HANNAH ARENDT (Jan 15, 2024)

Her thinking is like the wind - and her works develops from one book and develops
it to another work.

Why does it say that she is not a philosopher?

Why is she a political thinker?
What is this hostility?

point of politics is not to end debate, it is to continue it; it is its nature

in her later works, she says that what she is doing is thinking.

Her touch was as light as a feather’s,

She drifted through life as a pocket of air,
Every move that she made when unnoticed,
A breeze the only slight sign she was there,
Nobody acknowledged her presence,
And it wasn’t until she had started to leave,
That people would instantly wonder,
Why it became so much harder to breathe.

HANNAH ARENDT - “We Refugees” (Jan 17, 2024)

The Holocaust is very central in Arendt’s thoughts. What happened to us (Jews),
and how can it be prevented?

Biographical Note: Arendt’s Ph.D. Dissertation (she was a child genius), she was
really interested in questions on Theology. She wasn’t a Christian but was
interested in St. Augustine and wrote about it. It was the social events in the
1930s, the rise of Hitler, that politicized and made her aware of political issues.
Jews were forbidden from their rights and were forced to move to stay in Jewish
ghettos. There was a gradual erosion of Jewish rights.
It was not widespread knowledge that there was a gradual erosion of rights for the
Jews.
Germany occupied half of France; the other half was from the original French
power. Part of France was safer for Jews.
She was writing this when she was in refugee status.

Themes: She’s writing this for Jewish people. What is she implying in writing this
for refugees?
The right to have rights (the concept of nobody - does not have an identity) is
what the Jewish people are trying to do in Europe.
She was trying to develop the idea that Jewish people are pariahs (outcasts)/ or
become a parvenu. Jewish people were against the Christian communities; they
were a minority. There were periods when they were treated badly. They were
treated as outcasts. She was trying to analyze how people respond to being an
outcast; how do Jewish women respond? Many Jewish people assimilated (to
marry a Christian). They would try to rise to social status by assimilation. They
would try to find another social capital; they gained economic power and social
power, and when that happened, they were blamed (by Hitler, and they said that
they had to be stripped of their power).

What can Jewish people do? The lesson: there is no substitute for having political
power (Political power is not about being elected, politics and power - she’s
talking about collective power, a collective human agency)
Power is collective - when many people come together and decide based on their
common interest and work on it. And collectively, able to affect a wider change in
the community. That is political power.

Zionists, are those who fought for their homeland, they are those who are trying to
work on this politically. What the Zionists got right is that they had tried to fight
the problem politically.

People power is great. It can topple totalitarian governments, but it is difficult

because the people does not have rights (Right to life, liberty, and property/
happiness). But the prior right is the “Right to have Rights.” You need structures
made up of people to protect those rights (a government). None of these rights
(liberty, property and life) cannot be rights if they do not have rights.

The refugees does not have anyone to protect them.

Natality/ Newness - you’ll notice that throughout this essay, she talks about how
Jewish traditions are being exterminated. There is also a possibility of writing a
new story; this is where agency comes in in Arendt. Every human being can act;
you have the capacity not to be tied by your history but to create something new.

Hannah Arendt (01-19-24)

Peace or Armistice in the Near East?
– it is hard to separate what is happening right now with the Palestinians
vs. Israel.
– this is a much clearer essay as opposed to We Refugees.
– Impressions? Key Ideas? or What is telling about Arendt in this work?
– She tried to comply with everything on what should be better in that
situation;
– Are we planting an artificial state that is technically anchored on
nostalgia?
– Neighborliness as a precursor to Totalitarianism
– How did Arendt’s context influence the essay? Where is Arendt in the
essay?

Four forms of the style of Arendt’s writing:

. Many of her writing comments about current affairs - a journalistic style
. Many of her writings are about narratives about history.
. She writes in phenomenology; she writes about how human beings
experience things.
. Through these three, she comes in with a philosophical discussion - her
philosophical theory.
These four intertwine - that is the difficulty.
Another challenge is that she is very sarcastic. There is much irony in her writing,
and it is not always clear. For her, artifice (or artificial) is not a bad thing. Politics is
artificial; we make laws, and we construct them.

Who is her target audience? Think about who her target audience is and how it
affects her style. It is hard to pinpoint her writing since she writes to understand,
not to persuade.
Not coming off as biased: even if she’s trying to find a solution, she gives off a
view of elitism.

The recognition that trying to impose a certain order on people can also be
totalitarian, if not tyrannical. This attempt to modernize the world reached this
extreme, which allowed the holocaust to happen.