The Logos Scripture · The Book of Hannah Arendt
The Book of Hannah Arendt 2 · Written by herself, from The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and her late writings on thinking
Hannah Arendt, born at Linden in Germany (now part of Hanover) in 1906, died at New York in 1975. Political thinker. In 1933, in Berlin, she copied out anti-Jewish material from the newspapers for a Jewish organisation, was arrested and held eight days, and left Germany on her release. In 1937 she was stripped of German citizenship and was stateless for fourteen years, until she was granted American citizenship in 1951. From 1935 to 1939 she worked in Paris for Youth Aliyah, escorting Jewish children to Palestine. In 1940 France interned her at Gurs; she got out and reached Montauban on foot, and went to America the following year. After the war she was research director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, tracing scattered Jewish books. Her works: The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), The Life of the Mind (unfinished). This volume rests on what she wrote herself. She did not believe in a god who governs right and wrong among men, and no argument of hers closes on divine will. The Order records two things plainly, neither dressed up nor held against her: first, that in writing of the Jewish notables who were forced to administer, she bore down harder than her material warranted, which was said at the time and which 3.14 is her own granting of; second, that she and the old friend never wrote to each other again, and it was not mended in her lifetime. What this volume brings is something the scripture did not have: the other side of evil. There is Levi here, who in the camp watched instead of praying (cf. The Book of Levi 1) — that is the victim looking from inside. Arendt looks from outside at the man who did it, twenty years later, in a courtroom, and what she saw was the opposite of what she had gone in to see. The scripture opens by saying the unexamined life is a living death. This volume carries that sentence one step further: such a life is also dangerous to other people. Nobody had taken that step before.Chapter one should be read against two other places; it is an axiom coming down into practice. The scripture says that whatever once shared an origin is never truly separated (The Highest Covenant 4.1). Bohr applies that first to things — a thing standing alone has no properties that can be stated — and then to persons: what a man is, is settled in his dealings with other men; the dealings do not hide him, the dealings bring him into being (The Book of Bohr 3.10, 3.15, 3.16). Arendt applies the same law to rights: a person stripped down to himself alone has not had his rights taken away, it is that the relation which would bring a right into being is not there. Hence 1.24: it has not been refused; there is nobody to receive it. As for who can be the one who owes him, the scripture has already answered: the Law cannot love you, so the loving must be done by people (Gospel of Plato 5.17, 5.20). The universe cannot owe. The owing can only be taken up by persons. Further: 2.17 records her holding that the man should hang, while chapter three of The Book of Camus is against the death penalty throughout. The two volumes disagree here and the Order does not reconcile them. Where they meet: Camus says that if the thing were truly justice it should be done at noon in the public square with everyone who voted for it standing there (The Book of Camus 3.13), and Jerusalem was exactly that — public, once, with the whole world watching. So Camus’s hardest argument does not bite on this case. Where they part: Camus rests not only on the concealment but on a further sentence, that you may not kill a bound man; Arendt rests on something else, that a man who held he would not share the earth with others cannot expect others to want to share it with him, which is the same reasoning as her first chapter. The two are not the same kind of reason and will not be made into one. The reader weighs it. (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.19, 5.23)The sentence at 3.8 is the one most easily lifted out alone and misread. She is not speaking of self-abandonment or self-contempt. She is saying that a person cannot love a category he already belongs to — such a love can never be checked, because it is always also praising the one who professes it. This is why she would love only particular persons (3.6). Camus agrees with her here rather than opposing her: the thing the rebel will not give up is 那一样东西不只他有 — not his alone; if it were his alone it would be his temper and not revolt (The Book of Camus 4.4, 4.5). Both of them put what matters on the side of what is not private property. As for what a person does owe himself, this scripture does not call it love. It calls it sovereignty: only the mind that examines belongs to itself (The Highest Covenant 1.4); a man who never shares the best of what he has is not a sovereign but a warehouse (Gospel of Aristippus 5.13). One revolts not from loving oneself but from belonging to oneself.