For those who love philosophy, Hannah Arendt is more than a heroine. She was the true thinker that we all should value as her thoughts and ideas are still relevant until today. She has different view on totalitarianism if compared with her predecessor like Rosseau, or Carl Joachin Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Thanks for reviewing. RIP Hannah Arendt.
I took a few seminars on her work in Uni and have been very invested since. It is kind of incredible how applicable her work is in todays age and how foundational it turned out to be.
I’ve only recently become aware of Arendt and have been looking for a good introduction to her philosophy. This video is a great starting point. Thanks for sharing!
Your specifics on the differences of totalitarianism vs other forms of authoritarian government was very helpful. I’d heard some of those arguments before, but the way you phrased it makes it easier to inderstand
My father didn’t speak much, and rarely gave opinions. But one day, the lot of us were grumbling about “those Nazis,” and consequently, “those Germans.” It unglued him. He cut us off sharply and said that Nazis were self-righteous moral cowards - and that we were behaving the same. Then he left the room, red-faced. It was chiropractic, what he said to us, and I would never forget it.
Thank you kindly! I have 80 videos so far and will be making many more, especially this summer. Was there anything specific you would like me to discuss?
Indeed. The sad reality we must accept is that the Nazis were not unique but a symptom of a larger malady that has always been with us and can reassert itself at any time.
I agree with Arendt's answer to that: we realize and accept that we are born in order to begin. We have the capacity to continually find new beginnings that generates not only life but also choices in how to live. Arendt identifies two essential human actions: forgiving past wrongs that unfix the fixed past and promising future benefits that fix the unfixed future. To create a promising future, we need to acknowledge the diversity of people. Totalitarianism rejects diversity, and that is why it creates such harm attempting to stamp it out.
In the context in which Arendt is writing, diversity means acceptance of other religions and cultures. Her views were heavily influenced by her experiences as a Jewish person during the rise of the Nazis. Yes, read The Human Condition, it is well worth the time.
Arendt was Jewish but believed in the rights of all people. She supported Palestinian sovereignty and called for a Palestinian state that consisted of both Jews and Palestinians. She opposed Ben Gurion's policies that oppressed the Palestinians.
@@InsertPhilosophyHereI think she was unequivocally a Zionist who nevertheless had misgivings about how the idea of a sovereign Jewish state would be implemented. I also believe she would have had choice words for the way in which the Palestinian leadership has evolved over the decades - and most certainly in Gaza. Clearly, her passionate advocacy of respect for plurality and open engagement amongst equals is grossly at odds with Hamas' modus operandi.
Along that same line, Arendt would have some choice words for Netanyahu because, she would recognize how Israel is sliding into totalitarianism and her passionate advocacy of respect for plurality and open engagement amongst equals is grossly at odds with Netanyahu's modus operandi.
@@InsertPhilosophyHere Perhaps so. However, I don't believe there is any legitimate comparison between totalitarianism as understood by Arendt and the current political machinations taking place in Israel. Based on my historical understanding of Nazi Germany, there weren't too many mass anti-government rallies. The closest they got was perhaps Kristallnacht where Jewish books, shops and synagogues were incinerated en masse. My gut tells me many Palestinians maintain similar fantasies in 2023.
Not yet, but I used the term "sliding into totalitarianism" for very good reasons. Israel is an apartheid state and certain people in government want it to go even further in its oppression of the populace.
She did make that statement at least once in regards to her book "Totalitarianism," yes, though she was not rejecting philosophy. She had long-term collaborations with philosophers Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers and her book "The Human Condition" was a thoroughly a work of philosophy, drawing on Augustine, Jaspers, and Henri Bergson.
@@InsertPhilosophyHere she said it in one of her interviews. She never wanted to be associated with philosophers because of what happened during WWII, where every philosophers turned their back on her because she was a jew. She said something about them deciding to follow ideas rather than reality because that is what philosophy does and that is why philosophy, in her mind, should have never been mixed in with politics. Her book entitled “Human Condition” is profoundly political and not philosophical at all since it is dealing with human lives in societies. Philosophy is not an action but a contemplation ; actions are deeply political.
I admired Arendt philosophy initially, but this lady is unapologetically racist. Just read her published writings on black people and Arabs. As much as we appreciate some of these White European philosophers, we should also expose and discuss their highly privileged and discriminatory views about society and people of colour.
We can't excuse them, but we can understand Arendt's views as being a blindness common among people in oppressed minorities. Being a Jewish person, a people who the Nazis did not consider to be "white" and tried to exterminate, Arendt saw everything through that lens of an oppressed person of Jewish identity. This left her with little empathy for other peoples' struggles against oppression. We see a similar blindness in many other subaltern people, most notably, Black people who have little empathy for Jewish and other oppressed peoples.
This is a good essay on Arendt's racial blindness: www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/hannah-arendt-and-politics/thinking-with-and-against-arendt-about-race-racism-and-antiracism/F9E68DCE5E8188C6CE97072726759D33
"Totalitarianism, and by this we can understand Fascism and Stalinism" That bit is wrong and I suggest you read the Origins of Totalitarianism again. Whilst Stalinism was Totalitarian, Arendt clearly outlined the differences between the Fascism of leaders like Franco and the Nazi form of Totalitarianism exemplified by Hitler; eg Fascism is very nationalistic, but whilst Totalitarianism appears to be just the same, it's actually just the opposite. She describes other marked differences too, not least the difference in scale when it comes the death toll of these movements. To put it bluntly, whilst Fascists may kill thousands or tens of thousands of perceived 'enemies', Totalitarians end up killing millions because it is a machine which is fuelled by constantly finding new enemies to purge and if it stops, it dies. It needs constant momentum. It could never 'go to sleep' for decades like Fascist Spain because although they may wear the same clothes, Totalitarianism and Fascism have huge differences. This was one of the things that Arendt was so good at.
You are inventing a distinction that Arnedt did not make. "In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt claimed that the phenomenon of totalitarianism has broken the continuity of Occidental history, and has rendered meaningless most of our moral and political categories. The break in our tradition has become irrevocable after the tragic events of the twentieth century and the triumph of totalitarian movements East and West. In the form of Stalinism and Nazism, totalitarianism has exploded the established categories of political thought and the accepted standards of moral judgment, and has thereby broken the continuity of our history." - plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/ Nazis were fascists and no one denies this. The suggestion that Franco wasn't totalitarian because his totalitarian regime survived is a poor argument. Please reread Arendt.
