Tuesday 24 February 2026 at 18h
Dr. Courtney Hodrick
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Lecture in English. Lecture in room R.013, Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen.
Lecture in the framework of the "Network for European Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition".
Free entrance. To register, email to ijs@uantwerpen.be.
In this lecture, Hodrick compares Hannah Arendt's depiction of American and Israeli national consciousness in On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem, both published in 1963. She suggests that reading Eichmann against On Revolution allows us to understand her opposition to the trial in a new light that moves beyond the clichéd accusation that it was a "show trial,” and instead focuses on questions of political theology, namely, on the problem of legitimation of secular democratic politics in the modern world. Reading Eichmann through the questions of political theology and national identity formation posed by On Revolution reveals Arendt's true opposition to the trial: that it seeks to legitimize the State of Israel on the grounds of a philosophy of history in which antisemitism is eternal and universal, from Pharaoh to Hitler. Both nations define themselves, for Arendt, on the basis of a version of the Exodus story, and comparing these two stories allows Arendt to consider the true meaning of freedom.
Courtney Hodrick is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Research Focus “Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Atlantic World” at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften der Goethe Universität. She earned her PhD in German Studies from Stanford University in 2023, with a dissertation on hope in Arendt, where she then held positions in Jewish Studies and the first-year program in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education. Courtney is now working on her first academic book, provisionally titled Hannah Arendt and the Overcoming of Philosophy of History, and she has articles and chapters forthcoming on topics that include Arendt's Vita Activa and the role of the atomic bomb in her politics.