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irishrose 
Freshman
Joined: 22 Sep 2007
Posts: 215
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 Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:34 am Post subject:
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| Mad wrote: |
| And here I thought you might be poking fun at me and DH for our debate over whether Arendt is asserting or suggesting a definition of morality. |
Who…moi…?
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| I'm just not sure how it operates in the discussion. |
I’m not exactly sure either. All I know is that the consideration of consent as though it was analogous between all governments “even the most autocratic ones, even tyrannies” rang hollow to me. The rest of the discussion is me trying to figure out why that is so. But until I can concede that assumption, the way I will consider consent and the way Arendt will consider consent are likely to be different. Because, though her discussion of consent makes perfect sense to me, I wonder if that’s because I am the product of a republic.
Essentially—and I don’t mean to always be bringing the discussion back to myself, but that’s who I know well—if I, living in a republic, want to discuss the issue of consent regarding citizens living in an autocracy, I think it’s imperative of me to recognize that the way consent functions in my life might be different than the way it would function in my autocratic doppelganger’s life. I think not to do so would be presumptuous. Though I will note that, for the purposes of this essay, Arendt, who had experiences in both forms of government, didn’t find it necessary to draw the distinction.
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| Does it matter that the subjects of an autocracy might not realize that it exists only with their consent? So long as they're rendering that consent, I'm not sure it does. |
If we are to have a full understanding of how consent then plays any actual role in an autocracy, I think it might be important. If we are to consider how to address that, I think yes.
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| In a way, I think it might. In the Sudan case we were talking about in another thread, for example, it looks as though the protests calling for the death of the British teacher were, in part, staged to stir up public outcry. That reflects a concern over the people's support, and the very fact that people would protest in that case seems to indicate that they also think their input important. |
Hmmmm…I’m not sure this speaks directly to the issue I’m having. To think that your input in your government might be important, or the issue of participation that we’ve already discussed, does not necessitate that one consciously recognize that they’ve granted their consent—or so it seems to me.
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| Let's assume that they can't. What prevents them from withholding their consent? |
And I think that’s a real question that we need to get to the root of with regard to contemporary autocratic governments. Which is probably, in part, why this is an issue that stuck out to me.
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| The Nazi party came to power on a wave of national support, so we'll probably have to look to other autocracies for some indication of how the notion of consent fails. |
And, yes, I think my thoughts specifically turned from the Nazi government--considering your allusion to whether or not that was even a legitimate government, an argument I've heard before--as different than the kind of contemporary autocracy, or even theoretical autocracy, I have in mind. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject:
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| irishrose wrote: |
| All I know is that the consideration of consent as though it was analogous between all governments “even the most autocratic ones, even tyrannies” rang hollow to me. The rest of the discussion is me trying to figure out why that is so. |
I'm not really sure how to help, other than to suggest that we momentarily table the issue of how consent differs in the two types of government and move on to another issue that applies the concept of consent. Doing so may bring us to other problem that then puts the distinction between consent in those two types of society in a perspective that casts some light on Arendt's comment.
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| Because, though her discussion of consent makes perfect sense to me, I wonder if that’s because I am the product of a republic. |
I think it's likely that's because the notion of consent is widely informed by Rousseau. Having studied philosophy at length, Arendt probably gets it directly from Rousseau; you, via your study of a political system that has deep roots in Rousseau's philosophy.
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| Though I will note that, for the purposes of this essay, Arendt, who had experiences in both forms of government, didn’t find it necessary to draw the distinction. |
I doubt that's because she thinks the issue is immaterial. Most of her work prior to "Eichmann in Jerusalem" concentrated on the development and function of totalitarian governments, and it's entirely likely that she considers the issue of consent at more length there. If she blurs the distinction in this essay, it's probably for the specific reason that she doesn't think that distinction all that crucial to the specific matter of individual judgment. Which isn't to say that we should end the matter there. We can certainly question her suggestion.
