Arendt’s Critique of Judaism: Between Religion and Politics

Abstract

Arendt regarded the “Jewish question” in the 20^th century as a “political question”. Arendt pointed out that Jews were always influenced by Judaism in the process of political action when she analyzed the “Jewish problem”, which caused the Jews to show “non-cosmopolitanism” in politics, which also became one of the internal causes of Nazi massacre of Jews in the 20th century. Fundamentally, since Babylonian exile, “survival” has been the main goal of Jewish political thought and action. The basis of the survival of the Jews is the appearance of religious beliefs, which leads to the strong Jewish beliefs in the Jewish political concepts. Therefore, based on Arendt’s political philosophy, this paper analyzes the destructive problem of “religion” to “politics” between “religion” and “politics”. The tragedy of the Holocaust should alert the modern human society to establish a correct political consciousness, so as to avoid being in the political dilemma of Jews again.