HANNAH ARENDT: Her Ideas Changed the World

"Where there is no political alternative, there remains only the moral alternative – non-participation." - Hannah Arendt

 

Tonight at the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami a powerful movie about a brilliant thinker was screened. The film is HANNAH ARENDT that dramatizes an important chapter in the life of the political theorist Hannah Arendt. The film covers Arendt's reporting of the trial in Jerusalem of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker and the events surrounding the publication of her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963. She also wrote a series of articles for The New York Review of Books.


It was during this period that Hannah Arendt coined the term "the banality of evil." The film also engages in a nuanced analysis of the difference between what is radical and what is extreme and raises the question of what falls between resistance and cooperation.



Arendt is best known for her first major work, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),and The Human Condition (1958). The interview above with English subtitles is also found on youtube with Spanish subtitles was conducted in and broadcast in West Germany on October 28, 1964.

Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher

The film is directed by Margarethe von Trotta (Vision, Rosa Luxemburg) and the German actress Barbara Sukowa plays the title role. Its been well reviewed with Rotten Tomatoes giving it an 89% fresh rating and is now showing in South Florida this weekend with a limited release. Go out and see it if you can.

Moral Responsibility under Totalitarian Dictatorships (Pt. 2)

By Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

"Does conscience function at all or is it ‘social’? Which means, does it not function at all? Was it really possible to change the morals of a whole people like table manners?" - Hannah Arendt

IV. The moral side of the matter came to light after the war through court room procedure. The grandeur of the courtroom is that no one can any longer be a cog. To excuse yourself with – merely a cog, everybody else would have done it – is immaterial, because the judge looks only at you and asks: And why did you become a cog or continue to be a cog? All you say about cogs is at best mitigating circumstances.

And when this moral side came to light, there was the horror that it had been quite easy to still the conscience of a whole people — except a numerically small minority. When we think of morality, we think of conscience, but the words, morals as ethics, means manners, customs, conventions etc. Hence the question with which we are confronted is pretty serious: Does conscience function at all or is it “social”? Which means, does it not function at all? Was it really possible to change the morals of a whole people like table manners? There were however the minority of non-participants — we are not concerned with heroes or saints — but with everybody.

Who were the participants, who were the others?

V. 1. What is required of conscience in a situation in which you have nothing but yourself to guide you? You pit yourself not only against the legal system of the country but against public opinion. 2. Since totalitarianism relies on the atomization, you are – or think you are – one against all. For every communication is dangerous. The man whom you trust today may change tomorrow, and then you are lost. Those who think likewise are not known to you. 3. You apparently hold fast to standards which have lost all reality, they appear nowhere. 4. Empirically: Those who were always used to hold fast to standards without examining them, without doubting, who were conventional and respectable were the easiest to coordinate. The doubters, skeptics, rebels, and the like were much harder to sway. For this is a system with its own standards, and unexamined standards, simply accepted upon authority – or public opinion – crumble the moment they are no longer real. All that is left then is the habit to have standards to hold fast to something. And such standards are supplied by the new order.

VI. Those who did not participate were neither people who were old-fashioned enough not to accept new standards nor were they in possession of better ones. Their conscience did not function in this mechanical way — where you have a law and then subsume all particular cases under it. They were arrogant enough to judge by themselves. And their criterion, I’d suggest, was Socratic: Socrates said not only: Better to suffer than to do wrong, but he explained it: It is better to be at odds with the whole world than being one to be at odds with yourself. They asked themselves if they would still be able to live with themselves after having done certain deeds. And they decided not to participate, not because the world would be better (not because of political responsibility) and not because they were worried about the salvation of their soul, but because they wanted to go on living with themselves. They refused to murder not so much because they still held fast to the command Thou Shalt not Kill but because they were unwilling to live together with a murderer.

Two examples --

The presupposition for this kind of judging is the habit of examining and living together with yourself. We call that silent dialogue in which you speak with yourself thinking, but it is not technical, not the privilege of the educated and sophisticated. No one was easier to lure into the new morality-trap than the intellectuals because they can produce ideas for everything and they have a tendency to judge according to what makes them produce such things as notions and ideas.

We have a tendency to think of people who are in the habit of examining basic propositions and standards as destructive. We have every reason to change our minds on this subject. Doubters and skeptics are more reliable, not because doubting is wholesome or skepticism good but because such people are used to make up their own minds — to live together with themselves.

Hannah Arendt

VII. This attitude of non-participation, of not doing certain things quite irrespective of the world, is politically a marginal situation. It is irresponsible, and such irresponsibility is justified when you are completely impotent. Hence it is the right attitude in extreme situations, and it can also be the right attitude for those who have made Thinking a way of life — the philosopher, or whoever claims freedom from politics, which our body politic guarantees to all citizens.