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| If we are to have a full understanding of how consent then plays any actual role in an autocracy, I think it might be important. |
I think it's important to remember that Arendt's topic in this essay is personal responsibility -- and not simply the responsibility placed upon a person in a given context, but the person's responsibility for their own actions. In the US we have a very keen sense that we're responsible for the institutions that govern us. But I don't think that's the sort of responsibility Arendt has in mind -- at least, not directly. She suggests that, once we've taken responsibility at a very local level, the way that responsibility effects out conduct will indirectly effect the institutions that depend on us, on our "consent". But the key thing for Arendt is that of looking after your own behavior, whether or not that has any impact on society at large.
To that precise end, I'm not sure it makes any difference whether or not the citizen has this or that notion of the role their consent plays in constituting governmental institutions. In fact, the general tenor of the essay may suggest that too heavy an emphasis on consent would tend to rob us of that local imperative to take responsibility for our own actions.
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| And, yes, I think my thoughts specifically turned from the Nazi government... as different than the kind of contemporary autocracy, or even theoretical autocracy, I have in mind. |
What kind of autocracy did you have in mind? |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
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Joined: 29 Aug 2003
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| Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 6:56 pm Post subject:
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| RT2: The first thing I really like in the essay is her comment about judgment which I interpret as a critique of the insidious function of cultural and moral relativism in stripping us of our right and ability to judge in matters of truth and ethics. Relativism is a dangerous postmodern trend, as it has the effect of making all conduct amoral except, ironically, judgment, which relativism condemns as a sin against the sole holy absolute of tolerance. Arendt implies that the postmodern worship of secular pluralism is more a problem of cultural elites than the mass of the population, but as she says of elites in the prologue “that they were small in number does not make them any less characteristic of the climate of the times”. In this discussion she seems to share Heidegger’s contempt for the public realm, as a domain of idle chatter, curiosity and ambiguity. There seems to be an underlying demand here for a new conceptualization of excellence as a high value. |
I'm not clear if Arendt is confronting relativism as much as she is exposing the costs of personal and political cowardice: although it may be that relativism is a form of cowardice. Judgment requires courage as much as it requires reason, and it seems Arendt is arguing that those who lack courage will settle for any set of reasons to justify their lack of judgment...better, their fear of judgment. Judgment requires reverence as well, something that Arendt doesn't mention. I think reverence is what it takes to hold oneself and others accountable for something larger than my personal tastes or the dominant political party of the day. Reverence is the virtue that moves us to do the right thing and respect the dignity of ourselves and others: it is not a complex moral argument or ethical theory, but an attitude of awe and wonder that protects us from dangerous grandiosity and deadly hubris, as well as servile complacency and submissive cowardice. I think the poison that threatens us is not relativism, but a lack of reverence. Perhaps relativism is a lack of reverence towards the truth? With proper reverence, relativism becomes good judgment?
I think the best part of postmodern thinking involves a deconstruction that distrusts and challenges all totalizing narratives and absolute claims: perhaps proper reverence toward the truth involves accepting how little of it we actually control, and can call our own. One alternative involves the deadly hubris that claims universal understanding and then imposes it upon those less god-like, less intelligent, less rational, less beautiful, less human...
Instead of Heidegger, I think Nietszche is the actual source of digust in the herd mentality and its accompanying slave morality. Arendt's use of Nietzsche is very interesting in that I think she is far too lenient on him. |
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Robert Tulip 2
Eligible to vote!
Joined: 19 Nov 2007
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:23 pm Post subject:
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DH101207
Thank you for these comments. Your theme of reverence is connected to love, and I would argue that love links to relativity. I can’t help thinking that relativity, in creating doubt about absolute ideas, has links to relativism.
