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#arendt
blackswaneuroparedux · 11 months
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I can assure you that my personal needs as an individual are fulfilled when I have good books, good music, and good friends.
- Hannah Arendt
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philosophybitmaps · 19 days
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monicadeola · 1 month
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thefragileabsolute · 6 months
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Correspondence between Agamben and Arendt.
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Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.
Hannah Arendt
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kevkebus-subh · 2 years
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Heidegger, Arendt'e yazdığı bir mektupta şunu diyor: 
"Kendime her gün şunu öğütlüyorum; ‘sen kendi işini yap.’ Geri kalan ve büyük şeylerin bizden gizlenmiş kendi kaderleri vardır.'' Kendi işimizi yapalım, bırakalım diğer şeyler kendi kaderlerini yaşamaya devam etsin.
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nicklloydnow · 1 year
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“These ecosystems knit the social bonds that ground us to a community. They give us a sense of place, identity and worth. The economic dislocation of the past few decades, aggravated by the pandemic, have weakened or severed these bonds, leaving us disconnected, atomized, trapped in a debilitating anomie that fosters rage, despair, loneliness and fuels the epidemic of substance abuse, depression and suicidal ideation. Estranged from society, we become estranged from ourselves. This social isolation, exacerbated by social media, is a plague, leaving the vulnerable prey to groups and demagogues that promise a sense of belonging and purpose in return for loyalty to a dogmatic political or religious ideology. “The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness,” Hannah Arendt writes, “but his isolation and lack of normal social relations.” Social isolation is the lifeblood of totalitarian movements. There are many things I fear about the future, but this unmooring is one of the most ominous.”
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hyperbanal · 2 years
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Hence, they [the men of letters] turned to the study of Greek and Roman authors, but not—and this is decisive—for the sake of whatever eternal wisdom or immortal beauty the ancient books might contain but almost exclusively in order to learn about the political institutions to which they bore witness. In eighteenth-century France, as in eighteenth century America, it was their search of public freedom and public happiness, and not their quest for truth, that led men back to antiquity.
Hannah Arendt, Action and the ”Pursuit of Happiness”.
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aitan · 1 year
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"Il rivoluzionario più radicale diventerà un conservatore il giorno dopo la rivoluzione."
"La guerra non restaura diritti, ridefinisce poteri."
"Gli uomini muoiono, ma non sono fatti per morire. Sono creati per incominciare."
Hannah Arendt
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llaguetita · 2 years
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Leggere l'opera principale della Arendt significa scoprire che siamo tutti un po' Eichmann
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tita-ferreira · 1 month
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Opera Mundi: O dia em que um general israelense viu o nazismo em seu país
"Em 2016, o general israelense Yair Golan fazia comparações como a feita por Lula. Intelectuais como Einstein e Arendt também compararam extrema-direita israelense com os nazistas"
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Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself.
- Hannah Arendt
Republicans - often the restless and rootless cosmopolitan bourgeois - don’t understand how constitutional monarchies safeguard liberal democracy for everyone. Republicans demand an abstract loyalty to the state. But they don't  understand human beings or even the human condition. We are loyal to other people: to our family or congregation, our tribe or our nation. If we are moved by the state or by the flag, it is because it is a traditional institution of our people, our nation embodied in the apolitical nature of the constitutional monarch as HM Queen Elizabeth II did.
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philosophybitmaps · 2 months
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salonnierealexis · 2 months
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For the victims of slavery and colonialism, history had been cruel, but it was not, in his view, an inescapable destiny: “I am not a slave to the slavery that dehumanized my ancestors,” he declared in “Black Skin, White Masks,” adding for good measure that the “density of history determines none of my acts.” He placed his faith in humanity’s capacity for rebirth and innovation and in the possibility of new departures in history: what Arendt called “natality.”
The World Has Caught Up to Frantz Fanon
Feb. 2, 2024
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paulrmatthews · 3 months
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On working Animals
[a talk I recently gave at Leuphana for the Conference in Critical Animal Studies]
Blatter, Coulter, and Kymlicka, begin the introduction to their collected volume, Animal Labor, by pointing out that although we often employ turns of phrase such as “to work like a dog” or “beasts of burden,” there has long been a tradition in western philosophical thought of denying work to animals, of denying that animals have the ability to work or else to labor (and we might have to to distinguish between these two things, between working and laboring, if we are to make sense of the various voices that would deny animals the capacity to work but not necessarily to labor). The editors then go on to refer to the likes of Marx, “a founding father of contemporary labour theories,” as they say, who argues that labour, or better Arbeit (since again we might have to distinguish between labor and work), is something exclusively human. 
