Elisabeth Young-Bruehl 3 March 1946 - 1 December 2011
The enduring possibility of justice inheres chiefly in one site, one habitus, the very body - if we dare so term it - of the political qua political: Freundschaft.
It was my pleasure to have known Elisabeth personally, having collaborated with her during my undergraduate work. Like countless other students, my early studies were enriched by her practical wisdom and generous spirit.
We "met" in ink: I mailed her a paper I'd written on ideology, in fulfillment of an elective she'd taken over, sight unseen, at semester's end for a colleague fallen ill. I hadn't expected to get it back, given the circumstances, and when I did, certainly didn't expect to find anything other than a letter grade written on it. There was instead paragraph after paragraph of enthusiastic remarks, running down margins and added stapled pages, concluding in a sentence I carry in my spirit to this day: "Thought has in you an absolutely extraordinary champion." It was the start of a happy scholarly friendship.
We disagreed as often - and as passionately - as we agreed, and the conversations we engaged in were invigorating
philosophical perambulations despite (or, on one view, because of) our differences. Elisabeth was an energetic scholar and, more importantly, an eminently decent human being. She had no patience for pompousness, and no tolerance for the pettiness that pervades academe. In subsequent years, I regretted never having taken the time to tell her how much I'd enjoyed our chats, and was, to my surprise and delight, given a second chance to many years later.
In the Spring of 2010, our paths happened, improbably, to cross; she was invited to panel at the university I was just about that time receiving my doctorate from. It had been over a decade since we'd been in contact, and I wondered if she would even remember me. The answer to that question was the work of less than a second, as she caught sight of me walking towards her and her face lit up instantly like a beautiful flare. Her hair was whiter; her sturdy embrace utterly unchanged by time. We exclaimed and glowed and talked and talked until other obligations finally tugged us back to our respective duties. We parted that afternoon as we had greeted; that sincere, sturdy hug. We parted in the ultimate sense in the same way we met - in ink.
It must have been nearly seven months after that conference that I received, to my great surprise, a package by post from her. It contained a set of Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind - the very volumes, I recognized immediately, that had, so long ago, watched over our lively conversations from their bookshelf perch, the spines dappled with sunlight-fade in the shape of the ornate iron window lattice. She'd inscribed it, and her words are a gift I will cherish privately; her life was a public gift to all of us.
Elisabeth wrote extensively on Arendt, who had been her teacher and mentor, and among the things they shared in common was a deep concern for what happens when thought disappears from human life:
When political life atrophies and debate and questioning cease, while thoughtful moral experience is blocked internally, the resulting capacity for evil can spread like an epidemic. Arendt had feared that thoughtlessness - "the heedless recklessness or hopeless confusion or complacent repetition of 'truths' which have become trivial and empty"- had become "among the outstanding characteristics of our time".
Thought-lessness is still, half a century later, "among the outstanding characteristics of our time," and the evil it allows to blossom surpasses the semantic capabilities of the word "epidemic." We despair in such times, what to do. The answer I proffer I do so in memoriam of Elisabeth:
Do the work of love and everything else will follow.
It was my pleasure to have known Elisabeth personally, having collaborated with her during my undergraduate work. Like countless other students, my early studies were enriched by her practical wisdom and generous spirit.
We "met" in ink: I mailed her a paper I'd written on ideology, in fulfillment of an elective she'd taken over, sight unseen, at semester's end for a colleague fallen ill. I hadn't expected to get it back, given the circumstances, and when I did, certainly didn't expect to find anything other than a letter grade written on it. There was instead paragraph after paragraph of enthusiastic remarks, running down margins and added stapled pages, concluding in a sentence I carry in my spirit to this day: "Thought has in you an absolutely extraordinary champion." It was the start of a happy scholarly friendship.
We disagreed as often - and as passionately - as we agreed, and the conversations we engaged in were invigorating
philosophical perambulations despite (or, on one view, because of) our differences. Elisabeth was an energetic scholar and, more importantly, an eminently decent human being. She had no patience for pompousness, and no tolerance for the pettiness that pervades academe. In subsequent years, I regretted never having taken the time to tell her how much I'd enjoyed our chats, and was, to my surprise and delight, given a second chance to many years later.
In the Spring of 2010, our paths happened, improbably, to cross; she was invited to panel at the university I was just about that time receiving my doctorate from. It had been over a decade since we'd been in contact, and I wondered if she would even remember me. The answer to that question was the work of less than a second, as she caught sight of me walking towards her and her face lit up instantly like a beautiful flare. Her hair was whiter; her sturdy embrace utterly unchanged by time. We exclaimed and glowed and talked and talked until other obligations finally tugged us back to our respective duties. We parted that afternoon as we had greeted; that sincere, sturdy hug. We parted in the ultimate sense in the same way we met - in ink.
It must have been nearly seven months after that conference that I received, to my great surprise, a package by post from her. It contained a set of Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind - the very volumes, I recognized immediately, that had, so long ago, watched over our lively conversations from their bookshelf perch, the spines dappled with sunlight-fade in the shape of the ornate iron window lattice. She'd inscribed it, and her words are a gift I will cherish privately; her life was a public gift to all of us.
Elisabeth wrote extensively on Arendt, who had been her teacher and mentor, and among the things they shared in common was a deep concern for what happens when thought disappears from human life:
When political life atrophies and debate and questioning cease, while thoughtful moral experience is blocked internally, the resulting capacity for evil can spread like an epidemic. Arendt had feared that thoughtlessness - "the heedless recklessness or hopeless confusion or complacent repetition of 'truths' which have become trivial and empty"- had become "among the outstanding characteristics of our time".
Thought-lessness is still, half a century later, "among the outstanding characteristics of our time," and the evil it allows to blossom surpasses the semantic capabilities of the word "epidemic." We despair in such times, what to do. The answer I proffer I do so in memoriam of Elisabeth:
Do the work of love and everything else will follow.