Critically Engage With Hannah Arendts Humanistic Approach On Political Action

As per the 1948 Universal announcement of human rights, all individuals regardless of their background are all born equal before the law. This declaration made by the powerful nations and signed by all nations strong and weak that belong to the United Nations reflects the thoughts of many earlier philosophers to include the 16th & 17th Century Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. However, each philosopher -based on their times and experiences gave a different value to how men use their freedom and equality in presence of the other in a society, and in relation to political authority. As determinant of his freedom to act and think, the three writings focused on the will of man, the promise that shapes the social contract, and the

Arendt explains that the ultimate power of a totalitarian government is the acceptance of the ideology being propagated. The laws that are put into place in totalitarian government are not to empower the people and protect their rights. Instead, the laws tell the people what they must do, not what they must not do. Arendt tells how the law of nature is the foundation for Hitler's Nazis, and the law of history for Russia's communist regimes. According to Arendt, both the Nazi and communist regimes maintained that those laws gave them justification for their cruelty. These laws of nature and history are not permanent or stable. They are in motion to keep history and nature moving, so that it progresses without ever stopping. <p>Arendt claims that these laws of motion sustain the terror fueling the totalitarian government. Arendt says that terror is the realization and execution of these laws with nothing standing in its way. Throughout the selection, Arendt speaks of terror. Terror is essential for the state to keep its power, or else it will fall. According to Arendt, in a totalitarian state terror terminates individuality among the people. Individual men become a mass of humankind, in the eyes of the state. "Terror exists neither for nor against men", claims Arendt, "it substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between individual men a band of iron which holds them so tightly

Thesis: A key concept to understanding Hannah Arendt’s “Total Domination” is the essence of terror and the importance of concentration camps in maintaining the Nazi totalitarian state.

Human reason has been one of the guiding principles in our society since the beginning of time and because action is preceded by thought, these two go hand in hand. Every choice we make is based on our thinking process, differentiating between what is good or bad, and contemplating cause and effect. Machiavelli, Locke, and Marx all have distinct conceptions of human nature, which has led to a variety of conclusions regarding the political structures of society that still have resonance today, which goes to show how much of an impact their theories have.

The most alarming thing about Arendt's book is that she is able to make a compelling case that the greatest evils of mankind are committed by ordinary people. Her work forces one to look at the world and realize that the Holocaust was not an isolated incident committed by blood thirsty sociopaths. One must realize that the decision making processes that created an environment accepting of the "Final Solution" is still alive an well today as it has been throughout history. The weight of personal moral choice

This definition can be extended to a definition of politics. Indeed, the idea that “human values” and the “search for orienting theories” (lines 4 and 5) are entangled is clearly expressed. The vision of man that is given suggests that society should promote his innate capacities and put them at the chore of political decisions. “Participation in decision-making” (line19) conjures up the idea of a Participatory Democracy, which was a major theme for elements of the American Left in the 1960’s. This implies a more important influence of the people in the decisions of their society.

In her esteemed work, “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man,” Hannah Arendt, a prominent Jewish-American political theorist, juxtaposes Nash and conveys her skepticism of universal rights. Per Arendt, the aftermath of the events that transpired on August 4, 1941, namely the beginning of World War I (WWI), specifically statelessness and rightlessness, prohibit the world from achieving a cosmopolitan-from-above framework. By comparing the days preceding and following the initiation of the lengthy combat to the calm before and the aftershocks of an explosion, Arendt dramatizes the permanent ending of a period and the beginning of a new and unprecedented era. Creating a domino effect, the exertions of WWI dismantled the European aggregation of nations beyond repair. In addition, inflation, unemployment, civil wars, and migration caused the rise of stateless individuals, those who have lost the protection of their government and who therefore rely on international agreements for safeguarding. However, following World War II (WWII), the term “statelessness” was replaced by the term “displaced person,” no longer recognizing the pandemic obstacle and implying that the individuals are simply temporarily removed from their residence. As minorities emerged in Eastern and Southern Europe, stateless individuals were driven to Central and Western Europe, and disintegration was consequently introduced to postwar Europe and used at a weapon for the rising

Michael Parenti, author and political scientist, describes human nature as a topic deeply intertwined with politics. The reason for this is because arguments for and against human nature being unalterable and the cause of everything destructive are both ideologically motivated and have a political implication. According to him, to say that human nature is accountable for our current social relations is no different than what renowned thinkers of the past have asserted for their own social circumstances. For instance, philosophers of the Classical Era such as Plato and Socrates believed everyone belonged to their place in the hierarchy. That

One historically important tradition in social and political philosophy is called "Social Contract Theory." It gives a way of thinking about what it means to be human, raising fundamental questions such as: what is human nature, in itself, apart from society? Are people fundamentally

efficiently. Arendt argues that Eichmann was thoughtless and that possessing the trait of thoughtlessness contributes to evil

Hannah Arendt’s begins the chapter with the first part of after the fall of the First World War stating the condition of the stateless people clarified the catastrophe of the nation-state model and the failure of human rights. When the nation-system was created, the people in power in Europe separated the people into 3 major groups which are the state people, the nationalities like the Slovaks in Czechoslovakia, and the minorities like the Germans, being the strongest officially economically and in number. The “Minority Treaties” were created by the League of Nations to seek security to the minority groups in the new states. The “real significance of the Minority Treaties” (pg.274) was that currently millions of people were known by the international law since by the nation-states, they have the power to strip down the citizens of that state by banishment or other worse factors. Only nationals could be citizens and

John Rawls wrote several highly influential articles in the 19950`s and 1960`s, his first book, A Theory of Justice (1971), revitalized the social-contract tradition, using it to articulate and defend a detailed vision of egalitarian liberalism. In Political Liberalism [PL] (1993), he recast the role of political philosophy, accommodating it to the effectively permanent “reasonable pluralism” of religious, philosophical, and other comprehensive doctrines or worldviews that characterize modern societies. He explains how philosophers can characterize public justification and the legitimate, democratic use of collective coercive power while accepting that pluralism. (Richardson)

Hannah Arendt is a German Jewish philosopher, born in 1906 and died in 1975. She studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger as Professor. Her works deal with the nature of power and political subjects such as democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. She flew away to France in 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany. She flew away from Europe to the United States after escaping from the concentration camp of Gurs. She became a Professor in New York city, in which she became an active member of the German Jewish community. In 1963, she was sent to Jerusalem to report on Eichmann’s trial by The New Yorker. Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on Eichmann’s trial were expected to be harsh, considering the philosopher’s roots. However, her

While we associate with many different groups and focus on personal uniqueness for affirmation and identity, as a whole the similarities between individuals outweigh the differences. For example, race, class, culture, religion and politics are great divides in society. Yet, the majority if individuals would agree that we should be proponents of peace. I find Hume’s philosophy compelling because he applies the ideas of necessity and liberty to fundamentals of human nature.

Margaret Canovan argued that Hannah Arendt failed to realize that political opinions too have drawbacks. According to Arendt, different people have different opinions and claims that one political opinion can bring an enhancement on another. Based on this assumption, she adopted Kant’s notion of “judgement,” that is, “to think for the sake of general” into her political thinking. But Habermas rejected her ideas on the ground that it is “monologic.” She seems to have left no room for “rational truth” in political affairs. On the other hand, Canovan also disputed on Habermas’s insistence for fixing his attention on rational consensus. Habermas assumes that “just” society can be institutionalized if political discourse is based on ideal discourse.