I don't know if many people understood Arendt's argument (at the time), but Stanley Milgram did later when he performed the experiment that showed ordinary people were capable of great evil if given orders by an authority figure.
Thank you guys. Love your podcasts. I suspect that the 'Banality of Evil' is quite relevant in uncovering how/why we destroy the planet with a clean conscience.
hlrepet Hi, I thought of that same issue when they discussed about the current day examples of the Banality of Evil. We seem to divorce our consciousness of the consequences caused by the ecological price for our high standard of living. I'm also currently reading "The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles Mann. Seems to me some people are justifying their destructive behaviors by implying that Science will solve all of our ecological problems. Anyways, thanks for pointing it out, I knew I couldn't be alone thinking about that!
Hi. Thank you for commenting. I've never heard of Charles Mann but I will have a look. If you like Hannah Arendt you should try reading some (more) of her work. She was an incredible thinker! I particularly enjoyed 'The Human Condition' and 'Responsibility & Judgment'. Both can be found as .pdf's online. Recently, I've been thinking: Why is it that humans are now unable to adapt to their environment? Have we always been terrible at adapting? Is the technological scope of human action the only thing that has changed throughout history (i.e. humans were always on a path to destruction but we didn't have the technological ability to actually undermine the ecology of earth)? Is there more to it? Are modern ideologies such as capitalism, communism and nazism to blame? Are these ideas qualitatively different from ideologies of previous eras? ... And in a way so as to undermine sustainable morals? I think these are all important questions, and I think Arendt can help answer them.
hlrepet You should take a look at The Wizard and the Prophet. It's essentially the author comparing two thinkers on the Malthusian theory that humankind will reach a point where our finite ressources will be insufficient to feed an ever growing population. One thinker is William Vogt, an environmentalist who believed that we should reduce and downgrade industries/individual's uptake. The other is Norman Borlaug, an agronomist and searcher that thought innovations could help us surpass overpopulation. Charles Mann has a subtle bias for the latter, but I think Vogt is right, the promess of progress is just a promess. We can't put faith in Science to solve everything we did to the environment. As for your questions, I think we had environmental problems before capitalism. It exercabated the problems we had, mainly because now we have depleted a lot of non renewable ressources thanks to industrial ventures and technology. There is also a detachment from environmental issues because the West can ship its problems abroad. But we were already a destructive species in prehistory, albeit on far smaller scale and in a fashion that could be mitigated by natural processes. I would also add that we delude ourselves in thinking that we need Science to prevent cataclismic events (asteroid impacts, massive epidemics, etc.). We have no idea what's going to happen about these kinds of events. But we do know that we have finite ressources and are in danger of destroying vital ecosystems.
MrM3rios Thank you for your answer. That sounds interesting. I've never really heard about any of those guys but I will give it a read within a couple of weeks. So as to broaden my horizons! :) Thank you for the inspiration. On a different note, I suspect that the political consequences of the (post)modern tendency towards spatial and temporal fragmentation (leading to social stratification) are vastly underrated; since ancient Greece, the logic of politics has been that the polites (or political elites) consisted of those who reside within the polis' sphere of action and whose destiny depend on the polis (the wealthy). This is no longer the case; The destiny of the statesman is not that of the polis. Now, it would be regressive to say that we need to go back to the way things were, but I think we can learn a lot about the basic feedback-mechanisms that make democracy work (or did so 2.500 years ago). But I digress... If you feel like it you should read the article 'Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self' by Michael L. Schwalbe. If you enter the url www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.1993.16.4.333 on sci-hub.tw you can access it for free.
Hello , really followed your podcasts with a lot of interest. I want to add that the entire premise is wrong. Taking Eichmann at his trial and basing your thoughts and ideas from there on does not match with the entirety of historical factuality. Which is also something that Hannah Arendt overlooked. See Auschwitz survivor and writer Jean Amery's criticism of Hannah Arendt: " It's only a banality when you see him in a glass cage." . Take it from there and add other historical sources: Adolf Eichmann played a role. He played a role in interrogation /trial, he played a role in his argentinian exile and he played a role in his position in the SD and SS. And all of these are different. There's a hint of it in Arendts book where she described the witness statement of one Hungarian Jew who had direct contact with Eichmann and who's behavior towards the Jews he discussed with in Hungary differed greatly from what he represented himself to be in trial. Another evidence are the Sassen tapes. Sassen was a dutch Nazi and war reporter in the SS and formed a discussion and interview circle with other high ranking Nazis in Argentina. Those tapes are available to the public in audio and transcript. And if you put all all the personalities Eichmann played right next to each other, there is only one result: he was a manipulator. Rather pointing to a narcissist personality than to just the stubborn civil servant. That's where i mean, you cannot base your discussion off of Eichmann without diving into the Sassen tapes, where Eichmann shows pride in the holocaust, for example. It doesn't work, don't limit the scope, it will negatively affect your results.
Interesting. In the case of Trump truth is the ability of having the last word. Trump may say something thats clearly false yet no one is allowed to dispute it.
I never do the readings, barely understand the discussion, but love the podcast all the same. Thank you!
I don't know if many people understood Arendt's argument (at the time), but Stanley Milgram did later when he performed the experiment that showed ordinary people were capable of great evil if given orders by an authority figure.
