Hannah Arendt Politics And Violence

Dr. King and Malcolm X strived to achieve equality for blacks under the law, more specifically, voting rights, desegregation, and more representation in government and politics. However, both men differed immensely in their tactics and strategies. For Dr. King, the negotiations could be brought about by the persistence of a nonviolent plan where, the oppressed people’s determination would overcome the will of the oppressor in the hearts and minds of the nation. He firmly believed in the principles of Mahatma Gandhi’s method of nonviolence resistance, which had been successful in driving the British out of India. For example, according to King, one of the resisters, or black mans goals is not to humiliate the opponent, (the white man) but to win his friendship and understanding. Dr. King proposed a passive resistance, based on “the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice” (“Pilgrimage to Non Violence” King, 112). He claimed the center of nonviolence is based on the principle of love, or understanding. Dr. King emphasized that the white man should not be held responsible for the minorities and blacks being oppressed. Here is where the two leaders oppose each other. Malcolm X felt social injustice and racism had endured too long, and it was

Martin Luther King Jr. showed African Americans nonviolent ways to resist. He did not want African Americans to commit violent acts for their rights. For example, slaves resist by not picking cotton or picking below their usual amount. Resistant in nonviolent ways require people to find other ways to resist without fighting or hurting someone. According to Pitney, he believes King wanted African Americans “to resist white racism through nonviolent actions undertaken in a spirit of love” (Pitney 2). In other words, he wanted African Americans to fight for their rights but he did not want them harm someone else to get equality. For instance, if a white man was using racial slurs toward a

She talks about power of the masses, stating that power is not attainable by the individual but only by masses. Arendt opens her book by directly saying we are the most violent century known to man, always trying to be bigger and better than another country in this arms race. She talks about the ways in which our society views violence and says humans are naturally violent. Arendt is clearly against war in this book as being unjustifiable and says that war, and violence regarding to politics, is not a means to an end because if we look back in our history we have been fighting war after war with no end. The end will never come; so how then, can one justify the violence of war? In the book, she argues that many of the traits we see in ourselves regarding violence, we see in animals, except animals do not have the ability to reason. Arendt states that, “violence is neither beastly nor irrational- whether we understand these terms in ordinary language of the humanists or in accordance with scientific theories” (62). The author makes is very clear that when we fail to use our ability to reason and instead introduce violence, we are only repeating our past of being a violent being in which the means to our end keeps getting further and further away.

?The Ways Of Meeting Oppression,? by Martin Luther king Jr., gives an over view of how one man classifies his ways of dealing with oppression and how they were dealt with during segregation. . During the first half of the twentieth century segregation was the way of life in the south. It was excepted, and even though it was morally wrong, it still went on, as it there was nothing wrong with it. African Americans were treated as if they where a somehow sub-human, they were treated because of the color of their skin that somehow, someway they were different. Some African Americans began to ?tacitly adjust themselves to oppression?(King), or as King saw it acquiescence. Others began to stand up for themselves but in a matter that involved violence. There where those that stood up for themselves by using nonviolence resistance which was Dr. King?s ideal method of dealing with oppression. ?Nonviolence is the answer to the racial, political and moral question. . .the need for man to overcome oppression and violence. . .?(King). This captures both Dr. King?s powerful feeling and stance on nonviolence as the way to winning the respect of the oppressors. Like Martin Luther king Jr. I to have learned the strategies of how people deal with the three types of oppression which are: acquiescence, violence, and non-violence resistance, but trough historical instances and my personal experiences in the past.

Niebuhr believed that the world was full of evils and oppressions that individuals needed to fight against. People should not stand back and allow the horrors around them to continue, but instead fight back in whatever way they can. MLK would take these teachings and apply them to his ideas of Gandhi’s nonviolent protests. Individuals who are in the minority, and thus unable to take drastic action, would benefit from the use of nonviolence. This strategy would allow Black Americans to seek justice and equality without truly disturbing the current relationship with White Americans. King’s plan was to allow his religious and political ideals to run on the same moral edge, something that Reinhold Niebuhr had surely allowed for in his ideology (Branch, 81-7). Martin Luther King, Jr. was able to use this religious and moral idea of nonviolence to unite Black Americans who were tired of their oppression. Violence and drastic action had proven to arguably make their situation worse, meaning that something as different as peaceful civil disobedience could prove to work.

America stands for equality, freedom, and choice, but upon looking into the history behind America the everlasting struggle of racism, bigotry, and inequality are revealed. Through the 1950s to the 1970s, the fight for civil rights by African Americans was prominent throughout America. Schools, restaurants, and all public facilities were segregated, African Americans were blocked from voting through literacy tests and poll taxes, and The KKK, a white supremacist group, would lynch African American men. The need for the immediate cease of these practices and the desire for equality gave way to the Civil Rights Movement. Leaders and groups arose from this movement, such as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. The overall goal was to achieve rights but there were two significantly different methods of achieving this goal, non-violent civil disobedience and “black power”. The shift from non-violent civil disobedience to “black power” was caused by the emotional toll of being complacent during personal attack and the truth that immediate change calls upon the use of force, and the result of the shift was the further spread of violence.

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

Arendt simply points out that in order for total terror to be inflicted the Nazis had to do away with all opposition. The lack of opposition would give the Nazis, perhaps, a sense of security while they executed millions of people.

Many of these minority groups just wanted to be treated equally and not be judged. Those are some social changes that took place in the progressive

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. caused racial tensions to escalate even more. “Many whites openly celebrated the murder.” (Westheider 97) “The feeling of anger and frustration did not

The framework on which to evaluate the arguments of both authors is that of public versus private interest. Arendt also raises the question of centralized political power, and whether or not its growth is detrimental to society. In the chapter titled: “Foundation I: Constitutio Libertatis,” she begins by establishing the need for restrictions on the powers of national government. Arendt writes that the rights provided in the Constitution are “not powers of themselves, but merely an exemption from the abuses of power; they claim not a share in government, but a safeguard against

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

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

I’ll first talk about Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Adolph Eichmann and also talk about how his motives for committing the crimes were a “banality of evil”. Viewing the trial first hand, Arendt bases her analysis of Eichmann of the criminal charges that he is indicted on, his motives for the crimes, and how he tried to defend himself during the trial. The way that Arendt perceives Eichmann is by the fact that he was aware of the seriousness of the crimes that he committed at the trial, but he did not have the "evil" motives that would usually be seen in the type of heinous