt,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, 32). 21  Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979), 205, 212.

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

137

involved with public education were social.22 Anne Norton argued that the Little Rock essay placed racism itself within the private and reduced the response to racism to a “question of private virtue rather than public duty.”23 Belle went on to suggest the Jewish question was political for Arendt, but the Negro question was not and was relegated to the social.24 Belle argued that by restricting the Negro question to the realm of the social, it prevented Arendt from  seeing anti-Black racism as a political problem.25 Other scholars saw Arendt’s theory as offering positive resources for issues pertaining to identity, primarily because they believed that Arendt moved beyond and surpassed normal identity politics and did not reduce people to their identities. Julian Honkasalo and Morris Kaplan argued that Arendt’s work could be used positively for queer politics through the concept of the conscious pariah and by rejecting strict categories of identity. Kathleen B. Jones asserted that identity was not the proper category for Arendt since she rejected “racialized,” or “tribalized” concepts of identity because they led to racism. Jones believed Arendt’s thought could be pushed beyond identity and allow for a more intersectional approach.26 Jones interpreted action in concert as not organized around identities, but a shared relationship that maintained plurality and functioned in excess of identity, more like a “queer” identity.27 Bonnie Honig found Arendt’s thought useful for rejecting the expression of shared identities like gender, race, ethnicity, or nationality. Honig believed Arendt stressed performativity and agonism, rejected homogenized identities as social and allowed for

22  Kathryn Sophia Belle and others have shown how the issues of intermarriage and public education are related and are not so easily separated. 23  Anne Norton, “Heart of Darkness: Africa and African Americans in the Writings of Hannah Arendt,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, ed. Bonnie Honig (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 259. 24  Kathryn Sophia Belle (formerly known as Kathryn T. Gines), Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 11. 25  Ibid., 1–3. 26  Julian Honkasalo, “Hannah Arendt as an Ally for Queer Politics?” Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 17, no. 2 (Autumn 2014):180-200., Morris B. Kaplan, Sexual Justice-Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire, London: Routledge, 1997, Kathleen B.  Jones, “Queer(y)ing Hannah Arendt, or What’s Hannah Arendt Got to Do with Intersectionality?” New Political Science 37, no. 4 (December: 2015), 458–475. 27  Ibid. 466–7.

138 

K. FRY

the creation of new realities.28 Linda M.G. Zerilli emphasized the usefulness of Arendt’s theory for feminist aims because Arendt’s theory stressed “contingency, indeterminacy, and ongoing debate as the condition of democratic politics, including feminism.”29 Referencing Arendt’s work on indeterminate judgment, Zerilli found Arendt’s writings to be useful because there was no shared or natural identity of women as a social group, and political judgment allowed one to speak and create a new indeterminate community.30 Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek agreed that Arendt’s politics went beyond identity politics and did not promote the idea that individuals needed a common ancestry or history to work together as political actors. For Diprose and Ziarek, Arendt’s politics exceeded “gender, race, ethnicity, and class differences and does not presuppose a common identity or common interests.”31 They found this to be positive for poststructural feminist critiques of identity because shared identity was not normalized or essentialized.32 Marike Borren argued that Arendt’s theory “cuts across the logic of identity and non-identity,” and Arendt was more interested in groups struggling for political freedom and unique identities than the struggles involving social identity.33 The commonality between most of these various positions was that Arendt excluded typical identity politics as being outside of the political, so that even scholars who found resources within Arendt’s work for combatting oppression, it was understood as something that occurred outside conventional notions of identity. Yet, what was ignored in these discussions concerning identity was that Arendt was also well known for arguing that if one was attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Her approach to Jewish politics was as a member of that group and she 28  Bonnie Honig, “Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, 149. 29  Linda M.G. Zerilli, Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 166. 30  Ibid., 167. 31  Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics: Toward Democratic Plurality and Reproductive Justice (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), 82-83. 32  Judith Butler also criticized Arendt for her failure to address the body and feminist issues but found positive resources in Arendt’s work such as the fact that her point of departure for theorizing was the difficulties of being statelessness (Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015], 48). 33  Marieke Borren, “Feminism as Revolutionary Practice: From Justice and the Politics of Recognition to Freedom.” Hypatia 28, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 197–214, 201–202.

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

139

suggested that the only way to combat racist political situations for those who were oppressed was from within and with an appeal to identity membership. The contradiction between the common assumption that Arendt was against political action organized around identity, and Arendt’s claim that one must fight back against oppression as a member of that identity has, for the most part, been ignored. Lisa Disch commented briefly that Arendt did not explain how a deeply “social” identity like being Jewish was a political place for resistance, though Disch did not explore this puzzle more deeply.34 Kimberly Maslin also noticed that despite Arendt’s warnings about political movements based on victim status, it had “never been clear what she imagines for identity in political action.”35 Marike Borren noted that there are situations when a group identity is under attack, identity interests Arendt, but overall, there is much more of a focus on securing freedom for marginalized groups rather than focusing on the identity itself.36 In general, Arendt’s work has been understood as excluding or exceeding typical identity politics categories by most scholars. Whether scholars criticize or praise Arendt for rejecting identity politics, these positions fail to consider her advocacy of embracing Jewish identity to combat political oppression. For Arendt, Jewish identity was crucial to combatting political inequality based on that identity, so it must be concluded that identity politics were not completely excluded from politics for Arendt. What it meant to be a member of an identity group is difficult to pinpoint. To be Jewish seemed to be a given fact for Arendt, rather than adhering to a set of religious beliefs. Given her political status during the War, religious adherence was less important to her as a secular Jew. She stated being a Jew was acknowledging a “political fact” and that “being a member of this group outweighed all other questions of personal identity,” rendering the other identity categories nameless.37 In Men in Dark Times, Arendt  clarified that when she used the word “Jew,” she did not mean to suggest any special kind of human being, as though the Jewish fate were either representative of or a model for the fate of mankind … In saying   Lisa J.  Disch, “On Friendship in ‘Dark Times,’” in Feminist Interpretations of Arendt, 295. 35  Kimberly Maslin, The Experiential Ontology of Hannah Arendt (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020), 145. 36  Marike Borren, 208. 37  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), 18. 34

140 

K. FRY

“A Jew,” I did not even refer to a reality burdened or marked out for distinction by history …. Nowadays, therefore, it is easy to remark that those who reacted in this way had never got very far in the school of “humanity,” had fallen into the trap set by Hitler, and thus had succumbed to the spirit of Hitlerism in their own way. Unfortunately, the basically simple principle in question here is one that is particularly hard to understand in times of defamation and persecution: the principle that one can resist only in terms of the identity that is under attack.38

Arendt seemed to lean toward a somewhat contentless notion of identity, treating it as a “political fact,” and rejecting historical claims about the status of the Jewish people or similar essentialist claims. It is unclear whether one’s identifying with a group is enough to belong or whether it is based on an unchangeable characteristic. This description of identity membership may be problematic for the poststructuralist theorists who found positive resources in Arendt’s work beyond identity, though more flexible ideas of identity may still be possible depending on what the phrase “political fact” means. Perhaps it means that only under certain political situations does identity membership rise to the level of political action. Nonetheless, at least in the case of being a Jew in an antisemitic context, Arendt believed that one must fight back from the perspective of the identity under attack and was very clear about this stance. The contradiction between Arendt’s claims about fighting back as a Jew and the assertion within the scholarship that identity politics cannot be part of Arendt’s politics because it is social deserves exploration. Arendt thought the oppressed needed to engage politically by embracing identity, at least in some cases. Given the rest of her thought, it is unlikely that she was restricting this point to Jewish people alone, since she saw herself aligned with all oppressed peoples.39 For example, when she discussed the problem of the formation of the state of Israel and advocated for a bi-­ national solution, she thought both Jews and Palestinians needed equal rights and representation, and both qualified as political identity groups. She stated that the only solution to conflict in the region demanded that the “Arab rights to their own politics are recognized.”40 This statement

 Ibid.  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 232. The degree to which she was successful with this stance is up for debate. 40  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, 236. 38 39

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

141

showed political identity groups extended beyond her own Jewish identity membership. Obviously, there is intense debate about whether and how identity politics could be useful in combatting political oppression and what ways it undermines the aims of attaining freedom from oppression and structural inequality.41 Cressida Hayes pointed out that the only agreement in the debate about identity politics was: [T]hinkers agree that the notion of identity has become indispensable to contemporary political discourse, at the same time they concur that it has troubling implications for models of the self, political inclusiveness, and our possibilities for solidarity and resistance.42

These questions also pertain to Arendt’s theory. My claim is not to argue for or against the use of identity politics categories generally, or even to claim that Arendt was correct about how she categorized identity, but only to question the assumed position that Arendt excluded it politically altogether. Rightly or wrongly, identity politics groups could act politically for Arendt, given the significance of her claims about fighting back from the position of the identity that is attacked. In fact, if an identity was under political attack, she rejected fighting back from the position of universal humanity. Her decision to become a Zionist while she was in Berlin was because she saw them as the only political group fighting back from within and through the Jewish identity. By extension, it seemed that Arendt would advocate for others to fight back and act politically from the position of their identities as well.

41  See, for example: Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious: the Political Morality of Race (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Wendy Brown “Wounded Attachments,” Political Theory 21, no. 3 (Aug. 1993): 390–410; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1 (1989): 139–167; Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003); Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009); Lois McNay, Against Recognition (Cambridge: Polity, 2008); Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition: An Essay with Commentary, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 42  Cressida Hayes. “Identity Politics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, February 4, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/.

142 

K. FRY

What exactly identity was and in what ways acting from the position of an identity could be useful for politics was not clear in Arendt’s thought. One could explore her discussions about Jewish politics for insight into these issues even though there are certainly questions about transferring Arendt’s ideas about Jewish politics to other types of identities whose political problems are different. For Arendt, Jewish political action best occurred by advocating conscious pariah-hood and rejecting an apolitical, assimilationist, universalist, or parvenu stance. Arendt described the conscious pariah as an outlaw who rebelled against his or her status and acted politically. The conscious pariah retained one’s identity and was rebellious, but Arendt was never clear about how the pariah would join with others to act. Even though politics could involve group action, Arendt did not point toward specific procedures for group solidarity based on identity. Moreover, Arendt did not discuss whether allies with the oppressed minority group could join the cause, though given what she said about political groups generally, it seemed like it might be an option. Since Jewish identity was a “political fact,” the allies might not be joining the identity group itself, but they might be able to join a political group aligned with them.43 Otherwise, only those who were politically attacked based on identity issues could combat them which is not workable. Generally, the axis where the oppressed identity group and politics met was difficult in Arendt’s thought, even though, one could argue that it was at the core of her writing and the reason she was interested in politics in the first place. As described in Chap. 6, Arendt believed action was possible on the group level, but she did not discuss the specificities of how it occurred or how it related to identity politics issues. On the individual level, she clearly believed in plurality and the uniqueness of the individual as displayed in her description of political action from The Human Condition. This idea was also echoed in her discussion of the importance of doxa, or opinion, since it was necessary for people to express how the world appeared to them and to listen to the multiple perspectives of the community prior to making a judgment. Plurality and individuality were important for Arendt both in action and in the process of judging that action. Peter F. Cannavò noted the fact that political identity in general for actors was always unfinished for Arendt because the meaning of their 43  Obviously, working from the perspective of an essentialized identity has been rejected by many who examine these issues and Arendt cannot escape from this criticism. Beyond allyship, the possibility of religious conversion to Judaism does not seem to be accommodated here.