My comment about Martin Heidegger is from the context of the Hannah Arendt quote from page 9 of Responsibility and Judgment. Arendt interprets Hegel’s ‘Minerva’s owl flies at dusk’ as “the darkening of the public realm”, saying “this almost automatic rejection of the public realm was very widespread in the Europe of the 1920s with its ‘lost generations’ - as they called themselves”. While you are right that Nietzsche is a main voice, Arendt identifies Heidegger’s role in this anti-public outlook, saying in the next paragraph “Testimony to this anti-public climate of the times can be found in poetry, in art, and in philosophy; it was the decade when Heidegger discovered das man, the ‘They’ as opposed to the ‘authentic being a self’…”
The public realm melds and rejects particular views while also allowing contradictory views to stand without resolution, in support of freedom of thought. The Arendt/Heidegger objection to this process seems to involve the role of conscience in guiding the individual to form a coherent perspective. Heidegger is ironically and wrongly seen as a major progenitor of relativism due to the links between the existential analytic and postmodern rejection of foundationalism. Perhaps this relativist tag relates to his notorious claim that conscience has nothing to say? However, a relevant point here is that Heidegger, and following him Arendt, are shifting the foundations of thought from metaphysics to existence, not abolishing foundations as such.
Some further thoughts on related ideas are at www.geocities.com/rtulip2005/Tulip_Heidegger_MA |
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irishrose
Freshman
Joined: 22 Sep 2007
Posts: 215
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:03 am Post subject:
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| Mad wrote: |
| ...and move on to another issue that applies the concept of consent. |
Such as…?
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| She suggests that, once we've taken responsibility at a very local level, the way that responsibility effects out conduct will indirectly effect the institutions that depend on us, on our "consent". But the key thing for Arendt is that of looking after your own behavior, whether or not that has any impact on society at large. |
Right, but the key thing for me is how we, in any real sense, expect those of certain cultures to initiate the consideration that behavior, with regard to consent, is something that can be ‘looked after,’ when essentially everything in the system of government, to which they are subject, denies them such a purpose? So yes I understand that “once we’ve taken responsibility…” but the question is how do ‘the we,’ as members of certain governments, even begin to understand that they must take that responsibility? And how do ‘the we,’ as members of other types of governments, keep from having unrealistic expectations on that front? Yes, it’s imperative for citizens, of whatever government, to take personal responsibility for their actions—specifically for whether they offer their support to a government via consent—and that the assumption of such responsibility could go a long way to alleviating the damage government can inflict on its citizenry. But I question the value of such a statement when we don’t know to what extent consent is a full consideration operating in the day-to-day decisions of those who comply with their governments.
And, my consideration might not have much validity in the extreme examples of say storm troopers serving the Nazi party. I think the personal responsibility one should assume when participating in mass execution is obvious, even if one believes those acts to serve a state over which they might not have any ability to thwart. But, a less extreme level of participation may open the door to understanding how the lines between obedience and support might be blurred when one offers her consent. So, to what extent does a clerk working in an office, with no direct contact to the brutality of the government for which she works, feel personal responsibility for supporting such a government? Granted, the extent to which she is personally, morally responsible would be a gradient less than someone who directly participates in the brutality. But her consent is essentially the same. And, in such a situation, in any realistic sense, is she discerning that her acts are not mere obedience and actually offer support? That isn’t rhetorical; I don’t know the answer to that question.
Consider Arendt’s discussion between “obedience” and “support.” She notes that adults do not obey in the sense that a child or a slave obeys her master. Rather, an adult grants support, for “there is no such thing as obedience in political and moral matters.” But before such a distinction can be utilized, in any precise way within certain governments, I think the citizenry must be able to distinguish their acts as a matter of consent and not obedience. And this goes back to what I was saying before. Much of Arendt’s discussion is clear to me, but I think that’s because I am a product of a republic—a product of Rousseau and Locke and Jefferson and Madison, etc. I wouldn’t, in turn, expect this discussion to be as clear to someone who is a product of a different culture, and a different political history. And the problem there is, it seems to me that citizens can only withhold their consent, or their support, when they clearly understand that what they are offering is not merely obedience.
So, yes, I agree with Arendt’s proposition that people must take personal responsibility for their actions. But I can’t talk about how I perceive personal responsibility, with regard to offering consent to my government, in any kind of synonymous way with someone raised in certain Middle Eastern countries, or certain Eastern countries, or certain South American countries, or certain African countries. Or, at least, to do so may invalidate any conclusions that might be drawn.
