Stein, Weil, and Arendt
Three Women in Dark Times, by Sylvie Courtine-Denamy
About a year or two ago, I don’t remember exactly when or why, I found myself wondering whether Edith Stein and Hannah Arendt had ever crossed paths. They were contemporaries with much in common. I searched online and found Three Women in Dark Times, by Sylvie Courtine-Denamy, which compares the lives of Edith Stein (1891-1942), Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), and Simone Weil (1909-1943) as well.
The Greek Philosophers whom one calls Stoics say that one must love fate; that one must love everything that fate brings, even when it brings misfortune.
Simone Weil, Letter to Antonio
Courtine-Denamy makes this quotation her opening epigraph, and she uses the Stoic concept of amor fati as an organizing principle for her comparison of these three exceptional individuals, focusing mainly on the period 1933-1943. “Philosophers, women, and Jews: that was the hand they were dealt. What would they make of it?” (52). There are several points of comparison:
Religion: All three came from Jewish families. Only Stein’s family practiced Judaism, though. Weil’s family were artists and agnostics who did not bring her up with any religion. Arendt’s parents were educated and assimilated Germans; they did not practice Judaism themselves but allowed her to attend services with older relatives and receive religious instruction. All three turned away from religion and were atheists by the time they reached their teens, but Stein and Weil later turned toward Christianity. Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922 (not unusual for Jewish intellectuals of her generation) and entered the Carmelite order in 1933. Weil embraced Christian spirituality but apparently stopped short of being baptized. Stein and Arendt both affirmed their Jewishness despite not practicing Judaism, and Arendt became a Zionist, but Weil did not think of herself as a Jew and actively repudiated Judaism, though she opposed fascism. Weil had an almost Manichaean worldview, with Hellenic civilization, New Testament spirituality, Platonic philosophy, and Albigensianism on the side of light, and Rome, the Old Testament, Aristotle, and Northern France on the side of darkness. Although she was close to certain Catholic priests, she could not bring herself to accept baptism, for she felt the Church was too Roman and not Catholic enough, and the other churches were apparently even farther from her ideals.
Scholarship: all three were prodigious intellects who completed advanced degrees in philosophy and taught and wrote articles on the subject. All three had illustrious mentors: Stein studied under Edmund Husserl, Weil studied under Alain (the pen name of Emile Chartier), and Arendt studied (and had an affair with) Martin Heidegger and had a lifelong friendship with Karl Jaspers. In addition to engaging with the philosophical currents of their time, they drew on classical and medieval sources. In Stein’s masterwork, Finite and Eternal Being, she strives to harmonize Husserl’s phenomenology with the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. Arendt updates Aristotle’s practical philosophy with Existentialist insights in her postwar work. Weil, unlike the other two, was a Platonist. Her thorough grasp of ancient sources and their continued relevance to the present can be seen in her amazing essay The Iliad, or the Poem of Force.
Politics: All three opposed fascism. After Hitler took power in 1933, Stein wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI about the threat posed by the rise of Nazism. He did not reply, but in 1938 he commissioned the American Jesuit Fr. Paul Lafarge to write an encyclical against anti-semitism. Unfortunately, Pius XI died before it was finished, and his successor, Pius XII, did not publish it. Weil and Arendt were critical of Marx (as, presumably, was Stein), but were also critical of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. Paradoxically, the topic on which these three thinkers diverged the most was feminism. Only Stein actively addressed the question, and advocated for change, though her positions would still be seen as conservative by today’s standards. Weil seems to have refused to accept being categorized as a woman much as she refused to accept being categorized as a Jew. Arendt seems to have been comfortable with her position as a woman in her society and did not think of herself as a feminist.
Exile: Stein was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). Weil was born in Paris. Arendt was born in Hanover. All three left their homelands and died in other countries. Stein left Germany and settled in a convent in the Netherlands, but the Nazis came for her and she died in Auschwitz. Weil left Vichy France and spent time in the US, but felt compelled to return to Europe. She went to London, where she died of tuberculosis exacerbated by a regimen of fasting that she imposed on herself in solidarity with those living under Nazi occupation. Arendt left Germany in 1933, staying briefly in France before settling in the US.
It seems these women never met in person.
The book is organized chronologically, which works well as biography but makes it difficult to summarize and compare the thought of the three principals. Most of the book is a detailed year-by-year review of the events of 1933-1943 and the activities of these women during that time. Readers who have not read anything by these women or who are completely unfamiliar with Continental philosophy of that time may find parts of this book hard to follow. Readers who have at least some acquaintance with the writings of one or more of these women and some interest in the history of the period will find this an engaging book.