hannah
arendt emmanuel levinas 100
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When the goal of anniversaries is more and
more often that to celebrating the past, this 2006 series of
centennials at the Center for Jewish History is conceived to
explore the relevance of classic 20th century thought in terms
of its impact on contemporary global values.
Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, and Emmanuel
Levinas, are among the personalities whose work has changed the
face of society, the forms of our judgment, and the way in
which we interpret reality.
Their work has affected our values well
beyond what was foreseeable at the time in which they lived.
As his contemporary Karl Kraus, Freud saw
in World War I the end of the world of ideas, and the beginning
of one rooted in warfare. By pointing at the discontents of
civilization and providing instruments to achieve individual
awareness and responsibility, he delivered to the new century a
critical notion of human agent that represents a major
reference in contemporary ethics.
Drawing on a very similar historical
experience, but from different personal backgrounds Hannah
Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas established fundamental standards
for the understanding of public policies, human and civil
rights, historical criticism, and social justice. Whether
grounding their vision in phenomenology and traditional Jewish
text, like Levinas, or in the Greek tradition and the analysis
of contemporary socio-political practices, like Arendt, their
attempt to reconcile the most ancient of man’s concerns
with a world radically changed by revolutions of all kinds,
represents a precious contribution to our ability to shape,
understand, and sustain the world in the 21st century.
The Center
for Jewish History and the Cahnman Foundation offer
these two public programs as an opportunity to reflect upon and
discuss the contemporary significance of the thought and
writings of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas.
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