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

143

action was decided by the community and could change over time.44 Therefore, Arendt’s description of her Jewishness being an unchangeable fact and the fluid way identities could change over time in action seemed to be at odds, unless the fact of group membership could not change, but the relationship a person had to one’s identity was fluid and could differ across members of the group. Alternatively, perhaps it was the political meaning of the identity which changed. If Arendt’s ideas about the spontaneous actions of the councils were transferred to these issues, it would  suggest that when an issue arose for particular identity groups, groups focused on these issues would spontaneously form to engage them politically. However, it was likely that not all identity issues would count as political for Arendt, but those that involved legal denial of rights surely would. While Jewish identity was important politically, Arendt’s discussion of these issues was not clear. Many questions remain. For example, what does it mean to fight back within and through an identity or in solidarity with an identity group? Does the conscious pariah extend beyond an individual and form an alliance with others? How could such a group be successful in its aims? How could one disclose oneself through words and deeds if the action is collective and grounded in identity? How do the actions remain political and do not become personal, private, or social to cohere with the rest of Arendt’s project? What does it mean to have an identity, is it fluid, and is that identity always political or only during times of crisis? When Arendt asserted that one must fight back as a Jew, it seemed like a straightforward statement, but on reflection, she never explained precisely what that meant. Nonetheless, Arendt asserted repeatedly that if identity oppression occurred, it must be combated from within that identity and that a political response was required. Therefore, there is a role for identity politics within Arendt’s work, though it is an ambiguous one.

Bibliography Appiah, Kwame Anthony and Gutmann, Amy. Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding 1930–1954. Edited by Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994). ———. The Jewish Writings. Edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H.  Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. 44  Peter F. Cannavò, “Place: The Familiar Chair and Table,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, 344.

144 

K. FRY

———. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace &World, 1968a. ———. The Portable Arendt. Edited by Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000. Arendt, Hannah. Draft of “Is America by Nature a Violent Society?” 1968b, 021597, Hannah Arendt Papers; Speeches and Writings File, 1923–1975: Essays and Lectures; “Is American by Nature a Violent Society?” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.051580/?sp=3&r=-­ 0.916,-­0.105,2.833,1.134,0. Arendt, Hannah and Blumenfeld, Kurt. Hannah Arendt Kurt Blumenfeld Die Korrespondenz Edited by Ingeborg Nordmann and Iris Pilling. Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag, 1995. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969. Edited by Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. Translated by Robert and Rita Kimber. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992. Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Borren, Marike. “Feminism as Revolutionary Practice: From Justice and the Politics of Recognition to Freedom.” Hypatia 28, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 198–214. Brown, Wendy. “Wounded Attachments.” Political Theory 21, no. 3 (Aug. 1993): 390–410. Butler, Judith. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Cannavò, Peter F. “Place: The Familiar Chair and Table,” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, Edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 340–350. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Crenshaw, Kimberlié. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist\Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989): 139–167. Dietz, Mary G. “Feminist Receptions of Hannah Arendt,” In Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, 17–50. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1995. Diprose, Rosalyn and Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska. Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics: Toward Democratic Plurality and Reproductive Justice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Disch, Lisa J. “On Friendship in ‘Dark Times.’” In Feminist Interpretations of Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, 285–311. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1995. Fraser, Nancy and Honneth, Axel. Redistribution or Recognition: A Political Philosophical Exchange. London: Verso, 2003. Gines, Kathryn T. Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. Hayes, Cressida. “Identity Politics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, February 4, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-­politics/

7  ARENDT’S IDENTITIES, IDENTITY POLITICS, AND THE SOCIAL 

145

Hill, Samantha Rose, Hannah Arendt (Critical Lives). London: Reaktion Books, 2021. Honig, Bonnie. “Toward an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Identity,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, 135–166. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1995. Honkasalo, Julian. “Hannah Arendt as an ally for queer politics?” Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 17, no. 2 (Autumn 2014):180–200. Jonas, Hans. “Acting, Knowing, Thinking: Gleanings from Hannah Arendt’s Philosophical Work.” Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977): 25–43. Jones, Kathleen B. “Queer(y)ing Hannah Arendt, or What’s Hannah Arendt Got to Do with Intersectionality?” New Political Science 37, no. 4 (October: 2015), 458–475. Kaplan, Morris B. Sexual Justice-Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire. London: Routledge, 1997 King, Richard. “Arendt in America.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 131–137 (Great Britain: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). Markell, Patchen. Bound by Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Maslin, Kimberly. The Experiential Ontology of Hannah Arendt. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020. May, Derwent. Hannah Arendt. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1986. McCarthy, Mary. “Hannah Arendt and Politics.” Partisan Review 1 (1985): 729–738. McNay, Lois. Against Recognition. Cambridge: Polity, 2008. Norton, Anne. “Heart of Darkness: Africa and African Americans in the Writings of Hannah Arendt.” In Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, 247–261. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. “Conformism, Housekeeping, and the Attack of the Blob: The Origins of Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social.” In Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, 51–81. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1995. Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979. Taylor, Charles. Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition: An Essay with Commentary, ed. Amy Gutmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt Among the Feminists.” In Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later, edited by Larry May and Jerome Kohn, 307–324. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Zerilli, Linda M. G. Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, 166.

CHAPTER 8

Authenticity, Identity, and Politics

As shown in the previous chapter, Arendt thought there was a role for identity groups in politics at least some of the time, and she did not exclude them or their interests from politics entirely by relegating them to the social. Only once, however, did Arendt publish a journalistic/academic piece that was straightforwardly based upon and grounded in her own personal life experience connected to her identity. In 1943, Arendt published the essay “We Refugees” in response to her own experience as a Jewish immigrant. Often, the scholarly literature on “We Refugees” focused on the theoretical implications of the piece, including the “right to have rights,” and the worldlessness of the immigrant, but there was little focus on the autobiographical implications of the experience for Arendt.1 As the essay showed, Arendt’s experience as an immigrant gave rise to an inner contradiction noted in the text between what Arendt understood worked politically and what she and others did to survive. In her theoretical work, Arendt often discussed the need to fight back as a Jew to attain political rights and to reject assimilation. Yet, in this essay, 1  For example, see Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003); Serena Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity : a Phenomenology of Human Rights (New York: Routledge, 2008); Peg Birmingham, Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); and Ayten Gundogdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_8

147

148 

K. FRY

there were moments when she described the desire to assimilate to be safe. The contradiction between what seemed to be a category of authentic political action for Arendt and the understandable desire to assimilate was informative concerning how oppression was experienced. However, her later and most controversial works, Eichmann and Jerusalem and “Reflections on Little Rock,” seemed to ignore the insights coming from her direct experience. The contrast between her lived experience in this early piece of writing and her later claims is stark and showed how referencing lived experience and narratives that Arendt had done before could have been helpful in guiding her later theoretical claims.

“We Refugees” Arendt wrote “We Refugees” from the first-person plural point of view and it concerned her life experiences as an a Jewish immigrant and her knowledge of what others like her endured. Because of the rise of National Socialism, Arendt was forced to leave two different countries and ultimately make her home in a third. Each time she moved, she needed to perfect (in the case of French) or entirely learn (in the case of English) a language, a new culture, and a new way of life. These moves were reactionary to political events and not voluntary. The political and historical circumstances forced these moves upon Arendt and those who were closest to her. Arendt published this essay after writing Rahel Varnhagen, but before she completed The Origins of Totalitarianism. The Rahel Varnhagen book discussed the problematic desire for assimilation, but for most of the time of writing it, it was not felt in full relief in Arendt’s own life yet.2 Arendt understood that assimilation did not address the political problems associated with the Jewish question because it accepted negative associations with the identity and dissuaded individuals from political action by seeking to be individual exceptions. However, once she immigrated, she had life experience that showed the thoroughgoing difficulty of the problem. Arendt published “We Refugees” in The Menorah Journal in 1943, and it is the only formal essay Arendt wrote that referenced her personal life experiences as part of the main evidence for the piece. This essay was published two years after her arrival in New  York and she described the 2  Arendt had not immigrated yet when writing this book except for the final two chapters, which were written in France before she was interned.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

149

exhausting experience that in her view was common to all immigrants. The pronoun she chose to use in the essay was “we,” to indicate that she was part of the group in question. The selection of “we” for this essay was significant because it indicated that she was telling her story as a member of a group of displaced persons. Even though the essay was written with “we” as the subject, it tended to vacillate between her personal life experience as a displaced person and what she knew about what others had experienced. Some of the references were so individual and particular to Arendt’s own harrowing life experiences that it seemed strange to refer to them as a collective experience, or a “we.” For example, she said, to “be a doctor of philosophy no longer satisfied us,” which was obviously not true for most immigrants.3 What differed significantly from her other writings about the parvenu and the pariah was that she included herself explicitly within a group and within the struggles. She counted herself as a member of this group of displaced persons and sought to speak for the group to help others to understand. This was different from the “we” that emerged in the background of The Origins of Totalitarianism, which, as Judith Butler noted, effaced Arendt to some degree because it was more speculative, and less personal.4 In “We Refugees,” it was clear that Arendt was speaking from the position of a “we,” and it was partly a personal narrative. Arendt did not claim that she avoided the situation of the immigrant, nor the temptation to hide one’s identity and to assimilate to gain citizenship. It was a testimony to how difficult the lived experience was. Even if one had a diagnosis of the problem in theory, it did not mean that one completely avoided it in practice. Consequently, it may be the most personal piece of writing that Arendt wrote for the public. More so than any other piece of her public writing, Arendt grounded her theoretical conclusions in direct experience which was personal and lived. Much of the article described the difficulty of being persecuted by Hitler, losing one’s citizenship, and being forced to move. The essay began with a discussion of the common preference to be called an immigrant or newcomer, as opposed to a refugee. Refugees were understood to have escaped their countries due to political positions they held or acts

3  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H.  Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 269. 4  Judith Butler in Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, Who Sings the NationState? Language, Politics, Belonging (London: Seagull Books, 2007), 28.

150 

K. FRY

they committed in opposition to the government.5 In the case of what she called Hitler-persecuted people, mere existence was the issue, rather than overtly rebelling against the regime. Interestingly, Arendt had committed illegal acts initially by spying in the library in Berlin to document cases of antisemitism for the Zionists to publicize these acts outside of Germany. So, she may have been understood to be a refugee in her first immigration to France. However, by the time she escaped from France to the United States many years later, her mere existence as a Jew was the issue that motivated the move. It was not motivated by overt political action against the regime.6 Despite the claim for preferring the term immigrants or newcomers, Arendt retained “We Refugees” as the title of the piece. Overall, “We Refugees” concerned the pressure to assimilate into a new culture to obtain citizenship. Because of the past trauma suffered and the fact that she and many others had moved more than once, there were compelling urges for displaced persons to assimilate and gain citizenship as quickly as possible. The essay explained some of the demands placed upon the newcomer, and since many of them had to move several times, they learned to “follow as closely as possible all the good advice our saviors passed on to us.”7 Part of what was required was to appear to be patriotic to the new community.8 The irony was that many times, this required being patriotic to more than one new country as  the immigrants were forced to move multiple times. Another urgent goal was the need to master the new language. The newcomers tried to learn the new language as fast as possible, and Arendt stated that they would claim that they spoke it better than their mother tongue.9 In fact, Arendt sought to learn English as quickly as possible and left her family in New York for an extended stay with a family from Massachusetts. Having language proficiency was the best assurance that one would be an acceptable citizen. She claimed it was understandable that the new society questioned the newcomers’ loyalty initially during a time of war, but the experience made “life very bitter for us,” since they were perpetually under suspicion.10 Moreover, the immigrants were compelled to focus on the future and to forget about the past. Arendt noted that they would forget as soon as  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, 264.  Ibid. 7  Ibid., 265. 8  Ibid., 272. 9  Ibid., 265. 10  Ibid., 272. 5 6

