Hannah Arendt: Jewishness at the Edges

Abstract

Hannah Arendt positively reveled in adopting stances that were at odds with formulaic left or right positions and with liberal pieties. Where, for instance, do we place her 1959 “Reflections on Little Rock,” which, in its advocacy of states’ rights, appeared to support the cause of American racial segregationists? (She argued that schools and children should not bear the burden of enforced federal integration.) Her instinctive penchant was to oppose conventional stances, to go against the grain, to ruffle and cause discomfort, even outrage. To this day, admirers regard this as refreshing while critics view it as wellnigh demonic. Arendt, of course, was quite aware of this characteristic and the reactions it could evoke. Regarding the endlessly controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem, she told Mary McCarthy that: “You were the only reader to understand what otherwise I would never have admitted—namely that I wrote this book in a curious state of euphoria. And that ever since I did it, I feel …lighthearted about the matter. Don’t tell anybody; is it not proof positive that I have no ‘soul’?”¹