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Crisis de la República
Una recopilación de textos de crítica política sobre la situación política en Estados Unidos en los años 60, cuyos temas siguen estando de actualidad en estos momentos.
Los trabajos reunidos en Crisis de la República, pertenecientes a la última etapa de la producción de Hannah Arendt, son genuinos ensayos de comprensión. Analizan asuntos controvertidos de la vida política de Estados Unidos en el periodo de distensión de la guerra fría, en pleno auge de los movimientos pacifistas y de protesta y de la rebelión estudiantil. Pero son ante todo una brillante reflexión sobre la formación del juicio en política, la capacidad de aprendizaje a partir de los acontecimientos y el sentido de la acción.
Los trabajos reunidos en Crisis de la República, pertenecientes a la última etapa de la producción de Hannah Arendt, son genuinos ensayos de comprensión. Analizan asuntos controvertidos de la vida política de Estados Unidos en el periodo de distensión de la guerra fría, en pleno auge de los movimientos pacifistas y de protesta y de la rebelión estudiantil. Pero son ante todo una brillante reflexión sobre la formación del juicio en política, la capacidad de aprendizaje a partir de los acontecimientos y el sentido de la acción.
184 pages, Paperback
First published March 11, 1970
393 people are currently reading
2275 people want to read
About the author
Hannah Arendt
404 books4,850 followersHannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).
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October 28, 2022
بحرانهای جمهوری چهار نوشته را در بر دارد: یک. «دروغگویی در سیاست» (که نشان میدهد سیاستمداران امریکایی چطور خود و دیگران را دربارهی ویتنام فریب دادند). دو. «نافرمانی مدنی» (که شرح درخشانی ست از اینکه چرا بازشناسی نافرمانی مدنی در دموکراسی رضایتمحور ضرورت دارد). سه. «خشونت» که به همراه نوشتهی چهارم یعنی «اندیشههایی دربارهی سیاست و انقلاب» قبلا در کتاب خشونت (ترجمهی فولادوند) چاپ شدهاند و در موردشان چند کلمهای آنجا نوشتهام
September 28, 2023
درباره آمریکا، چیزی که آرنت را شگفت زده کرده، این است که "قانون کشوره" یا "این کشور قانون داره" نمی توانند در دفاع از ظلم و جور اکثریت و علیه اقلیت به کار روند.
در آمریکا می توان در برابر قانون بد ایستاد نه صرفا به کمک آزادی بیان، بلکه با کمک "انجمن های آزاد" و "جامعه مدنی". مفاهیمی که در خاک آمریکا ریشه دوانده اند.
در آمریکا می توان در برابر قانون بد ایستاد نه صرفا به کمک آزادی بیان، بلکه با کمک "انجمن های آزاد" و "جامعه مدنی". مفاهیمی که در خاک آمریکا ریشه دوانده اند.
April 3, 2025
Der Band umfasst zwei Essays. Der erste, „Die Lüge in der Politik“ von 1971, befasst sich mit einem damals tagesaktuellen Ereignis, der Veröffentlichung der Pentagon-Papers, aus denen seinerzeit für die Weltöffentlichkeit sichtbar wurde, dass die amerikanische Regierung in Bezug auf die Kriegsziele in Vietnam über Jahre gelogen hatte. Hier wird viel auf die konkreten Zusammenhänge des Falls referiert, die mir allerdings nicht geläufig genug sind, um den Aufsatz mit sehr viel Gewinn zu lesen. Viele der hier nur angerissenen grundsätzlichen Gedanken finden sich sehr viel elaborierter im zweiten Text „Wahrheit und Politik“ von 1967. Um das Verhältnis zwischen diesen Faktoren zu klären, unterscheidet Arendt zunächst zwischen „Vernunftwahrheiten“, dazu gehören etwa philosophische Axiome und moralische Gesetzmäßigkeiten, und „Tatsachenwahrheiten“, wissenschaftlich beweisbaren Fakten. Es mag kontraintuitiv erscheinen, aber letztere erachtet sie als für Lüge und Manipulation anfälliger, weil sie sich nicht immer, wie die Vernunftwahrheiten, aus logischer Herleitung erschließen, sondern häufig beliebig wirken. Die Lüge dagegen setzt dem zwar ein kohärentes Weltbild entgegen, das aber, eben weil es nicht der Wirklichkeit entspricht, immer unvollständig bleibt. Während der Vernunftwahrheit die Meinung gegenübersteht, ist der Gegensatz zur Tatsache die Lüge; doch indem man die Grenzen zwischen Meinung und Lüge verwischt, stellt man unbestreitbare Tatsachen der Interpretation anheim und versündigt sich damit am Wahrheitsbegriff an sich. Diktatoren und Tyrannen lehnen die Tatsachen ab, wenn sie sich ihrer Kontrolle entziehen. Der Lügner muss dabei auch der Selbsttäuschung zum Opfer fallen, denn überzeugend ist er nur, wenn er seine Lüge auch selbst glaubt. Dazu gehört etwa die feste Überzeugung, nicht in erster Linie zum eigenen Besten, sondern zum Wohle aller zu handeln: Der persönliche Machterhalt ist notwendig, weil Diktatoren der Selbsttäuschung unterliegen, nur sie selbst könnten das Wohl aller gewährleisten. Meinungsfreiheit und nicht zuletzt die Wissenschaftsfreiheit und deren Autonomie bilden das Korrektiv, um der Wahrheit zu ihrem Recht zu verhelfen, gegen die die Lüge nicht auf Dauer ankommen kann, weil sie gegenüber den Tatsachen immer unzulänglich bleibt. Vieles finde ich überzeugend und auf aktuelle Debatten anwendbar. Allerdings bleibt mir der Begriff der Vernunftwahrheiten etwas zu schwammig. Sie nennt als Beispiel Sokrates' Diktum, es sei besser, Unrecht zu erleiden als Unrecht zu begehen. Das ist eine moralische Setzung, der man folgen kann oder eben nicht. Wenn man aber anderer Meinung sein kann, was macht dann diese Aussage zu einer allgemein gültigen Wahrheit? Lassen sich dann nicht auch politische Ideologien als Vernunftwahrheiten verkaufen? Ich bin auch gar nicht so sicher, ob sie dieses Konstrukt für ihre Argumentation überhaupt so dringend benötigt, geht es ihr doch eher um die Rolle der Tatsachen in der politischen Debatte.
Want to read
October 5, 2016Seems like a good moment to read about lying in politics.
February 13, 2019
مجموعة مقالات لارندت، كما تعودنا على طريقة كتابتها غنية جدا بالأفكار، سأتطرق إلى بعضها هنا :
● ارندت محبة للسياسة الأمريكية، ما تم صنعه بعد الثورة الأمريكية من دستور وفدرالية و فصل سلطات و التنظيرات التي صاحبته لدى توكفيل وجيفيرسون وغيرهم لكنها تحس بأن الوضع حاليا ليس كما هو عليه، كأنها كانت موجودة هنالك في الفترات الأولى للتكوين ، اليوم وهي ترى حرب العبث التي قادتها أمريكا ضد فيتنام بلا اي فوائد حسب ما تراه براغماتيا فأنها لابد أن تنتقد سياسة الكذب التي صاغت الفكرة بالدخول في فيتنام ، هي ترى أن السياسي لا تجهده الكذبات بقدر ما تجهده الحقيقة ، في الكذبة يجد ما يريد الناس سماعه فيقوله و حين ينوي أمرا معينا عليه ان لا يخبر الحقيقة لأن تقبلها صعب، في نفس الوقت هو يتعرض لكذبة تحاك من مستشاريه و معاونيه و من الاكاديميين الذين يستعين بهم ، والذين ليسوا سوى زائدين على الحاجة ان لم يكونوا عبء لان افكارهم المعقدة لا تساهم بشئ
● اما في العصيان المدني فأرندت تبدأ تأسيسها من سقراط حيث رفضه للظلم لم يمنعه من تقبله للقانون بل كان يرى أن من يعارض القانون هو بذلك متقبل لعقابه، لحظة العصيان المدني بدأت مع هنري ثورو حين رفض القانون لظلمه و رغبة في تغييره لأنه لا أخلاقي، ومن هنا بدأت الاحتجاجات المدنية تصبح جزءا من طرق تغيير القوانين إعادة ترتيب الأنظمة و معارضة قراراتها، لكن في الوقت نفسه وبينما تتساءل حول هل ستصبح في المستقبل هذه الاحتجاجات جزء من الدولة ترى أن العصيان المدني يعترف بالدولة مقابل الثورة التي ترفضها فالعصيان لا يريد سوى تغيير بغض القوانين أو تحقيق بعض المطالبات هذا على مستوى التنظير السياسي طبعا فهنا يعتبر غاندي ثائرا لا عاصيا
● في سؤال العنف تقول لماذا اليوم أصبح لدينا ترسانة نووية بدعوى السلام ، لماذا شهدت مجالات التسليح هذا التطور ولماذا دعمتها التكنولوجيا حيث نحن في عهد يمكن بصاروخ واحد ان تنتهي نصف البشرية على الكوكب وهذا المستحيل أصبح ممكنا بينما الممكن من إنهاء الحروب والإبادات و المجاعات أصبح مستحيلا، العنف ضد البرجوازية مبرر لكنه لم ينجح غالبا ، وضعف القوة هو ما ينتج العنف كأحد البدائل
● نقطة مهمة هي المجموعات والتشكلات الصغيرة داخل المجتمع في ما بعد الثورات تصبح مهمة وخيار مستقبلي للتنظيم الذي سيبدأ من اسفل إلى أعلى الهرم على ما يمكن لمثل هذه البيروقراطية ان تطغى على صوت الفرد إلا أنها ممكنة الحدوث
● ارندت محبة للسياسة الأمريكية، ما تم صنعه بعد الثورة الأمريكية من دستور وفدرالية و فصل سلطات و التنظيرات التي صاحبته لدى توكفيل وجيفيرسون وغيرهم لكنها تحس بأن الوضع حاليا ليس كما هو عليه، كأنها كانت موجودة هنالك في الفترات الأولى للتكوين ، اليوم وهي ترى حرب العبث التي قادتها أمريكا ضد فيتنام بلا اي فوائد حسب ما تراه براغماتيا فأنها لابد أن تنتقد سياسة الكذب التي صاغت الفكرة بالدخول في فيتنام ، هي ترى أن السياسي لا تجهده الكذبات بقدر ما تجهده الحقيقة ، في الكذبة يجد ما يريد الناس سماعه فيقوله و حين ينوي أمرا معينا عليه ان لا يخبر الحقيقة لأن تقبلها صعب، في نفس الوقت هو يتعرض لكذبة تحاك من مستشاريه و معاونيه و من الاكاديميين الذين يستعين بهم ، والذين ليسوا سوى زائدين على الحاجة ان لم يكونوا عبء لان افكارهم المعقدة لا تساهم بشئ
● اما في العصيان المدني فأرندت تبدأ تأسيسها من سقراط حيث رفضه للظلم لم يمنعه من تقبله للقانون بل كان يرى أن من يعارض القانون هو بذلك متقبل لعقابه، لحظة العصيان المدني بدأت مع هنري ثورو حين رفض القانون لظلمه و رغبة في تغييره لأنه لا أخلاقي، ومن هنا بدأت الاحتجاجات المدنية تصبح جزءا من طرق تغيير القوانين إعادة ترتيب الأنظمة و معارضة قراراتها، لكن في الوقت نفسه وبينما تتساءل حول هل ستصبح في المستقبل هذه الاحتجاجات جزء من الدولة ترى أن العصيان المدني يعترف بالدولة مقابل الثورة التي ترفضها فالعصيان لا يريد سوى تغيير بغض القوانين أو تحقيق بعض المطالبات هذا على مستوى التنظير السياسي طبعا فهنا يعتبر غاندي ثائرا لا عاصيا
