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?
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.
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?