collection contains eight essays and speeches by Arendt, mainly from her later period, Most of them are very accessible, although it also contains some hard philosophical nuts to crack, The themes are hyperrelevant: ethics, responsibility, judgments, Arendt digs inexorably deep, especially when she broaches the holocaust and the notion of personal or collective responsibility, She has a lot of issues with that last concept and that is striking, I know it's an open door, but: what an impressive personality! Colectânea de ensaios de Hannah Arendt excelente mas perturbadora e inquietante, Aborda o holocausto na perspectiva do cidadão comum, que sem grandes conhecimentos ideológicos ou políticos, se transformou num monstro sem qualquer tipo de arrependimento ou sentido critico.
Lendo estes ensaios quase apetece dizer: é mentira a natureza humana não é assim tão terrível e cruel, existe também o outro lado que não foi abordado neste livro.
A ler sem duvida got another book of Hannah Arendt, me so happy. . : It's deep! Could not be different: Hannah Arendt was like a catchment basin في فترة كان يعيش فيها المجتمع الألماني واحدة من أفضع الفترات في التاريخ حين كنت اقرأ عن النازية والنازيين اسأل نفسي أهم بشر مثلنا من المسؤول عن كل هذا
أين هي ضمائرهم معقول أن جميعهم وحوش بشرية لا ترحم ولا تشعر
الحقيقة أنهم بشر مثلنا في هذا الكتاب قدمت لي ارنت تفاسير منطقية وأجوبة نظريات مثل نظرية الدولاب والشر التافه أو تفاهة الشر نجح الحزب في اخضاع الشعب وحاول البعض اخفاء حقيقة أن غالبية الشعب الألماني كان متعاطفا مع هتلر وحزبه هل يؤثمون هل هم متواطئون مع القتلة لم يخضع الحزب الشعب وحسب وانما جعل من "القتلة التافهين" عملهم كالمكائن أو الآلات التي لا تشعر بشيء تنفذ وتصمت تقوم بمهامها فقط ايخمان كان مثالا للشرير التافه الذي لا يقتل من اجل قضية أو أيدلوجيا معينة كان يريد الحفاظ على منصبه ووظيفته لذا ابدا أهمية ذلك على أرواح الملايين من البشر رغم أنه ليس مسؤول مباشرا عن ما جرى وهنا يكمن معنى تفاهة الشر من تحليل فلسفي ارنت تجيب على الأسئلة الأخلاقية المتعلقة بهذه الأحداث وأهما هل الصمت ذنبا صمت بابا الفاتيكان والشعب الألماني والكنيسة,
Every bit as relevant today as it was when these essays were first published, My favorites have to be "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy", "Thinking and Moral Considerations", and "Home to Roost", The one on Little Rock was pretty profound also, It's immediately clear, also, why Agamben was such a big fan of hers, She makes enormous distinctions between the activity of thinking and simple thinking, as well as differentiating thinking and knowledge, For her the only moral assurance we have is when we think, and we validate for ourselves what is rightly just in this world, As one of the most influential continental postHolocaust writers of philosophy, Arendt certainly knows the true pain of what happens when the seeminglymoral world breaks down.
"If thinking, the twoinone of the soundless dialogue, actualizes the difference within our identity as given in consciousness and thereby results in conscience as its byproduct, then judging, the byproduct of the liberating effect of thinking, realizes thinking, makes it manifest in the world of appearances, where I am never alone and always much too busy to be able to think.
The manifestation of the wind of thought is no knowledge it is the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly, And this indeed may prevent catastrophe, at least for myself, in the rare moments when the chips are down, " Hannah Arendt is probably recognized today as the greatest thinker I hesitate to use the word “philosopher” because she didnt care for that word applied to herself who tried to reckon with the moral and political repercussions of the rise of totalitarianism and fascism in Europe.
Shes probably best known for “The Origins of Totalitarianism”and her later “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, which made the term “the banality of evil” a household phrase.
“Responsibility and Judgment” is a collection of shorter, occasional pieces speeches, extended lectures, articles, and essays that orbit around those two dimensions of moral practice,
For those new to Arendts sometimes vertigoinducing forays into etymological origins in attempting to mine the meaning of words she was, after all, the most famous student of Heidegger working in the United States, these pieces offer a welcome entrée into her body of thought.
They are typically full of her moral seriousness, while their mostly abbreviated length make the contours of her moral thought much more accessible to those who are unfamiliar with her longer work.
In this collection, she touches again upon some of her previous themes with the occasional variation with the occasional flight into “pure philosophy,” but the focus is very much about the mind operating under the dire constraints of totalitarianism and fascism.