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

151

possible and stated, “after four weeks in France or six weeks in America, we pretended to be Frenchmen or Americans.”11 Obviously, this pointed to her own experience as an immigrant first to France, then to the United States. Arendt thought it was impressive that many immigrants managed to be optimistic for the future and about building a new life, despite losing their homes, occupations, language, relatives, having friends and family killed in the concentration camps, and experiencing the total rupture of their private lives and daily routines. The optimism, though, was not genuine according to Arendt, but rooted in a fear of potential further trouble if one failed to assimilate and gain citizenship. While they were positively focused on the future, they were forced to forget the past and their countries of origin. She noted that discussions about the concentration or internment camps were avoided, since “nobody likes to listen to all that.”12 These conversations were even shunned amongst the newcomers themselves. They remained silent. They continued to plan for the future and wanted “a course as sure as a gun,” ensuring Hitler would be defeated and they would become American citizens.13 There was no looking back and thinking about what they suffered. They had to be focused on obtaining citizenship. The transition to living in a new country and attempting to belong to a new culture was difficult and wearisome. Arendt spoke of being haunted by memories and dreams as well as the discomfort of being perceived as prospective citizens and enemy aliens all at the same time.14 Prior to being newcomers, they were once “somebodies about whom people cared, we were loved by friends, and even known by landlords as paying our rent regularly.”15 In New York, they could not even ride the subway without knowing we were “undesirable.”16 They tried to hide who they were, to avoid anyone knowing “what kind of passport we have, and where our birth certificate is filed, and that Hitler didn’t like us.” Even going to the store to buy milk and bread elicited these kinds of experiences. The crux of the matter was the need to perpetually shed one identity for another. The newcomers’ identities continued to shift. Arendt was seen as Jewish, an enemy alien, or a German national, first in France, then in the  Ibid., 265.  Ibid. 13  Ibid. 14  Ibid., 266. 15  Ibid., 269. 16  Ibid. 11 12

152 

K. FRY

United States. She stated, “our identity is changed so frequently that nobody can find out who we actually are.”17 This produced an urge not to be what one was and there was an “insane desire to be changed, not to be Jews.”18 She stated how fascinated they were by the new identities, like a woman who loved the miraculous qualities of a new dress to improve her appearance, until the magic wore off and she realized that it did not change her.19 There was an underlying theme throughout the essay of authenticity and how immigrants could not be who they truly were but adopted new identities to be “worthy” citizens of the new country. There was a necessity to hide the facts, to play roles, and to live inauthentically because of the need for safety. In her own case, there was ample evidence that Arendt identified as a Jew, though not necessarily a German national, especially after the War. Immigrating to America during the War, however, made the German side of her identity come to the fore because she was suspected as being connected to the enemy. It was a no-win situation. Arendt commented, “if we are saved we feel humiliated and if helped we feel degraded.”20 They did not feel at home and they could not be who they really were. She noted that we were “ready to pay any price in order to be accepted by society.”21 She commented that “very few individuals have the strength to conserve their own integrity if their social, political, and legal status is completely confused.”22 A consequence that Arendt noticed was that the newcomers avoided being engaged in politics out of fear of not assimilating. Rather than fight together as a group, they sought to change their identities.23 By shedding their identities and seeking to conform, they did “not feel entitled to Jewish solidarity.”24 She commented that the immigrants were so loyal to the French government, they would not even criticize the French order, and declared it was all right to be interned. This referenced her own experience. She claimed, “we were the first prisonniers volontaires history has ever seen.”25 When she was asked to assemble, she obeyed and did not  Ibid., 270.  Ibid., 271. 19  Ibid., 273. 20  Ibid., 268. 21  Ibid. 22  Ibid., 271. 23  Ibid. 24  Ibid., 269. 25  Ibid., 270. 17 18

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

153

rebel, though eventually she would escape the camp and refuse to register with the French government. Initially, however, she complied with the order. Perhaps this was an acknowledgment of how her political involvement and conviction weakened as her time without citizenship progressed. In her first act of rebellion, she was a German citizen who prided herself on acting prior to leaving her country. She collected materials for the Zionists with full knowledge of the consequences of the choice and the fact that she would soon have to leave. By the time she was ordered to report for internment in France, she had lived several years without citizenship. Then, she moved to the United States and needed to engage with a new identity once again. For Arendt, a similar story repeated itself around the world with other immigrants. What this taught the newcomer was to try to avoid politics. The newcomers were “neither willing nor able to risk our lives for a cause.”26 Without the security of citizenship, the risks of speaking up politically were too high. While she did not discuss this in her other theoretical writings concerning Jewish politics, in “We Refugees,” she admitted to being part of the group that sought to assimilate to find safety in the new land. By saying “we” she acknowledged that she was involved. Arendt had already discussed Rahel Varnhagen’s problematic desire to assimilate. She understood why Rahel was trying to escape her Jewishness, but she was also adamant that it did not work in the end. One could not escape one’s Jewishness. Assimilation did nothing to combat oppression. Yet, when she moved to New York, Arendt felt the pressure to assimilate for a second time and had the real fear that one would be thrown back to the wolves if one did not gain citizenship. Theoretically and philosophically, Arendt’s position didn’t change. Practically and lived, this idea was much more difficult. If life was on the line, then people were likely to do whatever it was that they thought will make them safe. “We Refugees” illustrated the trials of the lived experience and the problems of fighting back starkly. Alternatively, Arendt surmised, others found death to be a relief and committed suicide either prior to leaving their countries or in the following years. Arendt did not consider suicide herself except for the brief thought of it as a political act when she was interned at Gurs. However, she sympathized with those who did commit the act, after all they had suffered through, particularly if they were under imminent threat from the Nazis. She noted that suicide was more common among secular Jews, who  Ibid., 266.

26

154 

K. FRY

did not have to face theological prohibitions on the act.27 After learning that Hans Pollnow, a friend of hers from Königsberg, had committed suicide, she wrote to Gertrud Jaspers that perhaps he was just tired and didn’t want to move on again, didn’t want to face a totally alien world, a totally alien language, and the inevitable poverty, which so often, particularly at first, comes wretchedly close to utter destitution. This exhaustion, which often went along with a reluctance to make a big fuss, to summon so much concentration just for the sake of this little bit of life, that was surely the greatest danger we all faced.28

Connecting these comments to the suicide of her friend Walter Benjamin, she stated, “in our time you have to hate murder a lot to escape the seductive power of suicide.”29 Suicide occurred for the stateless during imprisonment, on the way to the new location, or even after one was considered “safe.” For those who survived, they had to face the immigrant experience once again, just as Arendt had in the United States. They had to have the energy to survive, especially when the required “insane optimism” for the future which often led to despair.30 Committing suicide was completely understandable in Arendt’s view. Unlike other suicides under different circumstances, no explanations were necessary. The motives were clear.31 The stateless were almost apologetic for the violence in which they had to settle their “personal” problems. In fact, Arendt claimed that they got used to wishing death for friends and relatives, because “we cheerfully imagine all the trouble he has been saved.”32 Immigrants tended to blame themselves and their individual shortcomings for being unable to cope with the situation. There was a problematic tendency to view the problem as one of individual struggle, rather than as something suffered in solidarity with a group. There was a sense in which they fought “like madmen for private existences and individual destinies” and feared being lumped in with the group of immigrants.33 Arendt  Ibid., 268.  Hannah Arendt to Gertrud Jaspers, May 30, 1946, Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969 eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1992), 40. 29  Ibid., 41. 30  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, 268. 31  Ibid., 467. 32  Ibid. 266. 33  Ibid., 269. 27 28

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

155

admitted that she and other immigrants lacked the courage to fight for social and legal status and tried to change their identities to fit in. In retrospect, she believed this “curious behavior makes matters much worse.”34 They viewed failing to succeed in this new environment as an individual personal problem, rather than as something that was triggered by events outside of themselves and suffered with others. Transforming the situation into an individual, private, and personal problem made political response impossible since that required recognizing that it was a group problem that required a group political response. This was why the “we” as the subject of the essay was so important. The political problems that immigrants suffered were ones that could not be addressed alone, even when the experience caused many to view the issues as personal. Seyla Benhabib argued that one of the problems with using human rights law to help with the plight of migrants was that the laws centered on the individual person and failed to address the structural aspects in place that would allow a group to demand asylum.35 Universalizing human rights did not pinpoint the factors connected to group oppression that led to statelessness. Therefore, a response targeting universal human rights or the individual specifically could not successfully help these groups of immigrants. Though Arendt had already argued that assimilation would not solve the political problems associated with the Jewish question based on the Varnhagen work, she found herself experiencing the yearning to assimilate to secure citizenship. Ultimately, her theory did not change, since many of her conclusions from the Varnhagen book appeared once more in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Yet, the personal urge for assimilation was palpable in this essay. The main problem was that assimilation into the United States seemed to require that Arendt shed her identity as a German national and a Jew. This shedding of one’s identity and eagerly adopting a new identity discouraged acting in response to political issues surrounding the original identity. Identity was sacrificed for the sake of safety and the need for citizenship, resulting in some apolitical consequences. For Arendt, one needed to acknowledge one had a Jewish identity to fight injustices associated with that identity, yet this essay showed the difficulty of living that belief. Arendt ended “We Refugees” with a discussion of a better, alternative approach of being a conscious pariah, like Rahel Varnhagen, but also  Ibid., 271.  Seyla Benhabib, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 114. 34 35

156 

K. FRY

Heinrich Heine, Sholom Aleichem, Bernard Lazare, Franz Kafka, and even Charlie Chaplin. The advantage of conscious pariah-hood was that immigrants kept their identities, even when they drifted from country to country without citizenship.36 Instead of trying to assimilate and forget where they came from, they retained their roots. Arendt stated that the one advantage for the conscious pariahs, despite their unpopularity, was that history was “no longer a closed book to them and politics is no longer the privilege of gentiles.”37 Being proudly rooted in their identities allowed them to participate fully in history and politics. Most scholars understood conscious pariah-hood in Arendt’s thought to be an individual phenomenon, since the examples she gives of conscious pariahs are singular individuals. However, it should be noted that to be a conscious pariah, one had to maintain one’s identity in the face of a hostile environment, which means being connected to Jewish identity and a member of that group. So, even though conscious pariahs are described as social outcasts, they did not solve the problem entirely individually and by themselves, but shunned assimilation, embraced identity, and continued to be members of an identity group. In fact, Arendt ended “We Refugees” with the claim: “Refugees driven from country to country represent the vanguard of their peoples—if they keep their identity.”38 This statement underscored the significance of the connection to the identity group. It is difficult to tell if Arendt saw herself as a conscious pariah or not since she did not discuss it in writing. Most scholars believed she was a conscious pariah, since both in her texts and her general behavior suggested she felt she was somewhat of an outsider who was interested in acting politically as a proud Jewish person.39 Furthermore, Arendt joined Aufbau soon after her immigration and wrote many politically oriented  Ibid., 274.  Ibid. 38  Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, 274. 39  For example, see Ron H.  Feldman, “Introduction: The Jew as Pariah: The Case of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975),” in Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, xli-lxxvi; Gabriel Piterberg “Public Intellectuals and Conscious Pariahs: Hannah Arendt, Edward Said and a Common State in Palestine-Israel,” Holy Land Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 141–159; Larry Ray and Maria Diemling, “Arendt’s ‘Conscious Pariah’ and the Ambiguous Figure of the Subaltern,” European Journal of Social Theory 19, no. 4 (2016): 503–520; Kei Hiruta, Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 199; Samir Gandesha, “Rahel Varnhagen,” in The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, eds. Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari (Great Britain: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). 36 37

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

157

pieces upon her arrival in the United States, showing that she was willing to fight politically even prior to obtaining citizenship.40 However, “We Refugees” displayed some moments of ambivalence and failure to live up to this ideal. The essay’s voice stood between the yearning for assimilation and the desire to be an outcast with a steel identity like the conscious pariah, like the stance of Rahel Varnhagen. Despite Arendt’s adamant belief that if one was attacked as a Jew, on must defend oneself as a Jew, there were moments in this essay that acknowledged that there were real urges to assimilate to obtain safety. In the end, it was clear that she saw no solutions in an appeal to universal rights or by shedding one’s identity to appeal to a higher order of universality. As stateless individuals, there were no human rights for those who did not have a nation state to back up the claims.41 Arendt and her husband, Heinrich Blücher, obtained their American citizenship in 1951 and 1952. For Blücher to obtain his citizenship, the couple had to lie to the authorities and claim that he was never a member of the Communist Party. From the beginning, Arendt had a strong, critical voice and felt very comfortable critiquing the political structure of her new home as well as finding aspects of it to be admired, though her initial critical pieces began at Aufbau, in German, and focused on Jewish politics in relation to the War. Yet, even after being safe for many years, Arendt and Blücher did not feel totally secure. Mary McCarthy believed that Arendt, like other Jewish German immigrants, worried that the transition from a Republic to National Socialism could occur again.42 Blücher and Arendt had an emergency meeting place in case the Soviets invaded, or some other calamity occurred. The meeting place was Bard College in upstate New York, where Blücher worked, in case all went wrong again. They never had to use their emergency location in their lifetimes, but they never forgot the precarity of politics. Both Arendt and Blücher are buried side by side at the cemetery at Bard College, as their last meeting place.

