The other day Kourosh-- also known as Cyrus the Great-- and I were having a discussion about the fact that my new passport has a microchip in it. It seems, I said, that at least from here, there is a real absence of any kind of political dialog about the turn our country has taken-- from microchips and offshore prisons to a war that few people actually seem to even support. Kourosh wondered whether his own stance that "this (evil) too shall pass" was apathetic or not. This reminded me of a radio show that I listened to the other week on Australia Broadcasting Corporation's The Philosophers Zone about Hannah Arendt.
Hannah Arendt, born of Jewish parents in Germany, grew up just in time for Hitler's regime. A student of the great Karl Jaspars, she was most famously the lover of Martin Heidegger. Having to flee Germany and then France for America, Arendt remained (for obvious reasons) deeply bitter about Heidegger and Jaspars stance (alternating support and then complete political withdraw) concerning Hitler and the Nazi regime. Afterall, of all people, shouldn't those people devoted to a life of contemplation (philosophers) be the first to stand up for what is right in the face of such overwhelming evil?
She is one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers. And though she was to live out her days in the United States, she remained committed to to practicing philosophy in the continental tradition (something basically impossible to do in contemporary America). In this European tradition, rather than working to construct philosophical systems which are rooted strictly in logic and a priori concepts, Arendt, like the greatest modern European philosophers, was committed to "doing philosophy" in a manner that is born out of one's own experience (that is, phenomenology).
In that way, her thinking is inextricably bound with that of Heidegger's as well as in her own experiences as a victim of the Nazis. She is, indeed, like many European philosophers concerned with our POLITICAL condition (and that means, she is, like Aristotle, concerned with our SHARED human experience). That is to say, really, that if thought does not somehow inspire action, if one does not lead a life of action (vita activa) then our thinking will remain impoverished (this is the great rejection of Plato).
This leads me to the point of the radio program where the host and guest talk about Arendt's very famous quote about the Banality of Evil. After a dramatic kidnapping in South America, the Israeli government brings Nazi master-mind Eichmann back to Israel to stand trial for his crimes againt Jewry and all humanity. Arendt traveled to Jerusalem to cover the trial, and reporting for the New Yorker, she made the famous comment that rather than sounding like some kind of madman, in fact what really struck her was the "banality of his speech." Accepting that many involved in evil acts are just robots or cogs in the wheel, still the show's host, Alan Saunders, persists that there are others who perform immoral acts on the basis of careful thought. How can that be, he asks? What, then, is the role of thought?
"Alan Saunders: Just finally, the great tragedy, or one of the great tragedies, there were quite a lot of contenders for the title, but one of the great tragedies of the 20th century to which she was witness, and of which she was to some extent a victim, a lot of it's about people like Hitler, Houston Chamberlain, the anti-Semitic theorist, even Wagner: a lot of it is about people sitting in rooms, thinking, and thinking the wrong thoughts. It's not all about people like Eichmann whom you can say are mechanics, are just getting on with the job, or just obeying orders. It is actually people thinking quite hard, but thinking badly.
Max Deutscher: Well she has quite a lot to say about that. As I say I've already indicated that she can be fully critical of a life of thought of a certain sort. If thought, to simplify, is a kind of inner conversation, this has implications. How do we get to think well? Well, we stand in need of the other, right? We need to be conversing with others. That sounds innocent and easy, but it isn't, as people find when they try. You know, things blow up, or the other person refuses to be thoughtful. So you get a kind of symbiotic relationship I suppose that my thinking well depends on the quality of my conversations with others. But it's not simply a one-way process as if thinking were a mere ghost of the full-blooded conversation with another, because the conversation with another that has any success is thoughtful, is borrowing upon my inner life as well, and so it's if you like, it's the preparedness to spend that time of what may be quite hard work thinking about the problems that arise at the conversational level, at the literally conversational level, that we refine and moderate our language and approach in order, if you like, that our conversations be more successful. None of this guarantees a good politics, and no-one has a guarantee for a good politics, but if one thinks of some of the characters you're talking about, they are people who are not working out their ideas adequately in close critical contact with others."
I suppose in this way, I do feel uncomfortable with Kourosh's apathetic response that "this too shall pass." This is because, above and beyond the political implications from such a stance is this role of conversation with the Other as being somehow critical to forming true judgements. For, I do believe that even "just talking" about philosophical or political issues is in some way-- while maybe actually effecting nothing at all- at least it involves some kind of faculty of judgement, and such discussions are therefore essential to our thinking processes and our moral lives.
But do conversations growing out of the inner life of individuals really take place anymore? This leads to what philosopher's describe as our contemporary sense of alienation whereby dialog comes down to a narrating of events (what I did last weekend). That is, discussion becomes dominated by that which has NOT been filtered through one's inner life.
Arendt concluded that Eichmann was-- as a kind of cog in the wheel (just a guy doing his job??) incapable of "exercising the kind of judgement that would have made his victims' suffering real or apparent for him." That is, "it was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him."
What is called for then? Individuals who are both willing to think (and are committed to having rich inner lives) as well as individuals who are committed to our shared experience via dialog (vita activa).
Hannah Arendt was chided by her publisher for wanting to call Eichmann "thoughtless," since that word (in English) really is used lightly to chastise children or someone considered rude. At the same time, though, in my opinion the word is exactly on target-- for truly there was a total lack of any thought. Eichmann was, as Arendt argued beautifully, bereft of the ability to have "an internal dialogue with himself, which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds." This inability, she says, "amounted to a failure to use self-reflection as a basis for judgement, the faculty that would have required Eichmann to exercise his imagination so as to contemplate the nature of his deeds from the experiential standpoint of his victims."
It really, then, comes down again to the heart (our inner lives and imagination). The ability to look at the world from another's point of view in an imaginative way. Kant required this of us, and perhaps such dialogs-- even in times where we think "nothing will come of it;" well, still such dialogs serve an important purpose. Arendt put it beautifully, calling such conversations that arise out of our contemplative lives as 'To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one's imagination to go visiting'.
Yes, the heart too needs to go visiting...
For a discussion of the banality of evil in terms of money and the arms trade, see this.
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"The Unexamined life is not worth living"-- Socrates
(A few days later): This whole discussion of the need for discussion which is filtered through our inner lives and our own inner dialogs reminded me of Socrates (perhaps my favorite Greek). Plato described him as saying that, "taking time everyday to DISCUSS questions of the basic values that shape your life is the best thing you can do to improce the qualty of your own life."
I think its interesting that Socrates chose to use the word "discuss" rather thank just to think about. I suppose-- like Arendt (who was deeply indebted to Socrates) that it was this shared understanding that was so essential to our moral lives. And to Socrates a life of virtue was equivalent to the Good Life. His concept of prtotecting our own souls from damage (whereby only the agent herself can damage her own soul) is very interesting-- as is the concept that the Good Life lies in our own choices-- right down to the end.
And speaking of the end. What a way to go! A cup of Hemlock poised at his lips, he smiles and says, "Tell Crito I owe a cock to Asclepius"
Here is a In our Times program about Socrates:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20070927.shtml
And the Philosophers Zone program (aired on my birthday last year):
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2007/1870416.htm
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