Enlightenment and the Jewish question

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Enlightenment and the Jewish Question is an article by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt from 1932. It first appeared in the journal Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland and was posthumously included in the essay volume Die Verborgene Tradition in 1976 . The early work did not come out in English until 2007.

Shortly before the time of National Socialism , Arendt presented a text that is based not only on philosophical and historical-philosophical , but also on theological thought processes and emphasizes the independence of the Jews in the past and present, partly with arguments of Zionism .

After her successful doctorate The Concept of Love in Augustin (1929) in philosophy with Karl Jaspers , the young thinker occupied herself with preparing her habilitation thesis on Rahel Varnhagen . This work was only possible after the Second World War under the title Rahel Varnhagen. The life story of a German Jewess from the Romantic period appears. The essay Enlightenment and the Jewish Question belongs in the context of this research project.

Arendt wrote the article in Heidegger's diction of existential philosophy and used terms from the philosophy of life , but already at this early time showed the beginnings of her later thinking about the independence of being a Jew and the existence of a Jewish nation. It is a text-related discussion, above all with Lessing's and Mendelssohn's philosophical ideal of equality as representatives of the Enlightenment of different radicals on the one hand and Herder's emphasis on individual and national differences on the other.

The author dates the “modern Jewish question ” from the Enlightenment and explains: “That is, the non-Jewish world posed it”, whose answers would have shaped the behavior of the Jews.

Unlike the protagonists of the Enlightenment, Arendt denies that the equality of all people and mutual tolerance can only be derived from reason . Beyond reason, a concept of truth is required, which must include historical-philosophical and theological considerations.

Confrontation with representatives of the Enlightenment

According to Arendt, the arguments regarding common sense were first put forward by Moses Mendelssohn , later by Christian Dohm and finally found their main representative in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , who saw humanity and tolerance as a connection between people, despite different dogmatic orientations, customs and Customs. An absolute truth , an objective good of salvation, was no longer recognized by the Enlightenment . The human being as a seeker received an independent meaning. She notes critically:

“The omnipotence of reason is at the same time the omnipotence of the human, of the human. ... After all, for the tolerant, and that means for the truly human, all denominations (are) just different names for the same person. ”Only“ rational truths ”are“ necessary ”for the Enlightenment. “Historical truths”, on the other hand, are “accidental” and only true or “convincing” and “generally binding” if they confirm the rational truths.

History has to serve the education of the people, summarizes Arendt Lessing's thoughts, but can only produce what is already present in the human being. While Lessing equated religion with religiosity and considered it to be older and more important than “ Revelation ” (Bible), Arendt argues that this attempt to save religion is in vain because the previously “certain” truth through “exaggeration of man "Was destroyed and replaced by" inwardness ".

For Lessing, history is the eternal search for truth, which only begins with the “coming of age” of man, ie. H. explains the author, people start from scratch on this basis and establish a new story. She will take up this idea again in her later works, referring to each new generation, under the term “natality” ( natality ) and will also represent it in her speech on the occasion of the Lessing Prize.

Mendelssohn still recognized the "eternal truths" of the Jewish religion , but, like Lessing, proceeded from the individual's self-thinking and saw education as the basis of reason, making history superfluous in the long term and the "best of Jews and Christians" will merge. Therefore, Mendelssohn did not concern himself with the "actual position of the Jews in the world" as educated or oppressed in the ghettos , Arendt criticizes.

A little later Dohm was the first writer in Germany to deal systematically with the Jews. As an advocate of the Enlightenment, he did not see Jews as "people of God" but as people like everyone else, with the same rights. According to Arendt, he sees history as a “bad past”, while he states that his contemporaries have “prejudices” against the Jews. Arendt puts forward the thesis that Jews in the Age of Enlightenment would have accepted such an explanation for their “cultural inferiority”, for their “uneducated”, for their “social harmfulness” and “unproductivity”. "Liberating the present from the burden and the consequences of this history becomes the work of naturalization and liberation of the Jews." This was the simple position of the first representatives of assimilation : Mendelssohn, Dohm and Mirabeau .