 Mary McCarthy, “Hannah Arendt and Politics,” Partisan Review 1 (1985): 730.  This approach can be contrasted with a politics that appeals to the universal and what Arendt would call the “Rights of Man.” In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt noteed that the inalienable rights associated with the “Rights of Man” were unenforceable “even in countries whose constitutions were based upon them—whenever people appeared who were no longer citizens of any sovereign state” (293). It was citizenship that guaranteed political rights. 42  Mary McCarthy, “Hannah Arendt and Politics,” 731. 40 41

158 

K. FRY

Authenticity and Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt’s description of being a refugee in “We Refugees” highlighted a momentary contrast between how her identity as a Jewish immigrant was experienced and what should be done politically. The greatest controversies surrounding Arendt’s thought concerned identity politics questions and how an identity group should respond politically. Arendt tended to understand racial or ethnic identity categories as given, but this was not the source of the controversy.43 These controversies concerned how she criticized the way people lived their identities and how the political questions related to those identitities were addressed. In these cases, Arendt understood identity on an axis authenticity/inauthenticity in terms of political action. When Arendt discussed political issues related to identity, she tended to frame identity as something that was authentic or inauthentic, as something that was straightforward and political or ignored to assimilate, as something that was pure or impure, and as something that implicated people in their own oppression if not properly responded to. Consequently, Arendt set herself up as a problematic judge. The proper members of the group embraced their identities, shunned assimilation, and acted politically. They acted like conscious pariahs. The inauthentic members of the group failed in this task. They either sought to be an exception as a parvenu, sought to assimilate and shed one’s identity, or remained an apolitical pariah rejecting politics. By viewing the situation along these lines, she introduced blame at the intersection of identity and politics that led to many problematic conclusions and controversies over the course of her career. Moreover, it did not reflect her own lived experience as described in “We Refugees,” which underscored the safety concerns associated with authentic political action and her more ambivalent attitude toward it. With her coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker, Arendt caused a public controversy that lasted for roughly three years and arguably continues. Arendt lobbied with the magazine to cover the trial after regretting having missed the Nuremburg Trials. After the controversy emerged, she told Jaspers she felt no responsibility for what occurred at the trial and was merely there to report it.44 When the controversy against 43  Many scholars rightly took issue with the idea that identities were strictly biological and/ or given. 44  Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, December 23, 1960, Correspondence, 417.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

159

her arose, she often retreated to this self-understanding, that she was reporting what occurred at trial as a journalist, and not advocating that the trial should have focused on the topics that it did. However, her strong writing voice and the fact that she held editorial and theoretical positions within the text made this journalistic defense suspect. As her friend Mary McCarthy noted, “self-knowledge was not Hannah’s strong point.”45 Some believed that Arendt’s tone in the Eichmann book was inappropriate given the seriousness of the subject matter. One of the first critics to mention this was her friend Gershom Scholem who found the tone to be flippant and lacked the seriousness and respectfulness needed.46 In addition to the tone, there were two explicit content issues that sparked the most controversy. The first was Arendt’s use of the name “banality of evil,” to categorize Eichmann’s behavior. This phrase was viewed by some as inappropriate when linked to Nazism and the Holocaust. It was contained in the subtitle of the book, which she worded “A Report on the Banality of Evil”, but Richard Bernstein pointed out that the phrase was only mentioned once in the book itself, which was surprising given the level of controversy associated with it.47 Arendt explained the concept more thoroughly in lectures given after the book was published. Even though Arendt argued that Eichmann was responsible for his crimes in assisting mass murder and deserved the death penalty as punishment, she claimed he was not like a typical murderer who was intentionally monstrous, sadistic, calculating, manipulative, and consciously seeking great harm for the victims. What was terrifying about Eichmann for Arendt was his extreme thoughtlessness and normalcy, which allowed him to think he was doing his duty and doing his job by following orders, without acknowledging his responsibility for participating in mass murder.48 Arendt’s choice to use the word “banal” to indicate his extreme thoughtlessness caused a great deal of confusion. Mary McCarthy, who often “Englished” 45  Mary McCarthy, quoted in Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975, ed. Carol Brightman (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), xxvi. 46  Gershom Scholem to Hannah Arendt, June 23, 1963, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 202. 47  Richard Bernstein, “Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question,” in Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics, eds. Roger Berkowitz, Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Keenan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 132–133. 48  Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: The Viking Press, 1963), 253.

160 

K. FRY

Arendt’s work, disagreed with how Arendt was using the term “banal,” which McCarthy thought did not capture the egregiousness of Eichmann’s behavior.49 What the banality of evil was meant to capture was the nature of a ruthless crime in the actors failed to recognize or judge its brutality adequately. Arendt did not think Eichmann’s actions were banal, or that the Holocaust was banal, or that Eichmann was in any way excused by his behavior. In fact, she said he was deserving of the death penalty. As a philosopher, Arendt was flabbergasted by the critique against her that claimed she didn’t find him responsible since it was not situated in the text. Arendt was so astounded, that for some time she did not respond to the straw man attacks, because she felt they were based on an inaccurate reading, which likely lengthened the controversy. Since the trial, however, historical documents and resources have shown that Eichmann was intentionally antisemitic and a brutal man. Even prior to this public evidence, many felt that Arendt was fooled by Eichmann and that he was much more aware of what he was doing than how he appeared in court to Arendt.50 Nonetheless, the concept of the “banality of evil,” continues to be used by some scholars and journalists to describe situations that seem to suit it better, to capture the evils causing grave harm that go unacknowledged by the perpetrators as part of the normal course of business. Though controversially used in reference to Eichmann and issues concerning the Holocaust, the concept itself was not as exclusively related to identity politics issues like the second controversy that emerged in this book, since the concept of the “banality of evil,” could be used in other contexts that were outside of identity issues. The other and perhaps more contentious issue was much more directly related to identity politics. Arendt reported on the involvement of the Jewish councils in executing the orders of the Nazis. In some cases, the Jewish councils, or the Judenräte, helped construct lists of Jews and their property to help assist with their deportations  to the camps.51 Arendt wanted to know why they cooperated and why they didn’t rebel.52 This issue connected directly to Arendt’s understanding of identity. Arendt was not sympathetic with Jews who assisted the Nazis, even though she 49  Mary McCarthy, quoted by Carol Brightman in Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975, ed. Carol Brightman (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), xxv. 50  For example, see Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann Before Jerusalem, trans. Ruth Martin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014). 51  Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 104. 52  Ibid., 110.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

161

recognized that members of the Jewish councils were victims as well.53 When criticized for discussing the Jewish councils, she claimed that the wrong of her own people grieved her more than ones done by others and even though it was not possible to resist politically, there was, as she wrote to Gershom Scholem, still the “possibility to do nothing.”54 Arendt thought it would be better for individuals to refuse to take leadership positions and collaborate. She claimed their decisions to assist with Nazi policy implementation should be judged.55 However, she also asserted that she did not hold Jews responsible for the overall system and stated that “my point is not to shift part of the guilt over to the Jews. The system was guilty and in this the Jews had no part in the guilt whatsoever.”56 Nonetheless, many felt her condemnation of the councils under these extreme circumstances was too harsh, particularly since some critics thought that Eichmann’s treatment seemed to be disproportionately gentle. Problematically, Arendt’s stance also denied that there was diversity in the behavior of the members of the councils when some of them worked with the Underground and resisted. Arendt did not either know or discuss this fact. She treated all the councils alike and thought they would have done better to do nothing, rather than cooperating and implicating themselves. Though as Kei Hiruta pointed out, Arendt distinguished between the leadership in the councils and the average suffers who behaved magnificently under horrible circumstances.57 She thought it was the leaders who were to blame. Arendt believed that the number of victims of the Holocaust was higher because of the cooperation of and organization of the Jewish people by the leadership in these councils.58 Though the leadership of the councils should be judged, it would be better do so on a case-by-case basis and with full acknowledgment of the difficulty of the situation. Another issue was why this discussion of the councils was included in her book in the first place. Arendt later claimed that she included the discussion of the Jewish councils as factual reporting on the content of the trial, but also because she wanted to show the level of the total moral collapse created by 53  Hannah Arendt, The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2013), 42. 54  Hannah Arendt to Gershom Scholem, July 20, 1963, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 208. 55  Ibid. 56  Ibid. 57  Kei Hiruta, Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin, 128. 58  Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 111.