● في سؤال العنف تقول لماذا اليوم أصبح لدينا ترسانة نووية بدعوى السلام ، لماذا شهدت مجالات التسليح هذا التطور ولماذا دعمتها التكنولوجيا حيث نحن في عهد يمكن بصاروخ واحد ان تنتهي نصف البشرية على الكوكب وهذا المستحيل أصبح ممكنا بينما الممكن من إنهاء الحروب والإبادات و المجاعات أصبح مستحيلا، العنف ضد البرجوازية مبرر لكنه لم ينجح غالبا ، وضعف القوة هو ما ينتج العنف كأحد البدائل
● نقطة مهمة هي المجموعات والتشكلات الصغيرة داخل المجتمع في ما بعد الثورات تصبح مهمة وخيار مستقبلي للتنظيم الذي سيبدأ من اسفل إلى أعلى الهرم على ما يمكن لمثل هذه البيروقراطية ان تطغى على صوت الفرد إلا أنها ممكنة الحدوث
July 4, 2020
Arendt's one of my all time favorite 20th century thinkers. A left-wing intellectual who had no illusions about the dangers incipient in her own side, the warnings, prophecies, and cautious optimism here bore themselves out as much in the time of writing—the late 60s and early 70s—as they seem to be in our current era. Each of these essays / interviews is both deeply insightful of the era in which they were first put forth and possess a degree of timelessness I found pretty staggering. Not to mention, this book includes perhaps my favorite quote about authoritarianism: "The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter." Definitely a good introduction to her way of thinking in general too!
June 21, 2020
I’m fully convinced we live in a PSYOPed world. By that I mean we are all caught within the cacophony of psychological operations trying to influence, manipulate, and transmogrify our thoughts, feelings, and actions (or inactions). This is certainly not a new dynamic to modern humanity, but I think the vast and nebulous nature of the Internet and all its dark crevices have magnified the problems to the breaking point’s ledge. This is a collection of essays which could also be philosophical exegeses, pulling apart the contexts of political lying, civil discontent, and the nature and purpose of violence in America. While dated, these issues are strongly prescient too. “Whether our form of government will survive this century [the 20th] is uncertain, but it is also uncertain that it will not” (p. 81). She may have been off the mark time-wise, but there’s plenty of room to wonder how History will unfold. Arendt analyzes the Pentagon Papers, published in 1972, condemning the entire US involvement in “Indochina” and the lies and language used to keep the bombs dropping and the body bags coming home. “In the realm of politics, where secrecy and deliberate deception have always played a significant role, self-deception is the danger par excellence; the self-deceived deceiver loses all contact with not only his audience, but also the real world, which still will catch up with him, because he can remove his mind from it but not his body” (pp. 32-33).
The self-deceived deceiver. Remember those weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) touted by George W. and his minders? The “war on terror” easily fits within Arendt’s analyses and should also be considered war crimes as much as crimes against humanity, but no one will ever be imprisoned at The Hague for such unforgivable acts that cost millions of lives. However, now, with a pathological liar as President, one with the emotional intelligence of a toddler, backed by ranks of sociopathic sycophants stealing from the public coffers and destroying the guardrails of checks & balances, and entire media outlets supporting the lies, obfuscations, delusional perceptions, and Fantasyland fallacies to fill the dim minds of millions of the easily manipulated, Arendt’s observations seem nuked in this exasperating Twilight Zone episode we’re currently trapped within. “What has often been suggested has now been established: so long as the press is free and not corrupt, it has an enormously important function to fulfill and can rightly be called the fourth branch of government. Whether the First Amendment will suffice to protect this most essential political freedom, the right to unmanipulated factual information without which all freedom of opinion becomes a cruel hoax, is another question” (p. 41). The elimination of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine in 1987 opened up the Pandora’s Box of smoke and mirrors, lies and fantasies for which we are all subjected to now. From AM radio stations to Fox News to InfoWars to One America. The Internet magnified the damage a million-fold with every village idiot forming their own tribal convictions, spreading the disease of disinformation. Arendt’s 1963 concept of “the banality of evil” also fits well here.
I could just let the long-lasting and outstanding thrash band Havok scream it for you with their song “Post-Truth Era” (2020):
Decide right now,
The path that we will take from here,
To annihilate ignorance.
Ideas can change the world,
That we live in today,
Hypnosis put to death.
Post-truth era,
Complex mind control.
Don't trust your eyes,
Unlearn what you think you know.
Post-truth era,
Deceit designed.
The eyes are useless,
When the mind is blind.
Truth is the first casualty,
In a world of lies.
Remain vigilant,
Believe half of what you see
And none of what you hear.
Demand evidence,
The messenger of truth,
Wasn't only burned alive.
He was forced to change his words,
Turning the world into an
Echo chamber of lies.
Watch the world burn.
Post-truth era,
Complex mind control.
Don't trust your eyes,
Unlearn what you think you know.
Post-truth era,
Deceit designed.
The eyes are useless,
When the mind is blind.
Post-truth era,
Complex mind control.
Don't trust your eyes,
Unlearn what you think you know.
Post-truth era,
Deceit designed.
The eyes are useless,
When the mind is blind.
The fact that politicians lie goes back to the beginning of the occupation when the first city-states were forged from the tribal wilds of, well, anywhere. It could just be a deep component of our elemental being, with troglodytic mankind screwing one another over for a stone tool, a fresh hide, a tempting female. Now, however, nations fall to the immorality and criminality of their governments. “Change is constant, inherent in the human condition, but the velocity of change is not. It varies greatly from country to country, from century to century” (p. 63). This is what Alvin Toffler articulated with Future Shock in 1970. The US has been on a long collision course towards a solid Reckoning. Putin and Xi Jinping know this with scholarly aplomb, almost as much as Osama bin Laden and Ho Chi Minh knew. One could argue it started in the 60s, with Vietnam, but it might very well have started with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Karma gets Her point across, for individuals and nations alike, in due time:
“Now as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be;
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;
he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.” (The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 7th Century BCE)
We reap what we sow, and this country is filled with undereducated, hate-filled hypocrites. Jill Lepore recently wrote an essay for The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...) in which she analyses the dross presented by government commissions, historically. “There’s a limit to the relevance of the so-called race riots of the nineteen-sixties to the protests of the moment. But the tragedy is: they’re not irrelevant. Nor is the history that came before. The language changes, from ‘insurrection’ to ‘uprising’ to the bureaucratic ‘civil disorder,’ terms used to describe everything from organized resistance to mayhem. But, nearly always, they leave a bloody trail in the historical record, in the form of government reports.” The summation is demoralizing: “The United States does not need one more commission, or one more report. A strong moral message? That message is being delivered by protesters every day, on street after street after street across the nation. Stop killing us. One day, these reports will lie archived, forgotten, irrelevant. Meanwhile, they pile up, an indictment, the stacked evidence of inertia. In the summer of 1968, the civil-rights leader Whitney Young published an essay titled ‘The Report That Died,’ writing, ‘The report is still there, it still reads well, but practically nothing is being done to follow its recommendations.’ It was as it had ever been. It is time for it to be something else.”
