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What went wrong with this discussion?

#40: Nov. - Dec. 2007 (Non-Fiction)
MadArchitect

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What went wrong with this discussion?

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As "discussion leader", I feel that I've dropped the ball somehow. I count at least six people who have bought or borrowed copies of "Responsibility and Judgment", but almost no one is discussing it. I figure it would contribute to the health of future discussions if we talked about why.

Can some of you who intended to, but haven't yet gotten around to discussing the book help me figure out why discussion never took off? Is there something I could be doing to make discussion easier or more active?
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Dissident Heart

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I think you've created plenty of opportunity for people to engage the text and each other Mad. I don't see the lack of participation as a reflection upon anything you've missed or ball you've dropped. Arendt is not light reading, nor are the subjects she explores easy jaunts around the park. She is demanding, but I think rewarding in the end...even if I don't share her conclusions.
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Dissident Heart wrote:Arendt is not light reading, nor are the subjects she explores easy jaunts around the park.
I would think that would make for more discussion, not less. For one thing, if a book is difficult, that would mean just figuring out what the hell she's talking about is a discussion in itself. If a book really is a "jaunt around the park", then I rarely find there's anything in it to discuss.

You could think of book discussion in terms of climbing a mountain. Too simple or smooth a rock face, and there's nothing on which to get a handle. It ends up being like trying to climb the glass mountain of myth. To really climb a mountain, you need a surface that's craggy and uneven, something with handholds. At the same time, if the mountain offers too gentle a slope, you end up not really climbing at all. You need something at least noticeably steep to present a challenge.

Maybe we as a group are a little afraid of appearing to not know something we're expected to know, of not understanding something we're expected to understand. Will anyone cop to that, or am I off base here?
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I have the book, and I'm about half way through. I was kind of planning to begin discussing once I'd finished it. I'm actually surprised at how well this book goes with the Zimbardo selection.

So on topic, I don't think that there's really a problem so much as the people who have the book seem a little busy at the moment. These kind of discussions tend to take time to get going.
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Niall001 wrote:I have the book, and I'm about half way through. I was kind of planning to begin discussing once I'd finished it. I'm actually surprised at how well this book goes with the Zimbardo selection.

So on topic, I don't think that there's really a problem so much as the people who have the book seem a little busy at the moment. These kind of discussions tend to take time to get going.
Honestly...every time I try to read it I get bored and start to drift. She seems to have a very odd writing style and I find her overly verbose. Basically, I do not 'like' reading her writing. But I need to knuckle down and at least read the first essay as you suggested Mad.

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MadArchitect

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I hope not everyone is waiting until they've finished the book to start discussing. For one thing, we're already about half way through the time allotted for discussion, and the holidays coming up next month are sure to keep people preoccupied during at least part of the discussion. For another, seeing a healthy discussion is one of the few ways we have to encourage other people to get involved, so it's actually better for discussion to handle it piecemeal rather than all at once. And for a third, I certainly don't remember everything I read three weeks ago, and even if you do, there's no guarantee that I'll know what you're talking about if you bring up something that interested you in the early sections a month after we've all read those sections.
misterpessimistic wrote: She seems to have a very odd writing style and I find her overly verbose.
I think the oddness you're picking up on may be due in part to the fact that English is not Arendt's mother tongue. She grew up with German, and that's bound to effect the way you write in another language. I'm not suggesting that she's half-literate or anything like that -- obviously she's very literate, and probably puts to shame a good many native English writers at very much the same level of education. Having to work harder to express yourself will sometimes do that.

As for her being overly verbose... maybe. I would say that part of what makes her difficult to read is that she attempts to make her sentences and paragraphs encapsulate ideas at a level of complexity that modern English readers don't often encounter. That, again, might be due to her having grown up with German, or it might be the effect of having studied philosophy, the greater philosophical works having been written in language that struggles to capture the complexity of difficult ideas.

So, yeah, reading Arendt is a challenge, for me as much as for anyone, but if you're having trouble maintaining interest or concentrating on the long line of her points, the best way to work through that may be to go ahead and start discussing what you have read, raising any points that interested you or asking questions about anything you're not sure about. If the discussion is interesting, it might spur you on through the rest of your reading. To my mind, that's one of the major benefits to reading a book with a group.
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Hi Mr P, I ordered the book but it hasn't come yet. I do want to follow up. People find Arendt troubling, partly due to her high moral vision coupled with her longstanding love affair with the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. The following article may be helpful

HTTP://WWW.NYBOOKS.COM/ARTICLES/19952
VOLUME 54, NUMBER 4
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Mad, don't be too hard on yourself. Most of the problem stems from us not having enough total members. But we're now gaining members and things are turning around. Stick with the discussion and if the book gets a decent amount of activity we'll leave the forum up in the Current section beyond the scheduled end date for that book.
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MadArchitect

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Chris OConnor wrote:Most of the problem stems from us not having enough total members.
I don't think it does, Chris. Rationally, it should work the other way around. Don't new members look to see whether or not there's a quality discussion to join in on? If there isn't already one going, then only the most adventurous additions to the site are likely to try and start one themselves. If the people already associated with the site aren't discussing a book, then there's something wrong with the discussion itself. (Note that I'm not saying that there's something wrong with the people -- I'm not blaming anyone else for how slow this discussion got started.) I'm just not sure what it is. I suspect that this is one of those books, even more than others, that needed us to provide some way of talking about its contents, some approach to the book that would have invited discussion. But then, just pointing out the fact that the discussion was flat-lining seems to have stirred up a little dust. Hopefully, discussing "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship" will draw a little more interest to the rest of the book, and discussion will pick up from here.
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MadArchitect wrote: But then, just pointing out the fact that the discussion was flat-lining seems to have stirred up a little dust. Hopefully, discussing "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship" will draw a little more interest to the rest of the book, and discussion will pick up from here.
Yes, there has been some activity. I will be responding to the comments you made Mad regarding my posts when I get some time to sit and think. This is a heavy selection it seems, as you and others have said in other posts.

I will move on to another essay (at least one more) so which do you suggest? Are you DONE reading this?

Mr. P.
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