The second Jewish “assimilation generation”, no longer religiously bound like Mendelssohn, had succumbed to the “blindness of the Enlightenment” because they saw the Jews only as oppressed without a history of their own. Everything that is one's own is then viewed as an “obstacle” on the way to “naturalization” and “becoming human”. David Friedländer was a representative of this view , who - himself areligious - justified the importance of reason in relation to history " blasphemously " by rejecting the objection that human reason cannot compete with divine reason. Arendt developed this argument against the exaggeration of man in her work What is Existential Philosophy? 1948 continued, but without theological justification.

While Mendelssohn still asked the Jews to adapt to the customs and constitutions of the respective country, but to comply with the religious laws, Friedländer went further in 1799 by calling on the Jews to be baptized in order to be “publicly” in the common reason and morality based society.

Reaction of the Christian majority society

However, according to Arendt, his plea came 20 to 30 years too late and was rejected by the majority of society. Both the mentioned church representative and the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher rather emphasized the peculiarity of Christianity beyond the rationality of the Enlightenment, which is only watered down by such " proselytes ". As Arendt sums up, religion should protect the community against what is “foreign”. It is true that reason should be the basis of the state; H. Jews should be naturalized quickly as “citizens”. Schleiermacher rejected the main idea of ​​the Enlightenment of the original equality of all people and took the view that there could only be complete assimilation if the Jews gave up their “ messianic hope ”. While early Enlightenmentists were ready to review all religions, including Christianity, according to the Socratic method , this now appeared absurd to “educated” Germany.

Recording of Herder's historical-philosophical considerations

In 1774, Johann Gottfried Herder was the first to criticize the Age of Enlightenment as a contemporary without gaining any influence on the "older generation" of the Enlightenment, but all the more so on the "coming Romanticism ". According to Arendt, this turned against the “universal rule” of man in the form of reason and its “flat doctrine of usefulness”. On the other hand, Herder, and after him Romanticism, continue the “discovery of history” that was already laid out by Lessing.

In the second part of her treatise, Arendt deals in detail with Herder's differing views from Lessing. Initially, Herder rejects the thesis that people only receive what is in them through upbringing. In his opinion, every person lives in a <chain of individuals> and is shaped by " tradition ". Only in this respect can one speak of a history of the “human race” and not just of the individual. She sums up Herder's considerations with approval: “Pure” reason does not exist for Herder, unlike the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Through history it is transformed, changed and <distributed in a thousand forms>, depending on factors over which humans have no power (<time, climate, need, world, fate>). The decisive factor is not - as for the Enlightenment - that “Possibility”, but the “reality” of the respective human being. "The real difference of man is more important than the actual equality." Reason is therefore the result of the entire experience of mankind. A reason so defined can never be completed, but is constantly changing.

Lessing, the other enlighteners and Herder jointly denied the existence of an “absolute truth”, Arendt notes. While Lessing replaced this postulate with the thesis of the eternal search for truth on the basis of human reason, Herder turned against both “one truth” and “one reason” and emphasized that reason is history subject, the human mind is not a pure rational mind. Man cannot see through history, it becomes “extra-human, impersonal” but not “God”. Herder's view denies the “ transcendence ” of the divine, religion should only bring about “purposes for people through people”. Arendt rejects this view.

However, it agrees with Herder's arguments against the idea of ​​the equality of all people in the present. In the course of history, an increasingly strong differentiation developed from an “original equality”. The “difference” does not lie in disposition, talent or character, but in the firmly established “irrevocable past”.

With this discovery, Arendt continues, Herder becomes one of the first great interpreters of history in Germany, who also dealt with the history of the Jews and describes it as a story that was essentially based on “possession of the Old Testament ”. Herder interpreted this story, Arendt explains, like the Jews themselves, as the "story of the chosen people of God" who, after being "dispersed throughout the world", "influenced the human race". As the author interprets, he becomes attentive to the peculiar "attitude towards life" of the Jews, which is related to the past. In religion he sees the "inalienable heirloom of their (the Jews) race, which stands or falls with the observance of the law and belongs to Palestine".