Thank you guys. Love your podcasts. I suspect that the 'Banality of Evil' is quite relevant in uncovering how/why we destroy the planet with a clean conscience.
hlrepet Hi, I thought of that same issue when they discussed about the current day examples of the Banality of Evil. We seem to divorce our consciousness of the consequences caused by the ecological price for our high standard of living. I'm also currently reading "The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles Mann. Seems to me some people are justifying their destructive behaviors by implying that Science will solve all of our ecological problems. Anyways, thanks for pointing it out, I knew I couldn't be alone thinking about that!
Hi. Thank you for commenting. I've never heard of Charles Mann but I will have a look. If you like Hannah Arendt you should try reading some (more) of her work. She was an incredible thinker! I particularly enjoyed 'The Human Condition' and 'Responsibility & Judgment'. Both can be found as .pdf's online. Recently, I've been thinking: Why is it that humans are now unable to adapt to their environment? Have we always been terrible at adapting? Is the technological scope of human action the only thing that has changed throughout history (i.e. humans were always on a path to destruction but we didn't have the technological ability to actually undermine the ecology of earth)? Is there more to it? Are modern ideologies such as capitalism, communism and nazism to blame? Are these ideas qualitatively different from ideologies of previous eras? ... And in a way so as to undermine sustainable morals? I think these are all important questions, and I think Arendt can help answer them.
hlrepet You should take a look at The Wizard and the Prophet. It's essentially the author comparing two thinkers on the Malthusian theory that humankind will reach a point where our finite ressources will be insufficient to feed an ever growing population. One thinker is William Vogt, an environmentalist who believed that we should reduce and downgrade industries/individual's uptake. The other is Norman Borlaug, an agronomist and searcher that thought innovations could help us surpass overpopulation. Charles Mann has a subtle bias for the latter, but I think Vogt is right, the promess of progress is just a promess. We can't put faith in Science to solve everything we did to the environment.
As for your questions, I think we had environmental problems before capitalism. It exercabated the problems we had, mainly because now we have depleted a lot of non renewable ressources thanks to industrial ventures and technology. There is also a detachment from environmental issues because the West can ship its problems abroad. But we were already a destructive species in prehistory, albeit on far smaller scale and in a fashion that could be mitigated by natural processes.
I would also add that we delude ourselves in thinking that we need Science to prevent cataclismic events (asteroid impacts, massive epidemics, etc.). We have no idea what's going to happen about these kinds of events. But we do know that we have finite ressources and are in danger of destroying vital ecosystems.
MrM3rios Thank you for your answer. That sounds interesting. I've never really heard about any of those guys but I will give it a read within a couple of weeks. So as to broaden my horizons! :) Thank you for the inspiration. On a different note, I suspect that the political consequences of the (post)modern tendency towards spatial and temporal fragmentation (leading to social stratification) are vastly underrated; since ancient Greece, the logic of politics has been that the polites (or political elites) consisted of those who reside within the polis' sphere of action and whose destiny depend on the polis (the wealthy). This is no longer the case; The destiny of the statesman is not that of the polis. Now, it would be regressive to say that we need to go back to the way things were, but I think we can learn a lot about the basic feedback-mechanisms that make democracy work (or did so 2.500 years ago). But I digress... If you feel like it you should read the article 'Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self' by Michael L. Schwalbe. If you enter the url www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.1993.16.4.333 on sci-hub.tw you can access it for free.
Hello , really followed your podcasts with a lot of interest. I want to add that the entire premise is wrong. Taking Eichmann at his trial and basing your thoughts and ideas from there on does not match with the entirety of historical factuality. Which is also something that Hannah Arendt overlooked. See Auschwitz survivor and writer Jean Amery's criticism of Hannah Arendt: " It's only a banality when you see him in a glass cage." . Take it from there and add other historical sources: Adolf Eichmann played a role. He played a role in interrogation /trial, he played a role in his argentinian exile and he played a role in his position in the SD and SS. And all of these are different. There's a hint of it in Arendts book where she described the witness statement of one Hungarian Jew who had direct contact with Eichmann and who's behavior towards the Jews he discussed with in Hungary differed greatly from what he represented himself to be in trial. Another evidence are the Sassen tapes. Sassen was a dutch Nazi and war reporter in the SS and formed a discussion and interview circle with other high ranking Nazis in Argentina. Those tapes are available to the public in audio and transcript. And if you put all all the personalities Eichmann played right next to each other, there is only one result: he was a manipulator. Rather pointing to a narcissist personality than to just the stubborn civil servant. That's where i mean, you cannot base your discussion off of Eichmann without diving into the Sassen tapes, where Eichmann shows pride in the holocaust, for example. It doesn't work, don't limit the scope, it will negatively affect your results.
Who is worthy of proclaiming truth? Should truth be owned by one party?
Interesting. In the case of Trump truth is the ability of having the last word. Trump may say something thats clearly false yet no one is allowed to dispute it.
@Oners82 I think today we've come away from shared truths and we live in or own perceptions; sometimes the agree and sometimes they dont.
Non mon ami! Learn from Big Brother! or:"In the land of the blind the one-eyed femme is queen." Ita oui!