My father, admittedly born twenty years after the pardon but raised in a Poland and a France where the Affair still had some currency, at least among Jews—and who then spent time in the French military at an extremely non-exalted level—thought Dreyfus stupid precisely _because_ he trusted the General Staff.
(I have often thought, in connexion to my father, that one of the worst aspects of the general absence of military service in the U.S. is a glaring deficit of that dislike for the military, and of officers in particular, that is the birth-right of any grunt.)
I remember from Bredin's book at that after Dreyfus accepted his pardon a lot of Dreyfusard politicians got mad at him for deciding he didn't want to be a martyr anymore - is that what Arendt thinks too? What a strange thing for someone to call him.
My father, admittedly born twenty years after the pardon but raised in a Poland and a France where the Affair still had some currency, at least among Jews—and who then spent time in the French military at an extremely non-exalted level—thought Dreyfus stupid precisely _because_ he trusted the General Staff.
(I have often thought, in connexion to my father, that one of the worst aspects of the general absence of military service in the U.S. is a glaring deficit of that dislike for the military, and of officers in particular, that is the birth-right of any grunt.)
I remember from Bredin's book at that after Dreyfus accepted his pardon a lot of Dreyfusard politicians got mad at him for deciding he didn't want to be a martyr anymore - is that what Arendt thinks too? What a strange thing for someone to call him.
Not exactly, but she does think it kind of adds to the farcical aspects of the case. She was often...unsentimental to put it nicely.
I’m never sure what the causal direction is between that unsentimentality and her scorn for the concerns of the oikos/the rise of the social
hmm thats a really good q, they are probably wrapped up together