Hannah Arendt1906-1975

analysis of totalitarianism

• reference to Nazi and Stalinist movements and‘states’ they established

• differences between Germany and Russia, e.g.private versus state property, superiority ofAryan race versus dictatorship of the proletariat;

• similarities e.g. terror and ideology, massmobilisation, anti-state, anti-national, anti-rights,anti-bourgeois, anti-civil society.

Meaning of ‘origins’

• ‘origins’ more like ‘elements’ than causes– Antisemitism– Imperialism– Anti-imperialism– Disillusion– Nihilism

decline of the nation-state

• enlightened idea of state: nation defined by virtue ofcommon citizenship in a shared political community

• nationalist idea of state: no longer state that definesthe nation but nation that defines state

• ‘decline of the nation-state’: transformation of statefrom instrument of law to instrument of nation

decline of the nation-state

• collapse of the great multi-nationalempires after the First World War

• rise of nationalism• dissolution of solidarity between the

formerly oppressed nations

New divisions• division of state into four national elements:

– state peoples– unequal partners– minorities (only nationals could be full citizens)– stateless peoples (displaced persons)

Sources of decline

• imperialism,• nationalism (anti-imperialist movements)• intervention of western and communist

powers• The role of minorities

End of the Rights of Man• subordination of rights of individual to rights of national

self-determination• “Everyone became convinced that true freedom, true

emancipation, and true popular sovereignty could beattained only with full national emancipation, thatpeople without their own national government weredeprived of human rights.” (Arendt)

perplexities of the rights of man

• In origin indicated the inalienable dignityof each individual that no power coulddeny.

• In practice dependent on politicalinfrastructure of nation-states

• Creation of new class of statelesspersons who lacked the right to haverights

Arendt’s conclusion

• “antisemitism, imperialism andtotalitarianism …have demonstrated thathuman dignity needs a new guaranteewhich can be found only in a newpolitical principle, a new law on earth,whose validity this time mustcomprehend the whole of humanity,while its power must remain strictlylimited, rooted in and controlled by newlydefined territorial entities.” (OT, ix)

Nihilism

• “The `front generation' ... were completelyabsorbed by their desire to see the ruin of thiswhole world of fake security, fake culture andfake life. This desire was so great that itoutweighed in impact and articulateness allearlier attempts at a `transformation of values'such as Nietzsche had attempted... Destructionwithout mitigation, chaos and ruin as suchassumed the dignity of supreme values” (OTp.328).

Nihilism

• “Simply to brand as outbursts of nihilismthis violent dissatisfaction with the prewarage ... is to overlook how justified disgustcan be in a society wholly permeated withthe ideological outlook and moralstandards of the bourgeoisie” (OT p. )

Nihilism

• “Since the bourgeoisie claimed to be theguardian of Western traditions and confoundedall moral issues by parading publicly virtueswhich it not only did not possess in private andbusiness life, but actually held in contempt, itseemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregardof human values, and general amorality,because this at least destroyed the duplicityupon which the existing society seemed to rest”(OT p.334)

Imperialism and Violence• “Expansion for expansion's sake' became the

political credo of the bourgeoisie, a conceptwhich was not really political at all, but had itsorigin in the realm of business speculation” (OTp. 125)

• “Imperialism was the first stage in the politicalrule of the bourgeoisie” (OT p.138)

• “What was new was not the use of violence assuch, but that violence now became the aim ofthe body politic and would not stop until therewas nothing left to violate” (OT?)

Mass society and totalitarianism• 'the term masses applies only where we deal

with people who either because of sheernumbers or indifference or a combination ofboth, cannot be integrated into any organisationbased on common interest, into political partiesor municipal governments or professionalassociations or trade unions' (p.311)

• ‘breakdown of the old party system transformedthe slumbering majorities behind all parties intoon great unorganised, structureless mass offurious individuals' (p.315).

Idea of mass man

• “a new form of selflessness, a new feelingof being infinitely expendable”

• `the masses grew out of the fragments ofa highly atomised society whosecompetitive structure and concomitantloneliness of the individual had been heldin check only through membership in aclass' (p. 317)

On Revolution

• Modern idea of revolution– No longer cycle of planets– But new beginning– Freedom as its raison d’être

Three moments of the revolutionarytradition

• French Revolution• American Revolution• Lost treasure of the revolutionary tradition

French Revolution

Two revolutions:• Political – liberation from old regime,

natural solidarity and exchange ofopinions

• Social - liberation from material want,artificial solidarity with the people, ‘voice ofthe people’ now identified as singular andwith unanimous cry for bread

French Revolution

• Conception of ‘the people’ rooted ininterpretation of Rousseau’s ‘general will’

• ‘A multi-headed monster, a mass thatmoves as one body and acts as thoughpossessed by one will’

• ‘the value of individuals should be judgedby the extent to which they act againsttheir own interest and for the god of all’

French revolution• ‘every attempt to solve the social question with

political means leads to terror’ (112)• Nothing more ‘obsolete… futile… dangerous’

than to ‘attempt to liberate humankind frompoverty by political means’ (114)

• ‘liberation from necessity because of its urgencywill always take precedence over the building offreedom’ (112)

• ‘nothing deprives people more effectively of the‘light of public happiness’ than poverty

Social Revolution

• Tear the mask of hypocrisy off society andcelebrate ‘the unspoilt honest face of lepeuple’

• World of universal suspicion anddenunciation

• General will as the enemy of all public life

American revolution

• Forgotten links between right andrevolution

• Representative form of government• Constitutional framework• Restoration of natural liberties

American revolution

• Defend private realm against public power• But no guarantees for the rights of public

life• ‘what we today call democracy is a form of

government where the few rule,supposedly in the interest of the many…and public happiness and public freedom… become the privilege of the few’

American revolution

• Only the representatives, not the people,have the opportunity to engage in thoseactivities of ‘expressing, discussing anddeciding which in a positive sense are theactivities of freedom’ (235)