In
his farewell address President Ronald Reagan saw the U.S. as a New Jerusalem,
the shining city upon a hill. The reference
for the president’s patriotic speech was biblical. (See Mt. 5:14, Rev. 21:21) Reagan’s carefully
crafted, sanctimonious American image still remains, but Reagan and U.S. responsibility
for massive killings of indigenous people in the Central American civil wars
have been quickly forgotten. (200,000
civilians killed in Guatemala - never publicized)
The Reagan legacy continues with Trump; only
the bigotry, nationalism and militarism are out in the open with a deluge of threats
and unapologetic vile rhetoric. With the
ground of U.S. Democracy flooded with hate, where do we establish our roots?
Let us consider some thoughts of three
courageous women during the time of the Second World War. A summary of their work can be found in the
book, Three Women in Dark Times, Cornell
University Press, 2000, Ithaca, NY by Sylvie Courtine-Denamy. All references in this article are to
Courtine-Denamy’s book.
The three women, Simon Weil (1909 – 1943)
Edith Stein (1891 – 1942) and Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975), were recognized as
outstanding philosophers in their own time. Simone Weil finished first in a Sorbonne general examination on
philosophy ahead of notables Merleau–Ponty and Simone de Bouvoir.
The Three Women of Dark Times addresses
the horrible events and politics of their era with courage and wisdom. Weil and Stein had an idealistic approach and
Arendt a pragmatic and existential vision. The women were from Jewish
families.
SIMON WEIL 1909 - 1943
Weil addressed the problem of “up-rootedness”
by trying to establish a “universal” identity.
She worked in factories and did farm labor to experience the alienation
of the worker. She became mal-nourished
because others did not have a sufficient diet.
Simone Weil was hostile to Judaism in her attempt to be above race. Jewish scholars, Martin Buber and Levinas “underscore
not only Weil’s profound misunderstanding of the Jewish religion but also her
unfair treatment of it.” (143)
Weil warned that the rootlessness of our
time tempts people to “belong unconditionally to a totalitarian system which
gives them a solid illusion of inward unity.” (p. 142) She explained:
God’s children should love no
fatherland short of the universe as a whole…one must uproot one’s self and have
no native land… One can only be rooted in the absence of a definite place. (pp. 43-44)
Simone Weil
tended toward pacifism, but opposed Hitler and fascism to the extent that she
volunteered for the Spanish Republican Army to fight Franco in Spain’s Civil
War. She died in England in 1943 of
tuberculosis refusing to take nourishment.
Weil, although close to Roman Catholicism, never requested baptism and
maintained her “universal” identity.
EDITH STIEN 1891 - 1942
Edith Stein was a student and assistant to the
founder of the philosophical method of Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. She broke with Husserl over her Ph.D. dissertation
on Empathy – Einfuhlung translated by
a German professor as, “to feel into the feeling of another.”
Was Stein’s “Empathy”
opposed to Weil’s “Universalism”?
In 1922 Edith Stein converted to the Roman Catholicism. She saw faith and Thomistic Theology as the
necessary confirmation for her philosophy.
She never renounced her Jewish heritage but joined the Carmelite order
of nuns in 1933. She took the name
Benedicta of the Cross. In 1938 Edith
Stein as Sister Benedicta of the Cross wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI asking
for an Encyclical to defend the Jews.
She never received an answer and the Encyclical was never written.
Her roots were in the Great Commandment of
the Jewish Law, ‘Love God and love your
neighbor as yourself including the stranger,’ (Dt. 6:3, Lv. 19:18, 33) however
she expressed it as a Christian. She
wrote, “For the Christian there is no
such thing as a ‘stranger.’ There is only the neighbor, the person next
to us, the person most in need of our help.” (p. 205)
Because she was Jewish she was executed by
the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1942. Edith
Stein was declared a Saint in 1998 by Pope John Paul II.
HANNAH ARENDT 1906 - 1975
Hannah Arendt was an associate of Martin
Heidegger, one of the first and most renowned of the Existentialists. However, she could not give him a pass on his
association with the Nazis.
Arendt agreed with Husserl that philosophy
begins with the consciousness of the person, but this did not lead her into the
idealism of Stein and or even that of Husserl and Heidegger. Action was crucial for her. She recounts a story
of her childhood. She told her Rabbi
that she feared that she had lost her faith.
“Who is asking for it?” he replied.
Jewish scholar Emmanuel Levinas commented, “What the Rabbi meant was - doing
good is the act of faith in itself.” (p. 205) Arendt saw that action springs
from humane loving friendship in an in-human world. Friends board an Ark like Noah and
collaborate in action with those floating in companion Arks. (pp. 209-210) Hannah Arendt escaped to the United States in
1933. She believed strongly in the U.S.
Constitution.
The
three women, Simone Weil, Edith Stein, and Hannah Arendt did not curse their
fate for having to live in the “Dark Times” of the 20th century. They not only accepted their fate, they loved
it. A subtitle of the book, Three
Women in Dark Times is ‘Amor fati –
amor mundi’ – they loved their fate – they loved the world. (pp. 41- 52, 219-221)
A challenge
of the prophet Micah is brought to mind.
Yahweh
asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God. (Mi, 6:8)
The three women responded with classical
philosophical writing to help in understanding a time which defies
understanding. The universalism of Weil, the empathy
of Stein, and the dedication to action
of Arendt are only a tiny piece of their philosophical work, but an important aid
to understanding and acting in our own dark times.
