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Mr. Pessimistic 
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 Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:09 pm Post subject:
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| Mad wrote: |
| Well, despite what Mr. P spoke of above, I don't think she's championing Freethought here. |
No time to get into all the responses yet...but I just wanted to address this. I never said she was championing freethought...but taking what she did say, I do not think I was off base by saying what I said. I think that the propensity of freethinking and skepticism is good for the very reason Mad offers...that people like this are inclined to hold back before jumping into the wave. I also think, in contrast to Mad, that these skeptics and freethinkers DO also rely heavily on reasoning to reach a decision on what actions to take and that these people are also less likely, on the whole, to fall into mass hysteria and support such pogroms.
Mr. P. |
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Niall001
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| Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:11 pm Post subject:
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| MadArchitect wrote: |
Powerlessness to accomplish a thing and powerlessness to resist are two very different things. The Mary McCarthy quotation is explicit on this point. What can any person force you to do something if even pointing a gun at you and demanding obedience is only tempting you? The answer is, even if you're obeying a command under mortal duress, the action is still yours. Others around you may find it more sympathetic if you held out until threatened with execution, but the deed itself is still accomplished by your participation.
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Well to borrow from the Borg, resistance is futile, at least as an end in itself. If poor old Jack chooses to die for the sake of resistance, his family may starve, or they may simply be viewed as undesirable. Few of us exist in a situation where we do not have obligations to others. In most situations, you are not simply deciding to sacrifice your own life, you are choosing to inflict a certain amount of suffering on those associated with you. How many people would inflict suffering on their loved ones in order to carry out an action that will have no effect?
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But in that context, she's talking about an excuse for not fighting the immorality around you. She does not take impotence or powerlessness as an excuse for participating in that morality yourself. |
That would make a little more sense.
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It almost looks to me as though the entire essay is meant to deal with the problem of the apparent failure of moral judgment in instances like the Nazi rise to power -- a problem seems to have really troubled Arendt only after the Eichmann trial. She proposes a solution to that problem by considering the examples of those who consciously refused to participate in that power. If it isn't a terribly comforting answer, that's probably because Arendt's experience and study finally led her to the conclusion that only the most tenuous threads connect humanity and morality. |
But what I find frustrating is that Arendt takes the Nazi atrocities as the gold standard of evil, then works backward. I wonder would her theories hold up if she attempted to apply them to the Armenian holocaust or Rwanda? What about on the global scale? Many of us are happy to support systems that result in situations of inescapable poverty, dictatorship and other evils. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:28 am Post subject:
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| misterpessimistic wrote: |
| I also think, in contrast to Mad, that these skeptics and freethinkers DO also rely heavily on reasoning to reach a decision on what actions to take and that these people are also less likely, on the whole, to fall into mass hysteria and support such pogroms. |
To clarify, I don't recall having suggested that freethinkers don't use reason to decide what actions to take. My point was that Arendt isn't talking about freethinkers at all. Modern writers like Michael Shermer have made it seem like the words skeptic and freethinker are almost synonymous, but all Arendt seems to be talking about when she says skeptic are people who are reserved about agreeing with the judgments of others. Her phrase was "skeptics and doubters", and I interpret that to involve no particular methodology. These are simply people who look at what everyone else is doing and say, "Actually, 1 million people could all be wrong", without supposing what might be right. Doubt and skepticism open you up for some way of deciding what would be better, but I don't think any particular alternative is necessary for what Arendt is talking about. What's crucial is that moment where you say, "Maybe I won't join in." Only then is it possible to apply judgment, regardless of whether it is based on reason or intuition.
| Niall wrote: |
| If poor old Jack chooses to die for the sake of resistance, his family may starve, or they may simply be viewed as undesirable. Few of us exist in a situation where we do not have obligations to others. |
To put it quite bluntly, that isn't Arendt's concern in this essay. All she's asking is whether or not it's possible to be personally responsible for the morality of one's own behavior. The defense made by Nazi conspirators after the war suggested that it wasn't, and if that's the case, then we're faced with all sorts of questions as to whether or not it's possible to behave morally at all, whether the fact of political involvement precludes morality, and whether or not it's even possible to resist immoral political paradigms.
