0:00
In today's lecture, I want to talk about some
0:02themes both from The Human Condition and from The Origins
0:05of Totalitarianism. I'll start with some ideas
0:07from The Human Condition.
0:09For Arendt, it's important to talk about the human
0:11condition rather than human nature, because humans don't
0:15have an essential nature that is unchanging over time.
0:19Rather, we condition our environment and are
0:23conditioned by it in a reciprocal fashion.
0:27There is no fundamental essence to human nature
0:31because we are always both shaping and being shaped
0:35by what surrounds us.
0:38We all partake in a shared human condition, but
0:42there's no kind of bird's eye view of an unchanging
0:45nature outside of history.
0:47This is probably a familiar concept to us by now
0:50because it picks up on some of the themes from Hegel
0:53and Marx about the way that humans are shaped in
0:56relation to our environment.
0:58For Arendt as well.
1:00Humans are a who rather than a what.
1:03We help define ourselves and we help define each other.
1:08The human condition is characterized by what
1:10Arendt calls, using a Latin term, the Vita
Vita Activa
1:13Activa, or the active life.
1:16Now the Vita Activa has three primary levels,
1:20we might say, to it.
1:21The first is labor.
1:22And labor refers to our activity in terms of
1:25biological processes, creating and sustaining life, taking
1:29care of our physical needs.
1:32Now the second level is work, which is activity in
1:35terms of the life of humans, the things that we create,
1:39the sort of environments or worldliness that we establish.
1:44So this vase is the product of work, not of
1:47labor in Arendt's sense.
1:49So she's using labor and work in pretty specific ways.
1:53Art is also an expression of work for Arendt.
1:57The third level of the Vita Activa is action.
2:01And this refers to activity in the sense of the
2:05social life of humans.
2:08The life of action is undertaken by humans as a
2:12collective or as a plurality.
2:15The life of thinking the life of politics are part
2:19of this domain of action.
2:21So thinking is action for Arendt and action
2:25is the political activity par excellence.
2:28What characterizes humans is that we have this capacity
2:31to be what Aristotle calls political animals.
Isolation
2:35Let's connect this idea of the Vita Activa to the
2:38Origins of Totalitarianism because in this text, Arendt
2:42seems extremely concerned that we have given up
2:47taking on the challenges of the life of action, of
2:53real political activity and engagement with one another,
2:58and just sort of lapsed into this laziness of
3:02accepting the status quo and allowing our sort of
3:06baser impulses to take over.
3:09Arendt talks about how one of the origins of totalitarianism
3:13is isolation, when the political sphere of life,
3:17which for her means acting together in pursuit of a
3:20common goal, is destroyed,
3:24and we start to pit ourselves against each other, we feel
3:28lonely in a political sense.
3:31We don't want to talk politics with each other.
3:33We don't feel like it's important for
3:35us to be political.
3:37We feel a sense of powerlessness to
3:39change the status quo.
3:41And this isolation in a political sense can breed
3:46loneliness about human life as a whole, which she discusses
3:50on pages four 74 and four 75.
3:53We have this experience of not belonging to the world
3:56at all, which she says is a common ground for terror.
4:00This experience of loneliness and isolation,
4:03perhaps paradoxically, is actually a shared experience
4:08of the ever-growing masses, she says on 478.
The Mass
4:13So what is the mass and how is it that we live in an era
4:18of the masses, even as we live in an era of extreme
4:22loneliness and isolation?
4:25Arendt describes the mass as not being held
4:27together by any sense of common interest or goals.
4:31They might actually have common interests and goals,
4:33but they don't recognize themselves as such.
4:37And she describes how both the Nazi and communist
4:40movements recruited members from the mass of people who
4:44are apparently indifferent.
4:46These people that the mainstream parties had given
4:49up on because they saw them as indifferent, maybe even as
4:53lazy as lacking motivation.
4:55And I want say that you probably
4:58have already picked up on some disturbing parallels
5:01to the present time, and there are more to come.
5:05Arendt is trying to figure out here how Germany
5:09in the 1930s became a bastion of the Nazi party,
5:13when previously there had been a republic.
5:15And here are a few of the many, many elements
5:18that she draws on.
5:19So she says that totalitarian movements end the illusions
totalitarianism
5:24of a democratic society.
5:26And there are two in particular that she
5:27focuses on on page 313.
5:30The first is the illusion that the people as a
5:32majority had taken an active part in government.
5:37The reality was, she says, that a democracy functions
5:41according to rules that are actively recognized
5:44only by a minority.
5:45So majority rule is often not the actual case in
5:49a democratic society, but democratic society
5:51pretends that it is.
5:53And the second illusion is that the indifferent masses,
5:56people who were politically apathetic, didn't matter.
6:00Right?
6:00It's like, Oh, you know, there are plenty of folks
6:03who don't really have strong political affiliation.
6:05They're just sort of apolitical, they don't do
6:07politics, and they don't want to discuss them.
6:10Democratic society functioned under the illusion that
6:13those people didn't matter.
6:15But what actual totalitarian movements such as that
6:19of national socialism recognized was that these
6:23people could be enlisted for totalitarian projects
6:26because of their feelings of isolation and loneliness.
