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MadArchitect
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 Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:56 pm Post subject:
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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. |
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seeker 
I can enter The Chamber
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| Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2007 7:13 pm Post subject:
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| Yes, MA, that does indeed help. Thank you. |
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irishrose
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| Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:14 am Post subject:
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| 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—*grin*
As for this issue I’m having, I’m not really thinking about any kind of Orwellian newsspeak/doublethink governmental control. Or, at least, I don’t think I am. Let me take a page out of your book and illustrate exactly what I have in mind.
I read the book Between Two Worlds, by Zanaib Salbi. Salbi is the daughter of a man who was Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot before the first Gulf War. Now, in such a position, Salbi’s father is serving a tyrant, and thus his tyranny. Salbi’s family would sit in quiet, dark homes and find the next morning, neighbors, friends, sometimes even family members missing—disappeared behind clouds that promised horror and probably death. Salbi’s parents feared for those who disappeared; they knew it to be an act of the tyrannical government. I’d even go so far that they judged it to be wrong, though that was never specifically stated in the book. 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. And all I can think then, was that they didn’t quite understand that, in serving Saddam, they were offering more than just obedience. And that the support that they offered could have been withheld.
Now perhaps they did recognized that what they offered was support, and not just mere obedience. And they continued to offer their support for fear of the danger that would befall them if they withdrew it. That would, I imagine, be Arendt’s argument. I’m just not necessarily convinced that I can just assume that about a people who live in such a different culture than I.
But to complicate this matter a bit. Arendt notes that the only way an adult realistically offers obedience is to her god. 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? |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:03 am Post subject:
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| 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?
| Quote: |
| 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. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:33 pm Post subject:
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| 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. |
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irishrose
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| Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:50 pm Post subject:
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| Mad wrote: |
| 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? |
I think you are misunderstanding my point, or at least, reading far more into than I have intended throughout. This appears to have become circular at this point, but being the stubborn one I am, I’m going to give it one more go around.
I am not, and have not been, speaking to people’s ability to draw the distinction between obedience and consent. (Looking over this thing, I think I used ability once, and I misspoke at the time. But I think it’s been clear I’ve been speaking directly to peoples’ likelihood, and as a result the realistic expectations with regard to consent/obedience.) Above, you state that there were presumably those within the Baath regime who “were capable of drawing the distinction” between obedience and support. And yes, I would agree, people are largely comparably capable of drawing the distinction between obedience and support. And that’s because I’m not speaking about ability or inability.
Nor am I speaking to any kind of government machination that precludes people from being capable of drawing a distinction between obedience and support. I am not thinking of an Orwellian-type newsspeak/doublethink. I am not speaking to autocracies that consciously set up machinations intended to create an environment that makes its subjects unable to distinguish between obedience and consent.
Nor am I saying that people of one government are to a less degree personally responsible for offering their consent to a tyrannical regime.
What I am saying, and all I have been saying, is that the likelihood—the probability—that a person living in an autocracy recognizes that what she offers is consent and not merely obedience is a degree less to the likelihood that a person living in a republic would recognize the same distinction. And I don’t think that’s a radical argument to make.
If it is equally likely that all people, in all forms of government, will recognize the distinction between consent and obedience in a comparable way, then what was the true significance in the revelation of “consent of the governed” hit on by the Enlightenment thinkers? If everyone recognizes the distinction between consent and obedience, regardless of the political climate in which they live, then why was “consent of the governed” such a big deal for the likes of Rousseau and Locke and Madison and Jefferson? If we can just assume that everyone, regardless of their environment and culture, are equally likely to recognize that government exists and relies on the consent of the governed, then why the hell did it take so long to spell it out?
I am not speaking to capability and I am not speaking to personal responsibility. And I already nodded to the fact that this is likely out of the scope of Arendt’s thesis.
The reason I have argued it thus far is because I fear Arendt leads us down a path where we are to assume that every member of this earth is equally likely to draw the distinction between consent and obedience. I don’t deny that every person is equally capable of drawing the distinction, and I do not deny that every person is equally responsible for the consent that they offer. But I will assert (and I claim the assertion, finally) that it’s dangerous to presume that everyone, regardless of the cultural and political climate in which they live, are equally likely to draw the distinction between offering consent and offering obedience. I think to assume so, assumes that everyone has read “The Social Contract,” or “The Declaration of Independence,” or are products of governments and cultures that have adopted similar ideology.
My issue is not with ability, nor is it with personal responsibility. I think those are steps removed from the first order of business, which is awareness. Before one can give or withhold consent, one has to recognize that what is offered is consent. And I just cannot assume that members of each and every contemporary culture are equally likely to question, and therefore recognize, the distinction between consent and obedience. And that recognition should be the first step, before we can start realistically expecting any decisions to withhold consent.
| Quote: |
| To say, "We now speak for God" |
Aha, I hadn’t thought of that. What you’re saying is to accept that your theocratic government speaks with the authority of your god, you must first accept that your government speaks with the voice of your god—which is still a matter of moral choice, and therefore personal responsibility. So a person must judge for herself whether a government that invokes her god’s authority is actually speaking for her god. Yes? I gotcha now, I missed that. |
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MadArchitect
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| Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:51 am Post subject:
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| irishrose wrote: |
| What I am saying, and all I have been saying, is that the likelihood—the probability—that a person living in an autocracy recognizes that what she offers is consent and not merely obedience is a degree less to the likelihood that a person living in a republic would recognize the same distinction. And I don’t think that’s a radical argument to make. |
I'd actually take it a step further and say that, in most societies, the fact of corporate responsibility actually diminishes the extent to which a person is offering consent rather than... well, something else. Obedience may not be the right word; submission might be better. But to borrow Arendt's parlance from "Reflections on Little Rock", they're submitting within the social realm rather than the political.
To illustrate, whether or not a political body like the Nazi party attempts to invert morality has, on its own, so little power to coerce or compel that there isn't much reason for anyone to submit -- submit being, as I'm using it, less a matter of will than with obey. What makes the Nazi inversion of morality a matter for submission is the fact that so many people within the social realm willingly adopt it. There's some very blurry point at which it no longer seems like merely the aggregate of a million instances of individual consent, but something more unified -- status quo is one way of thinking of it; organism is another. It's that social weight that levies itself against individual choice, and I'm not sure that any autocratic society could enforce its will without some sort of willingness on the part of the social realm to extent its power.
So with the Iraqi example you gave, the autocracy itself was probably inadequate to the task of really stifling dissent. It needed some sort of social consent, and once it had that social consent, it could manipulate it against any individual instances of dissent.
In "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship", Arendt seems to make only gestural reference to the influence of society over personal consent, but it may provide a conceptual foundation that can be elaborated by looking at her comments in other essays. Provided that what I've written in this reply bears more fully on what you intended to say, that should at least form a start.
| Quote: |
| If it is equally likely that all people, in all forms of government, will recognize the distinction between consent and obedience in a comparable way, then what was the true significance in the revelation of “consent of the governed” hit on by the Enlightenment thinkers? |
Now that's a really interesting question, but it's not one I'm confident we can address without taking a closer look at the historical context of the Enlightenment. If you're interested in pursuing that line of thought, we might find a little more help if we were to relocate to another thread, possible in the government forum. |
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