AI37 Hannah Arendt & the Jewish Question

This course examines Arendt’s complex and evolving relationship with Jewish identity, politics, and the broader “Jewish Question” through a reading of selected essays from the anthology The Jewish Writings. We will explore how Arendt’s personal experience as a stateless Jewish refugee informed her political philosophy, particularly her critiques of assimilation, her ambivalent stance toward Zionism, and her analysis of antisemitism as a distinctly modern political phenomenon. The course traces Arendt’s intellectual journey from her early engagement with Jewish politics in the 1940s through her later reflections on Jewish culture and belonging, examining how she navigated the tension between particularist Jewish concerns and her commitment to universal political principles. Through textual analysis and sustained discussion, we will investigate Arendt’s controversial arguments about Jewish political agency, her rejection of both victim narratives and nationalist solutions, and her vision of how Jewish experience might contribute to a broader understanding of political life and human plurality. The seminar culminates in an examination of how Arendt’s Jewish writings illuminate her central concepts of worldliness, political action, and the conditions necessary for human dignity in the modern age.