The Concept of ‘Responsibility’ and the Need for a Renewed Reading of Hannah Arendt’s Perception of Anti-Semitism

Authors

Keywords:

Hannah Arendt, Antisemitism, Responsibility, Phenomenology, Jewish historiography

Abstract

The article’s two main aims are to reread Hannah Arendt’s thinking on Antisemitism and suggest a new link between her writing on the Jewish people, Jewishness, Judaism, Jewish history, Antisemitism, and her activity in various Zionist frameworks such as “Ihud”. It opens with an examination of Arendt’s thinking on Antisemitism in Jewish and Zionist historiography, and then confronts it with her writings on the subject. For example, Arendt claims that a difference exists between nineteenth-century Antisemitism and Nazi Antisemitism.

The second part of the article discusses the importance of phenomenology in the reconstruction of subversive currents in history and “responsibility” in Arendt’s thinking, and especially their connection to her research in Jewish history and Antisemitism.

Published

2011-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

The Concept of ‘Responsibility’ and the Need for a Renewed Reading of Hannah Arendt’s Perception of Anti-Semitism. (2011). IYUNIM: Multidisciplinary Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society, 21, 435-465. https://iyunim.bgu.ac.il/index.php/iyunim/article/view/384