Many social and political philosophers extensively study and attempt to identify the ways by which people make judgments. Prior to interpreting and further analyzing conclusions of judgment as noted by any significant philosopher, one must first obtain an understanding of the background and culture said philosopher was surrounded by. Our minds are malleable; opinions and values are most often shaped by societal norms, political structures, and retrospective assessment of past experiences. This paper will examine judgment as studied by Hannah Arendt while delving into the political afflictions that likely shaped her conclusions. Hannah Arendt (born 1906) was a prominent political philosopher of her time. Born in Germany and ultimately …show more content…
Arendt witnessed the abundant pain and suffering resulting from Nazism. Instead of justifying by exemplary historical events or categorizing the Nazi regime as and inevitable tragedy, Arendt wanted to examine Nazism in its own right. She recognizes that often people classify special cases as common ones, and once this unreasonable distinction occurs, it provides the means to rationalize horrific behavior. Arendt notes that our innate structure for judgment deteriorates “as soon as we try to apply it honestly to the central political experiences of our own time” (Understanding and Politics 379). Moreover, Arendt sees understanding and judgment as codependent. If our framework for making judgment isn’t secure, we have no ability to understand. Arendt notes that understanding is “so closely related to and interrelated with judging that one must describe both as the subsumption of something particular under a universal rule” (UP, 383). An inability to understand preceding an inability to judge resolves to a loss of commonplace categories by which we classify events. Furthermore, human need to rationalize tragedy is tested when we lose sight of our putative categories for ethical and political understanding. However, Arendt recognizes that humans are distinct in their ability to surpass the restrictions of judgments or norms. Humans have the innate capacity to start fresh, change perspective, and adjust their views. Furthermore, humans are able
“Was German ‘Eliminationist Anti-Semitism” Responsible for the Holocaust?” is a fascinating and somewhat discouraging debate that explores the question of whether German anti-Semitism, instilled within citizens outside of the Nazi Party, played a vast role in the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust . Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of “The Paradigm Challenged,” believes that it did; and argues quite convincingly that ordinary German citizens were duplicitous either by their actions or inactions due to the deep-seeded nature of anti-Semitic sentiment in the country. On the other hand, Christopher R. Browning, who has extensively researched the Holocaust, argues that the arguments of Goldhagen leaves out significant dynamics which were prevalent throughout most of Western and Eastern Europe during this period of history.
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
In spite of the fact that it is a commonly known historical piece of the Holocaust, it’s authenticity has been questioned. Some conspiracies deny that it even happened at all. Through the analyzation of Hitler’s own violent anti-Semitism, powerful position, and ability to convey Nazi propaganda into action, one can see how he is the sole cause of the Holocaust.
A common misconception about the Holocaust is that the world was naïve of the atrocities happening under the Nazi’s rule. The horrors of the Holocaust were not left undocumented. Unfortunately, many saw these malicious acts as insignificant to the global population; people only start sympathizing when the hindrance affects them. Hitler, with the help of his many allies, achieved to murder millions of innocent men, women, and children. After spending this semester studying the Holocaust, I have realized that the Nazis’ greatest ally was neither an individual nor a country; Hitler’s greatest ally was indifference.
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.
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
Hannah Arendt’s essay suggests she believes that the motives steered by Adolf Eichmann to commit monstrous acts, where “once banal to all human” ( Arendt, Cp). Eichmann was viewed as a demonic monster for his immoral and corrupted mind. Banal evil shares similarities with Radical evil, such that they can both result in extraordinary evil. Unlike radical evil, banal evil can be committed by ordinary people. Eichmann lacked the ability to reflect and he seemed to think in terms of clichés as his goal was to follow Hitler’s orders to undo God’s creation and complete his job successfully and
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
According to Rosenfeld Arendt “famously gets a lot of her past wrong” (Rosenfeld 220). However, Rosenfeld’s study of Arendt’s work is not to find error rather depict the history of the writing of the French enlightenment. The “Truth in Politics” written by Arendt “provides a tour of various ancient and early modern thinkers, from Herodotus to Spinoza to James Madison, and of events in the profound and recent past to name a few” (qtd. in Rosenfeld 221).
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
"The sort of person that Eichmann appeared to be did not square either with the deeds for which he was being tried or with the traditional preconceptions about the kind of person who does evil" (Geddes). Throughout the trial, Arendt is conflicted by what she wants to seen when she analyzes Eichmann, and struggles greatly when she finds he does not embody the crude and inhumane thoughts she associated with the history of the Holocaust. It is this absence of the profound hatred of Jews, along with the normalcy he possesses, that creates the emblematic role of banal evil for Adolf Eichmann.
“There are no dangerous thoughts, thinking itself is dangerous” (Berkowitz et al. 2014), states Arendt. Arendt who lived through the atrocities of the 20th century (i.e. the Holocaust), placed the focus of her arguments and beliefs on the matter. Her arguments focus on of the banality of evil and how it is purely comprised of human action and arguably human inaction. Ultimately she contends that mass society is to be blamed and not a single individual, for any evils which are brought into existence. She believed that the most important cure to relieve the suffering brought by these evil actions and policies, was the art of thinking. She insisted that the greatest evils
The science and modernity lead us losing our faith and the religion becomes slowly unnecessary. She mentioned the the 17.th century when the modernization has started such as the discovery of America or the reformation and how the human beings turned their back on the Earth. The example of German economy in the 1950s can answer to our questions. The clear example to see Arendt’s opinion about violence and human nature is in The Origins of Totalitarianism.
From the reading, I understand that people think and act differently when faced with ethical issues. For one to make a rational decision, an extensive process of judgment is required (Bandura, Caprara, & Zsolnai, 2000). For an individual to be responsible, he or she should put into consideration the magnitude of the consequences of the actions, social
Hannah Arendt was German American philosopher; she wrote “The ‘Vita Activa’ and the Modern Age” in 1958. In the passage, Arendt advocates a three-part division of human activities, which include labor, work, and action. Arendt seems to put stress on action because it is “the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world” (389). Arendt discusses these parts within four areas: social, political, private, and public. She states that action is within the public realm. Despite, the hierarchical structure of these three parts, Arendt