Hannah Arendt On The Truth

A lie is neither a false proposition, nor a mistake, nor a mere fiction; it is a type of intentional fiction, a precise act that calls for a twist in reality. This act, the lie, produces effects. The cause-effect relationship of a lie affects an individual or group in a way that twists the personal reality of the subject(s) from the objective reality (the way that things truthfully are) (Raspa 105). Examples of how reality is twisted by lies are rather prevalent in today’s media. Leaders have always tried to manipulate the truth, with modern politics wanting to control the narrative. The most relevant of these examples is mutability of fact for which President Trump has become notorious. He lies, repeats the lie, and his urge to tell them purely reflect a present day Big Brother, from George Orwell’s 1984. When lies are told so often, and so repeatedly, fighting the lie becomes not simply more dangerous, but more exhausting than repeating it. The act of falsifying reality is merely a secondarily way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power. This can be exemplified in one particular circumstance when Trump falsely claimed that millions of illegal votes were cast against him in addition to his administration making unfounded allegations that Trump’s inauguration had record attendance. In response, Kellyanne Conway, infamously coined the false number as “alternative facts,” as opposed to the actual statistics (Beale, We're living

The truth seems to be apart of everyday life, or at least that's the way people want it to be. Life is never full of truth, there are going to be lies and deceit amongst everyone, everywhere. Whether it be the rich of England or the poor in Africa. Some lies are to try to protect the feelings of others, some are to protect the survival of the one telling the lie. In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the truth is avoided in order to protect the wellbeing of others through the examples of Marlow, painting of the woman, and Kurtz.

Hannah’s background as a Holocaust survivor is important for understanding the experience of the Holocaust. Her story provides unique insight on the Holocaust outside of concentration camps, dispels myths, and captivates the emotional aura of living during the Holocaust. Hannah’s story is one of resistance, danger, and the importance of family.

In her excerpt "Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government" from her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt reveals that terror is at the core of a totalitarian government, and that this terror is based upon ideology. This type of terror exceeds fear. Totalitarianism dominated many governments during the twentieth century. Unlike other forms of government that oppress its people; a totalitarian form of government escapes the boundaries of definition. A totalitarian government is commonly mistaken as a tyranny or dictatorship. Arendt explains that this is because it must begin as a tyranny to lift the boundaries of the laws. Arendt uses two particular governments as examples to help clarify the nature of a

In his book Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry explores how the trials and tribulations one experiences shape them from the beginning of life until death. Janne Teller writes, “Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you begin to die. That’s how it is with everything” In detailing Hannah Coulter’s life, Berry shows how the era she grew up in, the people surrounding her, and various life events formed the qualities and characteristics of the woman she became.

Based on Hedge’s iconic statement that “the most essential skill… is artifice”, one can infer that politicians use narrative as a strategy to increase their following. This causes controversy among the audience who may only decide their candidate through a subliminal message therefore empathizing with the candidate rather than voting based on their intellect and opinions. While it may seem as regular propaganda, it is a tool to deceive the viewer. Although it may be a compelling strategy, artifice creates a barrier between the politician and the audience making the politician unable to connect with his followers.

and various species of more or less outright lying. Many of these behaviors are subsumed under

In Stephanie Ericsson’s essay, “The Ways We Lie”, she describes the many ways we create miscommunication individually and as a community. Lies that affect us individually are lies we commit between ourselves and a small group, like, “your hair looks great” to a friend, knowing you meant the opposite. Meanwhile, lies that affects society is on a more severe consequence scale – Adolf Hitler, world famous anarchist, persuaded his soldiers into believing obliterating the life of massive amount of Jewish believers had a good cause, when it actually disrupted society itself. Her main topic is how we are consumed by lies and deceptions abused by oneself and society. She categorizes each lie which she later elaborates the different consequences they

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, had been raised by strong women’s rights advocates, which makes her characterization of the women in her story a wildly controversial discussion topic even all these years later. Mary Shelley’s philosopher father paid for her high education, and her mother wrote several works about equality for women. She lived a substantially progressive lifestyle, considering the time period in which she lived. This has raised many questions regarding the weak female characters in her story, due to her own very contrasting beliefs.

Good people can cause severe harm if their motives are influenced by the values shared in a public corporation or are a result of manipulation controlled by the law. Bob Henderson’s ability to satisfy his interests to obtain success by dismissing social responsibility and contributing to the rise in obesity is wrong. Hannah Arendt founded the theory “The banality evil’ through analyzing Adolf Eichmann’s case during the time of the Holocaust. Eichmann and Henderson share similarities of both being ordinary men who influenced large scale harm. The intent of this essay will be to compare and contrast the perception of evil and discuss at which point radical evil may be mistaken for banal evil.

Therefore, Arendt argues to defend modern political lying. Furthermore, Arendt continues to think outside of the Totalitarian environment she finds truth telling is a way to keep the “status quo”. However, the lie exercises the free exchange of opinions. Nonetheless, Arendt argues “the great danger of the modern world is the hierarchy between politics and lying reverses, and politics have begun to operate in service to a particular and fictitious world of “ersatz truth” (Rosenfeld 223).

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

If you’re going to watch a re-staging of an epic and convoluted love story full of politics and passion, Kate Foder’s “Hannah and Martin”, is a definite must-see. The play is about a conflict between the main character, Hannah’s, political and personal views and opinions, and between her relationship with Martin and his subsequent actions. It is a complicated love story in which a Jewish girl falls in love with a Nazi sympathizer, during the heart of the Nazi regime in Germany. The goal of this production was for the audience to decide, on their own, whether or not, through her relationship and support for Martin, Hannah had blood on her hands. This play definitely achieves this goal through carefully constructed scenes and powerful chemistry between the characters. “Hannah and Martin” is a successful rendition of the real-life, powerful, love story of Hannah and Martin, which is both heart wrenching and intriguing to watch.

In “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt analyzes Adolph Eichmann while he is on trial in Jerusalem for the crimes that he committed while being a Lieutenant Colonel in the SS during the Nazi Regime. In the book Arendt talks about how Eichmann’s actions were “banal” in the sense that he seemed to be an ordinary person who just committed acts that were evil. Italian-Jewish Writer Primo Levi, a Holocaust Survivor, states that SS officers like Eichmann lived in their own self-deception that made them believe that their actions were caused by just following their orders in the SS. In this paper, I will analyze the views that both Arendt and Levi had about the Eichmann trial and then compare and state the differences of their views. I will then explain the reasons why both Hannah Arendt’s and Primo Levi’s analysis of Adolph Eichmann that show that the actions that he committed were all truly evil actions.

In her classic work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt articulates a vision of totalitarianism that is juxtaposed against her own conceptions of freedom and the purpose of humanity. In this contrasting however, she ignores her own recognition that the meanings of such concepts are intimately tied with the narrative of a given society or group. As a result, this essay will argue that Arendt’s claim that totalitarianism destroys freedom as a living political reality is unjustified, and that instead totalitarianism gives a meaning to freedom that is informed by the collapse of ultimate concepts such as the law of History and the law of Nature into the sphere of man. To show this, we will explore the way Arendt lays the seeds of the