Hannah Arendt today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBJMS0G6Vrg&pp=ygUYaGFubmFoIGFyZW5kdCBlbiBlc3Bhbm9s

Peter Kopa, 21.10.23, Prague – The English version follows below

Hannah Arendt, born Johanna Arendt in 1906 in Germany, of Jewish faith, was a writer and political philosopher. To save herself from the Nazis she moved to the USA in 1951, where she became an American citizen.  Although she does not consider herself as important, she can be considered as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.3 Thanks to her independent thinking, her theory of totalitarianism (Theorie der totalen Herrschaft), her works on existential philosophy and her vindication of free political discussion, Arendt has a primary relevance in contemporary debates (Wikipedia).

Extra-worldliness or ‘Weltlosigkeit

In 1972, Hannah Arendt published a volume of analyses and studies on the then crises in the USA. In response to the publication of the ‘Pentagon Papers’, she offers reflections on the tectonic changes in the political-institutional structure of the USA. In addition, she reflects on the meaning of civil disobedience in modern democracies in the wake of the student protests against the Vietnam War and explores the political significance of the African-American civil rights movement. In this context, Arendt matures her conception of ‘Weltlosigkeit’, which means standing outside the real world or extra-worldliness, already developed in the book “The Human Condition”, a concept that is also illuminating for the analysis of contemporary modern societies.

Arendt tells us that a unitary frame of reference has been lost in political dialogue. In other words, certain parameters have been set aside, previously accepted by a culture based on undeniable values and principles, which allowed for a pluralism of diverse interpretations and evaluations, without changing these basic parameters. It can be assumed that for Arendt these rules then expressed common convictions strongly rooted in a Judeo-Christian culture that has given the West its greatness.

For Arendt, being out of touch with the world in the USA in the late 1960s and early 1970s manifests itself in the fact that a kind of “Alice in Wonderland atmosphere” (a kind of pink bubble without unitary parameters) undermines sensible political decision-making processes. Thus, lies and entire campaigns of deception come to determine everyday political life. This explains the erosion of the institutional framework of the American political system.

The “bureaucratization and the tendency of the two parties in the USA to represent no one but themselves” ultimately lead to a change in the role and function of Congress and the government itself: instead of exercising its political responsibility in a system of “checks and balances,” the government was increasingly dominated by partisan logic. Instead of a fact-based political debate, the image of a politician comes to the fore, which in a heavily mediatized public environment becomes the only guiding coordinate of political activity.

Reality must prevail

For Hannah Arendt, the loss of a common frame of reference manifests itself today in the way alternative facts, politically formulated fake news, echo chambers, filtered bubbles and the like are wielded. It is likewise manifested in the phrase “fake press,” which is used to express that one is only willing to give credence to one’s own previously confirmed worldview (which according to Arendt would be a frame outside the world).

Arendt was concerned about the irrationality of political decisions made in such an unreal atmosphere. At the same time, however, she was convinced that this kind of politics was doomed to failure in a country with a long republican democratic tradition; firm was her belief that “the public,” “the citizens,” and “the press” would unmask the lies and denounce the loss of reality. “Defeated by reality”: this is the phrase Arendt uses to express her conviction that a policy of lies and disinformation will not succeed in a mature democracy such as the United States.

Arendt’s conviction that in the end the truth will have to be imposed may seem naive to us today. This is because we are in a digital culture that subjects all areas of life to its system. It has the power to unite, relate and even deform and falsify them, thus generating diverse worlds separated from each other.

But it is worth asking with Václav Havel: To what extent is it relevant for individuals today to “live in truth”? The success of globalist mobilization strategies with false, politically motivated reports and the proliferation of alternative facts are precisely the problem. For the secret of this strategy seems to lie precisely in the design of a “world” in which the fears, racist prejudices and anger of potential supporters are transformed as rational and justified, and thus exploited in an apparently legitimate way to justify a discriminatory political program in favor of only one group, thus building the pretext for the abuse of power.

Merits of Hannah Arendt’s thought

La conciencia como libertad ante la verdad

We are dealing with a Jewish woman who offers us reflections on the enormous importance of not confusing black and white, of distinguishing evil from good, of preserving sincerity and intellectual honesty at all costs when making prudential decisions in politics.  Arendt tries to get to the bottom of this question. In her work ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ Arendt speaks of the “banality of evil” to refer to the ambiguity of the concept of evil by means of which some people can be manipulated by frivolous and relative meanings of good and evil. This banality, however, does not reduce the cruelty of its effects in reality, such as the persecutions of the Jews by the Nazis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK9abp9VvmY

That is to say, in the style of Eichmann, man is susceptible to being manipulated in order to avoid deprivation and suffering. This makes him a manageable individual and makes it easier for political power to lead to the commission of crimes, within an organization of tyrannical and coercive power. This view of man is analogous to the Judeo-Christian one, which tells us that a person has an obligation in conscience to resist evil when his surrender would harm others in serious matters. In politics, this may require going to extremes of heroism, when it is a matter of not selling out for a plate of lentils. Therefore, weak rulers, inclined to put their own advantage in the first birth, end up in the long run making the whole nation totter. La importancia de los valores

For a more in-depth study of the human condition in H. Arendt, the following study in English may be useful: https://ve.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1315-52162006000400002#:~:text=Hannah%20Arendt%20distinguishes%20three%20activities%20in%20the%20maintenance%20of%20life.