162 

K. FRY

totalitarianism.59 Anyone familiar with her earlier work recognized that she did, in fact, think the Jews had a part to play in failing to secure political rights over time and, therefore, she had blamed them to some degree. Though she had pointed to other instances of the Jewish people not being sufficiently political in The Origins of Totalitarianism and Rahel Varnhagen, she was not criticized as greatly as when she later criticized the Jewish councils. The controversy that arose in response to Eichmann in Jerusalem was public and she lost many friends over it, including Gershom Scholem, Kurt Blumenfeld, and Hans Jonas for a time, though he later forgave her. Though the Eichmann book brought this to the fore, Arendt was often critical of the actions of the group to which she belonged. Part of her analysis was her belief that Jews were not sufficiently political in securing their rights over time and in essence, were not being politically active in connection to their identities in the correct way. As Susie Linfield noted, Arendt accused Jews of being apolitical even though she was considering thousands of years of behavior.60 Others argued that Arendt’s knowledge of the history of antisemitism was minimal and often influenced by antisemitic sources.61 Moreover, she tended to understand her identity as a Jew in a secular way and did not appreciate the religiosity of the label and how for some, religion could pertain to politics.62 To some extent, she blamed the Jews for not handling their own persecution correctly. Arendt believed that the identity of an oppressed group must be retained and asserted politically, but by categorizing what “Jewish politics,” should be and how it should be expressed, she introduced frameworks of praise and blame that seemed to apply to minority groups alone. One cannot imagine majority groups having to live their political identities similarly. Kathryn Sophia Belle argued that Arendt understood “the Negro question as a Negro problem rather than a white problem,” making the onus for political action on the victims of segregation.63 It was clear that Arendt based  Ibid.  Susie Linfield, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 22. 61  For example, see Peter Staudenmaier, “Hannah Arendt’s Analysis of Antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Critical Appraisal,” Patterns of Prejudice 46, no. 2 (2012): 154–179. 62  Larry Ray and Maria Diemling, “Arendt’s ‘Conscious Pariah’ and the Ambiguous Figure of the Subaltern,” 504. 63  Kathryn Sophia Belle formerly known as Kathryn T.  Gines, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 1. 59 60

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

163

Jewish politics on this framework as well. She questioned the actions of minority group members and the goals they sought to attain in living their identities and failed to recognize the diversity of successful paths available. Given that Arendt was unable to sustain her sense of political identity fully in her immigrations as illustrated in her “We Refugees” essay, the judging of others should be more attuned to the difficult and differing circumstances at play and the multiplicity of responses available. Arendt sought to restore political agency to the Jews, but as Robert Fine and Philip Spencer argued, finding Jews co-responsible for their oppression does not work anymore than it would work to hold Blacks co-­ responsible for racism, women co-responsible for sexism, or Muslims co-­ responsible for Islamophobia.64 Fine and Spencer believed Arendt should have maintained a distinction between the response to antisemitism and the responsibility for it, by looking at various responses and whether they improved conditions, rather than holding the oppressed responsible for their condition.65 Additionally, arguing for a narrow way of behaving correctly with regard to racist oppression ran counter to Arendt’s typical avoidance of ethical frameworks generally as well as her interest in political plurality as a defense against totalitarian politics. During the Eichmann controversy, some critics entangled themselves in this dynamic similarly by attacking Arendt’s own identity, by examining whether she was sufficiently Jewish, or in the right way, or as Gershom Scholem suggested, whether she failed to have love for the Jewish people.66 Arendt was accused of both blaming the victim and being a self-loathing Jew. Articles were printed throughout the world and one French publication, Le Nouvel Observateur, headlined the story with “Is Arendt a Nazi?”67 Attacks on her authentic behavior as a Jew were also problematic. Ironically, the “We Refugees” essay showed how Arendt struggled to fully maintain the authentic political membership at times when she was worried about failing to gain citizenship. Although “We Refugees” is filled with keen understanding of 64  Robert Fine and Philip Spencer, Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 76. 65  Ibid. 66  Gershom Scholem to Hannah Arendt, June 23, 1963, The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, 202. 67  Someone who worked at the Observateur later admitted to McCarthy that the headline suggesting that Arendt might be a Nazi was merely to sell issues, and that no one at the publication took it seriously (Mary McCarthy to Hannah Arendt, November 21, 1966, Between Friends, 198).

164 

K. FRY

what immigrants suffered, the strength of this type of insight was absent in many of her less personal, more formal writings on these topics for which she had less direct experience. Some scholars did not find Arendt’s advocacy for authentic political behavior for oppressed groups to be problematic. Annabel Hertzog saw the quest for political authenticity to be a good reason for a group to transition from being a natural group outside of politics, to becoming a political one. For Herzog, Arendt understood the pre-political fact of racial or ethnic identity became political mainly as a matter of self-defense.68 Hertzog claimed that the “We Refugees” essay showed how immigrants were forced into inauthenticity by denying their identity.69 When one’s identity was politically attacked, then it became a political problem. Richard Bernstein did not view this structure of authentic political action as one of ethical blame, but as political responsibility which encouraged members to act.70 Still, the specificities of authentic political action for marginalized groups are not easy to identify conclusively or to live. Responsibility for one’s lived identity and its relation political action does not seem to be categorized so simply or quickly as Arendt did. Larry Ray and Maria Diemling discussed that Arendt seemed much more concerned with authenticity of the actors participating in politics, rather than whether they attained their goals.71 Despite her interest in political plurality, Arendt was unable to see political actions concerning identity in a more pluralistic framework which could include conscious pariah-hood as one option among many. Like individuals, groups participate in politics meaningfully in multiple ways. Arendt’s advocacy of the council system was a model for plurality in action that addressed different concerns that varied by community. Yet, this insight did not extend for Arendt to political action based upon identity oppression. Identity politics issues did not garner the same sense of diversity of approach for Arendt. As Ray and Diemling explored, the dichotomy of pariah/parvenu structure did not even capture the complexity of the relationships between Jews and the broader communities.72 68  Annabel Herzog, “When Arendt Said ‘We’: Jewish Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought,” Telos 192 (2020): 79. 69  Ibid., 76. 70  Richard Bernstein. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 38–40. 71  Larry Ray and Maria Diemling, “Arendt’s ‘Conscious Pariah’ and the Ambiguous Figure of the Subaltern.” European Journal of Social Theory 19, no. 4 (2016): 510. 72  Ibid., 504.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

165

Arendt praised plurality and individuality as key components to successful political action, but the main controversies surrounding her discussions of identity politics questions concerned this problematic dynamic of viewing identity groups through the lens of authentic political action. Not only her book on the Eichmann, but also her essay on Little Rock were caught up in this problematic framework of how identity should be defended authentically. This problem is even more pronounced in her Little Rock essay since Arendt was not a member of the group she was criticizing.

Authenticity and Little Rock In her 1959 essay “Reflections on Little Rock,” Arendt’s work provoked a public controversy connected to authentic political action that continues. When President Eisenhower ordered the desegregation of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas because of the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education, Arendt was bothered by the fact that so many citizens were willing to interfere with the court order in the South. Consequently, she worried about the precarious position that the young students were placed in by having to directly face the angry opponents of desegregation.73 She wrote “Reflections on Little Rock” in 1957 at roughly the same time that she was writing The Human Condition. Like her work in The Human Condition, she separated the realms of the public, private, and social and believed that public and legal discrimination was the proper area for protest.74 One central concern for Arendt was that she thought this conflict was too difficult for children to face and that they should be protected from intense circumstances of marching past racists with armed guards and having to endure prejudice throughout the school day.75 There was some consistency in her view about children not participating in political conflict. For example, in 1970, she refused to donate to support an anti-Vietnam War conference for high school students and stated: “I disagree with the advisability of mobilizing children in political

73  Hannah Arendt, Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (USA: Penguin Books, 2000), 235, 236. 74  Ibid., 309. 75  Ibid., 242.

166 

K. FRY

matters.”76 Arendt felt that adults should be the political actors and that children should be sheltered from bearing the brunt of the conflict. The more problematic claim was her assertion that schools were a place where the realms of public and private mixed, and in this case, she thought they were social and not political.77 Her understanding of prejudice in schools was influenced by her experience with Jewish schools in Germany. With the rise of Hitler, Arendt advocated for Jewish students to be separated into their own schools to avoid National Socialist ideology in the classroom. Arendt suggested a better goal for the civil rights movement would be to work on laws banning interracial marriage, since it was something that adults could face the brunt of the protest themselves, the ability to marry affected their lives intimately, and it involved individual political rights.78 She claimed that instances of legal enforcement of segregation was a more worthy political problem to address, instead of segregation in education itself, and in her response to critics, she stated it would be better to form a voluntary integrated school in order to persuade others of their value than to force desegregation.79 Arendt wrote that if the state tried to interfere with the formation of a school that voluntarily integrated, then political action should be taken, apparently by adults. She also stated that humans discriminate against each other socially along the lines of “profession, income, and ethnic origins,” which she considered to be a precondition for free association.80 She believed that schools were within the social realm and could be permissibly discriminatory since parents had a say in how their children were educated. She equated schools to hotels or recreation places catering to Jews or other groups.81 She also defended states’ rights as something that was valuable because it helped with the division of powers.82 The tone of the essay struck many readers as very problematic, especially since she was not a member of the group she was criticizing for their action. In her preliminary remarks she stated, “oppressed minorities were 76  Hannah Arendt to Sara Johnston, February 2, 1970, 014516, Hannah Arendt Papers: Subject File, 1949–1975; Vietnam War; 1969, Apr.–1971, Jan., Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.04116a/?sp=42. 77  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 237. 78  Ibid., 236. 79  Ibid., 245. 80  Ibid., 238. 81  Ibid. 82  Ibid., 240.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

167

never the best judges on the order of priorities in such matters.”83 Ironically, this statement contests the validity of her own writings on antisemitism. She did not give the parents of the students any credit for their decisions to enroll their children in these schools and she lacked understanding about the motives behind the choice. Her essay was thought to be inappropriately judgmental, callous, and unsympathetic, just like the future charges that would be made against the Eichmann book.84 In response to her critics who had analyzed her article for publication in Dissent, she explained problematically that she “imagined” herself as a Negro mother and thought she would not expose her child to those conditions since it may hurt the child’s pride and personal integrity.85 Unusually, Arendt was hesitant about the essay herself. She wrote a disclaimer at the beginning of the essay underscoring her sympathy with the movement, a move she would not make with any of the rest of her writing. The controversy over the essay began in 1957 with the editors of Commentary, but publication never occurred in that journal because Arendt withdrew her article and published it in Dissent in 1959 instead.86 The editors at the original journal, Commentary, delayed publication and commissioned Sidney Hook to write a response to be published with Arendt’s article. Arendt’s past with Sidney Hook was not a good one and he often criticized her work publicly. Arendt wrote the editors of Commentary that she was uncomfortable with the delays for publication and the fact that the New York intellectual community was discussing the article and Hook’s editorial without having even seen either.87 She no longer trusted that they would allow her adequate time to respond to Hook’s piece as they had promised, since his piece was already in galleys, and there were additional disputes about the pay schedule for the article.88 Norman Podhoretz, who worked at Commentary, stated that the editors  Ibid., 232.  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 309. 85  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 244. 86  Ibid., 309–311. 87  See the following for the letter of withdrawal: Hannah Arendt to the Editors of Commentary, February 1, 1957, 029882 Hannah Arendt Papers, Correspondence, 1938–1976; Publishers, 1944–1976; Commentary, 1958–1975, Library of Congress, https:// www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023010/?sp=1&r=-0.238,0.818,1.672,1.027,0. 88  Ibid. 83 84

168 

K. FRY

were maneuvering in the hopes that Arendt would withdraw the piece, which she did.89 Despite this, Podhoretz wrote her a letter reiterating his desire to publish her article in Commentary, and insisted that the dispute was merely about whether her response to Hook would appear as a letter to the editor or not, and he offered her the opportunity for another article in response to any mail they may receive about the first.90 She withdrew the article over the delays and other matters. In 1959, she agreed to publish the article in Dissent, with the discussion continuing for two years and not dying down and with new developments occurring with desegregation. It was published along with two critical replies, by David Spitz and Melvin Tuman. Spitz’s article focused on the untenable nature of the public/private/social distinctions that she had made, her defense of state’s rights, and her ordering of anti-miscegenation laws above segregation laws in schools. Spitz argued that desegregation was trying to remove the “state as a discriminatory power,” and therefore, was properly political because desegregating the schools was a fight concerning the need for the law to treat everyone equally.91 Tuman’s criticism centered on Arendt’s presumption that marriage laws were more important than jobs, housing, health, or voting, as well as her striking overall ignorance of the situation on the ground. He was stunned that someone who suffered under fascism was unable to understand the violence on the streets. Apparently, there was a potential letter to the editor that was submitted to Dissent by Mathew Lipman which was not published. Arendt wrote back to Lipmann restating her view that the education was a borderline case between the political and the social and that the focus in cases of the social was on the individual relation to society through social discrimination, not political inequality. Alternatively, she claimed that solidarity with the oppressed was truly 89  Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends: Falling out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (New York: The Free Press, 1999), 139. Despite this incident, her professional relationship with Commentary continued and she was asked to review books, participate in an anthology, and they invited her to the 50th anniversary celebration of the journal (Norman Podhoretz to Hannah Arendt, October 24, 1962 and October 20, 1965, 029873 and 02860, Hannah Arendt Papers, Correspondence, 1938–1976; Publishers, 1944–1975, Commentary, 1958–1975, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023010/?sp=11 and https:// www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023010/?sp=15). 90  Norman Podhoretz to Hannah Arendt, December 6, 1957, 029884, Hannah Arendt Papers, Correspondence, 1938–1976: Publishers., 1944–1975; Commentary, 1945–1957, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023000/?sp=53&r=-. 91  David Spitz, “Politics and the Realms of Being,” Dissent 6, no.3 (1959): 56–64.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

