Abstract

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt describes Herder as “an outspoken friend of the Jews,” and ascribes to him the transformative view that the Jews could be incorporated into civil society pending their assimilation, which they could achieve through self-education. An examination of Herder’s works, reveals, however, that while he praises the ancient Hebrew nation and the Old Testament and their role in world history, he contends that the ancient Hebrews should be distinguished from the Jews living in Europe whom he associates with social decay. In this article I argue that Arendt reconciles Herder’s contradictory views on the Jews and their role in his philosophy of history as part of her claim that the assimilation of minorities is a constitutive principle in the modern concept of civil rights, and of placing European Jewry at the center of this dynamic. Her selective interpretation of Herder’s views on Judaism, I contend, was instrumental to her conceptualization of the “Jew as Pariah”: a figure that embodied the precarious and partial nature of Jewish integration. Arendt’s insistence on equality as the foundation of the political sphere invalidates Herder’s proposal for the civil integration of Jews, since his account rests on a preference for cultural nationalism: his view that each nation should ultimately be composed of a distinct people.