Arendt writes: “Much would be gained if we could eliminate that pernicious word ‘obedience’ from our vocabulary of moral and political thought.” It’s a statement she competently argues and fully supports through the essay. I would not disagree. But I don’t think she addresses that, in order to eliminate that pernicious word, there might be a lot of work ahead in merely illustrating the difference between obedience and support for a substantial portion of the world’s population. And this is probably very much outside the scope of Arendt’s purpose with this essay. But, she seems to address the question of consent between these different citizenries synonymously, and I think that might be the start of leading us down the wrong path in addressing that pernicious word, "obedience."
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| What kind of autocracy did you have in mind? |
Probably specifically Iraq, pre-American-invasion. Though I don’t know if a military coup followed by a single-party system technically counts as an autocracy. And this is probably attributable to a book I read by the daughter of Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot. [I just spent 20 minutes looking for the book and can't find it. Sorry I can't offer the title. I'm sure it's around somewhere, I'll drop it in when I find it.] I don’t want to get into specifics; but, in a way, it alarmed me how little I remember the idea of opting out played in these individuals’ lives.
But, generally, I’m talking about a system of government that sees the cycling of a generation. So the Baath Party/Saddam’s Iraq lasted, what 23-24 years, long enough that a person born in the regime could then grow to adulthood—to the moment where she would need to choose whether or not to grant her consent. I just don’t know how much of an active/conscious choice that would be for such a person. |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
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Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 1436
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:06 pm Post subject:
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| MT2: Your theme of reverence is connected to love, and I would argue that love links to relativity. I can’t help thinking that relativity, in creating doubt about absolute ideas, has links to relativism. |
Arendt doesn't speak much about love (at least in this essay). I wonder why? Could it be that one of the primary factors that motivated those few courageous Germans to say "No" was a love of something or someone? Perhaps this mysterious intuitive force of conscience is love by another name? A love that demands one protect and care for...well, care for what exactly? What exactly was it that these intrepid souls loved?
Arendt ends the essay with a hope to repair lost human dignity. She argues that it was the absence of judgment, an escape from responsibility, that caused so much damage: obedience to authority and abandoning individual conscience are the lynchpins to this catastrophe. Behaving in such an undignified, disgraceful, irresponsible manner has severely damaged human credibility: why trust this species after all? Why bother with such a bungled and botched assortment of cowards and tyrants, hellbent for mutual destruction? We are confronted with an anthropodicy as well as theodicy here. Arendt does not address the latter, but I think this essay is an attempt to answer the former. And I think her answer is in the few courageous examples of those who said No while all around said Yes. And I think the spark of courage was set by an reverent attitude that demanded something more than individual safety or political expediency. This reverence is what protects human dignity and inspires one to judge the rightness and wrongness of any situation. But there is something more that moves one to choose the right, beyond simply knowing what is right. I think that something is love. |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
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Joined: 29 Aug 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject:
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| irishrose: I wouldn’t, in turn, expect this discussion to be as clear to someone who is a product of a different culture, and a different political history. And the problem there is, it seems to me that citizens can only withhold their consent, or their support, when they clearly understand that what they are offering is not merely obedience. ... But, generally, I’m talking about a system of government that sees the cycling of a generation. So the Baath Party/Saddam’s Iraq lasted, what 23-24 years, long enough that a person born in the regime could then grow to adulthood—to the moment where she would need to choose whether or not to grant her consent. I just don’t know how much of an active/conscious choice that would be for such a person. |
I think your questioning here gets to a fundamental assumption (perhaps a kind of faith) in Arendt's argument. Is Arendt arguing that no matter the political climate, historical development, or cultural setting there is something essential to human nature that knows the difference between consent and obedience? In other words, all human adults know the difference between legitimate and illegitimate authority: even if not all choose the right course of action. And it seems, according to Arendt, illegitimate authority should be judged so and therefore rejected and denied consent...and all adult humans know this too. Thus, there is no adult human setting where obedience is appropriate: it is always and everywhere poor judgment and irresponsible behavior.