If the Nazi party chooses to make life difficult for your family, if they choose to put a bullet in your brain, they're the one's acting immorally. And maybe they can bully you into acting immorally, but that does nothing to mitigate the immorality of your action, nor your responsibility for how you've acted. Crying out, "What else could I have done?" may make us feel badly for the circumstances you had to face, but it doesn't change the fact that your actions hurt someone else. The only question Arendt really intends to address in this essay, it seems, is that of whether or not a person can reliably judge for themselves the morality of an action.
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| In most situations, you are not simply deciding to sacrifice your own life, you are choosing to inflict a certain amount of suffering on those associated with you. |
Not true, and as Arendt points out in the prologue, political action is hardly a mechanical phenomenon. Nazi Germany implicitly threatened every nation that might refuse to return expatriate German Jews to the Fatherland. Only Denmark refused and the consequences were practically nil. In that particular situation, it's as though Germany pointed a gun at Denmark's head, said "Obey, or else", and then simply pulled the gun away when Denmark refused. It doesn't always work out that way, but the point is that you're not deciding who to sacrifice in those situations -- the aggressor always decides, and ultimately, you can't be personally responsible for their actions. In the same situation, it's easily as possible that, even if you obey, you'll still get your brains blown out, or that your family will suffer. Caving in to coercion guarantees nothing.
More to the point, the people who were killed for refusing generally stood at the end of a very long line of people who had not refused. The people at the top of the hierarchy would have been unable to force any hands had there not been a majority of people willing to oblige them. Which is, I gather, the gist of Arendt's meaning when she says that it's impossible to achieve a political goal alone -- the injustices of the Nazi regime were made possible only by the cooperation of a majority of people who were willing to suspend their own judgment and carry out the will of those who would otherwise have been powerless.
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| But what I find frustrating is that Arendt takes the Nazi atrocities as the gold standard of evil, then works backward. I wonder would her theories hold up if she attempted to apply them to the Armenian holocaust or Rwanda? What about on the global scale? |
I don't see why not. In every case, what seems to be operative is a failure of personal responsibility: people allowing a political agenda to dictate what is and is not moral. Arendt deals with the Nazi atrocities mostly because that's what she's studied most. Not only did she flee with her family from Nazi Germany, but she studied politics during a period when World War II was the defining influence on global politics. In the meantime, so much has happened that it's difficult to tie everything back to that one war, but Arendt died in 1975, and did most of her writing during the 50s and 60s, when World War II still cast a shadow over the whole of modern history. |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:48 am Post subject:
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Me: I haven't seen where in the text that Arendt introduces individual cases of those who said "No", so I'm not clear how she arrived at this conclusion regarding their motivations for opting out of the bovine or terrorist modes. How does she know it was an internal disgust more than an external command?
Mr. P: I did not see any individual cases either. So is Arendt speaking from her own experiences? Should we trust her assessment on this issue? Another component of her essay is the individual v. the masses, so this of course fits into that theme, but what IS her basis for this assertion? What 'external command' would you postulate in place of the 'internal disgust?" |
I think suspicion of her conclusions is warranted, and she would welcome it, even expect it...in the context of this essay, to not challenge every conclusion is to not think, or more precisely, to not judge, to avoid responsibility. Mad states that her personal experience in Nazi Germany and the many interviews and research she engaged in is the basis for her assertion (and it is an assertion). Nowhere does she show who she interviewed, the questions she asked, the nuances and differences in responses, or if there were any that had contrary motivations than what she asserts.
