Arendt, Scholem, Benjamin
| Date | 01 July 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885106064661 |
| Published date | 01 July 2006 |
| Author | Raluca Eddon |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Arendt, Scholem, Benjamin
Between Revolution and Messianism
Raluca Eddon United Nations
abstract: Walter Benjamin’s idiosyncratic theory of revolutionary messianism
was at the very crux of his influence on Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem.
This article argues that Arendt adopted important aspects of Benjamin’s idea of
revolution, but rejected his messianism, while Scholem rejected Benjamin’s belief
in revolution and accepted his emphasis on the power of messianism as a political
idea, but in a historical rather than metaphysical sense. As a result, in Arendt’s and
Scholem’s political thought both the category of revolution and that of messianism
as Benjamin understood them were radically transformed. This transformation
attests to the wide-ranging impact of Benjamin’s political philosophy, as well as to
the complex and hitherto misrecognized intellectual relationship between Arendt
and Scholem.
key words: Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, German Jews, political messianism,
Gershom Scholem, Zionism
The 30-odd-year relationship between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem is
often mentioned in passing, but rarely discussed in detail. Indeed, few readers
know that the infamous Eichmann exchange of 1963, with which their relation-
ship is most commonly associated, was but the nadir of a long, sometimes
close and occasionally turbulent friendship. Fewer still realize that much of this
friendship crystallized around Arendt and Scholem’s common devotion to Walter
Benjamin, the friend who exercised a defining influence on both and whose philo-
sophical and political thought came to decisively shape their own. Benjamin in
effect provided an important link from the very beginning. As Scholem recalled
years later, when in 1932 he met Arendt in Berlin, for her Benjamin ‘already
seemed to represent a weighty intellectual authority – surely a rarity in those
days’.1(Benjamin was related to Arendt’s first husband, Günter Stern.) To
Scholem, Arendt’s admiration for Benjamin suggested a deep-seated intellectual
affinity, which, in effect, animated their common efforts to recover and publish
Benjamin’s Nachlass long after their personal affection had all but died out.
261
article
Contact address: Raluca Eddon, 300 West 108th St, Apt 14D, New York,
NY 10025, USA.
Email: raluca.eddon@aya.yale.edu
EJPT
European Journal
of Political Theory
© SAGE Publications Ltd,
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi
issn 1474-8851, 5(3)261–279
[DOI: 10.1177/1474885106064661]
Nevertheless, in spite of his profound and lasting influence, both Arendt’s and
Scholem’s relationship with Benjamin were complicated, in part because of the
trying historical circumstances under which their friendships unfolded, but in
part also because of Benjamin’s inscrutable character. The most compelling bio-
graphical account of Benjamin to date, Benjaminiana, which is a montage of
letters, commentary and other ‘fragments’ drawn from Benjamin’s life, suggests
that Benjamin was as difficult to bear as a person as he was fascinating as an intel-
lectual.2Scholem, who devoted years to making Benjamin’s works known to a
general audience (in part with Arendt’s help), referred to Benjamin as ‘the friend
of a lifetime’,3though at times even he seems to have been in need of reassurance
and ultimately harbored no illusions about the mutuality of Benjamin’s attach-
ment.4While their mutual intellectual influence was considerable,5I suggest
in this article that it, too, was considerably more complex than the superlative
designation of Benjamin as ‘the friend of a lifetime’ would suggest.
As for Arendt, a detailed chronicle of her relationship with Benjamin remains
to be written. Thanks to Scholem, we know that she admired Benjamin as early as
1932, but their close personal acquaintance dates from the end of the 1930s, when
both Arendt and Benjamin were refugees in Paris (and later fellow inmates in an
internment camp in Southern France). In her letters to Scholem from the early
1940s, Arendt offers several deeply moving testimonies about Benjamin, includ-
ing a detailed description of the circumstances that had led to Benjamin’s suicide
in 1940.6Indeed, it was Arendt who informed Scholem of Benjamin’s suicide on
the Spanish border on his way to the United States,7and it is well-known that
she and her husband carried Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History in their
suitcase on the boat that brought them to New York in 1941. However,
Benjamin’s defining influence on Arendt’s thought in general and her political
thought in particular is just beginning to be understood.8This is even more the
case for the relationship between Arendt and Scholem, which is not only little
known but also often entirely misconstrued.
What emerges when reading Arendt, Benjamin, and Scholem together, how-
ever, is a web of common themes that deeply connect three thinkers usually
qualified as sui generis and idiosyncratic. These themes, I will argue, crystallize
around two ideas: the idea of revolution and the idea of messianism, which for
Benjamin were intimately connected. Arendt and Scholem both challenged this
connection: Arendt attempted to rescue Benjamin’s idea of revolution, while
subverting his messianism; Scholem, by contrast, rejected both Benjamin’s and
Arendt’s idea of revolution and focused instead on the dialectical role played by
messianism in Jewish history. Nevertheless, Benjamin ultimately provided both
Arendt and Scholem with a common paradigm for a unique kind of political,
moral, and philosophical radicalism. This paradigm marks Arendt and Scholem,
together and perhaps improbably in light of their mainstream acceptance, as two
of the 20th century’s most interesting and original intellectual radicals.
European Journal of Political Theory 5(3)
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