Arendt said this too, almost 50 years ago: “No doubt all this can change” (p. 42). The reports exist, but nobody reads them, and most importantly nobody acts upon them. The Pentagon Papers and the Afghanistan Papers, civil unrest and gross inequality, police brutality and political apathy. “Representative government itself is in a crisis today [1972], partly because it has lost, in the course of time, all institutions that permitted the citizens’ actual participation, and partly because it is now gravely affected by the disease from which the party system suffers: bureaucratization and the two parties’ tendency to represent nobody except the party machines” (p. 72). The GOP was surprisingly flexible in its drastic shift to the far right, with casualties and deserters dully noted. The corporate Dems are desperately trying to suffocate the progressive movement to maintain their version of the status quo. Anne Applebaum, in The Atlantic, tells us that History will judge the complicit (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/... “In english, the word collaborator has a double meaning. A colleague can be described as a collaborator in a neutral or positive sense. But the other definition of collaborator, relevant here, is different: someone who works with the enemy, with the occupying power, with the dictatorial regime. In this negative sense, collaborator is closely related to another set of words: collusion, complicity, connivance.” As I mentioned before, those who kept the carpet bombing campaigns going in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia did not go to prison; nor will Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. Egomaniac Trump has a bloated list of lawsuits ongoing and no-doubt growing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...), all while trying to incite violence amongst the tribes. History may judge, but in this post-truth era, does it even matter?
The self-deceived deceiver. Remember those weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) touted by George W. and his minders? The “war on terror” easily fits within Arendt’s analyses and should also be considered war crimes as much as crimes against humanity, but no one will ever be imprisoned at The Hague for such unforgivable acts that cost millions of lives. However, now, with a pathological liar as President, one with the emotional intelligence of a toddler, backed by ranks of sociopathic sycophants stealing from the public coffers and destroying the guardrails of checks & balances, and entire media outlets supporting the lies, obfuscations, delusional perceptions, and Fantasyland fallacies to fill the dim minds of millions of the easily manipulated, Arendt’s observations seem nuked in this exasperating Twilight Zone episode we’re currently trapped within. “What has often been suggested has now been established: so long as the press is free and not corrupt, it has an enormously important function to fulfill and can rightly be called the fourth branch of government. Whether the First Amendment will suffice to protect this most essential political freedom, the right to unmanipulated factual information without which all freedom of opinion becomes a cruel hoax, is another question” (p. 41). The elimination of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine in 1987 opened up the Pandora’s Box of smoke and mirrors, lies and fantasies for which we are all subjected to now. From AM radio stations to Fox News to InfoWars to One America. The Internet magnified the damage a million-fold with every village idiot forming their own tribal convictions, spreading the disease of disinformation. Arendt’s 1963 concept of “the banality of evil” also fits well here.
I could just let the long-lasting and outstanding thrash band Havok scream it for you with their song “Post-Truth Era” (2020):
Decide right now,
The path that we will take from here,
To annihilate ignorance.
Ideas can change the world,
That we live in today,
Hypnosis put to death.
Post-truth era,
Complex mind control.
Don't trust your eyes,
Unlearn what you think you know.
Post-truth era,
Deceit designed.
The eyes are useless,
When the mind is blind.
Truth is the first casualty,
In a world of lies.
Remain vigilant,
Believe half of what you see
And none of what you hear.
Demand evidence,
The messenger of truth,
Wasn't only burned alive.
He was forced to change his words,
Turning the world into an
Echo chamber of lies.
Watch the world burn.
Post-truth era,
Complex mind control.
Don't trust your eyes,
Unlearn what you think you know.
Post-truth era,
Deceit designed.
The eyes are useless,
When the mind is blind.
Post-truth era,
Complex mind control.
Don't trust your eyes,
Unlearn what you think you know.
Post-truth era,
Deceit designed.
The eyes are useless,
When the mind is blind.
The fact that politicians lie goes back to the beginning of the occupation when the first city-states were forged from the tribal wilds of, well, anywhere. It could just be a deep component of our elemental being, with troglodytic mankind screwing one another over for a stone tool, a fresh hide, a tempting female. Now, however, nations fall to the immorality and criminality of their governments. “Change is constant, inherent in the human condition, but the velocity of change is not. It varies greatly from country to country, from century to century” (p. 63). This is what Alvin Toffler articulated with Future Shock in 1970. The US has been on a long collision course towards a solid Reckoning. Putin and Xi Jinping know this with scholarly aplomb, almost as much as Osama bin Laden and Ho Chi Minh knew. One could argue it started in the 60s, with Vietnam, but it might very well have started with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Karma gets Her point across, for individuals and nations alike, in due time:
“Now as a man is like this or like that,
according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be;
a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad;
he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires,
and as is his desire, so is his will;
and as is his will, so is his deed;
and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.” (The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 7th Century BCE)
We reap what we sow, and this country is filled with undereducated, hate-filled hypocrites. Jill Lepore recently wrote an essay for The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...) in which she analyses the dross presented by government commissions, historically. “There’s a limit to the relevance of the so-called race riots of the nineteen-sixties to the protests of the moment. But the tragedy is: they’re not irrelevant. Nor is the history that came before. The language changes, from ‘insurrection’ to ‘uprising’ to the bureaucratic ‘civil disorder,’ terms used to describe everything from organized resistance to mayhem. But, nearly always, they leave a bloody trail in the historical record, in the form of government reports.” The summation is demoralizing: “The United States does not need one more commission, or one more report. A strong moral message? That message is being delivered by protesters every day, on street after street after street across the nation. Stop killing us. One day, these reports will lie archived, forgotten, irrelevant. Meanwhile, they pile up, an indictment, the stacked evidence of inertia. In the summer of 1968, the civil-rights leader Whitney Young published an essay titled ‘The Report That Died,’ writing, ‘The report is still there, it still reads well, but practically nothing is being done to follow its recommendations.’ It was as it had ever been. It is time for it to be something else.”
Arendt said this too, almost 50 years ago: “No doubt all this can change” (p. 42). The reports exist, but nobody reads them, and most importantly nobody acts upon them. The Pentagon Papers and the Afghanistan Papers, civil unrest and gross inequality, police brutality and political apathy. “Representative government itself is in a crisis today [1972], partly because it has lost, in the course of time, all institutions that permitted the citizens’ actual participation, and partly because it is now gravely affected by the disease from which the party system suffers: bureaucratization and the two parties’ tendency to represent nobody except the party machines” (p. 72). The GOP was surprisingly flexible in its drastic shift to the far right, with casualties and deserters dully noted. The corporate Dems are desperately trying to suffocate the progressive movement to maintain their version of the status quo. Anne Applebaum, in The Atlantic, tells us that History will judge the complicit (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/... “In english, the word collaborator has a double meaning. A colleague can be described as a collaborator in a neutral or positive sense. But the other definition of collaborator, relevant here, is different: someone who works with the enemy, with the occupying power, with the dictatorial regime. In this negative sense, collaborator is closely related to another set of words: collusion, complicity, connivance.” As I mentioned before, those who kept the carpet bombing campaigns going in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia did not go to prison; nor will Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld. Egomaniac Trump has a bloated list of lawsuits ongoing and no-doubt growing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...), all while trying to incite violence amongst the tribes. History may judge, but in this post-truth era, does it even matter?
July 31, 2020
این کتاب اولین کتابی است که از آرنت خواندم، قبلاً از شناختی که از طریق معرفی های دوستان از آرنت پیدا کرده بودم می دانستم که نگاه آرنت به مسائلی مانند جنگ، خشونت و نافرمانی های مدنی آنهم از دیدگاه فلسفی از جمله مهمترین نظریه های فلسفی در این حوزه می باشد.
در این کتاب آرنت در مقاله ای که نوشته است به موضوع جنگ ویتنام و چگونگی ورود دولت آمریکا به یک جنگ احمقانه آن هم برمبنای دروغی که اوراق پنتاگون اثباتشان می کند پرداخته است آرنت بعد از ورود به این موضوع مسائل دیگری را نیز بر مبنای این تحلیل از آمریکای درگیر جنگ ویتنام شروع می کند همچون دروغ در عالم سیاست، خشونت و جنگ، قدرت و اقتدار، نافرمانی های مدنی و جنبش های دانشجویی.
در همه این موارد آرنت تلاش کرده است تا تقریباً تمامی نظریه های موجود درباره این موضوعات را بیان کرده و نقدهای خود را نیز به آنها وارد کند خصوصاً اینکه آرنت به دو مکتب سیاسی اقتصادی گسترده در جهان یعنی سوسیالیسم و سکولاریسم می تازد.
