Jesuits, Jews, and Jacobins: A polite disagreement between Don Luigi Sturzo and Hannah Arendt

Jesuits, Jews, and Jacobins: A polite disagreement between Don Luigi Sturzo and Hannah Arendt

Presenter(s)

Laura T. Coughlin

Comments

Presentation: 9:00-9:20, Kennedy Union 207

Description

This paper, Jesuits, Jews, and Jacobins: A polite disagreement between Luigi Sturzo and Hannah Arendt, exposes original research funded by the University of Dayton and performed at the archives of the Istituto Luigi Sturzo in Rome. The essay is part of a larger dissertation project that endeavors to clarify the conservative and religiously inflected antifascism of Don Luigi Sturzo, Italian priest-politician and founder of the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI). In August of 1942, Hannah Arendt and Don Luigi Sturzo, both wartime exiles in the United States, exchanged letters related to Arendt’s groundbreaking essay, “From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today.” This correspondence reveals a genuinely civil conversation between partners engaged in dialogue about the most significant European issues of the long nineteenth century and the effect of those issues on the twentieth century. Of particular interest is their debate in three areas on which Arendt drives the conversation: 1) the relationship of the Society of Jesus to the formation of negative Catholic attitudes about the Jews of Europe, 2) the importance of personal political formation to a democratic tradition that enforces individual and human rights, 3) the distinction between the “mob” and the “people.” As to this last point, the former (“mob”) is large, emotional, violent, and easily led to reaction (e.g. Fascism) especially in corrupt states. By contrast, the latter (“people”) is small, rational, consistent, and able to secure the integrity of the laws.

Publication Date

4-17-2024

Project Designation

Graduate Research

Primary Advisor

William Portier

Primary Advisor's Department

Religious Studies

Keywords

Stander Symposium, College of Arts and Sciences

Institutional Learning Goals

Scholarship; Critical Evaluation of Our Times

Jesuits, Jews, and Jacobins: A polite disagreement between Don Luigi Sturzo and Hannah Arendt

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