169

political and combated cases of political persecution.92 Whereas social discrimination did not compel individuals legally and they retained the option to be “pariahs,” legislation was political and did compel obedience, so it was rightly fought against as a case of political persecution.93 Arendt claimed schools were public in terms of the curriculum that was supervised by the authorities, but social to the extent that parents had “the right to determine in which group their child should acquire its education.” 94 For this reason, Arendt supported federal funding of parochial schools.95 Arendt’s biggest error was to think education was a matter of social discrimination rather than political persecution. For Arendt, the “authentic” political action concerned addressing political persecution. Yet, the parents of the African American children were being prevented from choosing, which is not something that Arendt acknowledged. In the case of Little Rock, Arendt reconsidered her view when she got more information about the facts on the ground. After reading an interview with the author Ralph Ellison a few years later in 1965, she changed her mind, which is something Arendt rarely did with her scholarly work. Ellison’s point in his interview was that the world was already brutal for the children, and he thought that facing the angry crowd cultivated courage that was necessary for survival in the American South. Ellison stated when discussing the ideal of sacrifice that: Hannah Arendt’s failure to grasp the importance of this ideal among Southern Negroes caused her to fly way off into left field in her “Reflections on Little Rock,” in which she charged Negro parents with exploiting their children during the struggle to integrate the schools. But she has absolutely no conception of what goes on in the minds of Negro parents when they send their kids through those lines of hostile people.96

Ellison went on to compare the situation to a kind of rite of initiation in which the child was expected to contain his or her fear as a test to ensure 92  Hannah Arendt to Mathew Lipman, March 30, 1959, 030011, Hannah Arendt Papers: Correspondence, 1938–1976; Publishers, 1944–1975; Dissent, 1958–1972, undated, Library of Congress oc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023060/?sp=10. 93  Ibid., 030012, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.023060/?sp=11. 94  Ibid. 95  Ibid. 96  Ralph Ellison in Robert Penn Warren, Who Speaks for the Negro? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 343–344.

170 

K. FRY

a less harsh life in a racist society. Danielle S. Allen stated that Ellison saw that sacrifice, pains, and disappointments were part of what was necessary to be a citizen and it was the parents who showed heroic citizenship.97 After reading the interview, Arendt wrote to Ellison thanking him and realized that she did not understand the situation adequately. The following is the entire main body of Arendt’s letter: You are entirely right: it is precisely this “ideal of sacrifice” which I didn’t understand; and since my starting point was a consideration of the situation of Negro kids in forcibly integrated schools, this failure to understand caused me indeed to go into an entirely wrong direction. I received, of course, a great many criticisms about this article from the side of my “liberal” friends or rather non-friends which, I must confess, didn’t bother me. But I knew that I was somehow wrong and thought that I hadn’t grasped the element of stark violence, of elementary, bodily fear in the situation. But your remarks seem to me so entirely right, that I now see that I simply didn’t understand the complexities of the situation.”98

This was an extremely rare admission of fault on Arendt’s part, even though some of the comments focused on the public reception of her work, rather than the more important struggle for desegregation. Clearly, she did not have any frame of reference for understanding these issues and it betrayed her earlier method of using various sources, approaches, methodologies, and narratives as starting points to ground her theory. It may be the case that Arendt had changed her mind on this issue even earlier than her letter to Ellison in 1965. In a private letter to her friend Helene Wolff in August of 1963, Arendt discussed the bussing of children to integrate the schools in New York City and stated that if “things go well, and there may still be great chances for that, it would be great.” 99 The concern of children participating in action is no longer evident with this comment, but the situation in New York was substantially different than Little Rock.

97  Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 29–30. 98  Hannah Arendt to Ralph Ellison, July 29, 1965, 005820, Hannah Arendt Papers, Correspondence, 1938–1976; General, 1938–1976; “E” Miscellaneous, 1963–1976, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11056dig.020340/?sp=7. 99  Hannah Arendt to Helene Wolff, August 2, 1963, Hannah Arendt: Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, mag ich mir nicht vorstellen, eds. Ingeborg Nordmann and Ursula Ludz (Frankfurt am Main: Piper, 2017), 591.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

171

In subsequent years, Richard H.  King, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, and Liliane Weissberg asserted that Arendt understood race relations in the South on the model of what she had experienced in Germany, which was her fatal flaw in this essay.100 Separate education for Jews was not an oppressive situation in Weimar Germany because it was high quality and actually protected young Jewish children from antisemitism of the German schools, harkening back to the protective strategy that her mother had given her. Arendt held this view at the beginning of the War when the schools could protect Jewish students from the Nazi environment, and she advocated that anyone with any portion of Jewish ancestry should be allowed to attend so that they could be protected. However, in the American South, the situation was entirely different, and Arendt failed to recognize this fact. Arendt understood the response to all identity politics questions in the same way. The “proper” way to address prejudice based on identity seemingly for all groups, was to avoid assimilation, avoid parvenu ambitions, and avoid being apolitical. Identity politics issues were filtered largely through this lens. One reason for her ignorance about the situation in Little Rock was that she avoided traveling in the South because she was bothered by Jim Crow laws, and she was unwilling to see them in person. She stated she would find it “personally unbearable,” to witness them.101 Knowing little about how identity functioned for African Americans in the Southern United States under segregation, she applied her categories ignorantly and mistakenly. One could presume she thought erroneously that those who participated in desegregation had failed both the assimilation test and the parvenu test by seeking to desegregate the schools. Oddly, her suggestion of tackling marriage laws first, would pass all her areas of concern, since it did not have to do with assimilation, it had nothing to do with being an exception to the group, and it fit into her category of the political, but it did not address the greater issue of those suffering from unequal educational opportunities. Presuming to be able to identify the “political” problems and the only authentic ways of approaching them partly ignored Arendt’s other claims about plurality in politics. Unlike 100  Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 316. Liliane Weissberg, “From Königsberg to Little Rock: Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Childhood,” in “Escape to Life” German Intellectuals in New  York: A Compendium on Exile After 1933, eds. Eckhart Goebel and Sigrid Weigel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 80–99. 101  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 232.

172 

K. FRY

other instances in which she examined stories and conditions on the ground prior to making theoretical claims, this was suspiciously absent in this case. Arendt problematically interpreted the action through her categories without fully realizing the value of what was accomplished in Little Rock  and other desegregated schools. At the time, Arendt’s article on Little Rock was heavily criticized.102 Scholars have also noted there are many other areas of concern related to anti-Black racism in Arendt’s work.103 All of these issues demand further investigation. By claiming there is a correct, proper, or authentic way of fighting back from the perspective of a minority identity suggests that there is one appropriate way to live an identity politically and one way for groups to tackle 102  The response to this essay was not entirely negative. “Reflections on Little Rock” received the 1959 Longview Foundation Award for outstanding literary article (Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 315). Arendt thought it was typical of America to give an award for something so unpopular (Hannah Arendt to Gertrud Jaspers, January 3, 1960, Correspondence, 386). 103  One issue was her treatment of Africa and discussion of race in The Origins of Totalitarianism and her admiration of the founding of America without serious discussion of the problem of slavery either in America or in ancient Greece. Moreover, there are the problems of Arendt’s elitism and eurocentrism in her discussions of education, her differing discussions of the Black Power movement and the Anti-War movement in some of her writings, and her questioning of the qualifications of some Black students for university as well as her racial understandings of urban crime. Arendt largely ignored writing explicitly about antiBlack racism, which is extremely concerning since she prioritized political action so much and she tackled race issues early in her career. She often wrote as if it was clearly the case that all would assume her position to be against racial oppression of any kind. Many scholars have speculated about why this problematic thread runs through Arendt’s work. Michael D. Burroughs mapped out the various possibilities as blaming the categories of public, private, and social for excluding these discussions, as Arendt being racially prejudiced, as Arendt being culturally insensitive or as misunderstanding American racial politics since she was an immigrant from Europe, but he thinks it is an instance of white ignorance following Charles Mills’ theory (Michael Burroughs, “Hannah Arendt, ‘Reflections on Little Rock,’ and White Ignorance,” Critical Philosophy of Race 3, no. 1 [2015]: 52–78). Furthermore, Jimmy Casas Klausen argued that Arendt’s anti-primitivism is the source of her problematic race discussions in The Origins of Totalitarianism (Jimmy Casas Klausen, “Hannah Arendt’s Antiprimitivism,” Political Theory 38, vol. 3 [2010]: 394–423). Kathryn Sophia Belle, Robert Bernasconi, and Anne Norton have argued these problematic strains cannot be separated from her overall theory (Kathryn T. Gines, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question, Robert Bernasconi, “The Double Face of the Political and the Social: Hannah Arendt and American’s Racial Divisions,” Research in Phenomenology 26, no. 1 [1996]: 3–24, Anne Norton, “Heart of Darkness: Africa and African Americans in the Writings of Hannah Arendt,” in Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, ed. Bonnie Honig [University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995], 247–261).

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

173

issues. Linking authentic identity group political behavior to specific and narrow approaches does not seem to be helpful because it did not address what Arendt herself experienced, the desperate situation of those who suffered and were conflicted about how to live and how to be safe. “We Refugees” was a testament to her struggle to be political in trying circumstances. The same kind of understanding should be extended to others, the different circumstances in the situation should be recognized, and the acknowledgment of the success of the movement and the actors should be made. Further, Arendt did not recognize that there may be many roads for identity-based groups to succeed beyond the pariah/parvenu paradigm. While it is certainly useful to discuss effective techniques for obtaining political goals, a discussion of how one lived a minority identity under oppressive conditions should be more delicately addressed, by focusing on the plurality of ways to effectively respond as well as the plurality of ways the oppressed suffer. In The New York Times, Arendt was asked to answer the question of whether America was by nature a violent society. The article has problematic claims concerning the rise of violence in urban America and her archives show that she edited out statements from her first draft that expressed admiration for the success of the civil rights movement in the South and about how African Americans were never treated equally in the United States, which would have been helpful.104 Nonetheless, she concluded her piece with the following prescient paragraph in 1968: The real danger is not violence but the possibility of a white backlash of such proportions as to be able to invade the domain of regular government. Only such a victory at the polls could stop the present policy of integration; its consequences would be unmitigated disaster—the end, perhaps not of the country, but certainly of the American Republic.

Given the insurrection in the United States of 2021 and voter suppression legislation in the United States, there were moments of understanding in Arendt’s conclusion as well as her sense of its urgency and significance. Arendt’s errors in discussing desegregation in Little Rock and about identity politics issues in general, particularly regarding African American and women’s issues, cannot be easily settled or ignored, but there remain some  Hannah Arendt. Draft of “Is America by Nature a Violent Society?” 1968, 021597, Hannah Arendt Papers; Speeches and Writings File, 1923–1975: Essays and Lectures; “Is America by Nature a Violent Society?” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/ mss11056dig.051580/?sp=3&r=-0.916,-0.105,2.833,1.134,0. 104

174 

K. FRY

possibilities within her thought to reflect on how to alleviate political oppression connected to identity. Identity politics questions could be political for Arendt, even though she failed to acknowledge the diverse experiences that members of various identities endure  or fully describe how identity functions politically. Arendt’s success in discussing these topics is quite debatable and her mistakes and omissions should be made plain. Nonetheless, there remain moments of insight and the potential to reconceive of plurality in new ways to act against political oppression and systemic inequality.

