Hannah Arendt and Human Rights

Peg Birmingham

Description

Hannah Arendt's most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the "right to have rights." In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Peg Birmingham explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt's philosophy on human rights. Devoting special consideration to questions and issues surrounding Arendt's ideas of common humanity, human responsibility, and natality, Birmingham formulates a more complex view of how these basic concepts support Arendt's theory of human rights. Birmingham considers Arendt's key philosophical works along with her literary writings, especially those on Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, to reveal the extent of Arendt's commitment to humanity even as violence, horror, and pessimism overtook Europe during World War II and its aftermath. This current and lively book makes a significant contribution to philosophy, political science, and European intellectual history.

Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: The Problem of Human Rights
1. The Event of Natality: The Ontological Foundation of Human Rights
2. The Principle of Initium: Freedom, Power, and the Right to Have Rights
3. The Principle of Givenness: Appearance, Singularity, and the Right to Have Rights
4. The Predicament of Common Responsibility
Conclusion: The Political Institution of the Right to Have Rights

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Feminist
• Political
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy of science
• Politics
• Feminism
• Continental

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 29 septembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253112262
• Langue: English

Extrait

HANNAH ARENDT AND HUMAN RIGHTS
STUDIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT
JOHN SALLIS, GENERAL EDITOR
CONSULTING EDITORS
Robert Bernasconi
Rudolph Bernet
John D. Caputo
David Carr
Edward S. Casey
Hubert Dreyfus
Don Ihde
David Farrell Krell
Lenore Langsdorf
Alphonso Lingis
William L. McBride
J. N. Mohanty
Mary Rawlinson
Tom Rockmore
Calvin O. Schrag
Reiner Sch rmann
Charles E. Scott
Thomas Sheehan
Robert Sokolowski
Bruce W. Wilshire
David Wood

