|
Books Brave women in dark times
THREE WOMEN IN DARK
TIMES: EDITH STEIN, HANNAH ARENDT, SIMONE WEIL By Sylvie
Courtine-Denamy translated by G.M. Goshgarian, Cornell University
Press, 272 pages, $35 |
Reviewed by SALLY
CUNNEEN
This dense and important book is an absorbing presentation of the
lives and thinking of Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil, three
brilliant 20th-century philosophers who remain influential today. Sylvie
Courtine-Denamy is herself a philosopher who knows the political, intellectual
and cultural world of her subjects intimately.
Focusing on their work in the period from 1933 to 1943, the author
places them in the crucible of rising European totalitarianism, which
inevitably affected their uniquely committed approaches to philosophy. For
those who do not remember the events of those years, she wisely begins chapters
with factual bulletins that constitute a crash course in the events, arguments
and intellectual figures of the years leading up to World War II and the
Holocaust.
By interweaving the development of her three philosophers within
this context, Courtine-Denamy brings deeper meaning to many of their writings.
Weils classic analysis of The Iliad as a poem of force, her most
famous essay, becomes an astonishing contemplation of the suffering that total
war might cause. The common darkness around Stein, Arendt and Weil also
highlights the similarities and differences among them, revealing how, despite
their own sufferings and exile -- and in Steins case, martyrdom -- each
grew intellectually and morally in response to the injustices suffered by
others.
All were born Jewish but related differently to their identity and
to religion. Stein (1891-1942), the beloved 12th child of a practicing Orthodox
family from Breslau, felt drawn to Christianity and ultimately to the
contemplative life of Carmel. In her bedroom she had pictures of Jewish
heroines from the Bible as well as Christian saints. She was baptized in 1922
but always identified with the Jews, stressed the Judaism of Jesus, and when
Hitler took power in 1933, wrote that it was luminously clear to me that
once again Gods hand lay heavily on his people, and that the destiny of
this people was my own.
After failing to get an audience with Pius XI, she wrote him a
letter about the situation of the Jews in Germany and her fears for the
churchs future but received only his blessing in response. Stein chose
sympathy as the subject of her doctoral dissertation and displayed it just
before her death at Auschwitz when she confessed to a priest, You
dont know what it means to me as a daughter of the chosen people to
belong to Christ, not only spiritually, but according to the flesh. She
then took her sister Rosas hand and said, Come; were going
for our people.
Both Arendt (1906-1975) and Weil (1909-1943) were from assimilated
Jewish families, and in the case of Weil, agnostic as well. Weil could neither
identify with the Jews nor call them the chosen people. Intensely
drawn to Christ, passionately committed to justice for all, prayerful and
ascetic to an extreme, still she could never join the church. Though she
believed in all its doctrines and teachings, she deplored its tendency to use
intimidation in imposing its views and exercising its power.
Without ever repudiating her identity as a Jew, Arendt developed a
remarkable ability to recognize what was good in Christianity and recognized
what needed criticizing in Zionism. Having barely escaped Germany in 1933 and
France in 1940 after a stay in a detention camp, she could not help being angry
with her former teacher and lover, philosopher Martin Heidegger, who made
accommodations to Nazism that greatly helped his career. Nevertheless, in
The Human Condition, written in the English she learned in exile in the
United States -- she became a citizen in 1951 -- Arendt pointed to pardon as
essential for any political life. For her it emerged as the redemptive
possibility of overcoming the irreversibility of action. She saw Jesus as the
one who understood that the power to pardon does not derive from God ...
but on the contrary must be mobilized by men toward each other before they can
hope to be forgiven by God.
Perhaps the most striking similarity among the three is their
common witness to the belief that philosophy must be something to live, not
merely to think. Edith Stein interrupted her doctoral studies to work in a Red
Cross military hospital for a year during World War I. Simone Weil did
mind-numbing labor in an automobile factory that permanently influenced her
political philosophy: She would thereafter insist that a human life for working
people must include the ability to think and act, not merely to consume. Hannah
Arendt took on the dangerous job of collecting anti-Semitic propaganda in
Germany before she fled to Paris in 1933.
This book is an introduction to three philosophers who argued that
witness and clear thinking are essential if we are to develop a politics that
can serve human beings instead of reducing them to pawns and consumers. We can
still learn from Weils remarkable insight that morality is a matter of
attention, not will, and that the capacity to love is related to the ability to
see reality accurately. And we might well pay attention to Arendts
suggestion that constructive politics be used instead of destruction. It seems
especially true in light of our mindless use of bombing as a substitute for
foreign policy. Her selection of friendship as a basis for a human politics,
one depending on discourse, dialogue and care for the world we have in common,
calls for the response of religious believers today.
Sylvie Courtine-Denamys important book should be a
springboard for those who wish to continue to read and carry on the work of the
brave, clear-sighted women she has helped her readers understand.
Sally Cunneens doctorate is in philosophy. She is the
author of In Search of Mary and is presently teaching a course on Mary
at Fairfield University. Her e-mail address is
SCunn24219@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, April 13,
2001
|
|