Disclaimer: I have not yet read any posts for this topic except the original question.

I believe Arendt's main point, although she made many others, was that it is only morally acceptable to work to change a system from the inside if you support the general aims of that system; because even though you may do some good, you are still contributing to the system's success. If you do not believe in the overall aim of a system, and you are not able to work from the outside to change it, the morally responsible stance is to avoid cooperating with it.

NOW can I read the other posts, MA, huh??????

Heh, but of course. And I'm eager for you to do it, since the conversation can only benefit from the addition of another voice.

Sorry, Mad, I hadn't seen your earlier response to my post before now.

Mad wrote: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.

Are you saying here that citizens of totalitarian states are aware that there is a judgment to be made with regard to their specific behavior, and even how that behavior supports the state, but that they're not conscious of how their behavior affects others?

BTW, I haven't dropped the other thread. I'm giving the controlling issue there some thought. And thinking time has been stingy around my parts, lately.

DH, I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. Obviously I can't talk about elements of Arendt's faith, and what she takes on faith. In the quote that you mention, Arendt isn't speaking to an "ability" per se. She claims there is a dividing line that "strikes across" all elements of society, dividing those who want to think, and therefore judge, and those who do not. I don't think she's speaking directly to "ability" at all.

My issue isn't with the general ability to judge for one's self. My issue is with that dividing line and whether it separates, rather than those who do and do not think, those who are aware that they should think and those who are not.

irishrose wrote:Are you saying here that citizens of totalitarian states are aware that there is a judgment to be made with regard to their specific behavior, and even how that behavior supports the state, but that they're not conscious of how their behavior affects others?

Maybe. I was thinking specifically of some scenes towards the end of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". I'll try to steer clear of specific plot points, but if you're still thinking of reading the novel, and you don't want to know much about it going in, you may want to skip the rest of this paragraph. The background of the novel's plot is the Russian occupation of the Czech Republic. The way they attempt to control public opinion is only pseudo-Orwellian, but the main characters never cease to maintain at least an intellectual brand of resistance. The problem they encounter, though, is that even when they're relying on their own judgment and refusing to act in support of totalitarian initiatives, the government has ways of twisting their conduct to serve its own ends. Their decisions and judgment remain their own, but they find that the can hardly act without serving the state's interest.

So what I'm getting at is that it has proven more effective for modern totalitarian government to leave the people's consciences alone, and simply structure the society so that, even when a subject people acts from its own conscience, their actions can be made to serve the government's agenda. The governments who have gone the opposite route and attended to people's deliberation rather than their action seem to me to have done so only when there was already fertile ground, intellectually speaking. So while the Czech occupation government stood a better chance circumscribing people's actions, the Serbian government during the Yugoslavian revolution stumbled upon an already prevailing intellectual climate that served its ends to a T. The work the Serbian government had to do in order to impress upon the population the notion that there was an ethnic conflict already implicit in their society was actually fairly light -- the population was willing to accept that notion without much coercion.

There have been governments who attempted, with some success, to fashion such an intellectual climate where their was substantial resistance -- Maoist China being, perhaps, the most startling example -- but those instance require such an abundance of resources that I'd imagine they'll always represent the exception rather than the rule.

There is a lot of good discussion already on this topic, and at the risk of being hopelessly behind, I have to confess that I'm still hung up on this notion of an intuitive sense of right and wrong. Specifically, I'm trying to discern the meaning of the word "intuition" (I am using the word as synonymous with Arendt's automatic "human faculty") in this context. Also, I'm trying to decide whether or not Arendt is (or any of us are, for that matter) either suggesting or asserting that the intuitive judgment of what is right and wrong is the same for everyone.

I have heard an intuitive sense of danger described as the picking up of subliminal clues that are just below the threshold of consciousness. I could also understand intuition as associations that our brains make based on experiences we have forgotten or that we were not fully conscious of when they occurred. These definitions seem to rely mostly on experience, although I believe some danger triggers do come hard-wired with the equipment.

However, getting back to the context of judging between right and wrong by intuition, it would seem that such intuition must either be based on our prior experience or it must be innate (or some mixture of both), correct?

Also, if our intuitive grasp of right and wrong is based on experience, it does not seem likely that everyone would arrive at the same judgment, since our experiences vary so widely. True?

Then if we do all arrive at the same intuitive judgment, that intuition must be innate, yes, or have I gone off track somewhere?

But I stumble on through the brambles:

If this intuitive sense of right and wrong is innate, then it was created by evolution, agreed?

But if it was created by evolution, then it must be based upon survival and procreation, also agreed?

But in that case, how can it be about right and wrong?

Cogito ergo sum mixed up.

Seeker, I guess the best way to resolve the contradictions you're finding is to dispense with right and wrong. I think Arendt deliberately avoids those terms when talking about judgment. She isn't saying that we intuitively know right from wrong (though our legal systems almost invariably depend on the assumption that we do). Rather, she's saying that we all must inevitably fall back on the question of what behavior we can and can not live with ourselves. I think it a natural consequence of that supposition that we would all end up with slightly different answers to that question. Some would end up with radically different answers. But then, Arendt isn't suggestion an all encompassing, elaborated moral system. She's just trying to answer the question of why, given the failure of such systems, some people still refuse to do things that most of would regard as evil.

Hope that helps.

Yes, MA, that does indeed help. Thank you.

Mad wrote:Maybe. I was thinking specifically of some scenes towards the end of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". I'll try to steer clear of specific plot points, but if you're still thinking of reading the novel

All right, calm down, I'm gonna get to it eventually

irishrose wrote:Yet despite their fear and loathing of Saddam Hussein and his regime, never (at least in the book) was there a discussion that Salbi's father, in working for Saddam, was supporting the regime. I am just not convinced the corollary, though obvious to us, was ever consciously considered by those parties.

It may not have been, but I'm not sure that's the same as supposing that something in their environment made it improbable that they would. That there apparently were people in Baathist Iraq refusing to support or obey the Baath regime would at least suggest that those within the culture were capable of drawing the distinction. Or am I misunderstanding your point?

So, under these new autocracies of which Arendt was not really writing, can the theocratic element of tyrannies complicate the obedience/support question? If a theocracy demands in the name of your god, are you able to withhold your obedience?

I'd say that's subject to the same points that Arendt applies to the moral inversion that took place under the Nazis. To say, "We now speak for God" is as radical as saying, "Murder is now a moral imperative". To accept in the first place that a theocracy has your god's authority by proxy, you have to willingly accept whatever claims they're forwarding about your religion. I know some people would argue that religious believers will simply accept whatever's packaged as legitimate authority (and to be clear, I'm not saying that's your argument), but I don't buy it. People always have some motive for adopting this position or that, and the fact of naming it religion doesn't change that. To that end, Arendt's arguments are probably still applicable in the case of theocracies. People buy into them for a reason, and the faculty of judgment may still be the most reliable tonic to blind submission.

So, Seeker, what do you think of Arendt's thesis? I tend to think she's on to something with her notion of judgment as the background to moral action, but I can definitely seem room for disagreement.