Between Hebrew And Germany

This thesis explores a Jewish problem in Arendt's view. The Jewish problem, according to Arendt, is not an economic problem, nor a social, a cultural or a religious problem, but a political one.Because of her personal experience, Arendt began to think about the Jewish problem. Like many other German bourgeois Jewish who were born in the beginning of 20th Century, she regarded herself as a German with Jewish parentage, until anti-Semitism aroused her Jewish awareness. Later on, an 18-year-long period as a refugee affected her thought deeply. After her going in exile to the United States and then finally obtaining American citizenship, she kept her eyes on the Jewish problem. At that time, although she used English very frequently in her daily work, German and Germanic philosophic traditions, where she came, haunted her a lot.Arendt did not avoid talking about the internal defect of Jews even though she was a Jew herself. She refuted the theory of nationalism as a reason for the origin of anti-Semitism, which considered that the rise of nationalism caused anti-Semitism. Arendt pointed out, however, it was the decline of nationalism that leaded to anti-Semitism, and this was because that Jews lost their power but still kept lots of privilege. She also refuted the scapegoat theory and the eternal anti-Semitism theory, the former considering Jews as the scapegoat of the social crisis, while the latter considering anti-Semitism derived from hostility to Jews since ancient times. In Arendt's point of view, however, both of them escaped their duty, ignoring the defect of Jews: they were ignorant and naive about politics.Arendt thus analysed the situation of Jews, and then afforded a solution of her own. In her opinion, the reason Jews were repelled, expelled and slaughtered was that they were stateless, so they could not tenure human rights, for citizenship was "the right to have rights". Moreover, what Jews wanted to gain was struggling to assimilate into dominant nation under the wave of uniform equalization. Some of them succeeded to become parvenus, while others failed and kept being pariahs outside society. Nonetheless, Jews were always exotics of society. On the contrary, Arendt preferred choosing to become a conscious pariah, refusing to assimilate actively, instead, striving as a Jew against all the elements which oppressed Jews, and fighting for rights of Jews.In summary, according to Arendt, the solution of the Jewish problem was to become conscious pariahs, and only in this way could Jews obtain rights without losing their own uniqueness. The appeal for difference and uniqueness was the philosophic foundation of Arendt's Jewish thought. She distinguished private and public realms. Private realm was a uniform world, whereas public realm an abundant and diversified world. But social realm made private realm overt and public realm uniform, which made both private and public realms fall. Thereby, Arendt opposed identity politics, because the closure of identity politics conflicted with the uniqueness of the identity claimed by her, which was liberal and overt and was closely bound up in her public realm theory.All in all, starting from her appeal for difference and uniqueness, Arendt regarded the Jewish problem a political problem, whose solution was that one should become a conscious Pariah.