Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition

Pericles’ profound rhetorical skills were displayed within his Funeral Oration honoring Athenian soldiers who demonstrated extraordinary valor. Although the subject of his speech was in honor of the fallen soldiers who died gloriously defending Athens, he primarily praised Athens and everything it stood for. Within his speech, Pericles focuses on acting for the greater good of the city, which included sacrificing oneself much like the modeled sacrifice the dead had displayed through their valor. Through praising Athens and the fallen soldiers Pericles idealized the dead, showing their modeled behavior as honorable and glorious, which further appealed the sacrifice of dying for Athens. Pericles idealized motives continuously praised Athens: the dead, ancestors, and the city. Theses motives were intended to explain why Athenians should love their city and willingly sacrifice to ensure continued happiness and freedom.

The Jewish identity is reintegrated among the monuments through Hebrew inscriptions, the Star of David, and ritual practices (Appendix B, Figure 3). Eva Reimers (1999), interprets that a collective group identity is based on the idea of common historical origin (p. 148). This idea is important when analyzing the role of identity in the process of mourning Holocaust survivors. It illustrates that the formation of identity is founded on historical events. Therefore, the Holocaust serves as a historical event, which reinforced the importance of Jewish identity to the Jewish community. The practices of collectively mourning Holocaust survivors serves as an extension over the generations, which reduce the threat death poses to reduction of Jewish identity (Reimers, 1999, p.148). Furthermore, remembering the victims of the Holocaust creates a collective

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

Between the years 431 and 404 B.C.E. Greece was involved in a war between two powers, Athens and Sparta; as a consequence, Greek city-states adjusted to wartime stresses. I want to use one Greek polis, Athens, to show how the Peloponnesian War caused the polis to change, particularly with regards to citizenship and the greater concept of paideia. This period is absolutely important to us today, since the changing Athens provided a milieu in which democracy was tested. In his oration for Athenians killed in the first battles of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles presented a statement about Athenian democracy.

The goal of this paper is to prove my understanding of Plato’s critique of Athens by comparing Pericles’ Funeral Oration to Socrates’ Apology. Plato wrote Socrates’ Apology to express his ideas and opinions on the flaws of democracy. Pericles’ Funeral Oration is a speech given to the community of Athens during a time of war. Pericles is trying to encourage and raise the spirits of the citizens of Athens because according to him, they live in the greatest city on earth. To demonstrate my understanding of The Apology and the Funeral Oration, I will summarize both pieces and then provide specific examples of Pericles’ ignorance about the democracy in Athens, and of Socrates’ wisdom about human nature and politics, to further explain the comparison between the two. Both pieces of literature can be analyzed under the concept of The Allegory of the Cave, written by Plato. In a sense, Pericles is stuck further back in the cave than Socrates because Socrates understands the flaws of the democracy in Athens and recognizes that humans do not know everything, whereas Pericles has one closeminded perspective of Athens.

The funeral oration by Pericles is filled with instances in which he exhibits love for common good that surpasses individual benefit. According to Pericles, the Athenians illuminate qualities of people who are good and contribute to the benefit of their city because it is in fact great. In this case, it is possible for the reader to infer that common good can only be attained if the society in which individuals live is permissive of the same. Indeed, it is human nature to tend to feel the individual need and promote its good as opposed to what is good for the society in general. However, Pericles attempts to resolve this predicament of individual and common good by showcasing that people are capable for having such a collective form of thinking if they reside in a society that is permissive of the same. The inference can be gathered from the manner in which the orator describes Athens with so much awe. In his opinion, the city is to be admired because it is economically, socially, and politically great. There is a high level of democracy in Athens, so much so that anyone can wake up one day and decide to be a ruler. He regards the city as one to be admired by many, and in which the aspects of equality and

In the Greek society, there was enough wine and spirits for Socrates and his buddies to philosophize on the world around them, beginning the conversation of what is just and not. Ideas transform throughout the conversations of Socrates, Adeimantus, and Glaucon in the Republic forming what justice is in the opinion of Socrates. This opinion, the city in speech, is challenged by Adeimantus and Glaucon but Socrates eloquently responds to their challenges. Socrates’ answers with his city of speech are effective against the challenges of Adeimantus and Glaucon because every human has a soul with decency that is almost impossible to deny.

According to the text On Lying: Writing Philosophical History after the Enlightenment and after Arendt by Sophia Rosenfeld focuses on the works by Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish intellectual who fled Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, lived in Paris as a stateless refugee and Zionist activist until 1941 and then fled to and settled in the United States (Isaac). Hannah Arendt wrote a “Political Lying” essay at the end of the 1960’s and first years of 1970’s. During this time Arendt became an experienced world traveler.

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

What is remembered about a society in history is a fraction of the perspectives present in the given culture. However, the ones who are immortalized are not those whose work was not unimportant during their day. In fact, more often society’s “most admired” characteristics are direct reflections of the character traits that are required to be successful in the most esteemed institutions. Universally, an individual’s focus has always been on achieving immortality, whatever that meant for them, and most often that “most admired” characteristic was how they could do this. For the Greeks, who were proudest of their democracy (particularly in Athens), the “most admired” characteristic was political leadership or simply just involvement and devotion.

At this point I would like to introduce one more theorist, Hannah Arendt, author of the book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt introduces what she saw to be the rise of totalitarian states, using the specific examples of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In doing so she introduces the idea of the “mass man.” In Arendt’s description of the “mass man” she identifies several characteristics: they are apolitical: giving silent consent to those governing over them, they are concerned with private matters: they care more about their standard of living than the political, they are atomized: they don’t have social ties, and they are willing to believe narratives that promise (this can be seen especially in the United States with narratives of economic

In questions of the elements that help bind together the notion of a collective national identity, it is argued that the nation is constituted partly through a collective memory that is shared between many or most of the members of a nation. The collective memory is based on both real events and ancient, fictional narratives locating the collective inside a shared history which is constantly

“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

Hannah Arendt’s Human Condition is crammed with distinctions: between labour, work, and action. In this essay I will talk more about the human action, the uniqueness of individuality, and how the actions draw human life story. Actions are unique and unrepeatable. Action is not what they do, but what they did, and how meaningful it is. Action defines the unique individuality. “To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin, to set something into motion”(pg 177). When you stand up and do something different than others around you, and the action you do is telling something about you, this is called to be an action. Action is public and it’s creating something that is lasting within the world. For Hannah Arendt action is one of the most important things in human nature. In fact, your actions will shape yourself and give a description about your biography. Action is the most unique thing that human nature has. As human we all have many things in common, but we all act in different ways. Every single being is unique in his or her way of acting. It is funny how we all are living our lives but at the same time we all are acting. In some point we can say living life is equal of acting, and being a human is equal of being an actresses. But as we know every play beside an actress has an author too. Who is an author of human life-story? Is it us? Are we the actor or the author of our own actions? Those are the questions that will be answered on this essay.

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.