If this is the case (and I think she is arguing this) then multiple generations could be raised in horrific tyranny, but this would have no impact upon their innate/essential (?) ability to ascertain legitimate authority and reject its opposite. There is something that simply knows "This leadership is illegitimate...this command is bullshit...I should not obey."
I think there is a difference between knowing what is illegitimate leadership, and witholding one's consent to it. The first, it seems, is innate and instinctual...the second requires something more. Arendt is arguing that all persons can do the former, but with shameful indignity, very few can do the latter. |
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irishrose
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:23 pm Post subject:
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| No this matter has absolutely nothing to do with faith. I am not taking anything on faith, nor am I making a “fundamental assumption” about Arendt’s argument. From what I quoted it seems to me that Arendt does not draw a distinction between citizens of different governments—“even the most autocratic ones, even tyrannies”—and their recognition of consent/support/obedience. That might be outside the scope of this essay. But I think if we continue Arendt’s discussion by assuming that recognition in an autocracy is the same as a republic, or assuming that commensurable recognition is not necessary to speak in any kind of realistic way about citizens withholding consent/support, we’re treading the wrong path. I agree with Arendt that “much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word ‘obedience.’” But I think that’s only going to happen when participants of all forms of government recognize that what they offer is not obedience, but support. And I can’t just assume that members of certain contemporary governments recognize that. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:45 pm Post subject:
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| Right, but the key thing for me is how we, in any real sense, expect those of certain cultures to initiate the consideration that behavior, with regard to consent, is something that can be ‘looked after,’ when essentially everything in the system of government, to which they are subject, denies them such a purpose? |
I'd hazard the suggestion that falling back on our own judgment to determine our own behavior is something that we, regardless of cultural milieu, do so often that any government that seeks to define all the terms by which a person decides their conduct would require an incredibly unwieldy apparatus. That isn't to say that it can't be done, and we have at our disposal a number of examples of governments that have pulled it off with limited success -- those limits being mostly temporal.
In the Nazi example that Arendt works with, I think it's notable that the Nazi government itself had to do very little to suppress that recourse to judgment. It wasn't a system of government that intervened, but rather the individual's decision to determine their conduct in relation to a voluntary moral system.
You seem more concerned with the sort of totalistic regimes that employ a huge apparatus in order to condition the citizenry's perception of the world. And that is concerning, but I'm not so sure that the success of such regimes is necessarily the result of a successful campaign to change people's though on moral questions. Rather, they seem to have succeeded mostly be negating the consequences of individual behavior. The citizen of a totalistic regime, that is to say, may still make the same recourse to their own judgment, but the government has found ways to circumscribe their behavior and relation to others, thereby effectively quarantining any adverse judgment that person might make.
If that's the case, then clearly there are consequences for the idea that falling back on one's own judgment is an effective political deterrent. And that's a serious challenge to one of the points Arendt makes. In her defense, she was dealing with an earlier stage in the evolution of totalistic regimes, and seems not to have dealt with Maoist communism, the Czech revolution, and other more modern autocratic/totalitarian states. But in so much as the crucial concern is that of whether or not governments make it improbable that their citizens will exercise judgment, I'd say that the answer depends first of all on whether or not the sort of totalistic regimes we're talking about actually do what it is we're assuming they do. The documentary sources and first-hand accounts I've read would tend to suggest that they don't.
Or have I misunderstood that direction of your concern in this case?
