When I was in grade 12, after reading Victor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, in a private Catholic school, where one lay teacher wanted to make young white privileged students aware of the holocaust. Some Irish priests, who founded the school were on board but it was this one teacher with a local priest who arranged Frankl to speak with us and other students in the city.
Frankl was a soft spoken, kind, academic, who gave an intellectual presentation in perfect English. The most revealing moments were during the break where no one spoke with this brilliant psychiatrist as he sat on the stage looking into space. Like the living bird he stared at on a dead tree that he saw outside the window at Auschwitz. The loneliness was deafening and profound from my perspective.
What does this have to do with this weeks reflection on Arendt?
Hi Jack, thank you for sharing that story about Frankl. I feel like I can see the image you painted so clearly. Certainly, Bernstein argued (among others) that Arendt's argument about the secularization of antisemitism was misguided, and that it was in one way or another a continuation of the old religious hatred. I think there's a lot to say about loneliness and hatred--the loneliness and self-isolating behavior of the one who hates; and the loneliness of the one is othered and made to feel apart from society. What do you think?
Martin Buber “I/Thou” the very heart of the human relationship seeing the other in mutuality - seeing the other ( in theological terms) as we are all in the image of God.
“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”
Buber
The merging of experience with the wonder of what we may call being in the epiphany of the realization that we can know another and that they can know us without perfection which is the folly of theological totalitarianism.
Is loneliness the stage before the realization of another possibility of growth? Not like but comparable with the ancient idea of the five stages of death but with new birth in this life?
Reading this makes me ask myself to what extent does the "immigrant" fill in a similar role now, or is on the way to such a role. All while antisemitism also remains in place.
- Anti semitism a secular, political ideology
- a continuation of religious hatred
When I was in grade 12, after reading Victor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, in a private Catholic school, where one lay teacher wanted to make young white privileged students aware of the holocaust. Some Irish priests, who founded the school were on board but it was this one teacher with a local priest who arranged Frankl to speak with us and other students in the city.
Frankl was a soft spoken, kind, academic, who gave an intellectual presentation in perfect English. The most revealing moments were during the break where no one spoke with this brilliant psychiatrist as he sat on the stage looking into space. Like the living bird he stared at on a dead tree that he saw outside the window at Auschwitz. The loneliness was deafening and profound from my perspective.
What does this have to do with this weeks reflection on Arendt?
Hi Jack, thank you for sharing that story about Frankl. I feel like I can see the image you painted so clearly. Certainly, Bernstein argued (among others) that Arendt's argument about the secularization of antisemitism was misguided, and that it was in one way or another a continuation of the old religious hatred. I think there's a lot to say about loneliness and hatred--the loneliness and self-isolating behavior of the one who hates; and the loneliness of the one is othered and made to feel apart from society. What do you think?
Martin Buber “I/Thou” the very heart of the human relationship seeing the other in mutuality - seeing the other ( in theological terms) as we are all in the image of God.
“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”
Buber
The merging of experience with the wonder of what we may call being in the epiphany of the realization that we can know another and that they can know us without perfection which is the folly of theological totalitarianism.
Who knows?
Is loneliness the stage before the realization of another possibility of growth? Not like but comparable with the ancient idea of the five stages of death but with new birth in this life?
Reading this makes me ask myself to what extent does the "immigrant" fill in a similar role now, or is on the way to such a role. All while antisemitism also remains in place.
Here is a polemical question for you: what do you think of David Nirenberg's analysis of Arendt's interpretation of antisemitism?