It may be that all any of us can produce is assertion in these matters: we are not counting bodies, soldiers, warehousing arsenals, or establishing train schedules...we are trying to determine what motivates a person to act responsibly and judge the morality of others and themselves. To make it even more difficult, we are using perhaps the most obscene chain of events in modern history as our case: who wants to be responsible for the most heinous of atrocoties...who is going to tell the truth about their own complicity, or the actual deeds of those they know and perhaps even love? Who can we trust regarding a period of time when so much human decency and dignity are slandered and abandoned: who is trustworthy about these kinds of events?
Arendt's point is that those who did not participate, opted out of the public and political poison, stood apart and alone at great risk of harm, are the one's who are most trustworthy. Unfortunately, we never hear directly from any of them- only what she tells us.
Perhaps Arendt is projecting upon these noble souls her own ideal of human dignity and self respect? Strangely, in making the point that ideals are impotent in the face of crucial, terrifying decisions- she is constructing her own and lifting them up as the model, exemplar case. Even when she shows that ideals will not motivate responsible judgment, she is utilizing an ideal to make her case. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 11:48 am Post subject:
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| Okay, so what's your alternative model for why people refused to follow the whole of society down an immoral path? I think we all recognize that Arendt was not writing a scientific paper and didn't provide citations in support of her argument, so we need not labor that point any further. And you've made your point that without any evidence having been made explicit we have to take her suggestion (or, if you'd rather, "assertion") as just that, a suggestion, and by no means definitive. Does this train of thought lead us anywhere, or are we left with just the doubt? |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:52 pm Post subject:
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| Mad: Okay, so what's your alternative model for why people refused to follow the whole of society down an immoral path? |
Some may have been motivated by religious beliefs, fostered within a lifetime of religious practice and theological understanding, rooted in a religious tradition and worship community that could not support such patently immoral and unjust behavior. Many German Churches did support and endorse and stood silent in response to the abuses of National Socialism- but not all. Those individuals within those religious communities who said "No" because a God of love who demands justice and mercy, protection of the outsider, and care for the weakest among us...offer an alternative model.
Arendt's attempt to lift up the isolated individual, free of ideological constraint, unencumbered by moral systems, relying upon an innate ability to judge responsibly and do the right thing is raising an ideal to inspire, encourage and foster its implementation in her readers. In tearing down one ideology, she replaces it with another. We can't escape it, it seems.
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| Mad: I think we all recognize that Arendt was not writing a scientific paper and didn't provide citations in support of her argument, so we need not labor that point any further. |
I don't think it's a minor point. I think it helps us understand the limits of philosophy when engaging the social sciences: conclusions about human populations require data to support these claims; whereas, the philosopher is making claims based upon an idea about human nature and its essence.
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| Mad: And you've made your point that without any evidence having been made explicit we have to take her suggestion (or, if you'd rather, "assertion") as just that, a suggestion, and by no means definitive. Does this train of thought lead us anywhere, or are we left with just the doubt? |
Well, Arendt states that the doubters and skeptics are the most reliable characters on the social stage: if that is true, then we must doubt the doubters and be skeptical of the skeptics too! I think suggestion is not as accurate as assertion . Arendt is making a strong case for the role of responsibility and judgment: we must choose and make a decision, and in the deciding and taking a stand, we defend what is most valuable about our humanity...our dignity and self-respect. She is not merely suggesting this: she is asserting it as a model for authentic personhood. In other words, in the face of much opposition and contrary evidence, she asserts against the grain, like a force struggling for expression, breaking through and emerging forward: she proclaims her humanity, and in so doing, affirms the humanity of others. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:35 pm Post subject:
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| Dissident Heart wrote: |
| Arendt's attempt to lift up the isolated individual, free of ideological constraint, unencumbered by moral systems, relying upon an innate ability to judge responsibly and do the right thing is raising an ideal to inspire, encourage and foster its implementation in her readers. |
I don't think she intended to present it as an ideal. In fact, it looks to me as though she's attempting to mark a a limitation in the human capacity for morality and personal responsibility. She certainly isn't presenting the German non-participants as any sort of transcendent moral heroes. Rather it looks to me as though she envisions them as having fallen back on resources that are fairly primitive and that they might not have relied on had they not supposed the social system to have gone awry.
| me wrote: |
| Mad: I think we all recognize that Arendt was not writing a scientific paper and didn't provide citations in support of her argument, so we need not labor that point any further. |
| DH wrote: |
| I don't think it's a minor point. |
I didn't say it was a minor point. Rather, I said that we've all acknowledged it, so let's take it a step further and talk about what it means and whether or not there's an alternative. There's no real point in simply reiterating a point we all agree on.