6:29One of the first signs of the breakdown of the party
6:31system in a democracy is the failure to recruit members
6:36from the younger generations.
6:38Younger generations come of age and they're like, what
6:41do I care about politics?
6:43That's just not my deal!
6:45Another is the lack of silent support of unorganized masses.
6:50A mass of furious individuals who seemingly have nothing
6:54in common start to develop.
6:56What they have in common is precisely their sense that
7:02party members are doomed and that the powers that be
7:06are stupid and fraudulent, she discusses on page 315.
7:11The self-centered bitterness of the masses develops
7:15hand in hand with their increasing lack of care for
7:19their own self preservation.
7:21The masses sort of start to go haywire and self-destruct,
7:25and they're okay with destroying themselves
7:27and others around them.
7:29These are extremely dangerous conditions
7:31for totalitarianism.
7:32Arendt gives a very useful summary of totalitarian
7:36government on page 460.
7:39Totalitarian government transforms
7:41classes into masses.
7:43It also supplants the party system by a mass movement.
7:49Importantly, Arendt says the origins of totalitarianism
7:52aren't so much in a one party dictatorship as they
7:55are in a mass movement that's not really driven
7:59by any particular goal.
8:01Totalitarian government also shifts the center of power
8:05from the army to the police.
8:07And in addition, it establishes a foreign policy
8:10that is openly directed towards world domination.
8:14She says on page 462, that totalitarianism is
8:18lawfulness without legality.
8:23One thing that totalitarian governments tend to do is
8:26supplant legality with laws of history and or laws of nature.
8:33For instance, the idea that our particular people
8:36is destined to dominate the world, right?
8:39In the case of national socialism.
8:41In this sense, humans are taken to be swept along by
8:44a force outside of them.
8:47And Arendt mentions actually Darwin and Marx
8:50here, as examples of this very troublesome idea.
8:53Actual laws that are context specific begin to
8:57be replaced by total terror, which she says translates
9:01into reality, the law of nature and or of history.
9:05This idea that you are being swept along by forces, and you
9:08can either be at the bottom or you can be at the top.
9:11Terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.
9:16She says on page 464, Terror makes us think
9:21that we are nothing but the pawns of nature or
9:24the pawns of history.
9:27We are not free.
9:29Terror eliminates freedom and the source of freedom.
9:33One of the many ways it does this is through
9:36undermining our capacity for action, which is the
9:40third level and the highest level of the Vita Activa.
9:43Recall that thinking is one of the components of action.
9:47For Arendt, totalitarianism undermines our capacity
9:50for free thinking in part because it causes us to
9:55question the distinction between reality and fiction.
10:00And to conclude that there is no valid
10:02distinction to be made.
10:03So on page 474, she says that the ideal subject of
10:06totalitarian the rule is not the convinced dogmatist,
10:11it's not the person who says "national socialism
10:14is the best political philosophy out there.
10:16I'm going to hang my hat on it."
10:17And that's that.
10:19No.
10:20The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is
10:23the person for whom fact and fiction, true and
10:27false, no longer have any relevant meaning.
10:30They don't have any relevant distinction such
10:32that somebody can say, this is the right view,
10:35or this is the wrong view.
ideologies
10:37I want to close by saying something briefly
10:39about ideologies, which Arendt addresses here.
10:42She says that ideologies are not inherently
10:44totalitarian, but they do have totalitarian elements.
10:48And an ideology is an -ism that can explain
10:52everything by deducing it from a single premise.
10:56Ideologies draw from the scientific approach
10:59and they pretend to be a scientific philosophy, right?
11:03Everything is organized around a particular principle,
11:06say spirit in Hegel.
11:08Ideologies pretend to know the mysteries of the
11:11entire historical process.
11:14And for ,Arendt they're extremely troublesome because
11:17they reduce our freedom
11:19by replacing it with a straitjacket of logic.
11:23Everything can be explained-- and not just explained,
11:26but explained away.
11:28The claim to total explanation that we find in ideologies
11:32intersects with ideologies' independence from experience.
11:38An ideology doesn't think it needs to draw on the
11:41evidence of experience,
11:43because all it does is explain phenomena by deducing them
11:47from overarching abstract a priori principles.
11:51So for instance, something like that, alternative facts,
11:54I think Arendt hints at on page 471, where she says that
11:59in ideology, different facts can change their reality in
12:03accordance with their claim.
12:05You might think about the way that a supporter of Q Anon
12:08is always going to be able to fit in a particular belief
12:11that seems to contradict their belief system with
12:14another belief that makes sense of the apparent
12:16contradiction and says, no, actually this can fit back
12:19in to the Q Anon narrative.
12:22In the end, ideologies have an unreal consistency
12:26as Arendt describes them.
12:28Reality, she notes, is not itself consistent.
12:32And so anytime we're able to find a perfectly consistent
12:35picture, whether of history or of nature, we are
12:39finding ourselves in a very troubling situation where
12:43we're not letting ourselves be taught by reality.
12:46We're trying to slot everything in to a
12:49predetermined set of principles deduced from one
12:52overarching principle, but that doesn't do justice to the
12:56messy nature of reality of the world as it is, including the
13:01inconsistent and unpredictable character of human freedom.
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