در مواردی که آرنت استفاده نابجا از قدرت توسط حکومت ها را تشریح می کند کاملاً میتوان جامعه امروزی ایران را نیز تحت این تفسیر ها پدیدارشناسانه تفسیر کرد که چگونه حکومتی که از طرف مردم قدرت یافته است با ناکارآمدی های سیاسی و اقتصادی که داشته است این قدرت را را از دست داده و به طرف خشونت و دیکتاتوری و توتالیتر شدن می رود.
ترجمه ای که من از این کتاب خواندم ترجمه علی معظمی از انتشارات جاوید بود که متاسفانه به نظر من ترجمه خوبی از آب در نیامده و مترجم بیشتر باعث سردرگمی خواننده در ترجمه جملات تودرتو شده است.
در این کتاب آرنت در مقاله ای که نوشته است به موضوع جنگ ویتنام و چگونگی ورود دولت آمریکا به یک جنگ احمقانه آن هم برمبنای دروغی که اوراق پنتاگون اثباتشان می کند پرداخته است آرنت بعد از ورود به این موضوع مسائل دیگری را نیز بر مبنای این تحلیل از آمریکای درگیر جنگ ویتنام شروع می کند همچون دروغ در عالم سیاست، خشونت و جنگ، قدرت و اقتدار، نافرمانی های مدنی و جنبش های دانشجویی.
در همه این موارد آرنت تلاش کرده است تا تقریباً تمامی نظریه های موجود درباره این موضوعات را بیان کرده و نقدهای خود را نیز به آنها وارد کند خصوصاً اینکه آرنت به دو مکتب سیاسی اقتصادی گسترده در جهان یعنی سوسیالیسم و سکولاریسم می تازد.
در مواردی که آرنت استفاده نابجا از قدرت توسط حکومت ها را تشریح می کند کاملاً میتوان جامعه امروزی ایران را نیز تحت این تفسیر ها پدیدارشناسانه تفسیر کرد که چگونه حکومتی که از طرف مردم قدرت یافته است با ناکارآمدی های سیاسی و اقتصادی که داشته است این قدرت را را از دست داده و به طرف خشونت و دیکتاتوری و توتالیتر شدن می رود.
ترجمه ای که من از این کتاب خواندم ترجمه علی معظمی از انتشارات جاوید بود که متاسفانه به نظر من ترجمه خوبی از آب در نیامده و مترجم بیشتر باعث سردرگمی خواننده در ترجمه جملات تودرتو شده است.
July 15, 2018
Reading this book on Kindle, I was drawn to the "popular reader highlights" which were confined exclusively to the essay on Lying in Politics. Amazon informed me that before I opened the book, over 100 people before me had highlighted some of Arendt's statements about how regimes build up authority based on lies, and how lies appeal to people. She is certainly more insightful than most of the takes about Trump which you can get for free on HuffPo or various other free websites, so I can recommend this essay, but it's not exactly an analysis which inspires new and revolutionary thought in the reader's mind.
More interesting to me is "On Violence" and the follow-up article after it, which Amazon's software informed me got no highlights at all. The left-wing students that Arendt analyzes in 1968 sound very similar to the students of 2018, viz.::
"The [radical students] in the East demand precisely those freedoms of speech and thought that the young rebels in the West say they despise as irrelevant. On the level of ideologies, the whole thing is confusing; it is much less so if we start from the obvious fact that the party machines have succeeded everywhere in overruling the voice of the citizens, even in countries where freedom of speech and association is still intact."
"On Violence" showcases this and many other similarities between 1968 and 2018, cataloged by Arendt in a periphrastic, aloof manner. The essay is also interesting as an example of Arendt's cold, vaguely racist attitude towards black nationalists; she refers to Swahili as a "non-language."
Again, this is not really required reading but it's pretty easy and interesting.
More interesting to me is "On Violence" and the follow-up article after it, which Amazon's software informed me got no highlights at all. The left-wing students that Arendt analyzes in 1968 sound very similar to the students of 2018, viz.::
"The [radical students] in the East demand precisely those freedoms of speech and thought that the young rebels in the West say they despise as irrelevant. On the level of ideologies, the whole thing is confusing; it is much less so if we start from the obvious fact that the party machines have succeeded everywhere in overruling the voice of the citizens, even in countries where freedom of speech and association is still intact."
"On Violence" showcases this and many other similarities between 1968 and 2018, cataloged by Arendt in a periphrastic, aloof manner. The essay is also interesting as an example of Arendt's cold, vaguely racist attitude towards black nationalists; she refers to Swahili as a "non-language."
Again, this is not really required reading but it's pretty easy and interesting.
March 3, 2024
Die Frau war eindeutig zu schlau für mich
February 1, 2021
This isn't really Arendt at her best, although of course her mediocrities are a cut above most. There's some solid stuff here, including her efforts to disentangle and distinguish the concepts of violence and power. I thought she was bang-on in defining power as drawing obedience without persuasion nor compulsion, and her analysis of the prevalence of violence as inversely proportional to the presence of power is likely correct. Political violence is often a rearguard action for when power is receding, an effort to prop up institutions and ideas that have lost the consent of the culture. Arendt is great at hinting around at the shared delusion that is sovereignty, politics, or perhaps shared human enterprise generally. She's largely concerned to shore up some of that shared delusion on moral grounds: she's seen what happens when power is destabilized, and abhors the abreactive horrors of totalitarian systems that are its final, most distorted forms (with their absolute elevation of violence to ruling principle). Arendt is wonderful precisely because of the moral core of her hard-nosed realism.
That said, she suffers from a grievous fault, the flip of her strength: she's always sure she's right, and she must Have Opinions about all things. There's plenty of irony in Arendt's texts but there's little humility; in this book, it reaches an almost brittle hilarity as she opines declaratively about things that have no certain answer (or where subsequent history has shown her up as entirely wrong).
One of the things Arendt is uncomfortably authoritative about here is the matter of race in America. I'm not judging Arendt by the standards of our day nor demanding "woke" orthodoxy to say that many of the claims made about "the Negro" in this volume are blinkered at best. Arendt is quite dismissive of the intellectual and political aims and tactics of the Black Power movement, who is apparently for her a metonym for all Black people anyway. She's quick to scoff at college Swahili courses or the purportedly foolish hopes of the liberal elite for school integration. It's embarrassing to read, really, and goes beyond what one might reasonably hope for an intellectual of the era. I get that Arendt would condemn me for my lack of "thinking" and insufficient appreciation for the boldness of her intellectual honesty. But...it's not?
Setting aside those claims, there's lots of good, iconoclastic political and moral philosophy here. And it's striking how similar the problems of 50 years ago look to today. Arendt doesn't have all the answers but she's got a great framework for asking the right questions. I'm rating this higher than it likely deserves but understand she's coasting a bit on reputation here. Chalk it up to her power.
That said, she suffers from a grievous fault, the flip of her strength: she's always sure she's right, and she must Have Opinions about all things. There's plenty of irony in Arendt's texts but there's little humility; in this book, it reaches an almost brittle hilarity as she opines declaratively about things that have no certain answer (or where subsequent history has shown her up as entirely wrong).
One of the things Arendt is uncomfortably authoritative about here is the matter of race in America. I'm not judging Arendt by the standards of our day nor demanding "woke" orthodoxy to say that many of the claims made about "the Negro" in this volume are blinkered at best. Arendt is quite dismissive of the intellectual and political aims and tactics of the Black Power movement, who is apparently for her a metonym for all Black people anyway. She's quick to scoff at college Swahili courses or the purportedly foolish hopes of the liberal elite for school integration. It's embarrassing to read, really, and goes beyond what one might reasonably hope for an intellectual of the era. I get that Arendt would condemn me for my lack of "thinking" and insufficient appreciation for the boldness of her intellectual honesty. But...it's not?
Setting aside those claims, there's lots of good, iconoclastic political and moral philosophy here. And it's striking how similar the problems of 50 years ago look to today. Arendt doesn't have all the answers but she's got a great framework for asking the right questions. I'm rating this higher than it likely deserves but understand she's coasting a bit on reputation here. Chalk it up to her power.
June 22, 2012
Lying in Politics was an interesting read, particularly in relation to Vietnam. Civil Disobedience, the main reason I picked up the book, was *very* thought provoking with regard to the "Occupy" phenomenon.
I found On Violence to be less interesting than the first two essays, but it was saved somewhat by the interview on the essay that followed.
Overall, I'd say that Lying in Politics and Civil Disobedience are worthwhile reads. Maybe skip the rest of the book.
I found On Violence to be less interesting than the first two essays, but it was saved somewhat by the interview on the essay that followed.
Overall, I'd say that Lying in Politics and Civil Disobedience are worthwhile reads. Maybe skip the rest of the book.
March 18, 2017
sad and frustrating, and sometimes harsh. not always political theory I agree with but Arendt is undeniably smart. my favorite of these collected essays was the first - Lying in Politics - about the pentagon papers and is incredibly relevant for today's readers. Civil Disobedience was also fantastic and very approachable.
December 12, 2017
I adore her.
August 10, 2021
This collection of essays and interviews show Hannah Arendt at her very best and worst. In "Lying in Politics" she neatly dissects the Pentagon Papers, while "On Violence" is a full take-on, if not take-down, of Frantz Fanon. Yet, these luminous musings sit astride her much-vaunted fear of a black planet, e.g., "Swahili is a kind of no one's invented language" and "the Third World? Try telling a Chinese he has anything in common with a Hottentot in Africa and you'll get the surprise of your life." I recommend her lively short sketches of everyone from Rosa Luxemburg to Pope John XXIII.
