Hannah ArendtThinkers

Agency is a non-instrumental mode of being. It is being alive to the boundlessness and unpredictability of human action and the sheer power and joy of doing.

Agency is about revealing oneself to others, presenting oneself through deeds and words.

Agency is coincident with freedom. It is not simply an inner subjective disposition but a feature of intersubjective experience that arises though human togetherness.

Antisemitism is a grounded in an opposition between 'state' and 'society'. When society came in conflict with the state, they came into conflict with Jews as their target of first opportunity.

Antisemitism is a modern phenomenon underpinned by a fundamental paradox... namely, it is not a by-product of nationalism. Rather, it rose as the modem nation-state declined (and 'society' came to replace it).

Antisemitism is a political phenomenon situated at the nexus of the rise of european imperialism... the decline of the nation-state... and the failure of liberal emancipation.

Antisemitism is a purely modern phenomenon (there is no 'eternal anti-semitism), and it has to be understood exclusively as a political phenomenon, not a social or an economic one, and it has nothing to do with nationalism per se.

Antisemitism is a result of the decline of the nation-state, whose original consolidation into a force had relied on Jewish financial resources and had rewarded the jews with social privileges both to make them dependent upon the state and to prevent their integration into 'society'.

Antisemitism is a result of the Jews having failed to make the transition from nation state (in which they had political privilege) to imperialism, where they were rendered politically obsolete, possessing no longer their public functions nor their influence and left with nothing but their wealth.

Antisemitism is, in part, due to the political decisions of 'the Jews' to isolate themselves from society and to align themselves with state authority. When society came into conflict with the state, they came into conflict with the Jews as their target of first opportunity.

Antisemitism is not a constant in history. Rather a theory of anti-semitism can and must be constructed.

Antisemitism is not about religion, rather it is a political ideology and movement. It is not age-old, but emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century, reaching its height of virulence when the jews had actually lost public influence and were much more interested in cultural, intellectual, and professional accomplishments than in the pursuit of wealth and patronage.

Antisemitism is not an accidental feature of German totalitarianism but is central to it.

Antisemitism is not an eternal aspect of the human condition or of human history. It originated with the interlacing of historical, socio-economic, political, and cultural circumstances around the rise of the modern nation-state, the emancipation of european jewry, and the eventual rise of european imperialism.

Antisemitism is today, not a religious phenomenon as it was in the middle ages, but a political phenomenon.