Her modestly titled essay “Questions on Moral Philosophy” by far the longest in the book at almostpages is a detailed archaeology of the thought of thinkers as disparate as Saint Augustine, Kant, and Nietzsche.
At the heart of her writing, though, Arendt is obsessed with the same question that drew the attention of her most illustrious teacher: “Was ist denken” Her answer is that thinking at least moral thinking is that unique state in which we are both alone and not alone left alone to the devices of our own mind, but simultaneously able to consider both sides of an argument, to think against ones self, to play advocatus diaboli.
It is either the harmony or cacophony that arises between these two voices that lays the ground for moral thought, The moral thinker always has that miniaturized version of herself sitting on her shoulder, ready to speak out against injustice,
As far as I can tell, the only moral misfire in the entire collection is her essay titled “Reflections on Little Rock,” in which she essentially argues that it wasnt the place of the federal government to see that the schools in Arkansas and the rest of the south were racially integrated.
She thinks this constitutes having “unfairly shifted the burden of responsibility from the shoulders of adults to those of children, ” While clearly not in favor of de jure segregation, Arendt thinks that school belongs properly in the social sphere where we should be allowed to freely associate with whomever we choose even though she oddly misses the point that enforced segregation takes exactly that right away and that stateimposed integration would restore it.
To read Arendt carefully is to constantly be reminded of the seriousness of her task, and her unquestioned ability to look abstract moral questions directly in the eye without even the slightest sense of evasion.
Shes used to working within the confines of human weakness and the myopic scope of historical memory, while at the same time stressing that our minds and that memory are all we have to work with.
Shes clearly a thinker with blind spots, but Arendt has no need to entertain her readers with shibboleths about the vast, unlimited human power to solve moral problems.
Shes accustomed to the fumbling about in the postlapsarian darkness that is the human condition the title of still another book that deserves revisiting, but still manages to unearth truths that are both uncanny and endlessly relevant.
Die große Philosophin nimmt hier ihre Idee von der Banalität des Bösen wieder auf, Sie denkt über Ethik und Moral, Gut und Böse nach, Ein starker Text von ungebrochener Aktualität, Tapa na cara da sociedade, Incisive, revealing, informative are some of the impressions one has while reading this collection of essays, Arendt, goruslerini ve bu gorusleri ifade ederken kurdugu nedenselligi sevdigim ve bu nedenle kitaplarini okumaktan cok keyif aldigim bir siyasal bilimci dusunur, Bu kitabini da ayni keyifle okudum, hatta dusunsel yuku nedeniyle ozellikle aceleye getirmeden okudum, Arendt bu kitabini iki ana baslik altinda toplamis: sorumluluk ve yargi, Kitabin ilk bolumunde sorumluluk, ikinci bolumunde ise yargi basligi altinda konular kendi icinde ayriliyor, Hitler doneminde gerceklesen Yahudi soykirimini, islenen suclar ve failler uzerinden genis kapsamli bir analiz ile ele aliyor, Diktatorluk kosullarinda kisisel sorumluluklar, kolektif sorumluluk, dusunme etkinligi ve ahlaki degerlendirmeler gibi konular ilk bolumun konusunu olusturuyor, Ilk yarinin en uzun bolumunu olusturan yaklasiksayfa ahlak felsefesinin bazi sorunlari baslikli kisimda, Arendt ahlak felsefesinin meselelerini Gorgias'ta Socrates'in savunduklari uzerinden degerlendirerek okuyucuda bambaska ufuklar aciyor.
Ikinci yarida ise Little Rock olayi uzerinden Amerika'daki siyahi irkciligi, yine Amerika'nin Vietnam'da yuruttugu savas ve Auschwitz uzerinde duruyor, Bu kitap kesinlikle bir kere okunup rafa kaldirilacak bir kitap degil, mutlaka bir sure sonra yeniden okumayi dusunuyorum, Bu arada cevirmenin olaganustu bir is cikardigini soylemeden edemeyecegim, The most and greatest evil, Arendt believes, is not done by wicked or evil people, but “by people who never made up their mind to be either bad or good” “by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
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This is probably my favorite read from my Arendt collection aside from book one of The Life of the Mind because the essays in this beautifully and clearly sum up some of the themes and ideas from the heavy hitters like EIJ, THC, and OOT.
The explanation of Kant and the examination of Gorgias is impeccable, Arendt loves saying "when the chips are down," I noticed :
The only thing about this collection that's, . . an issue for me, is obviously the Little Rock essay, which I'm not going to attempt to defend although Arendt issued a rather blasé apology about it later in a letter to James Baldwin.
Do I like the idea that we shouldn't expect children to shoulder political burdens for us Yes, Do I like Arendt's moralizing about black parenting and about why discrimination should be allowed in a certain realm, in controlled measures Hell no!
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