July 30, 2021
I read a number of books on the same subjects, she did not say anything new, particularly interesting or so well written, it begged to be read anyway. Possibly, I've just read to much on these topics, but I don't think so. I have tried one other book by her with similiar result. Three stars means, it's okay
October 27, 2018
Not sure I really understood all of it, but I like her style of writing, with the exception of her “tendency” to put a “lot” of words in “quotes.” I’ve never read her before, id like to try another of her books.
May 3, 2022
Ich hab bisschen gebraucht um reinzukommen aber vor allem das zweite essay ist mega spannend und greift auch einige Punkte vorweg die z.B Žižek in sublime object of ideology weiter behandelt
July 21, 2025
Protože krize trvá.
January 28, 2017
"The crucial point here is not merely that the policy of lying was hardly ever aimed at the enemy...but was destined chiefly, if not exclusively, for domestic consumption, for propaganda at home, and especially for the purpose of deceiving Congress" (p. 14).
"The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life...It is this fragility that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting" (p. 8).
On the process of 'internal self-deception': "It is as thought the normal process of self-deceiving were reversed; it was not as though deception ended with self-deception. The deceivers started with self-deception...Probably because of their high success, not on the battlefield, but in the public relations arena...And since they lived in a defactualized world anyway, they did not find it difficult to pay no more attention to the fact that their audience refused to be convinced than to other facts" (p. 35).
"For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficacy depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods" (p. 31).
Helpful pairing: Kathryn Gines on Arendt's anti-black racism.
Kathryn T. Gines. "Hannah Arendt, Liberalism, and Racism: Controversies Concerning Violence, Segregation, and Education." The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2009) Vol. XLVII.
"The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life...It is this fragility that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting" (p. 8).
On the process of 'internal self-deception': "It is as thought the normal process of self-deceiving were reversed; it was not as though deception ended with self-deception. The deceivers started with self-deception...Probably because of their high success, not on the battlefield, but in the public relations arena...And since they lived in a defactualized world anyway, they did not find it difficult to pay no more attention to the fact that their audience refused to be convinced than to other facts" (p. 35).
"For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficacy depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods" (p. 31).
Helpful pairing: Kathryn Gines on Arendt's anti-black racism.
Kathryn T. Gines. "Hannah Arendt, Liberalism, and Racism: Controversies Concerning Violence, Segregation, and Education." The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2009) Vol. XLVII.
September 26, 2024
Pues no sé muy bien cuántas estrellas darle. De los ensayos reunidos en este libro me ha parecido muy interesante y bastante actual el dedicado a la mentira en política, pero me chirría la defensa que hace a "la libertad que se tiene en Estados Unidos, donde se dispone de todo género de información", y sí, disponen de esa informacion por filtraciones, y la misma palabra niega esa libertad a la información, pero no son libres realmente porque su gobierno les miente, léase guerra de Vietnam, y hasta que no ven con sus propios ojos con la ofensiva de Tet lo que sus soldados hacen realmente no se dan cuenta de que eso era lo contrario de lo que los políticos decían.
El ensayo dedicado a la desobediencia civil, me ha parecido muy repetitivo y demasiado egocéntrico con respecto a las universidades americanas y muy poco justo con Ghandi y lo que representó.
Tampoco creo que la conciencia individual sea apolítica, podrás ser indiferente a la política pero nadie puede pensarse fuera de la política ya que formamos parte de la sociedad y acatamos sus reglas.
La mejor frase de este ensayo pertenece a Aristóteles, "el hombres bueno solo podría ser un buen ciudadano en un buen estado".
En el último ensayo que trata sobre la violencia he echado en falta alguna disertación sobre la violencia gratuita.
Todo lo demás está perfectamente explicado.
Merece la pena leerlo.
El ensayo dedicado a la desobediencia civil, me ha parecido muy repetitivo y demasiado egocéntrico con respecto a las universidades americanas y muy poco justo con Ghandi y lo que representó.
Tampoco creo que la conciencia individual sea apolítica, podrás ser indiferente a la política pero nadie puede pensarse fuera de la política ya que formamos parte de la sociedad y acatamos sus reglas.
La mejor frase de este ensayo pertenece a Aristóteles, "el hombres bueno solo podría ser un buen ciudadano en un buen estado".
En el último ensayo que trata sobre la violencia he echado en falta alguna disertación sobre la violencia gratuita.
Todo lo demás está perfectamente explicado.
Merece la pena leerlo.
November 12, 2018
The ways in which I discover new writers is almost as exciting to me as the new writers themselves.
I found Hannah Arendt through the recommendation of an acquaintance in a local writer's group I attend. I'm glad I listened.
This is the first work of Arendt's that I have read and I'm very much impressed and excited. She's a lot like other mid-20th century writers I've discovered and fell in love with (Ellul, Girard, Bonhoeffer, Tillich) because they draw their material from a diverse mixture of fields: philosophy, theology, literature, politics, sociology.
This was an indulgence in between required academic reading, but I'm glad I did it and I can't wait for my next foray into her work. This is a collection of essays written for publication in periodicals that cover various political topics (Vietnam, the student protest movement, the meaning of violence, the relationship between capitalism and socialism). They're all very insightful. "On Violence" has really got me thinking (the difference and relationship between power and violence). And there are echoes of many of her thoughts in things that are said and published today (which claim to be original!).
I found Hannah Arendt through the recommendation of an acquaintance in a local writer's group I attend. I'm glad I listened.
This is the first work of Arendt's that I have read and I'm very much impressed and excited. She's a lot like other mid-20th century writers I've discovered and fell in love with (Ellul, Girard, Bonhoeffer, Tillich) because they draw their material from a diverse mixture of fields: philosophy, theology, literature, politics, sociology.
This was an indulgence in between required academic reading, but I'm glad I did it and I can't wait for my next foray into her work. This is a collection of essays written for publication in periodicals that cover various political topics (Vietnam, the student protest movement, the meaning of violence, the relationship between capitalism and socialism). They're all very insightful. "On Violence" has really got me thinking (the difference and relationship between power and violence). And there are echoes of many of her thoughts in things that are said and published today (which claim to be original!).
May 12, 2024
Thing that’s disappointing with Arendt is her fixation on the political paradigm. A paradigm from which she misjudges Marxism. She takes it as a failed science or ideology. She sees Marxism as a failed revolution more than a hijacked reappropriation. She uses Lenin and Marx in the same sentences. I don’t think she fully understood Marxism as an economic reverse engineering of capitalism at the time she wrote this. She saw Marxism as an impotent aesthetic. Portraying Marx, as if he’s a philosopher first and an economic strategist second. Then in contrast portraying Bergson and his elan vital as if he’s a political scientist or politician first. Without considering that Bergson’s work as a representative of decolonialization was actually secondary to his academic innovation and influence as a philosopher.
All that said, this book is still a really important one. Arendt quietly shows how WWII was the actual takeover of capitalist countries from the communist ones. *paws for affect*
The totalitarian reappropriation of Marxism wasn’t going to be enough (at this time) to take over the world. IM(H)O. Nothing short of maybe 27 million Soviet deaths could ensure capitalist hegemony over the disaster of Marxist reappropriation. The dropping of an atomic bomb having at least in part to do with asserting authority over a newly debilitated Russia…and the rest of the world.
America lost less than half a million people in comparison to the much poorer off countries. Not that the richer off fought any of these battles themselves at this point. In other words, it was a decadent American inheritance of the Earth with a peaceful mongering action at a distance.
In a WWII that took out 1/33 of earths human population, America hedged its war money on the baddest technology. America comes out the economic winner of a race to the apocalyptic kill switch.
Later in the book she gets into how Vietnam was already the beginning of the world policing. Domino theory, was scientifically disproved in this gigantic omnibus page turner. A collection that was ignored by the people in the US government who most needed to understand it. And then people follow the ideas of domino theory even though no one who had even a partial idea of what was going on, and was in power, actually believed in it. It was a simple marketing explanation. The Vietnam war being the beginning of world nepotism. Coming with it, all the capitalist things that slowly solidify into oligopolistic, corporate socialism. Or fascism, depending on how you want to horizontally dissect it. All the stuff that inevitably reifies over a long enough time. WWII was the beginning of that. You suddenly saw it with Vietnam. People in power no longer needed to know what they were doing. Hegemony acquired.
“It is astounding that the Pentagon papers could have been prepared over years while people in the White House, in the Department of State, and in the Defense Department apparently ignored the study; but it is even more astounding that after its completion, with sets dispatched in all directions within the government bureaucracy, the White House and the State Department were unable even to locate the forty-seven volumes, clearly indicating that those who should have been most concerned with what the study had to tell never set eyes on it.”
Arendt talks about how slavery and the native inhabitants were not considered in the constitution. She discusses how the constitution no longer mattered outside of how it could be used to appropriate a form of manufactured consent. Manufactured “consent” and the law were forced into a “do as I say not as I do”, while the upper class went above and beyond the law to secure the homeland. Homeland being another name for, say, the earth. Upper class being the most American of people, who militarily employed, surveilled, and policed the rest of the world.