According to Arendt, by calling them a <foreign Asian people>, Herder emphasizes the foreignness of the Jews in Germany. Accordingly, Arendt believes, the alien religion is for Herder the religion of another nation . This turns the Jewish question from a religious question, which is about tolerance (Lessing), to a question of political emancipation, a <state question>.

Arendt used this method of analyzing reality for its political implications all her life. Furthermore, as in this early study, she will later express very pointed theses without taking up the scientific majority debate and sometimes using negative terms with a positive meaning (here e.g. “foreign” and “parasitic” (see: Jewish Parasite ), later the term " pariah ").

The fact that Jews, despite the oppression in a strange world as a people "did not perish, but tried to adapt, even if parasitically", is what Herder understands from the history of the Jewish people. Assimilation is through education and upbringing, i.e. H. Humanization possible, which makes the "parasitic" of the Jewish people productive. Herder polemicizes against the educational concept of the Enlightenment, self-thinking, which, according to Arendt, he accuses of "lack of reality". Instead, education must be based on experience, on “understanding”, not on imitating role models, and must become “action”. Reality, the “unique fate of every epoch and every person” must be accepted, the past has no “binding force” for the present and must be viewed with “distance”. This creates a new kind of tolerance. “Every person like every historical epoch has a fate whose uniqueness no one else can condemn; it is history itself that has taken over the judge's office in the relentlessness of its continuity. "

It's not about tolerance, but about “understanding” the uniqueness. In her opinion, Herder is giving the Jews their history back. It becomes the "understood" story without the direct belief in the "original leader of this event". Arendt uses the concept of understanding repeatedly here. In 1964, in her interview with Günter Gaus , she formulated the motto: “I want to understand”.

The author emphasizes that the secularization cannot be reversed. In the place of God, Herder put the “power of fate”. On the other hand, the Enlightenment still had a direct connection to God, "by rejecting, defending or consciously reinterpreting him". Herder's understanding of history is therefore not binding and does not contain any historical ties. He emphasized the “impartiality” of educated Jews who were not bound by the tradition of non-Jews. He assesses positively the characteristics that the “need of the social”, the “need of the diaspora ” created in the first place (“acquisition” and “biblical interpretation”). Arendt argues: educated Jews in Herder's sense have been won back to "mankind"; H. but on the other hand, they are no longer a "chosen people". She quotes Herder: “... they (the educated Jews) raise themselves there through purely human, scientific and civic merits. Their Palestine is then where they live and work nobly everywhere. ”According to Arendt, Herder is pushing the Jews back into an exceptional position within the overall culture after education has destroyed the religious content (people of God) to which such an idea could refer had been. Lessing's complete ideal of equality, on the other hand, only required the Jews "to be human, which they could ultimately achieve, especially in Mendelssohn's interpretation."

Now the author turns once more to Schleiermacher, who wanted to preserve the peculiarities of Christians and the particularity of Jews. She criticizes the fact that, in his view, the Jews should understand their own historical situation, an expectation that they could not fulfill. In contrast, she puts forward the thesis: The Jews cannot hope for any <gradual development> (Schleiermacher) because they have no place in "the foreign world" from which development could begin. “In this way, the Jews become the historians in history.” Without a past that was taken from them by Herder's approach to understanding, they are forced to somehow adapt to the European secularized world through education. For the Jews, Arendt believes, education is “necessary” for everything that is not “the Jewish world”. As a way out for the educated Jews, she sees their own way of dealing with the past in order to be able to understand the present. "The expressing of the past is the positive expression for the Herderian distance of the educated - a distance that the Jews bring with them from the start."

Independence of Judaism and reception

Arendt ends her article with her summary of Herder's thinking about the Jews: "Thus, from the strangeness of history, history emerges as a special and legitimate topic of the Jews."

