Hannah Arendt’s Theory of - anotherpanacea · Hannah Arendt‟s Theory of the Vita Activa Labor...
-
Upload
nguyenthuy -
Category
Documents
-
view
244 -
download
0
Transcript of Hannah Arendt’s Theory of - anotherpanacea · Hannah Arendt‟s Theory of the Vita Activa Labor...
Hannah Arendt‟s Theory of the Vita Activa
Labor
Work
Action
Arendt rejects ImmanualKant‟s moral theory
Arendt returns to her phenomenological account of neighborly love in Augustine
Thinking
Willing
Judging
Deliberative Polling® is a technique which combines traditional random sampling
public opinion polls with deliberation in small group discussions. A number of
Deliberative Polls have been conducted in various countries around the world (e.g.
Britain, Australia, Denmark, US, etc.) in various themes - some national and some
local. The main argument behind this technique is that citizens are often
underinformed about key public issues, thus traditional public opinion polls
represent the public‟s shallow impressions on an issue. The public, according to
the theory of "rational ignorance" in social sciences, does not invest time and
effort in acquiring information or establishing a grounded opinion
What is the connection between revolutionary activity and deliberative
democratic politics?
On Arendt‟s account, the councils of the Hungarian
revolution closely resembled the Constitutional Congress
and ward system proposed by Jefferson as an alternative to
political parties, the ad hoc groupings of citizens during the
French Revolution, and the soviets that succumbed to party
unification after the Russian Revolution. Everywhere, the
building blocks of politics seem to form the same
basic shapes, only to be assembled into different forms
due to ideologies, foreign pressures, or historical
ideals. The councils predate the formation of interest
groups, they federate easily and advance their most excellent
members as representatives to more central councils. The
councilors are principally concerned with the establishment
of the polis, and so strategy often succumbs to republican
altruism.
What the councils, wards, and townships all have in
common is that they enact a vision of democratic
politics in which democracy is understood as isonomy, meaning equality both before the law and in the
legislation.
Hannah Arendt was a Jewish political theorist who fled
Germany during World War II. She is famous for her analysis of
the institutional and ideological commonalities between the
Nazis and the Russian communism under Stalin, for her
coverage of Adolf Eichmann‟s trial in which she described the
“banality of evil,” and for her analysis of the New Left and Civil
Rights movements of the 1960s.
Citizens of Kaposvár, Hungary deliberated on the topics of
employment, job creation and the employment policy of the
European Union.
What is the Vita Activa?
“Labor assures not only individual survival but the life of the
species. Work and its product, the human artifact, bestow a
measure of permanence and durability upon the futility of
mortal life and the fleeting character of human time. Action, in
so far as it engages in founding and preserving political bodies,
creates the conditions for remembrance, that is, for history.”
What is the relationship between political action and political judgment?
Arendt held that communities of like-minded individuals
supply the foundations of political action, and that the
increasing interconnection of governance and economic
management is detrimental to this civic springboard. As a
result, institutions cannot duck substantive
disagreements about justice because one of the fundamental
public goods these institutions must distribute is the
opportunity for civic engagement. In addition to devoting
their attention to the distribution of public goods, state
institutions are obligated to supply a space for action and
mutual engagement.
What did you do?
I worked with unpublished notes and
materials available through The Hannah
Arendt Papers available at the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC to
reconstruct Arendt‟s intended plan for
The Life of the Mind. The background
image of this poster is one of about
25,000 items contained within the archive.
In an attempt to fill the lacuna left by her unfinished
work, The Life of the Mind, I argue that Arendt‟s appropriation
of the Kantian sensus communis entails a theory of ethical and
political judgment centered in the community rather than the
subject. Judgment is guided and delimited by a hermeneutic
understanding of the horizons of meaning and the role
communities play in evaluating competing claims to
normativity. Arendt‟s early work on Augustine supplies an
account of the discursive and material requirements to bridge
divided communities, and I expand it with a reading of
Augustine‟s struggle to negotiate with the Donatist
schismatics. Finally, I develop the parallels between Arendt‟s
later work and contemporary democratic theories of
deliberation and public reason, focusing on her analysis of
the growing power of the administrative state and public
ignorance.
What about judging?
Of judging, we are told little explicitly: even in the extant
writing, Arendt piles up enigmatic phrases in its description: it
is a “mysterious endowment of the mind,” a “peculiar
faculty,” it decides “without any over-all rules” which renders
its unconditioned autonomy particularly vexing for the reader
seeking a definition. Arendt herself seems to be still feeling
out the shape of this faculty, describing its prerequisites in
impartiality and withdrawal from our own preferences and
perspectives. Arendt stresses that it “presupposes an
„unnatural‟ and deliberate withdrawal from involvement
and the partiality of immediate interests as they are
given by my position in the world and the part I play in
it.”
How does Arendt describe the Vita Contemplativa:?
Whereas the activities of the vita activa followed from the conditions of the
human being, the faculties of the vita contemplativa are, Arendt claims,
“unconditioned” and “autonomous.” Each corresponds to various kinds of
withdrawal from appearances and action. Thinking withdraws from
appearances completely, “de-sensing” the sensible in order to render it
intelligible. Willing withdraws from desire and consequence:“…in
order to will, the mind must withdraw from the immediacy of desire…
the will is not concerned with objects but with projects…. it transforms
the desire into an intention.”
In the second edition of The Origins of
Totalitarianism, published in 1958, Arendt appended
a commentary on the brief 1956 Hungarian
insurrection, in which she sought to apply her
insights into the historical origins of
totalitarianism in imperial domination of other
cultures. She sought to alter her account of
modern Nazism and Stalinism to fit the Hungarian
situation. Totalitarianism, Arendt argued,
combines national unity and ideological purity with
the administrative apparatus of imperialism. The
result is an unprecedented degree of state
involvement in the everyday affairs of its citizens.
Totalitarian regimes destroy communities in favor
of a purely statist administration of personal,
economic, and cultural life. On Arendt‟s view, the
horizontal relations of communal life are dissolved
in favor of vertical relationships to the regime,
such that each citizen loses the network of family,
friends, colleagues and associates that constitute
human life, and are left with nothing but a
dependence relationship to the state. Isolated from
their fellows, plurality becomes impossible, and
with it, politics dies. These horizontal relationships
are necessary for unexpected configurations to
emerge, and serve as the foundation for political
action.
Hannah Arendt’s Theory of
Deliberative Judgment
Name: Joshua A. Miller
Advisor: John Christman
Department: Philosophy
Contact: [email protected]
Special thanks for researching funding from Penn State‟s Center
for Democratic Deliberation
What is isonomy?
Arendt distinguished
totalitarianism from what she
called „isonomy‟ or home rule. The
three norms of isonomy are
mutually reinforcing: equal
participation requires that the
office-holder act with the
understanding that she might be
replaced by any other member of
the community. She cannot abuse
her office without being held to
account at the end of her term.
For the same reason she must
regularly give reciprocally
recognizable justifications for her
actions, without which her
decisions might be reversed by the
next office-holder, or even
punished when her office no
longer protects her from
prosecution. The ideal result of
such a regime is a strong
preference for deliberation,
consensus, and mutual respect,
alongside a cautious honesty and
transparency with regard to
potentially controversial decisions.
Futu
re R
esea
rch