The last great point she makes is to separate power and violence as terms. Violence being a mechanism of subordination. Power being something that Gandhi was able to achieve through guiding emotional leadership. By looking at it this way she does make you realize just how violent the state is. How it’s only by means of the state that these rich folks are allowed to subordinate the consumer as much as they do. Then you can see why someone like MLK, who had power, is able to change some peripheral laws of social indecency but not able to effect the deeper political structures that depend on violent coercion.
“In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. If Gandhi's enormously powerful and successful strategy of nonviolent resistance had met with a different enemy— Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, even prewar Japan, instead of England-the outcome would not have been decolonization, but massacre and submission. However, England in India and France in Algeria had good reasons for their restraint. Rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost; it is precisely the shrinking power of the Russian government, internally and externally, that became manifest in its "solution" of the Czechoslovak problem-just as it was the shrinking power of European imperialism that became manifest in the alternative between decolonization and massacre. To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power. This is especially true when the victor happens to enjoy domestically the blessings of constitutional government.”
This all makes you realize just how much “power” or emotional leadership the colonialists have today. Not much. Since they are forced to resort to violence. Mass incarceration and policing is on its way out. These are strategies of a decadent rich class who is losing relevance and awareness of culture. You can’t just continue to exploit culture and not expect culture to retaliate in a way the rich no longer understand.
All that said, this book is still a really important one. Arendt quietly shows how WWII was the actual takeover of capitalist countries from the communist ones. *paws for affect*
The totalitarian reappropriation of Marxism wasn’t going to be enough (at this time) to take over the world. IM(H)O. Nothing short of maybe 27 million Soviet deaths could ensure capitalist hegemony over the disaster of Marxist reappropriation. The dropping of an atomic bomb having at least in part to do with asserting authority over a newly debilitated Russia…and the rest of the world.
America lost less than half a million people in comparison to the much poorer off countries. Not that the richer off fought any of these battles themselves at this point. In other words, it was a decadent American inheritance of the Earth with a peaceful mongering action at a distance.
In a WWII that took out 1/33 of earths human population, America hedged its war money on the baddest technology. America comes out the economic winner of a race to the apocalyptic kill switch.
Later in the book she gets into how Vietnam was already the beginning of the world policing. Domino theory, was scientifically disproved in this gigantic omnibus page turner. A collection that was ignored by the people in the US government who most needed to understand it. And then people follow the ideas of domino theory even though no one who had even a partial idea of what was going on, and was in power, actually believed in it. It was a simple marketing explanation. The Vietnam war being the beginning of world nepotism. Coming with it, all the capitalist things that slowly solidify into oligopolistic, corporate socialism. Or fascism, depending on how you want to horizontally dissect it. All the stuff that inevitably reifies over a long enough time. WWII was the beginning of that. You suddenly saw it with Vietnam. People in power no longer needed to know what they were doing. Hegemony acquired.
“It is astounding that the Pentagon papers could have been prepared over years while people in the White House, in the Department of State, and in the Defense Department apparently ignored the study; but it is even more astounding that after its completion, with sets dispatched in all directions within the government bureaucracy, the White House and the State Department were unable even to locate the forty-seven volumes, clearly indicating that those who should have been most concerned with what the study had to tell never set eyes on it.”
Arendt talks about how slavery and the native inhabitants were not considered in the constitution. She discusses how the constitution no longer mattered outside of how it could be used to appropriate a form of manufactured consent. Manufactured “consent” and the law were forced into a “do as I say not as I do”, while the upper class went above and beyond the law to secure the homeland. Homeland being another name for, say, the earth. Upper class being the most American of people, who militarily employed, surveilled, and policed the rest of the world.
The last great point she makes is to separate power and violence as terms. Violence being a mechanism of subordination. Power being something that Gandhi was able to achieve through guiding emotional leadership. By looking at it this way she does make you realize just how violent the state is. How it’s only by means of the state that these rich folks are allowed to subordinate the consumer as much as they do. Then you can see why someone like MLK, who had power, is able to change some peripheral laws of social indecency but not able to effect the deeper political structures that depend on violent coercion.
“In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. If Gandhi's enormously powerful and successful strategy of nonviolent resistance had met with a different enemy— Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, even prewar Japan, instead of England-the outcome would not have been decolonization, but massacre and submission. However, England in India and France in Algeria had good reasons for their restraint. Rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost; it is precisely the shrinking power of the Russian government, internally and externally, that became manifest in its "solution" of the Czechoslovak problem-just as it was the shrinking power of European imperialism that became manifest in the alternative between decolonization and massacre. To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power. This is especially true when the victor happens to enjoy domestically the blessings of constitutional government.”
This all makes you realize just how much “power” or emotional leadership the colonialists have today. Not much. Since they are forced to resort to violence. Mass incarceration and policing is on its way out. These are strategies of a decadent rich class who is losing relevance and awareness of culture. You can’t just continue to exploit culture and not expect culture to retaliate in a way the rich no longer understand.
December 12, 2021
An excellent collection of short writings. Lying in Politics is a amazingly done Cliff Notes of the Pentagon Papers. Don't want to read the entirety of the Pentagon Papers, then this will inform you to the heart of the matter within 100 pages.
Civil Disobedience is an excellent breakdown of the difference between being a conscientious objector and engaging in civil disobedience. Using Socrates, Thoreau, and the movements during the 1960's, Arendt lays out the importance of voluntary association of groups to stand up to the government when the promises of the social contract have been broken.
Both of these are still relevant in today's political and social environment.
Civil Disobedience is an excellent breakdown of the difference between being a conscientious objector and engaging in civil disobedience. Using Socrates, Thoreau, and the movements during the 1960's, Arendt lays out the importance of voluntary association of groups to stand up to the government when the promises of the social contract have been broken.
Both of these are still relevant in today's political and social environment.
December 31, 2024
The essays in this collection feel dated, but the fundamental insights still have relevance. Arendt's treatment of violence, of lying in politics, of civil disobedience reminds us that corruption, authoritarian tendencies and opposition to the powerful status quo have always existed in American politics. At the same time, she explains how these tendencies are structurally built into the culture and founding politics of the nation.
Currently reading
November 5, 2010She's one of my favorite deep thinkers. This book is dated, having been set in the 1960s, and I think Arendt was fascinated by the politics of the moment and trying to make sense of it. Good, but not Origins of Totalitarianism.
January 30, 2017
Reading this book shook me. There are parts that are dated, but so much of it is stunningly prophetic to what we are witnessing in the world today. The best bits are the first part of Lying in Politics, and the latter portion of On Violence.
December 27, 2014
On Violence had problematic misreadings of Fanon and Third World politics.
February 3, 2018
Walkin’ to the Freedom Land
The Berkeley Times. This month, I am pondering on the origins of the present suffering and strife in the USA mirrored, magnified and distorted in our beloved town, how we might grow or back out of it, and how many centuries it may take, if we humans have the luxury of time.
“God shed His grace on thee” is only the beginning of our national suffering, since the doctrine of “manifest destiny” used against Indigenous peoples, religious “pagans,” women, children, elders and many varieties of “others.” Murderous dominance and innate misogyny combined on “American” soil from the very beginning, imported by our European forbears just after the end of most “witch burnings,” as well as dating back to Emperor Theodosius I and dear (St.) Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. The former “in 380 C.E. determined to implement his bellicose form of Christianity in the (Middle and Asian) East,…(and) decided to create a power base by wooing the disaffected townsfolk,” (sound familiar?).
The latter in 424 C.E. “gave the most authoritative blessing to… Christian state violence” and argued that violence was “legitimate, however, if inspired by charity—by a sincere concern for the enemy’s welfare,…” [i] that is, “conversion” and the “saving of souls” for the Hereafter. The “passions of greed, hatred and ambition” are therefore swept under the rug in his invention of a “just war,”[ii] which has plagued us ever since. Previous to that, whatever ruler or feudal Lord spoke and acted with impunity, and like King Henry VIII, got rid of troublesome clerics who disagreed, or like DT, simply ignore and dismiss both His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis and what he hears as their ecological pacifist nonsense. (So much for the life and morality of 2,600 years of Gautama Buddha and the spiritual and social teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and St. Francis of Assisi.)
Hannah Arendt disputes “the anarchic nature of divinely inspired consciences, so blatantly manifest in the beginnings of Christianity” in her essay, “Civil Disobedience;”[iii] but leaves herself and other females out, even in 1972 in the midst of New York City and America’s Second Wave of feminism. Even after a long life of vast scholastic and publishing honors, she refers to the “human beings” ready to “depart from” the world “just when they have acquired the experience and familiarity that may enable them to be “wise” in the ways of the world,” by saying “they have always been old men.”[iv] (my italics) Her humility and/or unconscious self-abnegation makes me sigh. This is the woman/human being who wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism, “recognized upon publication as the comprehensive account of its subject…later hailed as a classic by the Times Literary Supplement…continues to be the definitive history….” One only has to think of the “sin of Eve,” the annihilation of the Magdalen-loving Cathars and God’s curse upon them to imagine which gender remains “one down” in The New World.