The young scientist confirmed these reflections on a Jewish history at about the same time in her correspondence with Jaspers , who vehemently contradicted this, underlined the equality of all people in the sense of the Enlightenment and described his pupil as German. Arendt only accepted this in the sense that she felt she belonged to German culture, but not to the German nation-state. In contrast to this, she always saw herself as a Jew. In this early writing, Enlightenment and the Jewish Question , she justified this position, which was later repeatedly taken. This was also the case in 1942 during the construction phase , where she stated that modern (reform) Judaism had lost its connection to its actual Jewish tradition. One cannot get out of Judaism at will, rather one should turn one's affiliation into a “blessing”, namely a weapon in the struggle for freedom .

The American Arendt biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl raised Hannah Arendt in her standard work in 1982 . For Love of the World Arendt's attitude towards Herder emerges in this 1932 essay. In education and Jewish question dive Herder as one of their "hero" on. In contrast to the Enlightenment survey of "rational truths" over "historical truths" (Lessing, Mendelssohn), Herder emphasized the importance of history for individuals and peoples. As Nathan Snaider emphasized on the occasion of the English publication of the article in 2007, according to Arendt, “the emancipation of Jews , which wanted to turn Jews into integrated citizens, left the Jews as a collective defenseless.” In the Arendt-Handbuch (2011) the Germanist Barbara Hahn judges : The text differs linguistically considerably from Arendt's later treatises. There is no reference to the "comic in the terrible" and the laconic expression.

expenditure

literature

  • Elisabeth Young-Bruehl : Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-16010-3 , pp. 148-151. (American original edition Hannah Arendt. For Love of the World , Yale University Press 1982).

Remarks

  1. ↑ Vol. 4, No. 2/3, Berlin 1932
  2. ↑ The hidden tradition. Eight essays (1932-1948). Frankfurt a. M. 1976, pp. 108-126.
  3. ^ In: Jewish Writings. Edited by Jerome Kohn & Ron Feldman, New York 2007
  4. ↑ The concept of love in Augustine. Attempt at a philosophical interpretation. Berlin 1929, new edition Philo Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin and Vienna 2003 ISBN 3-865-72343-8 .
  5. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 109.
  6. ↑ About humanity in dark times , speech on September 28, 1959 when receiving the Lessing Prize from the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, EVA, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-434-50127-4
  7. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 114
  8. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 115
  9. ↑ What is existential philosophy? (1948). Publisher Anton Hain, Frankfurt a. M. 1990, ISBN 3-445-06011-8 .
  10. ↑ Here Arendt uses the term “public” as she will later use it in the sense of political publicity.
  11. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 117
  12. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 118
  13. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 118
  14. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 119
  15. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 120
  16. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 121
  17. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 122
  18. ^ Günter Gaus in conversation with Hannah Arendt , ARD, October 28, 1964
  19. ↑ Ursula Ludz: Introduction . In: Hannah Arendt. I want to understand. Self-assessment of life and work. Ed. Ursula Ludz. Munich 1996, p. 11
  20. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 123
  21. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 124
  22. ↑ Hannah Arendt: Enlightenment and the Jewish question. In: The Hidden Tradition. Eight essays. Frankfurt a. M. 1976, p. 124
  23. ^ Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers: Briefwechsel 1926–1969 , Piper, Munich, 2001, p. 53, ISBN 3-492-21757-5
  24. ^ Republication in double issue 12/2008, 01/2009, p. 33
  25. ^ Yale University Press
  26. ↑ here quoted in German translation. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl: Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. , Frankfurt a. M. 2004, p. 148f
  27. ↑ Nathan Snaider: Returning to History. NZZ online December 1, 2007, accessed June 8, 2016
  28. ↑ Barbara Hahn: Jewish Existences. The follow-up volume "The Lost Tradition". In: Wolfgang Heuer , Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): Arendt manual. Life, work, effect. Stuttgart 2011, p. 28