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All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Birmingham, Peg, date
Hannah Arendt and human rights : the predicament of common responsibility / Peg Birmingham.
p. cm. - (Studies in Continental thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-21865-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Arendt, Hannah. 2.
Human rights-Philosophy. 3. Responsibility. I. Title. II. Series.
JC251.A74B57 2006
323.092-dc22
2006006223
1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 07 06
For Clare
We become aware of the existence of a right to have rights (and that means to live in a framework where one is judged by one s actions and opinions) and a right to belong to some kind of organized community, only when millions of people emerge who had lost and could not regain these rights because of the new global political situation.
Hannah Arendt,
The Origins of Totalitarianism
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction: The Problem of Human Rights
1. The Event of Natality: The Ontological Foundation of Human Rights
2. The Principle of Initium: Freedom, Power, and the Right to Have Rights
3. The Principle of Givenness: Appearance, Singularity, and the Right to Have Rights
4. The Predicament of Common Responsibility
Conclusion: The Political Institution of the Right to Have Rights
NOTES
WORKS CITED
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am profoundly grateful to Professor Fred Kersten, who first introduced me to the world of philosophy, most notably Husserlian phenomenology. His stories of studying with Arendt, Gurwitsch, and Jonas at the New School for Social Research first led me to these thinkers, especially Arendt. The years I studied with him at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay constituted my archaic beginning that continues to animate the present.
I owe a great debt to my students at DePaul University, whose contributions to the seminars I have given on Arendt helped me better formulate the arguments in this book. It has been my good fortune to have David F. Krell as a colleague and friend. Not only did he read a penultimate draft of this manuscript, making copious suggestions and comments, but he has been enormously encouraging of my work since our first disagreement over Heidegger s thought nearly two decades ago. Of course, any errors and lapses of judgment are entirely my own. Conversations with colleagues Bill Martin, Darrell Moore, Will McNeill, Tina Chanter, Michael Naas, and Elizabeth Rottenberg have been immensely helpful. A word of thanks to Bernie Flynn, who graciously accepted my invitation to give a course on Hannah Arendt at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in 1990 and with whom I have had many subsequent insightful conversations on Arendt s thought. Thanks also to Robin May Schott, who was in the audience when I presented a paper on Arendt and the banality of evil at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in 2001 and encouraged me to submit it for consideration in a special volume of Hypatia she was editing on feminist philosophy and the problem of evil. The framework of this book grew out of my contribution to that volume.
Ben and Laura Nicholson have provided the respite of friendship, their dinner table a place in which the pleasure of company flourishes. I am also grateful to Richard Tobin, who was there in the beginning and continues to be so. Dee Mortensen, Elisabeth Marsh, and Kate Babbitt at Indiana University Press have been wonderful editors. Kate Babbitt s meticulous copyediting has made this a more elegant book.
And finally, I would like to thank Dean Michael L. Mezey for his unfailing support and his insistence that the duties of chairing the philosophy department not take priority over the completion of this work. Research for this book was supported by a DePaul University Summer Research Grant as well as a two-quarter research leave, both extremely helpful in giving me the time needed to finish this work.
I dedicate this book, with love, to my daughter Clare.
Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following sources for permission to quote from previously published material:
Research in Phenomenology, Volume 33, 2003-Peg Birmingham, The Pleasure of Your Company: Arendt, Kristeva, and an Ethics of Public Happiness, pp. 55-72.
Revolt, Affect, Collectivity: The Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva s Polis, ed. Tina Chanter and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, pp. 129-41. Reprinted by permission of the State University of New York Press. 2005 State University of New York. All Rights Reserved.
Hypatia, Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2003, Holes of Oblivion: The Banality of Evil, pp. 80-89.
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT FOR BOOKS BY HANNAH ARENDT
BPF
Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1977)
EJ
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books, 1963)
EU
Essays in Understanding, edited by Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1994)
HC
The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958)
JP
The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, edited by Ron H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press, 1978)
KPP
Lectures on Kant s Political Philosophy, edited and with an interpretive essay by Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)
LMT
Life of the Mind, vol. 1, Thinking (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978)
LMW
Life of the Mind, vol. 2, Willing (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978)
LSA
Love and Saint Augustine, edited by Joanne Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius Stark (1929; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
MDT
Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace World, 1968)
OR
On Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1963)
OT
The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: HBJ, 1951)
OV
On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace World, 1970)
PP
The Promise of Politics, edited by Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005)
RJ
Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003)
RV
Rahel Varnhagen, The Life of a Jewish Woman, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974)
HANNAH ARENDT AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Introduction: The Problem of Human Rights
H annah Arendt s most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the right to have rights. She first articulated the idea in The Origins of Totalitarianism in the context of her analysis of the decline of the nation-state. Its eventual d nouement in the death camps, she argues, could have happened only because of a philosophically invalid and politically impotent notion of human rights. Arendt s entire work can be read as an attempt to work out theoretically this fundamental right to have rights. Yet her notion of the right to have rights remains the least understood aspect of her work. While many of her most astute and careful readers refer admiringly to the phrase, they criticize her for providing no theoretical justification for this right. For example, Benhabib argues that Arendt can ultimately offer no philosophical justification either for her belief in universal human rights or for the category of crimes against humanity. 1 Benhabib asks:

Is the whole category of human rights, the existence of a right to have rights, in her perspicacious phrase, a defensible one? Do human beings have rights in the same way in which they can be said to have body parts? If we insist that we must treat all humans as being entitled to the right to have rights, on the basis of which philosophical assumptions do we defend this insistence? Do we ground such respect for universal human rights in nature, in history, or in human rationality? One searches in vain for answers to these questions in Arendt s text. But by withholding a philosophical engagement with the justification of human rights, by leaving ungrounded her own ingenious formulation of the right to have rights , Arendt also leaves us with a disquiet about the normative foundations of her own political philosophy. 2
Dana Villa offers a similar critique, arguing that Arendt devotes little attention to the liberal tradition and the theory of rights which animates it. 3 He claims that Arendt eschews a theory of human rights in favor of political action which, in turn, renders her thought relatively unconcern[ed] with the topic of justice. 4
In a similar vein, Margaret Canovan argues that however committed she herself might be to the ideas of equal human worth and equal human rights, [Arendt] certainly did not suppose that this was something that could be demonstrated or deduced f