Do we have hope? Or are we so mired in our biological and cultural habits that the “wise” Cassandras of any gender will be ignored and/or silenced once more? Or worse yet, believe in our own “unworthiness,” so that we silence and ignore ourselves in “the unexamined life?”[v]
In 1993, Berkeley intern from Starr King School for the Ministry’s[vi] Helene Knox (no relation) “worked with (Dorothy May Emerson) to refine the initial outline” of Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936, and “gathered all the material that had been collected (by the UU Women’s History Publication Project), and began the (meticulous, I am sure, 567 p.) process of actually placing texts into chapters and noting where major gaps occurred”[vii] in a shockingly late inclusion of brilliant women. In “(UUs) dynamic religious liberalism….a religion inspiring them to live in the real world” where “there was too much to do on earth” to avoid “Feminine Foment.”[viii]
Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Dorothy Day and Frances Dana Gage all the way to Charlotte Perkins Gilman search for and demand reform, justice and tolerance in society, education, sexuality, health, religion, racial representation, work and all venues of North American and American life. It may have taken 224 years to get our work compiled and published, but it shines as a steady wire of hope now. Law and government are not the only venues for association, direct action and resistance; and the powers that be and we ourselves ignore a million foremothers and Mother Earth herself at our collective peril.
Arendt says it is good that our Constitutional challenges proceed slowly “when a significant number of citizens have become convinced either that the normal channels of change no longer function, and grievances will not be heard or acted upon, or that, on the contrary, the government is about to change and has embarked upon and persists in modes of action whose legality and constitutionality are open to grave doubt” (sound familiar?) in reference to Civil Rights and the Vietnam (undeclared) War.[ix] Many immigrants to the United States and Canada, some of them my ancestors, “ran away” from home, away to or away from war. Or away from or to our dreadful Civil War. Or away from domestic violence of a family, not national, sort.
De Toqueville predicted the “most formidable of the ills that threaten the future of the Union” as the primary disenfranchisement (dehumanization, literal “alienation”) of “Negroes and Indians” (and now Latinx) who legally “had never been included in the original consensus universalis of the American republic”[x] due to these imported “othering” worldviews, the need for land and workers. The deeply rooted persistence of this genocide and slavery echo in Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, the Rachel Aviv article “How Albert Woodfox Survived Solitary” from The New Yorker and Michelle Alexander’s classic, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
The Antifa and Black Bloc members can keep this “legitimate violence” of the police and court system in mind, even as they resist it. The consequences and horrors of “revolutionary” acts and even associations can be dire for individual extremists and for all in our present “data-driven” system. Even true “dissent” still only has legal “validity” if one has “mass demonstrations,” [xi] totally nonviolent and with unified intentions and goals; or if one is a wealthy, White, upper-class, well-connected and/or otherwise “well-armed” male or his chattel.
Even the confrontation of yet another domestic gun massacre committed by a white male is turned aside in our rapid, sophisticated social and television media by defenders of “the Second Amendment,” its “right to bear arms” and its billion-dollar-donating defenders; insane and outmoded as that addiction may be. The conversation quickly turned to throwing more money at “the mentally ill,” even though that’s another “pre-existing condition” those defenders don’t want paid for by government health. Federalization, surveillance and/or “monetization” of the Internet and social media (see the new head of the FCC and threats to your Facebook account data) bring the concepts of “association,” “freedom” and “privacy” under newfound definitions and controls. “There oughta be a law.” There may be one for the 1% elites, and a different one for all the rest of the 99% “community.”
Personally, I’m deliberately going back to the late 1960s, 30s, turn of the last century and beyond for clues as to how we might weather our changes, as well as “Wishes, Lies and Dreams” (Kenneth Koch) and Sci-Fi.
I’m not a bodhisattva this time around. I’m not here to “be a bed for those who have nowhere to sleep,” which is in the prayer His Holiness the Dalai Lama recites every morning. In the vernacular, I think: been there, done that. But I do love my, “guru,” Louise Hay’s saying, “If I hear a negative story, I say, ‘It may be true for them, but it is not true for me,’” because it keeps me relatively sane.
I’m an observer, writer and librarian at heart, too; not really a teacher or lecturer. Here are some good books I’ve been looking at:
Alexander, Michelle, (fwd.) Cornel West, (2012), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The New Press, New York, NY.
Arendt, Hannah, (May 10, 1972) Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, Harvest Books, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.
Armstrong, Karen, (2015), Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House LLC, New York, NY.
Aviv, Rachel, (16 January, 2017) “How Albert Woodfox Survived Solitary,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20... The New Yorker, New York, NY (2 October, 2017).
Emerson, Dorothy May, author; Helene Knox and June Edwards, eds., (first published July 1st 1999), Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936, (September 1st 2001), Skinner House Books, Boston, MA.
Erdrich, Louise, (2008), The Plague of Doves, Harper Collins, New York, NY.
Gladwell, Malcolm, (November 18th 2008), Outliers, “Harlan, Kentucky, ‘Die Like a Man, Like Your Brother Did!’” Little, Brown and Company, esp p. 166-170.
Graham, Hugh Davis and Ted Robert Gurr, (June, 1969), The History of Violence in America, A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, New York Times Books, Bantam Books, New York, NY.
King, Jr., Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, ed. James M. Washington, (1986), A Testament of Hope, The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY.
Lynd, Staughton, ed., (1966), Nonviolence in America, A Documentary History, Bobbs-Merrill Corporation, Inc., Indianapolis, ID and New York, NY.
Maté, Gabor, (2008), In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA.
Peltier, Leonard, Harvey Arden (Editor), Arvol Looking Horse (Introduction), Ramsey Clark (Preface); (June 16th 2000), Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, St. Martin's Griffin (first published 1999), New York, NY.
Wyndy Knox Carr lives south of campus and can be e-mailed at nohkauz88nohgunz@gmail.com, but don’t expect a quick reply. Her previous articles are on her LinkedIn page in extended versions.
Endnotes:
[i] Armstrong, Karen, (2015), Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House LLC, New York, NY, p. 168-170.
[ii] Ibid., p. 170.
[iii] Arendt, Hannah, (May 10, 1972) Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, Harvest Books, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, p. 66.
[iv] ibid., p. 77.
[v] Socrates, the Apology; from Arendt, op. cit., p.59.
[vi] (on Holy Hill, just North of UCal Berkeley campus.)
[vii] Emerson, , Dorothy May, (author); Helene Knox and June Edwards, (eds.), (first published July 1st 1999), Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936, (September 1st 2001), Skinner House Books, Boston, MA, p.571.
[viii] Barth, Ramona Sawyer p. 567 from Emerson, ibid.
[ix] Arendt, op. cit., p.74.
[x] Ibid., p. 89-90.
[xi] Ibid., p.95.
The Berkeley Times. This month, I am pondering on the origins of the present suffering and strife in the USA mirrored, magnified and distorted in our beloved town, how we might grow or back out of it, and how many centuries it may take, if we humans have the luxury of time.
“God shed His grace on thee” is only the beginning of our national suffering, since the doctrine of “manifest destiny” used against Indigenous peoples, religious “pagans,” women, children, elders and many varieties of “others.” Murderous dominance and innate misogyny combined on “American” soil from the very beginning, imported by our European forbears just after the end of most “witch burnings,” as well as dating back to Emperor Theodosius I and dear (St.) Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. The former “in 380 C.E. determined to implement his bellicose form of Christianity in the (Middle and Asian) East,…(and) decided to create a power base by wooing the disaffected townsfolk,” (sound familiar?).
The latter in 424 C.E. “gave the most authoritative blessing to… Christian state violence” and argued that violence was “legitimate, however, if inspired by charity—by a sincere concern for the enemy’s welfare,…” [i] that is, “conversion” and the “saving of souls” for the Hereafter. The “passions of greed, hatred and ambition” are therefore swept under the rug in his invention of a “just war,”[ii] which has plagued us ever since. Previous to that, whatever ruler or feudal Lord spoke and acted with impunity, and like King Henry VIII, got rid of troublesome clerics who disagreed, or like DT, simply ignore and dismiss both His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis and what he hears as their ecological pacifist nonsense. (So much for the life and morality of 2,600 years of Gautama Buddha and the spiritual and social teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and St. Francis of Assisi.)
Hannah Arendt disputes “the anarchic nature of divinely inspired consciences, so blatantly manifest in the beginnings of Christianity” in her essay, “Civil Disobedience;”[iii] but leaves herself and other females out, even in 1972 in the midst of New York City and America’s Second Wave of feminism. Even after a long life of vast scholastic and publishing honors, she refers to the “human beings” ready to “depart from” the world “just when they have acquired the experience and familiarity that may enable them to be “wise” in the ways of the world,” by saying “they have always been old men.”[iv] (my italics) Her humility and/or unconscious self-abnegation makes me sigh. This is the woman/human being who wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism, “recognized upon publication as the comprehensive account of its subject…later hailed as a classic by the Times Literary Supplement…continues to be the definitive history….” One only has to think of the “sin of Eve,” the annihilation of the Magdalen-loving Cathars and God’s curse upon them to imagine which gender remains “one down” in The New World.
