New Yorker Profile on Hannah Arendt
Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009
New Yorker profile of Hannah Arendt.
Two interesting Arendt quotes from the article to hold in your head at once:
"One truth that is unfamiliar to the Jewish people, though they are beginning to learn it, is that you can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as. A person attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or Frenchman. The world would only conclude that he is simply not defending himself."
"I have never in my life ‘loved’ any people or collective. . . I indeed love ‘only’ my friends and the only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons."