Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Paperback)

by Richard A. Bernstein (Author) "When Hannah Arendt died in 1975 at the age of 69, she had achieved limited fame and a great deal of notoriety..." (more)
Key Phrases: Hannah Arendt, European Jewry, United Nations (more...)

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Product Description
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most original and interesting political thinkers of the twentieth century. In this new interpretation of her career, philosopher Richard Bernstein situates Arendt historically as an engaged Jewish intellectual and explores the range of her thinking from the perspective of her continuing confrontation with "the Jewish question." Bernstein argues that many themes that emerged in the course of Arendt's attempts to understand specifically Jewish issues shaped her thinking about politics in general and the life of the mind. By exploring pivotal events of her life story – her arrest and subsequent emigration from Germany in 1933, her precarious existence in Paris as a stateless Jew working for Zionist organizations, her internment at Gurs and her subsequent escape, and finally her flight from Europe in 1941 – he shows how personal experiences and her responses to them oriented her thinking. Arendt's analysis of the Jews' lack of preparation for the vicious political antiSemitism that arose in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Bernstein argues, led her on a quest for the ultimate meaning of politics and political responsibility. Moreover, he points out that Arendt's deepest insights about politics emerged from her reflections on statelessness and totalitarian domination. Bernstein also examines Arendt's attraction to and break with Zionism, and the reasons for her critical stance toward a Jewish sovereign state. He then turns to the issue that, in Arendt's opinion, needed most to be confronted in the aftermath of World War II: the fundamental nature of evil. He traces the nuances of her thinking from "radical evil" to "the banality of evil" and, finally, reexamines Eichmann in Jerusalem, her meditation on evil that caused a storm of protest and led some to question her loyalty to the Jewish people.

About the Author
Richard J. Bernstein is Vera List Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 251 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; Lst MIT Press ed edition (July 11, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262522144
• ISBN-13: 978-0262522144
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #113,658 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A deep study despite the apologetics , April 22, 2006

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Richard A. Bernstein traces Hannah Arendt's relationship to her own Jewishness, from her earliest experiences of Anti- Semitism in childhood to and through the 'banality of evil' controversy. He shows that certain fundamental concepts of her thought were strongly influenced by her experience as a stateless Jew.He details the story of her special connection with Kurt Blumenfeld and the thought of Charles Lazare which helped form her Zionism.
Her latter- day critique of Israel is considered as her passionate admission that the one public tragedy she could not think to bear would be the destruction of Israel.
As to her controversy with the Jewish community on the 'banality of evil'. My own sense is that Bernstein is a bit too sympathetic to her position, and that Scholem was essentially right in speaking of Arendt's distance from the ordinary Jewish people. Her insensitivity, even moral cruelty to the victims of the Shoah, is a black mark on her record, a record which includes a heroic chapter in her years in France helping foster Youth Aliyah, and saving Jewish children.
The story is complicated and always interesting. This is a deep study but a political thinker who understands Arendt well.