Do we have hope? Or are we so mired in our biological and cultural habits that the “wise” Cassandras of any gender will be ignored and/or silenced once more? Or worse yet, believe in our own “unworthiness,” so that we silence and ignore ourselves in “the unexamined life?”[v]
In 1993, Berkeley intern from Starr King School for the Ministry’s[vi] Helene Knox (no relation) “worked with (Dorothy May Emerson) to refine the initial outline” of Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936, and “gathered all the material that had been collected (by the UU Women’s History Publication Project), and began the (meticulous, I am sure, 567 p.) process of actually placing texts into chapters and noting where major gaps occurred”[vii] in a shockingly late inclusion of brilliant women. In “(UUs) dynamic religious liberalism….a religion inspiring them to live in the real world” where “there was too much to do on earth” to avoid “Feminine Foment.”[viii]
Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Dorothy Day and Frances Dana Gage all the way to Charlotte Perkins Gilman search for and demand reform, justice and tolerance in society, education, sexuality, health, religion, racial representation, work and all venues of North American and American life. It may have taken 224 years to get our work compiled and published, but it shines as a steady wire of hope now. Law and government are not the only venues for association, direct action and resistance; and the powers that be and we ourselves ignore a million foremothers and Mother Earth herself at our collective peril.
Arendt says it is good that our Constitutional challenges proceed slowly “when a significant number of citizens have become convinced either that the normal channels of change no longer function, and grievances will not be heard or acted upon, or that, on the contrary, the government is about to change and has embarked upon and persists in modes of action whose legality and constitutionality are open to grave doubt” (sound familiar?) in reference to Civil Rights and the Vietnam (undeclared) War.[ix] Many immigrants to the United States and Canada, some of them my ancestors, “ran away” from home, away to or away from war. Or away from or to our dreadful Civil War. Or away from domestic violence of a family, not national, sort.
De Toqueville predicted the “most formidable of the ills that threaten the future of the Union” as the primary disenfranchisement (dehumanization, literal “alienation”) of “Negroes and Indians” (and now Latinx) who legally “had never been included in the original consensus universalis of the American republic”[x] due to these imported “othering” worldviews, the need for land and workers. The deeply rooted persistence of this genocide and slavery echo in Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, the Rachel Aviv article “How Albert Woodfox Survived Solitary” from The New Yorker and Michelle Alexander’s classic, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
The Antifa and Black Bloc members can keep this “legitimate violence” of the police and court system in mind, even as they resist it. The consequences and horrors of “revolutionary” acts and even associations can be dire for individual extremists and for all in our present “data-driven” system. Even true “dissent” still only has legal “validity” if one has “mass demonstrations,” [xi] totally nonviolent and with unified intentions and goals; or if one is a wealthy, White, upper-class, well-connected and/or otherwise “well-armed” male or his chattel.
Even the confrontation of yet another domestic gun massacre committed by a white male is turned aside in our rapid, sophisticated social and television media by defenders of “the Second Amendment,” its “right to bear arms” and its billion-dollar-donating defenders; insane and outmoded as that addiction may be. The conversation quickly turned to throwing more money at “the mentally ill,” even though that’s another “pre-existing condition” those defenders don’t want paid for by government health. Federalization, surveillance and/or “monetization” of the Internet and social media (see the new head of the FCC and threats to your Facebook account data) bring the concepts of “association,” “freedom” and “privacy” under newfound definitions and controls. “There oughta be a law.” There may be one for the 1% elites, and a different one for all the rest of the 99% “community.”
Personally, I’m deliberately going back to the late 1960s, 30s, turn of the last century and beyond for clues as to how we might weather our changes, as well as “Wishes, Lies and Dreams” (Kenneth Koch) and Sci-Fi.
I’m not a bodhisattva this time around. I’m not here to “be a bed for those who have nowhere to sleep,” which is in the prayer His Holiness the Dalai Lama recites every morning. In the vernacular, I think: been there, done that. But I do love my, “guru,” Louise Hay’s saying, “If I hear a negative story, I say, ‘It may be true for them, but it is not true for me,’” because it keeps me relatively sane.
I’m an observer, writer and librarian at heart, too; not really a teacher or lecturer. Here are some good books I’ve been looking at:
Alexander, Michelle, (fwd.) Cornel West, (2012), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The New Press, New York, NY.
Arendt, Hannah, (May 10, 1972) Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, Harvest Books, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.
Armstrong, Karen, (2015), Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House LLC, New York, NY.
Aviv, Rachel, (16 January, 2017) “How Albert Woodfox Survived Solitary,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20... The New Yorker, New York, NY (2 October, 2017).
Emerson, Dorothy May, author; Helene Knox and June Edwards, eds., (first published July 1st 1999), Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936, (September 1st 2001), Skinner House Books, Boston, MA.
Erdrich, Louise, (2008), The Plague of Doves, Harper Collins, New York, NY.
Gladwell, Malcolm, (November 18th 2008), Outliers, “Harlan, Kentucky, ‘Die Like a Man, Like Your Brother Did!’” Little, Brown and Company, esp p. 166-170.
Graham, Hugh Davis and Ted Robert Gurr, (June, 1969), The History of Violence in America, A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, New York Times Books, Bantam Books, New York, NY.
King, Jr., Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, ed. James M. Washington, (1986), A Testament of Hope, The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY.
Lynd, Staughton, ed., (1966), Nonviolence in America, A Documentary History, Bobbs-Merrill Corporation, Inc., Indianapolis, ID and New York, NY.
Maté, Gabor, (2008), In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA.
Peltier, Leonard, Harvey Arden (Editor), Arvol Looking Horse (Introduction), Ramsey Clark (Preface); (June 16th 2000), Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, St. Martin's Griffin (first published 1999), New York, NY.
Wyndy Knox Carr lives south of campus and can be e-mailed at nohkauz88nohgunz@gmail.com, but don’t expect a quick reply. Her previous articles are on her LinkedIn page in extended versions.
Endnotes:
[i] Armstrong, Karen, (2015), Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House LLC, New York, NY, p. 168-170.
[ii] Ibid., p. 170.
[iii] Arendt, Hannah, (May 10, 1972) Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution, Harvest Books, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA, p. 66.
[iv] ibid., p. 77.
[v] Socrates, the Apology; from Arendt, op. cit., p.59.
[vi] (on Holy Hill, just North of UCal Berkeley campus.)
[vii] Emerson, , Dorothy May, (author); Helene Knox and June Edwards, (eds.), (first published July 1st 1999), Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936, (September 1st 2001), Skinner House Books, Boston, MA, p.571.
[viii] Barth, Ramona Sawyer p. 567 from Emerson, ibid.
[ix] Arendt, op. cit., p.74.
[x] Ibid., p. 89-90.
[xi] Ibid., p.95.
October 19, 2020
Reading this, I am struck by two thoughts. First, as an American, it is impossible to read this collection of essays but through the lens of the post-2000 world, that is the so-called “War on Terror,” the social turbulence of the last decade or so, the actions and rhetoric of the Trump administration, and the Federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of what Arendt writes about the Vietnam conflict and the social upheavals of her own time seem pertinent, some outmoded. It is unfortunate in a sense that this book cannot be approached more on the basis of political thought in 1972 when it was published than 2020 when I happened to read it, but that was my experience. Unfortunately, it does highlight how dated the text is and how her models and interpretations have aged. There perhaps are equal numbers of relevant insights and problematic statements scattered through these four essays.
Second, it is equally impossible to not read this without a feeling of wistfulness, a sense that this represents intellectual product from a sadly bygone age. Intended for a fairly general audience (I believe, please correct me if I am wrong), its style, its form of argumentation seem utterly foreign to these times of Trump tweets and rampant anti-intellectualism. I am not sure that there are many general readers today who could follow her thought or sustain interest in her sprawling musings. Arendt’s era encompassed a vast range of American political expression, everything from robust, good-faith political philosophy to “Up against the wall, motherfucker!” These days, I fear all that remains is the latter, on both right and left. I think Arendt probably feared that as well.
“Whither Socrates? Whither Thoreau?” is a bit of a facile, classist complaint, yet now twenty years into the 21st century and nearly fifty years after Arendt’s death we face an environment where a significant portion of the American electorate cannot discern even the dire fascist abyss of the Trump presidency for what it is. What place is there for her among the people of a “republic” who chose simply to ignore their own decades’ long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as if they ended long ago? Mendacity is not even the issue when the populace just abandons the realities of civic life and obligation in favor of the stupid entertainments of what passes for modern-day ideologies. I am not certain that this is the book to speak to the problems of the day at hand anymore.
Second, it is equally impossible to not read this without a feeling of wistfulness, a sense that this represents intellectual product from a sadly bygone age. Intended for a fairly general audience (I believe, please correct me if I am wrong), its style, its form of argumentation seem utterly foreign to these times of Trump tweets and rampant anti-intellectualism. I am not sure that there are many general readers today who could follow her thought or sustain interest in her sprawling musings. Arendt’s era encompassed a vast range of American political expression, everything from robust, good-faith political philosophy to “Up against the wall, motherfucker!” These days, I fear all that remains is the latter, on both right and left. I think Arendt probably feared that as well.
“Whither Socrates? Whither Thoreau?” is a bit of a facile, classist complaint, yet now twenty years into the 21st century and nearly fifty years after Arendt’s death we face an environment where a significant portion of the American electorate cannot discern even the dire fascist abyss of the Trump presidency for what it is. What place is there for her among the people of a “republic” who chose simply to ignore their own decades’ long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as if they ended long ago? Mendacity is not even the issue when the populace just abandons the realities of civic life and obligation in favor of the stupid entertainments of what passes for modern-day ideologies. I am not certain that this is the book to speak to the problems of the day at hand anymore.
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