Personally, given the nature of your comment, I think a productive way to continue that line of thought would be to consider whether or not there is any research that actually does present evidence either in favor of or against Arendt's suggestion. Any ideas?
| DH wrote: |
| I think suggestion is not as accurate as assertion. |
And I think you prefer assertion because it makes your point look more imperative, as though it were the only thing worth discussing.
| Hannah Arendt wrote: |
| "I therefore would suggest that the nonparticipants were those whose consciences did not function in this, as it were, automatic way -- as though we dispose of a set of learned or innate rules which we then apply to the particular case as it arises, so that every new experience or situation is already prejudged and we need only act out whatever we learned or possessed beforehand. Their criterion, I think, was a different one: they asked themselves to what extent they would still be able to leave in peace with themselves after having committed certain deeds; and they decided that it would be better to do nothing, not because the world would then be changed for the better, but simply because only in this condition could they go on living with themselves at all." (p. 44; emphasis mine) |
If Arendt thought suggest more accurate than assert, and felt it necessary to qualify "I think" in an essay full of what everyone would already recognize as her thoughts, I don't see why we should second guess her own estimation of what it is she meant to say.
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| She is not merely suggesting this: she is asserting it as a model for authentic personhood. |
That reads a whole lot like something you've brought to the essay, not something put there by Arendt. I didn't get that at all. |
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Dissident Heart
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| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 12:54 pm Post subject:
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| Mad : I don't think she intended to present it as an ideal. In fact, it looks to me as though she's attempting to mark a a limitation in the human capacity for morality and personal responsibility. She certainly isn't presenting the German non-participants as any sort of transcendent moral heroes. Rather it looks to me as though she envisions them as having fallen back on resources that are fairly primitive and that they might not have relied on had they not supposed the social system to have gone awry. |
I don't think her efforts to define the limits of morality and personal responsibility are incompatable with her desire to present an ideal human response to a terrible dillemma. Rather than transcendent moral heroes, her narrative highlights a paradigm of behavior that reflects her desire to salvage some sense of human dignity from otherwise universally undignified behavior. The key text in this sense closes her essay:
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| Arendt: "Much could be gained if we could eliminate this word obedience from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human." 48 |
The non-participants were the dis-obedient ones and Arendt uses their example to repair what was lost to the status of being human: dignity and honor.
Yet, I don't understand why Arendt remains silent about those few who not only opted out, but fought back and resisted with force. Nor does it make sense to leave out the Jewish resistance and the many forms it took althruout Germany. Perhaps the violence and destruction of the war, and the potential for nuclear holocaust in her future, made it impossible for her to bring those forms of resistance into her discussion? There was no ideal in anyone who defined honor and dignity in the destruction of their enemy: rather, her traumatic history and fear for the future could only tolerate the courage of those who would do nothing, lending neither their bodies or their minds to destructive state policies.
In some ways this is similar to Dr. King's conflict with the more radical Black Power movements of the Civil Rights Era, most notably Malcolm X. King was certain that violent resistance by Negros would lead to terrible loss of life and the brutal, murderous, perhaps even genocidal destruction of Blak America. For him, there simply was no violent solution to their oppression. Arendt speaks directly to some of this in her chapter Reflections on Little Rock...more to see.