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| So, to what extent does a clerk working in an office, with no direct contact to the brutality of the government for which she works, feel personal responsibility for supporting such a government? ... And, in such a situation, in any realistic sense, is she discerning that her acts are not mere obedience and actually offer support? |
I'd say that depends a great deal on the individual. Some will think it through, others won't. But if the question is whether or not the government can encourage them to stop short of connecting their personal action from the political consequence, I'd say no. A government probably can obscure the pathways by which personal action leads to political consequence, such that the office clerk genuinely does not know what her actions support this or that atrocity, but in doing so they will have made personal responsibility void. If you're kept against your will from knowing that your actions have an immoral consequence, then moral deliberation becomes impossible. And that's probably as worrisome, on a political level, as the premise that a government can dissuade us from ever falling back on our own judgment.
To return to Arendt's most famous example, though, Eichmann was essentially a clerk; In fact, that's how he started. And while there does seem to have been some sort of impasse beyond which he found it difficult to conceive that his actions -- even direct orders -- resulted in deaths by the millions, I would say the Mary McCarthy rule that the government merely tempted him applies.
| Dissident wrote: |
| Is Arendt arguing that no matter the political climate, historical development, or cultural setting there is something essential to human nature that knows the difference between consent and obedience? |
If she were, what would be the point of even raising the argument? I think she takes it for granted that something is to be gained by forwarding the argument that there is a difference. But I don't think she locates the difference on the same side of choice as we've been discussing it. She does not seem to assume, for instance, that you need be conscious of the distinction in order to use your own judgment. Those who said they were merely following orders, as was their duty, are not giving an accurate account of what went into their decision to act or not act as prescribed. Rather, they're giving a justification of an act they've already performed.
To that end, it seems to me that Arendt brings the question of obedience into her essay in order to provide some purchase by which we can get a handle on our own assessment of the immoral behavior of others. The Kantian argument given by Nazi functionaries -- that morality consists in obedience, and that their actions could not, therefore, be judged -- depends on that inversion of the place obedience holds in a causal scheme. But to my knowledge, there has yet to be presented any evidence or argument that would demonstrate that we're even capable of acting from pure obedience -- that is, without involving personal judgment in our deliberation. The German citizens who consented to serve as functionaries in the Nazi engine didn't lack judgment altogether. The implication, I think, is that they simply opted to act according to something other than their own judgment, and with disastrous results.
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| And it seems, according to Arendt, illegitimate authority should be judged so and therefore rejected and denied consent...and all adult humans know this too. Thus, there is no adult human setting where obedience is appropriate: it is always and everywhere poor judgment and irresponsible behavior. |
I don't recall any of this in the essay. Can you point me to a relevant passage? |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:09 pm Post subject:
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| irishrose: No this matter has absolutely nothing to do with faith. I am not taking anything on faith, nor am I making a “fundamental assumption” about Arendt’s argument. |
I was referring to a fundamental assumption and faith held by Arendt...namely, a capacity for judgment that transcends historical or political circumstances. An ability that "cuts across all social and cultural and educational differences" 45. I use the word faith because I think it is as much a matter of hope and desperation, as it is carefully reasoned conclusions regarding human nature and moral responsibility.
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| irishrose: I think if we continue Arendt’s discussion by assuming that recognition in an autocracy is the same as a republic, or assuming that commensurable recognition is not necessary to speak in any kind of realistic way about citizens withholding consent/support, we’re treading the wrong path. |
But I think this is precisely the path Arendt is on, using history's best example of a autocratic totalitarian system to prove her point: which is, as I see it- no matter the circumstances, there is no excuse, we must judge and be judged; at least if human self-respect is to be protected and moral catastrophe avoided.
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| irishrose: I agree with Arendt that “much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word ‘obedience.’” But I think that’s only going to happen when participants of all forms of government recognize that what they offer is not obedience, but support. And I can’t just assume that members of certain contemporary governments recognize that. |
I agree with Arendt that obedience is best left to religion and parenting: but even there, the goal is not simply submission (even if it is required) but actually full human flourishing. As far as governance, support is better than obedience, but actual participation is best. I think Arendt's use of the term judgment is what it means to determine legitimate leadership: not simply with elected officials, but in every facet of human relationship. I completely agree that there are many, multitudes, who embrace obedience, are miles away taking responsibility for giving their support, and even further from active participation and sharing in leadership. |
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