R0 13ERT
WI STR.I C H
33
she would insist (as inl 9-+6) that politically" I will speak o nl y in th e name
of the Jews. . .." Arendt, to her credi t, never tri ed to gloss over the fa ct that
she had been expell ed from Germany as a Jewess and maintained that her
Germann ess was stri ctly a matter o f mo ther tongue and love o f German phi–
losophy and li terature.
Jaspers (himself marri ed to a Jewess) could never qui te fa thom thi s w ill–
ful keeping of di stance by Arendt (who was marri ed to Heinri ch l3ILi cher, a
Germall Gentil e ex-Communi st); a parti culari st residue whi ch somehow
contradi cted hi s enlightenment philosophy.
In
a long letter of 1952 abo ut
R ahel Varnhagen, he commented that Arendt's book made one feel that " if
a person is a Jew he canno t reall y li ve hi s life to the full " and that the Jewish
factor was too much in the fo regroulld. Arendt did no t deny thi s but felt that
her longs tanding cri tique of Jewi sh assimilati on in Germany (whi ch had
been inspired by her ea rli er Zioni st
beli ef.~)
was still va lid. Arendt, of course,
had lo ng since changed her views on Z ioni sm and criti cized Jaspers' admi–
rati on fo r Israel's cOllduct in the Suez cri sis as po liti call y na·ive. Her
jaundiced vi ew o f the Jewi sh State found even sharper expression in her
highly controversial boo k
ElrllI
II
all
II
III
J erl/sa/clII
(1963)-a work whi ch
Jaspers nonetheless considered to be pro found .
In
thi s work, even more than in her studi es o f to talitariani sm, Arendt
tended to loca te th e sources o f anti semiti sm within Jewi sh hi sto ry rath er
than in external fo rces . In th e eyes of many cri ti cs Arendt dangerously
blurred the lin e between N azi executi oners and Jewish victims. Thi s ten–
dency already appea rs ill a letter of 19-+6 to Jaspers where Arendt draws a
bi zarre (some might say perverse) symmetry between N azis and Jews on the
matter o f guilt and innocence. Sh e wrote that " the Germans are burdened
now wi th thousands or hundreds of thousa nds o f people who canno t be ade–
quately puni shed within the legal sys tem; all d we Jews are burdened w ith
milli ons of innocellts by reason o f whi ch every Jew alive today can see him–
self as inn ocence perso nified." Jas pers avo ided CO ll1m ent o n thi s
extraordinary statement but illstead came out stron gly aga inst any attempt to
see an el ement of "satalli c grea tness" ill Nazism o r a " demoni c" e1 ell1 ent in
Hitl er. T hi s admoniti on may well have provided th e seed o f Arendt's shi ft
in
the late 1950s from her earli er no ti on of the " radi cal evil " in to talitari an–
ism, to what Jaspers desc ribed as the " to tal ballali ty" of the Nazis.
It was also Jaspers who ge lltl y urged Arendt to presen t her th eses " in a
hi sto ri cally more correct and less visionary way," to refl ect more on meth od
and to avo id inves ting hi story w ith a false grandeur. At th e same time, he saw
the vividness and o ri gillality that underl ay some of Arendt's conceptions; her
insight into the death camps as the labo rato ry of N azism and into th e to tal–
itarian mentali ty that proclaimed "everything is possibl e;" her sharp analys is
of statelessness, abstract human ri ghts, and th e superflu o usness th at paved
