Integration after totalitarianism: Arendt and Habermas on the postwar imperatives of memory

Abstract

Collective memories of totalitarianism and the industrialized slaughter of the Holocaust have exerted a profound influence on postwar European politics and philosophy. Two of the most prominent political theorists and public intellectuals to take up the legacy of total war are Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. However, their prescriptions seem to pull in opposite directions. While Arendt draws on remembrance to recover politics on a smaller scale by advocating for the empowerment of local councils, Habermas draws on the past to justify his search for postnational forms of political community that can overcome the bloody legacy of nationalism. My argument brings these two perspectives together by examining their mutual support for European integration as a way of preserving the lessons of totalitarianism. I argue that both Arendt and Habermas reject the technocratic tendencies of the European Union while maintaining hope that it can develop a truly postnational form of politics.

Historical criticism without progress: Memory as an emancipatory resource for critical theory

“…Instead, I contend that he has come to treat the past—particularly the Second World War—as a record of mistakes that can motivate social transformation. While I agree with Allen that Habermas (and the Frankfurt School as a whole) does indeed focus too much on Europe and the Holocaust and too little on the important issues of race, colonialism, and empire highlighted by postcolonial theorists (see also Verovšek, ), I contend that this oversight can be corrected by expanding the application of this critical theory of memory to include a more active engagement with Europe's history of imperial domination across the globe.…”

“…Taken to its logical conclusion, his argument about the politics of memory suggests that Germany ought to show the same commitment to remembrance for its mass killings of the Herero people of Namibia (Anderson, ), which it acknowledged only in 2016 (Brady, )—as it has to the Nazi genocide during the Second World War . Although he should do more to draw out the implications of his position beyond the crimes committed on the European continent, Habermas's mature notion of collective memory conceives of the past as a process of moral‐practical learning from catastrophe that does not rely on narratives of progress, but instead creates imperatives for the future (for more on this critique of Habermas's understanding of collective memory and its relationship to Europe, see Verovšek, ). Far from the backward‐looking, teleological philosophies of historical progress posited by Kant, Hegel, and Marx, Habermas's mnemonic conception of the past is far more similar to what Allen calls progress in history.…”

“…Habermas's mature notion of collective memory conceives of the past as a process of moral-practical learning from catastrophe that does not rely on narratives of progress, but instead creates imperatives for the future (for more on this critique of Habermas's understanding of collective memory and its relationship to Europe, see Verovšek, 2018).…”

Hannah Arendt

“…Though the circumstances are new, the continued neoliberal economic and political climate, together with the all-pervasiveness of social media, seem to have a similar effect, namely, people are reduced to a tenuous sense of reality and become susceptible to bizarre conspiracy theories invented by ideologues on the extreme right (Kohn 2018). What exactly the lessons are we have to learn from the European past of totalitarianism and death camps is, of course, a question of debate (Verovšek 2020), but certain is that historical research needs to be aware of the tendency to reduce the new to the old. As contemporary history is the domain of the unexpected new, historical research of our present condition requires imagination and reflective judgment (Storey 2017).…”

Thelexof the earth? Arendt’s critique of Roman law

“…whether it stands alone or plays a supplementary role for higher institutions, such as the constitution or international law) remains contested. See Lederman (2019: 30) and Verovšek (2018: 14).…”