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Interesting, thanks for sharing! I'm gonna trash the review now, but really just because I'm a bit bored at work and I enjoyed the review and it got me thinking

by b450 3y ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing! I'm gonna trash the review now, but really just because I'm a bit bored at work and I enjoyed the review and it got me thinking. This review is kind of funny - it's like, "look how prescient and correct Arendt was about the Nazis. But then she was wrong about desegregation. Also her one-time lover Heidegger was a total Nazi! Hannah Arendt was a philosopher, but also a complicated and flawed person!" Anyone read the book, "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War"? It's an interesting sort of de-mythologization of 20th century American culture, where these intellectual and cultural giants of that time are argued to have not really _defined_ the thought of that time, but rather were elevated and canonized according to the needs of Cold War politics. Of course it's not a surprise that Arendt got some stuff wrong! She was a Kantian, and Kantian ethics which stands out as a facially absurd theory, even in the already ridiculous field of philosophical ethics. The reviewer here sort of argues that she managed to liberate herself from the "grand systems" and tidy, comforting rationalizations of philosophy, instead bringing a messy, incoherent humanity to the philosophical enterprise. I can't help but shake my head at that representation of a Kantian, who thought all our moral duties were fricking a priori! Not to mention that this is all represented as feminist, when her whole idea that "just as for Kant, feelings could get in the way of proper moral judgement" still reeks of philosophy's delusional male chauvinism. I admit I'm a weirdo and bring a very specific, partisan, and generally confused perspective to this matter. But I think something like Carol Gilligan's "ethics of care" (which came well after Arendt) is such a more powerful and relevant feminist critique of the grand systems of philosophical ethics.

DiscourseFan 3y ago
Yes, I agree that its not a very good review, but from a different angle, since the whole issue of Arendt is that she side-steps Heidegger's discourse on (political) Freedom--or rather, the lack thereof--in his ontologization of Kant. And also, of course, that the most famous Kantian was Nietzsche, for the simple reason that Nietzsche took morality into overdrive by transforming every type of Kantian maxim into its dialectically perverse flipside: be strong, be powerful, overcome weakness. Arendt just ignores both of them and positions herself as an advocate for "human freedom" in the vaguest possible terms, and probably came to prominence, as you say, because of the Cold War, rather than the originality of her thought.
zoogeny 3y ago
> these intellectual and cultural giants of that time are argued to have not really _defined_ the thought of that time, but rather were elevated and canonized according to the needs of Cold War politics. I've often felt this, specifically with Arendt. Even though I have heard her referenced 100 times or more this was the first time I realized she was Kantian. I had actually just assumed she was an important voice in feminist philosophy that I just hadn't dove deep into, like a proto Judith Butler. I admit I am just ignorant of that vein of Western cultural philosophy. But she is positioned so often as an expert on the cultural philosophy of WW2, especially the holocaust (again, another subject I'm not very read up on). When that characterization pops up I cynically assume that her intersectionality is the reason, since she is both Jewish and a woman which leads to a different perspective than found elsewhere. I started to resent my own cynicism and I have always had in the back of my mind the intention to actually read something by her, just to see if she is being tokenized or if there is really something there. This article was more like gossip to me than a good introduction to Arendt. After reading it, I still don't know if there is much to gain from her thought outside of her unique perspective on the tragedy of the holocaust and some salacious talk about her affairs with Heidegger.
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  Its difficult to say who has the best "voice" on the holocaust (I would say, tentatively, Adorno), but its impossible to ignore Heidegger's analysis, especially the late Heidegger ("Question Concerning Technology"), in considering the technorationality of the SS. The trouble with Arendt is not that she is a Kantian, its that she is a very bad Kantian, and one who fails to see how Kant as phenomenological, via Schelling and Hegel, was instrumental in Nazi politics; only Heidegger was able to elucidate properly this problematic of Kantian "Freedom," especially political Freedom, which could be seen by later thinkers like Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari as in fact only an instrumental freedom, freedom to be instrumentalized in a grander machine. But there are many people who like Adorno better since he seems to offer something more than an elucidation of the unfreedom of freedom; his "negative dialectic" contains within it the possibility of redemption.
  - zoogeny 3y ago

by b450 3y ago

DiscourseFan 3y ago

Yes, I agree that its not a very good review, but from a different angle, since the whole issue of Arendt is that she side-steps Heidegger's discourse on (political) Freedom--or rather, the lack thereof--in his ontologization of Kant. And also, of course, that the most famous Kantian was Nietzsche, for the simple reason that Nietzsche took morality into overdrive by transforming every type of Kantian maxim into its dialectically perverse flipside: be strong, be powerful, overcome weakness. Arendt just ignores both of them and positions herself as an advocate for "human freedom" in the vaguest possible terms, and probably came to prominence, as you say, because of the Cold War, rather than the originality of her thought.

zoogeny 3y ago

> these intellectual and cultural giants of that time are argued to have not really _defined_ the thought of that time, but rather were elevated and canonized according to the needs of Cold War politics. I've often felt this, specifically with Arendt. Even though I have heard her referenced 100 times or more this was the first time I realized she was Kantian. I had actually just assumed she was an important voice in feminist philosophy that I just hadn't dove deep into, like a proto Judith Butler. I admit I am just ignorant of that vein of Western cultural philosophy. But she is positioned so often as an expert on the cultural philosophy of WW2, especially the holocaust (again, another subject I'm not very read up on). When that characterization pops up I cynically assume that her intersectionality is the reason, since she is both Jewish and a woman which leads to a different perspective than found elsewhere. I started to resent my own cynicism and I have always had in the back of my mind the intention to actually read something by her, just to see if she is being tokenized or if there is really something there. This article was more like gossip to me than a good introduction to Arendt. After reading it, I still don't know if there is much to gain from her thought outside of her unique perspective on the tragedy of the holocaust and some salacious talk about her affairs with Heidegger.

DiscourseFan 3y ago
Its difficult to say who has the best "voice" on the holocaust (I would say, tentatively, Adorno), but its impossible to ignore Heidegger's analysis, especially the late Heidegger ("Question Concerning Technology"), in considering the technorationality of the SS. The trouble with Arendt is not that she is a Kantian, its that she is a very bad Kantian, and one who fails to see how Kant as phenomenological, via Schelling and Hegel, was instrumental in Nazi politics; only Heidegger was able to elucidate properly this problematic of Kantian "Freedom," especially political Freedom, which could be seen by later thinkers like Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari as in fact only an instrumental freedom, freedom to be instrumentalized in a grander machine. But there are many people who like Adorno better since he seems to offer something more than an elucidation of the unfreedom of freedom; his "negative dialectic" contains within it the possibility of redemption.
- zoogeny 3y ago