Was Arendt's pessimism about modern liberal society justified?

Résumé du document

Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 in Germany, being the only child of middle-class Jewish parents of Russian descent. As a university student, she was one of the most brilliant and studied with the finest scholars of the time. Arendt in 1933 left Germany for France, and was even interned there for a while before she managed to leave for the U.S. in 1941. There, she began to wonder about and write The Origins of Totalitarianism (thereafter referred to as OT) firstly published in 1951. She worked for Jewish organisations, and even took part – as a journalist for The New Yorker – to the infamous Eichmann trial in Israel. Her series of article published in the foresaid journal can be found in: Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil (thereafter Eichmann's Report). She became an eminent political post-modernist philosopher, intrinsically linked to the historical events of the 20th century, both for being a human and a German Jew.

Extraits

[...] From the origins of Totalitarianism she deduced a universal pessimism about life, and human being in general. We are all heirs of the past, and this course of events creates an infinite circle of destruction the climax of which is Totalitarianism and its chaos, its “shapelessness”[28]. Man is subjected to higher forces he cannot control, but will always try to. He will invent theories to justify those forces (races, imperialism even to unjustness[29], even to his own alienation[30] and of what he primarily struggled for[31]. [...]

[...] Indeed, our context has evolved, and we must naturally replace and further her analysis in this historical context. It seems to me that those who want to exercise totalitarianism now have a scope not simply limited by a party or an ideology, but do so within the existing boundaries of democracy and bureaucracy. I therefore want to express my opinion that if Arendt is pessimistic about modern liberal society, then she is not justified. However, I want to see her lessons as a necessary sceptical attitude towards authority, and human nature. [...]

[...] This is also well shown in the Eichmann's Report, e.g. p. 22: “under the conditions of the Third Reich only ‘exceptions' could be expected to react ‘normally' Hannah Arendt, OT p. 300-301-302 ibid footnote 6 Robert Fine, The Idea of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, p.28: was the first to situate the idea of right historically as the achievement of the modern age, socially as a determinate form of subjectivity, dynamically as a movement from one form and shape to another without a given end, holistically as a system of intrinsic connections and critically as a system rent by its own contradictions” Margaret Cannovan, ATT, p Hannah Arendt, OT, p Robert Fine, TRS, p Margaret Canovan, ATT, p Durhkeim, The Division of Labour, p These arguments are those of Canovan Hannah Arendt, OT, p Margaret Canovan, ATT, p ibid., p. [...]

[...] Also, we will see why this analysis led her to such pessimism about human nature, not only modern liberal societies, hence criticising the idea of inalienable Human Rights, and reassessing the role of thinkers vis-à-vis Totalitarianism. But perhaps, those social theory tools she so radically rejected are not useless and may help us to understand Totalitarianism? Conceivably, she might have used some of them unconsciously. It will appear somewhat false to hold such regimes as being “beyond human understanding”[6]. Perhaps also, she missed certain points she herself drew. [...]

[...] Whilst she claims that Totalitarianism is beyond our understanding but that we must keep on trying to understand it in fact she drew a picture of a complete rational system, using perhaps unconsciously Hegel, Weber, etc. To my mind, she echoes this great human fear that if God does not exist, then the worse persons are right for so being, for everything is possible and they never will be punished. In so doing, she appears to reify Totalitarianism, therein stigmatising our conception of it. [...]