In the third chapter of the 1867 edition of Capital, volume 1, devoted to the work-process and the production of use-values, Marx writes that, [quote] “we assume the work-process to be in such a form that it belongs exclusively to the human.” He then goes on to differentiate such work from the operations and constructions of spiders and bees, arguing that while [quote] “a spider [Spinne] carries out operations resembling those of a weaver and a bee, through the construction of its wax cells, puts some human builders to shame,” even the worst human builders distinguish themselves from bees insofar as they are able to construct cells in their heads before constructing them in wax (Marx 1967, pp. 177-8 / MEGA II.5 129).⁠1 In other words, they are able to construct their edifices ideally before constructing them really.  A few lines later, Marx further clarifies what he means, arguing  that work does not merely consist in the alteration of a natural form, but in the realization of a purpose or Zweck in that very alteration: [quote] “Apart from the striving of the organs that are working, the purposeful will, which reveals itself as attention, is required  for the entire duration of the work-process...” (MEGA II.5 129). From the start, Marx makes it clear that he is not interested in “those sort of animalistic instinctual forms of the work-process (MEGA II.5 129),” which we find, for example, in the workings of the vital organs: the heart, the lungs, etc. Instead, he is interested in that kind of work which, of which he thinks, only humans are capable: namely, willed, purposeful, intentional work. That many other non-human animals are most certainly capable of work that transcends the workings of organs, does not seem to bother Marx. Ultimately, the closest that animals get to actually working is becoming tools, instruments in the human work-process.
Like most all Western philosophers, Marx is a dualist who believes we can divide the world up into humans on the one side and nonhumans on the other and that on the basis of some supposedly specifically human trait or property or constellation of properties:  in this case intentionality, purposefulness, willfulness, consciousness etc.. To be sure, in Marx’s case,  it is not entirely correct to say, that animals are incapable of work in a general sense, only that they are incapable of that specific kind of work, which human beings engage in and which distinguishes them from all other animals: namely, intentional, purposeful, willful, work. Another way of putting this is that, for Marx, it is not work per se that distinguishes human beings from other animals, but the human animal’s capacity to think, to plan ahead, to design etc., to work purposefully, which is to say to have a goal or purpose in mind while working, to be conscious of what one is doing and why one is doing it while working. And this is why work demands the worker’s attention; otherwise, it would be indistinguishable from play, which [quote] “carries the worker away on the basis of its own content and its manner of execution”  (MEGA II.5 129). Here, work becomes intentional, purposeful, willful etc., to the extent that it demands will, purpose, intention, etc. Put otherwise, work appears as work as such when it comes into conflict with the natural will, with the drives or desires. Will, intention, purpose, and even consciousness as such, would seem to arise through the negation of a “natural”  will, intention, purpose, consciousness etc. – what Hegel refers to as desire or else animal consciousness.
I do not want to dwell too long here on Marx, especially sense I have promised you a talk on Bataille, Kojève, and Hegel. That said, something would be amiss, if I were to give a talk on work without mentioning Marx, especially sense, as far as I can tell, Marx is one of the first to explicitly make the case that humans differentiate themselves from other animals on the basis work as purposeful activity, an argument that will then be taken up and modified by Kojève and Bataille. Although something like this argument is present in Hegel, Kojève and Bataille make this argument even more explicitly, (along with Hannah Arendt for that matter), and it it is to their works that I would now like to turn.  Without downplaying their very real differences, my goal will be to highlight the essentially Hegelian strand of thought, binding these thinkers together. To begin, let me then briefly discuss Hegel’s concept of work.
