Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship

MadArchitect · Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:56 pm

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.

seeker · Sat Dec 15, 2007 7:13 pm

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

irishrose · Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:14 am


	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

MadArchitect · Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:03 am


	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.

MadArchitect · Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:33 pm

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.

irishrose · Mon Dec 17, 2007 3:50 pm


	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

MadArchitect · Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:51 am

[quote="irishrose"]What I am saying, and all I have been saying, is that the likelihood

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