Truth In Politics Hannah Arendt Summary

The first chapter of Lying About Hitler examines the challenges to objectivity that surfaces in the court case between David Irving and Debra Lipstadt. Evans was requested to participate due to his objectivity, however, impartiality within the field of History comes under scrutiny. Evans examines what it means to history and its importance to the court case. The trial transforms into a study of whether the Holocaust had been depicted truthfully or had objectivity created our modern notion. Irving’s belief of preconceived notions and opinions corrupting studies in the field, if true, would discredit many historians’ works. Lipstadt believes that Irving’s anti-Semite sentiments are the cause of him misrepresenting and falsifying sources. Evans

“Whatever the motives for conflict, they are incorporated in individual attitudes and expressed in popular opinion.” (Albig 1939, 139) It has often been argued that Defence Secretary Robert McNamara “has done more to shape that conflict than anyone outside the Viet Cong” (Kennedy 1993, 93). This is an important illustration of the power of the media; through the media, “The domino theory [was] the dominant interpretation of events in Indochina” (Schulzinger 1998, 88).

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

Vietnam was an entirely new type of war for the United States. It still remains morally and historically problematic in today’s society. The Vietnam War had a tremendous impact on American society and culture, primarily because it was the first war to be televised. The American press played a significant

Here Isserman and Kazin acknowledge that the military’s hands were tied, as they were, not only by popular discontent, but because Johnson did not want to risk making the Cold War hot. Insomuch as success in the conflict was measured by enemy body count in lieu of territorial gains, there would be no direct bombing of Hanoi. As much as the consummate Texan and his inherited Alamo mythology made him believe he was fighting for freedom, there was a line he would not cross, and the North Vietnamese took advantage of this. Americans who opposed the war by 1968 did so because they believed that it could not be won. Once the Pentagon Papers were released in 1971, this purloined collection of documents related to the escalation of American involvement in Southeast Asia, spanning presidencies from Eisenhower to Johnson, further deteriorated the credibility of the American government, and helped to lead the majority of Americans to believe that the war in Vietnam was wrong

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

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

A quarter of a century after the Fall of Saigon, Vietnam continues to exercise a powerful hold of the American psyche. No deployment of American troops abroad is considered without the infusion of the Vietnam question. No formulation of strategic policy can be completed without weighing the possibility of Vietnanization. Even the politics of a person cannot be discussed without taking into account his opinion on the Vietnam Ware. This national obsession with Vietnam is perfectly national when viewed from a far. It was the only war that the United States has ever lost. It defined an era of American history that must rank with the depression as one of this nation’s most traumatic. It concluded with Watergate and led many to believe that the

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 analysis of lies in a hypertext fiction seems interesting and original. Pryll brings about a unique concept of how it is easy to understand a person by first understanding their lies. Nevertheless, Pryll introduces a code or a double meaning for phrases or keywords, which force the reader to question on telling each other about lies. To be honest, I agree with your stating that lies can tell you on what an individual want, rather than what they are. However, I expected to hear two other concepts that I saw relevant in Pryll hypertext fiction on lies. The first one, “lies are dreams, and fantasy,” while the other one, “who want to live the truth, when he/she can live a lie.” The two may seem obvious, but have a lot of intensity.

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.

Therefore, in my opinion, it makes sense to address both philosophers in the same chapter. At the same time, Arendt tries to avoid any references to "human nature". She explicitly states that the human condition is not the same as human nature, if only because, according to her, 'attempts to define human nature almost invariably end with some construction of a deity' (Arendt 1998, 11). Obviously, Arendt's aim is not to construct a deity. Rather, she starts a necessarily anthropological discussion of the human condition in order to target the political dead-ends of the 20th century's mass society. For Arendt, political ideas of Aristotle are definitely helpful in such an

The “Truth in Politics” expands upon Arendt’s “history of thought and politics and in her situation less between Europe Totalitarianism and post-war American democracy” (qtd. in Rosenfeld 218-230). Arendt resolves politics and deception link together in some way. Furthermore, not all lying past to present are identical in form or effect. In “Truth and Politics” Arendt stands firm on the position as she finds in total totalitarian regime all reality become phony and