Bibliography Allen, Danielle, S. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on Knowledge. New York: The Viking Press, 1963. ———. Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. ———. The Jewish Writings. Edited by Jerome Kohn and Ron H.  Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. ———. The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2013. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1973. ———. The Portable Arendt. ed. Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000. ———. Hannah Arendt: Wie ich einmal ohne Dich leben soll, mag ich mir nicht vorstellen. Edited by Ingeborg Nordmann and Ursula Ludz. Frankfurt am Main: Piper, 2017. Arendt, Hannah and Jaspers, Karl. Hannah Arendt/Karl Jaspers Correspondence, 1926–1969. Eds. Lotte Kohler and Hans Saner. Trans. Robert and Rita Kimber. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1992. Arendt, Hannah and McCarthy, Mary. Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949–1975. Edited by Carol Brightman. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995. Arendt, Hannah and Scholem, Gershom. The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Edited by Marie Luise Knott. Translated by Anthony David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Benhabib, Seyla. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. ———. Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

8  AUTHENTICITY, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS 

175

Bernasconi, Robert. “The Double Face of the Political and the Social: Hannah Arendt and American’s Racial Divisions.” Research in Phenomenology 26, no. 1 (1996): 3–24. Bernstein, Richard. “Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question.” In Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. Edited by Roger Berkowitz, Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Keenan, 131–136. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. ———. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Birmingham, Peg. Hannah Arendt and Human Right: The Predicament of Common Responsibility. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Butler, Judith and Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty. Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging. London: Seagull Books, 2007. Ellison, Ralph in Warren, Robert Penn. Who Speaks for the Negro? New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 343–344. Fine, Robert, and Spencer, Phillip. Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. Gandesha, Simir. “Rahel Varnhagen.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt, edited by Peter Gratton and Yasemin Sari, 191–198. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Gines, Kathryn T. Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. Gundogdu, Ayten. Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggle of Migrants. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Herzog, Annabel. “When Arendt Said ‘We’: Jewish Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought,” Telos 192 (2020): 67–79. Hiruta, Kei. Hannah Arendt & Isaiah Berlin: Freedom, Politics and Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. Linfield, Susie. The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. McCarthy, Mary. “Hannah Arendt and Politics.” Partisan Review 1 (1985): 729–738. Norton, Anne. “Heart of Darkness: Africa and African Americans in the Writings of Hannah Arendt.” In Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt, edited by Bonnie Honig, 247–261. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995 Parekh, Serena. Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights. New York: Routledge, 2008. Piterberg, Gabriel. “Public Intellectuals and Conscious Pariahs: Hannah Arendt, Edward Said and a Common State in Palestine-Israel.” Holy Land Studies 12, no. 2 (2013): 141–159.

176 

K. FRY

Podhoretz, Norman. Ex-Friends: Falling out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer. New  York: The Free Press, 1999. Ray, Larry and Diemling, Maria. “Arendt’s ‘Conscious Pariah’ and the Ambiguous Figure of the Subaltern.” European Journal of Social Theory 19, no. 4 (2016): 503–520. Spitz, David. “Politics and the Realms of Being,” Dissent 6, no. 3 (1959): 56–64. Stangneth, Bettina. Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. Translated by Ruth Martin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. Staudenmaier, Peter. “Hannah Arendt’s Analysis of Antisemitism in The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Critical Appraisal.” Patterns of Prejudice 46, No. 2 (2012): 154–179. Weissberg, Liliane. “From Königsberg to Little Rock: Hannah Arendt and the Concept of Childhood.” “Escape to Life” German Intellectuals in New York: A Compendium on Exile After 1933. Edited by Eckhart Goebel, Sigrid Weigel, Jerome Bolton. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For the Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 309.

CHAPTER 9

Conclusion

Exploring the documentary, biographical, and historical evidence related to Arendt’s life has led to some non-traditional findings relating to her work. Even though Arendt used biographical information and stories often, that fact has not been fully focused on in detail. The most scholarly references to Arendt’s use of storytelling came from her description of history in The Human Condition as well as in her Isak Dinesen essay which appeared in Men in Dark Times. Yet, often Arendt’s descriptions of the significance of stories, including biographical narratives, were understood in the abstract and as part of her overall theory of history or politics, without paying much attention to the fact that the evidence of life stories sometimes preceded and fueled the philosophical conclusions that Arendt made. History, politics, and theory did not exist in complete isolation from how lives were lived and how the world was. In her interview with Günther Gaus, Arendt said: I do not believe that there is any thought process possible without personal experience. Every thought is an afterthought, that is, a reflection on some matter or event. Isn’t that so?1

While this comment may reference thinking in general, it was certainly the case that personal experiences, including narratives and life stories, were 1

 Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (USA: Penguin Books, 2000), 19.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8_9

177

178 

K. FRY

important to Arendt and informed her thought. Her analysis in Men in Dark Times went beyond abstract discussions of the theoretical claims of her subjects’ written works and made connections between their life experiences and their beliefs. Arendt thought that philosophy needed to engage with life stories and individual events, particularly when seeking to understand some of the issues that were most important to her like  the rise of National Socialism. Phenomena could not be understood theoretically without referencing lived conditions. In fact, there is a sense in which one of the central problems of totalitarianism for Arendt was that it sought to eliminate individual life stories and prevented communication, which made it easier for the masses to buy into the propaganda of the super-­ structure. Arendt often returned to biography and narrative, both in her writing and teaching, as relating directly to and inspiring some of the theoretical conclusions that she made. While she had more abstract writings and analyzing them in isolation from personal experience has significance, there is also value in investigating Arendt’s life experiences and how they informed her theory. Given that saving life stories and historical documents were important to Arendt, many conclusions can be made concerning the extensive archive that she carefully compiled. Though she kept letters throughout her life, the years that she spent stateless emphasized the need to preserve documents, academic work, and life stories of her friends and colleagues. Her care with her friend Walter Benjamin’s writing, her work in the publishing industry, and her work for the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction organization are some examples that illustrated the value she placed on documenting events. Both Benjamin and Arendt thought that preserving the fragments of life was a way to combat the aims of totalitarianism by allowing future pearl divers to reach down into the sea of materials from the past and understand something of what occurred. Focusing on the process of archiving for Arendt and Benjamin grants insight into how they understood history and how their archiving or collecting was a politically inspired task. Even though preserving stories helped in understanding history, philosophy, and politics, there were some issues that Arendt chose not to preserve. Given her openness with the kinds of things that she did share, including love letters and medical documents, the gaps of major life events, such as her internment at Gurs, are important and illustrative. Perhaps she did not feel distanced enough from the experiences to document them or perhaps they paled in comparison to what happened to others during the

9 CONCLUSION 

179

War. It is likely that there was no opportunity while living in the camp to document anything, yet the fact that this persisted and Arendt rarely referenced these experiences in public and private writing was notable, given everything else she did document. Further, the fact that her hometown of Königsberg slipped from her view seemed strange, though one could certainly understand why she would want to leave these experiences behind. Concentrating on archival information also gives a greater sense of the context and development of her work. Even though she was often thought of as being in Heidegger’s shadow, the archival evidence and personal letters show that Jaspers was a more constant force who had an important influence on her life as well. In fact, the narrative of the professor who was romantically involved with a female student and therefore, was the guiding influence for her theoretical work was based more on assumptions in this case  than in evidence. The archival record shows that philosophers influence one another personally and professionally and that influence does not occur one way only, from more famous teacher to student, but is mutual and often changed over time. Focusing on the archival and biographical data also gives us insights into how politics functioned practically for Arendt, especially concerning the relationship between the individual and the group. Arendt considered herself to be a thinker who did not belong to political groups, and she was not particularly interested in participating in practical politics. Though Arendt was “forced,” to take actions at times, such as becoming a Zionist during the Second World War, she largely rejected joining political groups and voted across political parties. Arendt had an ambivalent connection to groups, denying membership much more frequently than asserting it. Even the strategy of keeping the letters for the invitations that she declined seemed to underscore her worry of being associated with a group or cause to which she disagreed. When she rejected heading the Judah Magnes Foundation, she claimed that practical politics required patience, political maneuvering, and the ability to remain aloof and to not get disgusted by the process. She said she was a thinker and not an actor and she believed that the existential position of political action was different from thinking because it required joining with others. Examining Arendt’s rejection of political action in her own life gives us a greater understanding of what she thought about politics generally and how it functioned. While her theoretical discussions of action produced more optimistic and ideal notions of politics, it was clear that Arendt thought the world often presented urgent situations that demanded a response by people bound together in a

180 

K. FRY

common cause, choosing to come together, as messy as the process was. The significance of deciding to join a group to act together is underemphasized in Arendt scholarship which focused understandably on the texts like The Human Condition, linking  action with displaying individual uniqueness, or On Revolution, which empasized  rational deliberation about politics in general. Arendt’s discussions of acting in concert or metaphors about politics being like talking with others around a table, did not capture totally her personal ideas about how all instances of politics existed in the world. Focusing on Arendt’s stated dismissals of political action in her own life allows a greater variety of political action to emerge. Further, Arendt’s academic work is often understood as excluding identity politics categories as social and therefore, outside of the realm of the properly political. What these views ignored was how often Arendt approached her own battles against antisemitism with the assertion that “if one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew.”2 This was certainly the case in the battle against Hitlerism, which made her Jewishness outweigh “all other questions of personal identity or rather had decided them in favor of anonymity, of namelessness.”3 Arendt’s Jewishness during the rise of National Socialism was a “political fact,” which  denied her rights and forced her to emigrate twice.4 Embracing identity membership was central for her personal fight as well as in many of her essays and books that addressed antisemitism. She emphasized that “one can resist only in terms of the identity that is under attack.”5 The other options of trying to be an exception or appealing to universal human rights did not explain the oppression or help alleviate it for Arendt. Denying identity membership was ineffective for Arendt. Arendt may not be right about the benefits of identity politics and there are concerns about whether identity politics can combat oppression or whether it is inappropriate, ineffective, or problematic by reinforcing essentialism in identity. Nonetheless, it seemed that identity politics was not only possible for Arendt, but necessary for combating political oppression based on that identity. Therefore, how politics functioned for Arendt is largely misunderstood on this issue, and it raises further questions about the role of identity politics in Arendt’s thought. What constitutes  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 12.  Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), 18. 4  Ibid. 5  Ibid. 2 3

9 CONCLUSION 

181

membership in the group? Is membership in groups based on self-­ identification or is it based on some unchanging characteristic? Are there roles for allies to play? Is this something that only becomes political in times of oppression or persecution and remains outside of politics otherwise? How does an individual disclose oneself when working in a group? Is it possible to transfer Arendt’s claims about the need to fight back “as a Jew” to other types of oppression and groups? Are there dangers in doing so? Is there a way to accommodate an intersectional approach with this view? Looking at Arendt’s life and how she understood her own identity complicates her theory, which clearly engaged with identity politics at some points, but neither defined identity categories in detail nor discussed how identity politics were meant to function specifically. There are hints to possible answers to some of these questions scattered throughout Arendt’s work, but her position was far from conclusive. The generality of her claim that one must resist from the position of the identity attacked suggested that this view may extend beyond the antisemitism she suffered and toward other types of oppressions, but it is difficult to tell for sure. Arendt described the “political fact” of her Jewish identity in her interview with Günter Gaus. When asked to talk about whether she had “love” for the Jewish people, Arendt stated: Belonging to a group is a natural condition. You belong to some sort of group when you are born, always.6