Against this attitude, the current claim was: Every citizen has a duty to obey the laws. He cannot examine the laws and then decide whether or not they are good laws; such conduct would undermine every body politic. No government can survive without this obedience. This is a fallacy, and it resides in the word obedience. Only a child obeys. An adult actually supports the laws or the authority that claims obedience. No action is possible without support and help from others. The one who starts action needs the support from others to see the matter through. Without such “obedience,” a leader is helpless — whereas in the nursery the child is helpless or the slave when they refuse to “cooperate.” If I obey the laws of the land, I actually support its constitution, and every revolution starts when this tacit consent is withdrawn.

In political terms, the non-participants to the extent that they came in conflict with the laws of the land did not claim freedom from politics but withdrew their consent, refused to support by shunning such places of responsibility where such support under the name of obedience was required, or by paying with their lives for non-obedience.

VIII. In conclusion: Moral responsibility begins where political responsibility ends, where you either can’t or won’t do anything for this world. In certain inhuman political situations it may be a sign of courage to admit impotence and to say: I don’t want any part of this world, I shall not take my share and shall not participate. Then, there is nothing left but life itself in its sheer thereness. And now you will decide according to this criterion only – the old Socratic criterion: If I can’t do this (f.i. examine myself and those around me) life is not worth living, and if I must do that – for instance. kill or bear false witness against my neighbor – I won’t be able to live with myself any longer. And though there may be many people who don’t live with themselves — and that means who, strictly speaking, have no conscience — for me life would not be worth living if I lost myself. If you are lucky, this moral attitude under totalitarian dictatorship leads you only into isolation from your fellow-men, if you are unlucky it leads you into death.

Source: Arendt, Hannah “Moral Responsibility under Totalitarian Dictatorship,” The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress, Speeches and Writings File: 1923–1975

Moral Responsibility under Totalitarian Dictatorships (Pt. 1)

"[W]here there is no political alternative, there remains only the moral alternative – non-participation." - Hannah Arendt

By Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

1. We speak about moral responsibility and not about political and about totalitarian and not just any form of dictatorship or tyranny. To be clear about the subject, let me just define in a preliminary way the difference between moral and political on one side, between totalitarian and other forms of tyranny on the other. For the question is: Is there something like moral responsibility still extant under totalitarianism? And this question came up after the war in the war crime trials. All these trials under the assumption that there were moral alternatives that conscience continued to function as before.

1. All tyrannies deprive their citizens of power, condemn them to impotence, hence take away all possibilities to organize themselves. Atomization of the body politic. They expel men from the realm of the political and tell him to go and take care of their private matters only. Whatever regards all of them, the commonwealth, will be taken care by One man and his advisors only. They are not total or totalitarian because they respect to an extent the private sphere, and the citizens, except in case of emergency, are not involved in the possible crimes. Totalitarian tyranny is “democratic”: the citizens are deprived of all power, they are carefully atomized, but they constantly appear in public, their private life is by no means respected, on the contrary no privacy exists any longer, and they [are] implicated directly in all crimes. These crimes are not just committed in their name, but they themselves are asked to do it. Hence, they act, but without any initiative. They follow the leader, and their only virtue is obedience. They are participants – and this they never were in classic tyranny. This is the reason why they could be held criminally (and morally) responsible and why they could say, on the other hand a) I did not what I wanted to do, I had no bad motives (or good ones either), I am entirely motiveless, and b) If had not done it somebody else would, it did not matter. To put it differently: All citizens had become cogs. (No Nazi could be found after the debacle, no Stalinist can be found in Russia.

2. This is the setting. And the question is: Is there still moral responsibility left and what are its criteria? Political responsibility is out of the question once the totalitarian dictatorship is established because there is no power left. If you take as the model of moral responsibility the Socratic proposition: It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong, then the answer from the political side would be: Suffering and Doing wrong are both equally bad, for there should be no wrong. In other words, the accent lies entirely on the world and not on the self. “The world is out of joint”, but not your self. In moral matters on the contrary: You are concerned with your self. Politically, it is almost as wrong not to resist evil as it is to do it. But to resist evil you may be forced to do evil. This tension between the political and moral spheres is inevitable. The early Christians knew it quite well. They engaged in doing good, hence decided that they would shun the public realm and remain in the seclusion of the private. (Tertullian, the Gospels) Machiavelli still knew it quite well: How not to be good – that is, not how to be bad (evil deeds may bring power but not glory, and glory is the ultimate goal of Machiavellian politics) but how not to apply this criterion.