Hegel discusses the concept of work in at least two places: in his Philosophy of Right and his Phenomenology of Spirit, published some 13 years apart. While reading Hegel’s treatment of work in the Philosophy of Right, it is hard not to be reminded of Marx’s treatment and, indeed, it would appear that, rather than Hegel’s treatment of work in the Phenomenology, it is his treatment in the  Philosophy of Right which influenced Marx most directly. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel’s discussion of work takes place in the context of a larger discussion on the “System of Needs,” where work is a a particular way of meeting such needs. Here we find discussions of the nature of work, the processing of raw-materials, the consumption of products (which is really the consummation of human effort), education, division of labor, etc. But, in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel refrains from discussing work, theoretically, in the abstract as he does in the Phenomenology. There, Hegel defines work as [quote] “hemmed in  desire, stalled disappearing, or it educates” (PhG 135 / 115).⁠2  For Hegel, work is essentially holding back, a negation or reigning in of our drives and/or desires. Animals, Hegel argues, are incapable of holding back; they famously do not [quote] “stand before sensible things as if they existed in themselves, but, despairing of this reality and being fully convinced of its nothingness, help themselves without hesitation and eat it up” (PhG 77 / 69).⁠3 All we have to do here to understand what Hegel means is to, according to Bataille, “Think of the voracity of animals, as against the composure of a cook”  (Bataille Reader 244-245; The text is from The Accursed Share vol. II, The History of Eroticism; vol. III, Sovereignty, tr. Robert Hurley (,: ,me Books, New York, 1 99 1 ), pp. 79-86.) To be sure, this is not to say that the animal does not, at times, have to wait to satisfy its desires, but that at the moment that an object of desire comes along, the animal cannot but help itself and satisfies its desire more or less immediately. In contrast, humans often purposefully delay or defer satisfaction, sometimes indefinitely, normally with some end in mind. They limit themselves, usually for some reason or purpose. To be sure, this is a learned behavior. Human beings had to learn to work, which means they had to be forced to work, and this is what happens in the infamous dialectic between Herr and Knecht, Lord and Bondsman, sometimes translated, Master and Slave, in in the Phenomenology.
While we will not be able to get into the details of this dialectic here, suffice it to say that, in Hegel’s mythical tale, the Lord and Bondsman to-be engage in a struggle to the death for recognition. Each wants to prove to the other that they are not “mere” animals, but self-conscious human subjects, willing to sacrifice everything for something which only humans beings would sacrifice themselves for:  things like, prestige, honor, glory.  So as to prove themselves to each other, they must demonstrate that they are willing to die without, at the same time, dying, since the death of one or the other or both would render the act of mutual recognition impossible. In the end, the Bondsman realizes that death will achieve nothing, so he surrenders, becoming in the eyes of the Lord, an animal, a thing, an instrument or tool to be used at the Lord’s discretion. Of course, the bondsman has experienced things the Lord has not. Although the Bondsman has not died, he has experienced death or the fear of death (which, at the same time, Hegel remarks, is the fear of the Lord), and has thereby gained an awareness or consciousness of his own finitude – a consciousness which raises him above all other, non-human animals, freeing him, so to speak, from nature ( which Hegel conceives, first and foremost, as the sphere of immediacy). Moreover, it is this learned fear of death, which motivates the Bondsman to work  in the first place,  and it is by by working, that the Bondsman ultimately raises himself, objectively, above the animal; not only in consciousness, but really and actually. By working for the Lord, the Bondsman learns how to stave off his own desires and thus to work off his [quote] “attachment to natural existence”  (PhG 134 / 114). Every product that the bondsman produces, is itself a reproduction of his own self-consciousness, an objective realization of himself in the world, and a chance for the bondsman to get to know himself – a chance that the Master, who never works, never receives. 
Although Hegel himself never says it, Kojève summarizes Hegel’s take on work well when he says, [quote] “it is by work, and only by work, that man realizes himself objectively as man. Only after producing an artificial object is man himself really and objectively more than and different from a natural being; and only in this real and objective product does he become truly conscious of his subjective human reality...Work, then, is what ‘forms-or-educates’ man beyond the animal” (Kojève 1969, p. 25). As a Marxist first and Hegelian second, Kojève perhaps over emphasizes the role that work plays in the genesis of the self-conscious human being; it is doubtful whether we can really say, for Hegel, that work is what forms-or-educates the human being beyond the animal, if only because work is not the only way that human beings learn to hem in their desires or repress their drives, albeit we will have to leave this question aside for now. That said, Hegel does indeed argue, quite clearly, that human beings realize themselves objectively in the world through work; thus, the analysis of the work of human beings, their works, should allow us some insight into this anthropogenesis – at least this is what Bataille appears to argue, at least in part.
Following Kojève, and, for that matter Marx, Bataille also argues that that human beings distinguish themselves from other animals through work; although, like Marx, he does not deny that animals work, albeit in their own,  instinctual sort of way. Work, Bataille writes, is “[quote] no less ancient than man himself, and though work is not always foreign to animals, human work is never foreign to reason.”  Bataille is aware that such statements are, for various reasons, questionable,  yet this does not stop him from asserting that the animal, “every animal,” as he so memorably puts it, is [quote] “in the world like water in water” (1992, p. 19). Like Hegel, Kojève, and Marx, Bataille argues that non-human animals relate to the world immediately and/or immanently. Their world is characterized by continuity, ours by discontinuity. When an animal eats another, Bataille claims, it is not aware or conscious of the other animal as another animal, there is [quote] “no transcendence between the eater and the eaten” (1992, p. 17), and thus no subordination as we have, for example, between the Lord and the Bondsman, the Master and the Slave: “The lion is not the king of the beasts,” writes Bataille, “in the moment of the waters he is only a higher wave overturning the other, weaker ones” (1992, p. 19).  