This suggested that at least in the case of her being Jewish, Arendt seemed to consider it to be natural or innate fact, despite calling it a political fact as well. She contrasted this kind of membership to actively joining political groups which she said was completely different.7 Arendt said a political organization “has to do with a relation to the world. People who become organized have in common what are ordinarily called interests.”8 Joining the political group involved making a conscious decision to organize around a cause. When she described joining political groups in the United States, she said the public realm was formed by

 Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 16.  Ibid. 8  Ibid. 6 7

182 

K. FRY

spontaneous associations, which then disband again … Some public interest concerns a specific group of people, those in a neighborhood or even in just one house or in a city or in some other sort of group. Then these people will convene and they are very capable of acting publicly in these matters—for they have an overview of them.9

If this comment can be transferred to identity politics cases, it suggests that political events emerge which may make identity groups inclined to organize politically, but then the situation could change, making them no longer necessary. So perhaps, one is always a member of an identity group in her first sense as a natural fact about oneself, but one could choose to be a member of a political group addressing identity politics oppression when the conditions demanded it.10 Yet, she also described her innate identity as a “political” fact about herself, which seemed different than a natural one, given her separation between the public and private realms and how she understood what politics was. In the Little Rock essay, Arendt pointed toward the purview of identity politics issues, which did not include all instances of discrimination against minorities. Arendt claimed that some identity politics topics were political, and some were social.11 The political cases pertained to the legal enforcement of denying political rights. Social discrimination, on the other hand, was acceptable to Arendt for those who wanted to socialize with people similar to them, which she problematically extended to educational choice for parents. Political discrimination was not acceptable and the legal enforcement of discrimination by the state was a political issue that should be combatted.12 Arendt called the legal enforcement of social discrimination “persecution,” which demanded a political response.13 She argued that the political realm was a realm of equality and that equality was “its innermost principle.”14 Therefore, perhaps when political equality was  Ibid., 20.  The idea being an innate member of an identity group is not obvious and varies, depending on the identity involved. Regarding her Jewish identity, Arendt’s experience of oppression had nothing to do being a practicing religious person, but in other contexts conversion and choosing not to practice seem to complicate this identity, which has historically been understood in a variety of ways, including religiously, ethnically, culturally, or racially. Other types of identities complicate the “naturalness” of identity even further. 11  Arendt saw education as a social venue, but this is highly contested. 12  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 240. 13  Ibid. 14  Ibid., 237. 9

10

9 CONCLUSION 

183

threatened based on an identity issue, then those with the identity should fight back from the position of that identity. It is unclear whether others could join in this task, but it seems likely that they could since in democracies anyone can join a political group based on a cause. “We Refugees,” showed moments in Arendt’s lived experience that challenged some of her theoretical claims about the need to fight back from a position of identity. Her experience and the experiences of other immigrants pointed to the temptation for assimilation to attain citizenship, safety, and security. Affirming one’s identity politically could be extremely risky. In contrast, the more theoretical and less autobiographical writings concerning oppression like Eichmann and Jerusalem and many of the writings collected in The Jewish Writings maintained a more specific, “authentic” approach toward fighting back from within an identity, embodying the attitude of the conscious pariah, and seemingly rejecting and condemning other paths. “Reflections on Little Rock” also made claims about appropriate and specific action for oppressed minorities despite Arendt’s insufficient knowledge of the lived experience of those in the segregated American South. Though she was interested in plurality and the need for political action to allow for diversity of approaches, she argued for very specific behavior, including which political goal was necessary to obtain first, even though she was not a member of the group to which it applied. She said in her disclaimer at the beginning of the Little Rock essay: [O]ppressed minorities were never the best judges on the order of priorities in such matters and there are many instances when they preferred to fight for social opportunity rather than for basic human or political rights.15

The absence of her previous method of being familiar with narratives and lived conditions to inform theoretical outcomes was most explicit in “Reflections on Little Rock.” Ralph Ellison’s description of the actual situation of minority children in the South changed her mind about some of her claims. Failing to engage with these kinds of sources prior to writing led to errors on Arendt’s part. Theories about appropriate political action required knowledge of the experience of those involved. This may not be necessary for all instances of philosophical theorizing, but certainly political philosophy about current events needed to engage with the people the  Hannah Arendt, The Portable Arendt, 232.

15

184 

K. FRY

theory addressed. Arendt’s mistakes are instructive for developing different conceptualizations of politics on these issues that embrace plurality informed by more narratives and stories concerning lived experience. If one ignores the biographical material and documents, Arendt’s interest in archiving, biography, storytelling, and preserving individual histories as part of her method are de-emphasized. The story of how she grew to influence her thesis advisors remains unexplored. Her understanding of political group action and the breadth of options possible is somewhat overshadowed by her more ideal renditions of action throughout her texts. Arendt’s ambivalent attitude concerning her refugee status and the way it contested her theoretical claims are not seen. Most importantly, Arendt’s statement about the need to fight back as a Jew and her support for identity politics, at least at some cases, is eclipsed by her tendency to avoid the topic in many of her more mainstream political books. Though Arendt had a strong public/private distinction and wanted to keep political aims from being informed by private interests, the fact that she left her archive of personal documents to the public means that she did think that, academically, there could be use in knowing private opinions, stories, and experiences. In fact, her first book after her thesis, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman, followed the same path, deriving implications about the world by referencing the private letters and struggles of Rahel Varnhagen. Perhaps Arendt is a unique case. As someone who was interested in life stories and biographical evidence, her work seems unusually suited for an examination of the lived details that related to the development of her theory. Moreover, she saved so much material, making an analysis like this possible. Arendt’s archive is so extensive that there are many more things to discover by examining it. Yet, particularly in political philosophy, but perhaps in other types as well, biographical and historical examinations can provide insight into theoretical claims. The archival data can give a broader picture of the world in which the ideas were written, giving new contours of meaning to the statements being made. Since Arendt was interested in political theory and had strong opinions about current political events, it can be particularly useful to look at her private discussions that she left in her public archive. Philosophers do not live in an ivory tower in isolation from the world, but the world they experience, including historical, political, and personal events of their lives, influences the topics they choose to

9 CONCLUSION 

185

write about and the meaning of their claims. This method is time-­ consuming and beyond the aims and purposes of many scholars. However, it can be worth the effort, since the context of the writing does matter and it can alter or enhance the meaning of the formally written theory.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968. ———. The Portable Arendt. Edited by Peter Baehr. USA: Penguin Books, 2000.

Index1

A Action as authentic, 7, 148, 158, 164, 165, 169 as collective, 7, 111, 115, 116, 123, 125–127 Adorno, Theodor, 40, 45–47, 57, 63, 80 Antisemitism, 12n12, 14, 16, 18–20, 41, 50, 69, 70, 97, 98, 108, 132, 133, 150, 162, 163, 167, 171, 180, 181 Archive, 4–7, 35–65, 68, 69, 79, 89, 173, 178, 184 Arendt, Martha, 76, 132 Augustine, St., 12, 20, 94 Authenticity, 95, 113, 147–174 B Banality of evil, 159, 160 Beauvoir, Simone de, 88

Benjamin, Walter, 6, 15n25, 36, 37, 39–65, 41n24, 45n46, 48n70, 50n74, 51n77, 51n81, 52n82, 60n125, 154, 178 Biography, 5, 11–14, 22, 22n58, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 54, 96, 178, 184 Blücher, Heinrich, 16, 31, 39, 40, 42–45, 49, 50, 68n8, 72, 75, 76, 78, 80, 88, 91, 93, 94, 97–99, 102, 133, 157 Blumenfeld, Kurt, 37, 78, 162 C Concentration camps, 67, 71, 75, 81, 82, 151 Conscientious objection, 127 Conscious pariah, see Pariah Council system, 123, 125, 125n87, 164

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 K. Fry, Life, Theory, and Group Identity in Hannah Arendt’s Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10877-8

187

188 

INDEX

D Desegregation, 165, 166, 168, 170, 171, 173

Immigrant/immigration, 5, 7, 42, 69, 75, 83, 108, 131, 147–158, 163, 164, 172n103, 183

E Eichmann, Adolf, 1, 82, 109, 158–165, 167 Ellison, Ralph, 169, 170, 183

J Jaspers, Gertrud, 89, 92, 99, 100, 154, 172n102 Jaspers, Karl, 3, 4, 6, 17, 22, 24, 25, 36, 37, 39, 47, 87–103, 109, 110, 134, 158, 179 Jefferson, Thomas, 124 Jewish councils, 160–162 Jewish identity, 15, 16, 131, 133–135, 139, 141–143, 155, 156, 181, 182n10 Jonas, Hans, 12, 14n18, 97, 102, 133, 134, 162

F Feminism, 138 Fittko, Lisa, 42–44, 75–79, 85 G Gurs, 6, 39, 42, 68, 74–85, 153, 178 H Hegel, G. W. F., 27, 52 Heidegger, Elfride, 97, 98, 100 Heidegger, Martin, 2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 19, 20, 36, 39, 47, 87–103 History, 2, 6, 11, 14n18, 16, 20–32, 35, 41, 45, 50, 52–60, 62–65, 67, 80, 84, 138, 140, 152, 156, 162, 177, 178 Hitler, Adolf, 10, 19, 21, 41, 70, 71, 84, 101, 107, 109, 133, 140, 149–151, 166 Holocaust, 80, 81, 159–161 Hungarian revolution, 92, 125

K Kaliningrad, 72–74 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 3, 52, 61, 90 Königsberg, 2, 6, 68–74, 131, 154, 179

I Identity groups, 139–143, 147, 156, 158, 165, 173, 182, 182n10 Identity politics, 7, 131–143, 158, 160, 164, 165, 171, 173, 174, 180–182, 184

N Narrative, 28, 84 See also Storytelling Nazis, 36n3, 38, 42, 71, 73–76, 78, 79, 81, 117, 133, 153, 160

M Marx, Karl, 24, 27, 52, 135 Marxism, 50, 51, 51n77 Mass men, 117–120, 127 McCarthy, Mary, 23, 36, 108, 109, 131, 157, 159, 160, 163n67

 INDEX 

P Pariah, 17, 18, 22, 137, 142, 143, 149, 155–158, 164, 169, 173, 183 Philosophy, rejection of, 9, 10, 10n3 Q Queer theory, 137 R Race, 136–138, 171, 172n103 “Reflections on Little Rock,” 136, 148, 165, 169, 172n102, 172n103, 183 S Sartre, Jean-Paul, 30, 88 Schocken, Salman, 36, 37, 46, 47 Scholem, Gershom, 10, 37–40, 46, 47, 48n70, 50n74, 51n77, 63, 75, 92, 108, 134, 159, 161–163 Social, 7, 13, 18, 118–120, 127, 131–143, 147, 156, 165, 166, 168, 169, 172n103, 180, 182, 182n11, 183

189

Socrates, 3, 4, 88, 122 Stalinists, 71, 72 Storytelling, 26, 29, 55, 177 See also Narrative Suicide, 44, 45, 48n70, 71, 78, 83, 153, 154 T Totalitarianism, 5, 11–22, 54, 64, 67, 73, 80, 81, 93, 117, 119, 120, 162, 178 V Varnhagen, Rahel, 8, 12–22, 40, 54, 148, 153, 155, 157, 184 Violence, 53, 60, 62, 71, 121, 154, 168, 170, 173 W Weil, Anne Mendelsohn, 35 Z Zionism, 50, 51, 51n77