3. In this political sense, all people who live under a totalitarian dictatorship become guilty: Jaspers: Dass wir leben ist unsere Schld. Namely: Even those of us who did not participate did not resist. Resistance would have been suicide, and, more important, it would have been without effect. This is a political responsibility – it means you have a share by simply belonging to the group in whose name evil is being done. Napoleon when he became rule of France, said at once: I assume responsibility for everything France has done from the times of Charlemagne to the terror of Robespierre. But this did not mean that : I am guilty of what has been done. The responsibility lies on me because I am the representative of the body politic. In this sense, we are indeed held responsible for the sins of our fathers – Germany, Negroes, -- but we are not guilty of them.

II. Let us underline the distinction between responsibility and guilt: You may be politically responsible without any guilt. For guilt, it is necessary that you have done something, and even the sin of omission still implies that you could have acted and therefore your abstention is a kind of acting, only another mode. Just as silence can be a mode of speaking. To say: I am guilty of what others did – this feeling of guilt without deed is sentimentality and dangerous nonsense. Those Germans who declared after the war: We are all guilty, actually made it impossible to find who was guilty of something specific – where all are guilty no one is, practically speaking. This sentimentality was a very effective cover for the criminals. Had the Germans said: We are responsible, they would have found out those who actually were guilty and punished them. (Example the Auschwitz Trial: There were actual criminals, not desk criminals, on trial, and public opinion was clearly on their side.) And they would have found out differences in guilt in certain circumstances – guilty for obeying orders and guilty of their own initiative, for doing for instance what even in this state was not permitted. Before we proceed: You may be politically responsible without any guilt; conversely, by not being guilty you were not yet politically responsible.

Let us consider the nature of the crimes as they appeared in the court rooms: The crimes of which people who had lived under totalitarian rule were accused were of two altogether different orders: They were either “acts of state” – the Final solution was an act of State, entirely legal in Nazi Germany, -- or as in the Auschwitz Trial, they accused of criminal acts which were criminal acts under all circumstances, which were individual acts. No moral problem is involved in the latter. We are concerned only with the former. Acts of State is an old concept; it means 1. that the State may be forced to commit acts, which, if done by an individual, would be criminal, which are clearly against the moral order. And it means 2. that these acts are outside all jurisdiction, because no other state has a right to sit in judgment. Every state is sovereign, and this means that it obeys no other law and is subject to no judge outside itself. Behind this stands the theory of a special “Reason of State”, raison d’état, which says: If the survival of the state is at stake that is, also the survival of the legal and moral order, the state may do certain unlawful things in order to keep this legal order in existence. It does not mean the abolition of legal order, but on the contrary, its existence. That is, the State or its servants commit certain moral crimes because of political responsibility. They risk, to speak Machiavelli’s language, the salvation of their soul for the sake of the secular lawful order. Those who do not do so are accused of shunning political responsibility. They are acting irresponsible. Hence, those who are morally guiltless may be politically irresponsible.

III. Let us see how this works under totalitarian circumstances. I can’t give here an analysis of this form of government, you will have to believe me. Human nature, generally speaking, is such that no totalitarian government is possible without becoming criminal itself. That is the gigantic crimes committed by these governments are not committed in order to preserve a normal legal and moral order, but they are committed for their own sake or the sake of ideology: the essence of a totalitarian order is criminality. Instead of Thou shalt not kill comes the order: Thou shalt kill and we shall tell you when and whom. Instead of: Thou shall not bear false witness, comes the order: Only by denouncing all those close to you can you prove that you have only one loyalty. And this criminality is a legal order, it is the law of the land to which you owe legal obedience just as in any other government. That is, they are immoral and criminal, but not as particular acts may be, but as an ORDER, a legal system. In other words the extermination of certain ethnic groups under Hitler and the extermination of classes under Stalin had no goal outside itself; it would not have come to a halt for instance when all Jews were dead or all members of classes. The movement was supposed to go on and on. It was not restricted to common-sense utilitarian goals, and it had in the case of Hitler nothing to do with the war. Hitler may have won it without it just as Stalin may not almost have lost it if he had not subjected the military to the same ruthless decimation process as the Peasants and the Bureaucracy. What were the alternatives to participation? The only political alternative in both cases was rebellion or revolution. But this did not happen for the simple reason that such governments, like all tyrannies, rely on mass support, and revolution is never possible without a previous loss of authority. What was feebly tried in both cases were conspiracies – and no conspiracy has ever brought about a revolution. In both cases, the change came from without – the death of Hitler, the defeat of Germany, and the death of Stalin. (If Stalin was killed the significant fact is that his assassins did not own up to their liberating deed – out of fear of the masses.) Hence, there is no political alternative, and where there is no political alternative, there remains only the moral alternative – non-participation.

Source: Arendt, Hannah “Moral Responsibility under Totalitarian Dictatorship,” The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress, Speeches and Writings File: 1923–1975