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| Mad: I think a productive way to continue that line of thought would be to consider whether or not there is any research that actually does present evidence either in favor of or against Arendt's suggestion. |
There are literally libraries of data to work with. Two substantial authors in the field of Holocaust Studies, Daniel Goldhagen and Raul Hilberg offer two ends of a spectrum regarding the lives of Germans during that dark time. Goldhagen argues for a mass population of "willing executioners" without which no Hitler was possible. Hilberg describes more of the social psychological, state bureaucratic militarist control model. But both state their conclusions by way of actual Germans, and Jewish, accounts and testimony. |
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irishrose
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:23 am Post subject:
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I appreciate the symmetry of Arendt’s bookend discussions on the semantical considerations for the terms “force” and “temptation,” and “obedience” and “support.” And I don’t mean to identify this as semantical in a pejorative way, as semantics is often colored. In fact, the bulk of Arendt’s essay, from her introduction to the conclusion, demonstrates that in certain high-stakes situations the way we perceive something is clouded by how we speak about it. And the parallels for these terms seem clear: If one submits to “force,” one is merely “obedient” to a will over which there is no control. However, if one submits to “temptation,” then one offers “support” to those powers, and is thus implicated in the personal responsibility Arendt has described. And I think these statements speak very generally to Arendt’s discussion throughout the essay—In what way do outside forces (here we’re speaking of political forces) engage the individual—do they force or do they tempt—and in what way does the individual decide whether or not to submit to those forces—does she obey or does she support?
And this sets a staging area for Arendt to ask the question how does one, when confronted with such moral considerations, judge for oneself? For me the matter centered on the following passage:
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| For only if we assume that there exists a human faculty which enables us to judge rationally without being carried away by either emotion or self interest, and which at the same time functions spontaneously, that is to say, is not bound by standards and rules under which particular cases are simply subsumed, but on the contrary, produces its own principles by virtue of the judging activity itself; only under this assumption can we risk ourselves on this very slippery moral ground with some hope of finding a firm footing. (27) |
Arendt seems to be invoking an approach to judgment that requires a marriage of rational and intuitive thinking—a relationship which may be the only way to support “this very slippery moral ground.” But it seems to me Arendt’s essay incorporates two kinds of judgment—the judging of others and the judging for one’s self. I wonder now, does she mean for this marriage of the rational and the intuitive to edify both forms of judgment?
I know this is just skimming the surface at this point, but I’m going to end for the moment with that question. I’m tired and my computer connection is acting all wonky. So rather than throwing my computer at the wall, I’ll bid adieu until next time. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:32 am Post subject:
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| irishrose wrote: |
| I wonder now, does she mean for this marriage of the rational and the intuitive to edify both forms of judgment? |
I'll have to think about this one a little, but offhand I'd say that, if the faculty she has in mind really does "function spontaneously", then it probably does involve itself in our judgments of others, whether Arendt thinks that's healthy or not. But I'd also say that reason provides a critical mechanism that allows us to veto those judgments -- else, how do you account for all those ostensibly good German's who did act in support of the Final Solution?
But I'll give the matter some thought and wait to see how you develop the idea further. |
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irishrose
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:29 pm Post subject:
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| Mad wrote: |
| But I'd also say that reason provides a critical mechanism that allows us to veto those judgments -- else, how do you account for all those ostensibly good German's who did act in support of the Final Solution? |
Quick clarification before I go on. You mean here that, in the instance of the “good Germans who acted in support of the Final Solution,” it was reason that overrode what would have been an intuitive judgment of such acts? |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:12 pm Post subject:
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| Rationalization, yes. If that's a function of reason, then an even more specific yes to your question. There had to be some rationalization involved in inverting a moral scheme that you've practiced your entire life. Even if the rationalization was just, "Everybody else is doing it," there's still an implicit line of reasoning involved, and in more than a few people it was probably a very conscious (even if not schematic) act of reasoning. All you need to do is assume the right premises, and logical thought can take you to any conclusion, no matter how horrific. |
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Robert Tulip 2
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