Bataille admits that it is impossible to know what it is like to be an animal, to live in the animal’s world. We are separated from other animals, according to Bataille, by an abyss, a depth or a profundity.  The animal, Bataille writes, [and I quote] “opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me. In as sense, I know this depth: it is my own. It is also that which is farthest removed form me, that which deserves the name depth [profundeur], which means precisely that it is unfathomable to me” (1992, p. 22). The animal’s world remains unfathomable, because we can no longer imagine what it is like to experience the world in terms of continuity, intimacy or immediacy. We now live in a world of discontinuity, ushered in by work and, more specifically, by the tool. Bataille writes, [quote’ “the positing of the object, which is not given in animality, is in the human use of tools…Insofar as tools  are developed with their end in view consciousness posits them as objects, as interruptions in the indistinct continuity” (1992, p. 27). The introduction of the tool not only interrupts the continuity of the animal world, it sets everything in the world in a relation of cause and effect,  of subordination, transforming even other subjects (both human and animal) into tools, instruments to be used. “By work,” writes Bataille,  “man orders the world of things and brings himself down to the level of a thing among things; work makes a worker a means to an end” (Bataille Erotic 157). Although the world of work promises an end, its end is always but another means; hence, life in the world of work is ultimately meaningless.  Moreover, it is work that, according to Bataille, reveals death, which at all times threatens to make “nonsense of our efforts” (Bataille, Erotic, 45), and which then appears as the opposite of work, as a perhaps the only way to return to the plane of continuity – an idea that both repeals and attracts us, according to Bataille. It is this prospect of escape, which also explains the abyssal allure of the animal. However, such a return is and and always will be impossible. 
If we had had more time, I would have loved to expand upon these admittedly rudimentary sketches. Instead, I would like to pose the question again, with which I began this talk, namely, whether animals work. I doubt anything I have said here today has made this question easier to answer, although that was never my intention, even if I think that the likes of Hegel, Kojève, and Bataille may be help us to clarify what it means, or could mean, to work. As for myself, I sometimes wonder if Arendt’s distinction, which she makes in her Human Condition, between labor and work could help us perhaps persevere a place for animal labor, if not animal work. But then I am reminded of Butler’s criticism of Arendt, of her tendency to denigrate the bodily at the expense of the spiritual, of labor at the expense of work, and I wonder if we might be able to take a cue from Bataille and imagine a different kind of work, which would be closer to play.
1 Wir unterstellen die Arbeit in einer Form, worin sie dem Menschen ausschließlich angehört. Eine Spinne verrichtet Operationen, die denen des Webers ähneln, und eine Biene beschämt durch den Bau ihrer Wachszellen manchen menschlichen Baumeister. Was aber von vornherein den schlechtesten Baumeister vor der besten Biene auszeichnet, ist, daß er die Zelle in seinem Kopf gebaut hat, bevor er sie in Wachs baut.
2 “Die Arbeit hingegen ist gehemmte Begierde, aufgehaltenes Verschwinden, oder sie bildet” (PhG 135 / 115).
3 Kojève:  “Work transforms the world and civilizes, educates, Man. The man who want to work – or who must work – must repress the instinct that drives him ‘to consume’ ‘immediately’ the ‘raw’ object. And the Slave can work for the Master – that is, for another than himself – only by repressing his own desires. Hence, he transcends himself by working – or, perhaps better, he educates himself, he ‘cultivates’ and ‘sublimates’ his instincts by repressing them. On the other hand, he does not destroy the thing as it is given. He postpones the destruction of the thing by first trans-forming it through work; he prepares it for consumption – that is to say, he ‘forms’ it. In his work, he trans-forms things and trans-forms himself a the same time: he forms things and the World by transforming himself, by educating himself; and he educates himself, he forms himself, by transforming things and the world” (Kojève 1969, p. 25).
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Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo di fascismo
“I suoi primi contatti personali con funzionari ebrei, tutti sionisti di vecchia data, furono pienamente soddisfacenti. Eichmann spiegò che la ragione per cui la ‘questione ebraica’ lo affascinava tanto era il proprio ‘idealismo’. Anche quegli ebrei, a differenza degli assimilazionisti, da lui sempre disprezzati, e degli ortodossi, che lo annoiavano, erano ‘idealisti’. Essere ‘idealisti’, secondo…
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