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Hannah Arendt's Jewish Cosmopolitanism

Between the Universal and the Particular

ACADEMIC COLLEGE OF TEL-AVIV-YAFFO, ISRAEL

This article conceptualizes the lofty term of cosmopolitanism from people's historical experience. It attempts to find a bridge between theory and life. Many writers now maintain that cosmopolitanism is no longer a dream, but rather the substance of social reality - and that it is increasingly the nation-state and our particular identities that are figments of our imagination, clung to by our memories. The aim of this article is to concretize this argument and demonstrate how some of the Jewish intellectuals who emerged from World War II and the Holocaust argued passionately about the status of their Jewishness and how this related to abstract and universal ideals of modernity and human rights. The article focuses on Hannah Arendt's responses to her critics instead of her vast theoretical work to illustrate this point. In responding to her critics, Arendt came closest to providing a formula for a concept of cosmopolitanism, which attempts to square the circle between the universal and the particular.

Key Words: Hannah Arendt • cosmopolitanism • the Holocaust • particularism • universalism

European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 10, No. 1, 112-122 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1368431006068764


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