Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

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PuerAzaelis
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Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by PuerAzaelis »

Terror, then, was not a means for totalitarian regimes but, in Arendt’s view, their very essence. But this raises two important questions. First, how can a regime whose essence is terror come to power in the first place? What was the basis of its mass appeal? Secondly, how is it that European culture, the culture of the West, gave birth to these pathological experiments in what Arendt calls “total domination”?

For Arendt, the appeal of totalitarianism lay in its ideology. For millions of people shaken loose from their accustomed place in the social order by
World War, the Great Depression, and revolution, the notion that a single idea could, through its “inherent logic,” reveal “the mysteries of the whole
historical process – the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, [and] the uncertainties of the future” was tremendously comforting.

Once the premise of the ideology was accepted – that is, once the idea that all history is the history of class struggle (Marxism) or a natural development resulting from the struggle between the races (Nazism) – every action of the regime could be logically “deduced” and justified in terms of the “law” of History or Nature. The idea of class struggle logically entailed the idea of “dying classes” who would soon be swept into the dustbin of history (and should be helped on their way), just as the Nazis’ conception of racial/cultural struggle entailed the idea of “unfit races” – races whose built-in inferiority would lead them to extinction in the ruthless Darwinian struggle for survival and domination. The unembarrassed claim of totalitarian ideology in both its Marxist and its National Socialist forms was that the logic of its central animating idea mirrored the logic of the historical or natural process itself.

Hence, totalitarian regimes could claim an authority which transcended all merely human laws and agreements (which the regimes treated with thinly disguised contempt), an authority derived directly from the “laws of motion” which governed the natural or historical process.

The certitude that arises from the apparent possession of such a “key to history” helps us understand the nature of totalitarianism’s appeal. But what about the second question? How is it that Europe, the home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, gave birth to a form of politics as brutally murderous as totalitarianism? Arendt’s answer to this question is complex and multi-faceted; any summary of it will be simplified to the point of distortion. Nevertheless, we can note that Arendt viewed modern European history as, in large part, a series of pathologies, with totalitarianism as “the climactic pathology.” Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism were not aberrations born of peculiarly dysfunctional national characters or political histories; rather, they were phenomena made possible by a particular constellation of events and tendencies within modern European history and culture. Foremost among these was the imperialism of the late nineteenth century, with its focus on expansion for the sake of expansion and the limitless accumulation of wealth. This boundless pursuit of wealth and empire undermined the self-limiting structure of the nation-state and prefigured the totalitarian pursuit of global conquest.

Moreover, it represented, in Arendt’s eyes, the triumph of the bourgeois(who lusted after wealth and power at any price) over the citoyen (who was concerned with the public realm and the preservation of rights and freedoms).

Dissolving the stable boundaries of the public world in order to expand further and gain more, imperialism set the stage for political movements which were concerned no longer with care of a stable and limited public world, but with conquest and the self-assertion of national (ethnic or racial) identity.
https://pensarelespaciopublico.files.wo ... arendt.pdf

Is Arendt correct?
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thrasymachus
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Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by thrasymachus »

"the logic of its central animating idea mirrored the logic of the historical or natural process itself."

This is the issue, isn't it? But nothing is this easy, as if it could be conceived in a "totality" what is right and just. This is the kind of thing dystopian is made of. The trouble with historical and natural accounts that seem to infer the way the world really should be is that these accounts are closed. The only thing that works is what can be called an open totality: a system of ideas and laws that is interpretatively sensitive and yielding to something closer to the foundation of our existence, ethics and value.
GE Morton
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Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by GE Morton »

PuerAzaelis wrote: January 25th, 2023, 5:46 pm
Is Arendt correct?
That is an interesting question, one I would have expected to elicit more comments. I bought and have almost finished her essay on "The Origins of Totalitarianism." She's not wrong, but I don't think her explanation really answers the question --- "How could such totalitarian movements as Naziism and Stalinism have arisen in Europe, the birthplace of liberalism and the notions of equality and natural rights?"

More later, after I've finished her essay.
gad-fly
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Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by gad-fly »

PuerAzaelis wrote: January 25th, 2023, 5:46 pm
Terror, then, was not a means for totalitarian regimes but, in Arendt’s view, their very essence. But this raises two important questions. First, how can a regime whose essence is terror come to power in the first place? What was the basis of its mass appeal? Secondly, how is it that European culture, the culture of the West, gave birth to these pathological experiments in what Arendt calls “total domination”?

For Arendt, the appeal of totalitarianism lay in its ideology. For millions of people shaken loose from their accustomed place in the social order by
World War, the Great Depression, and revolution, the notion that a single idea could, through its “inherent logic,” reveal “the mysteries of the whole
historical process – the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, [and] the uncertainties of the future” was tremendously comforting.

Once the premise of the ideology was accepted – that is, once the idea that all history is the history of class struggle (Marxism) or a natural development resulting from the struggle between the races (Nazism) – every action of the regime could be logically “deduced” and justified in terms of the “law” of History or Nature. The idea of class struggle logically entailed the idea of “dying classes” who would soon be swept into the dustbin of history (and should be helped on their way), just as the Nazis’ conception of racial/cultural struggle entailed the idea of “unfit races” – races whose built-in inferiority would lead them to extinction in the ruthless Darwinian struggle for survival and domination. The unembarrassed claim of totalitarian ideology in both its Marxist and its National Socialist forms was that the logic of its central animating idea mirrored the logic of the historical or natural process itself.

Hence, totalitarian regimes could claim an authority which transcended all merely human laws and agreements (which the regimes treated with thinly disguised contempt), an authority derived directly from the “laws of motion” which governed the natural or historical process.

The certitude that arises from the apparent possession of such a “key to history” helps us understand the nature of totalitarianism’s appeal. But what about the second question? How is it that Europe, the home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, gave birth to a form of politics as brutally murderous as totalitarianism? Arendt’s answer to this question is complex and multi-faceted; any summary of it will be simplified to the point of distortion. Nevertheless, we can note that Arendt viewed modern European history as, in large part, a series of pathologies, with totalitarianism as “the climactic pathology.” Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism were not aberrations born of peculiarly dysfunctional national characters or political histories; rather, they were phenomena made possible by a particular constellation of events and tendencies within modern European history and culture. Foremost among these was the imperialism of the late nineteenth century, with its focus on expansion for the sake of expansion and the limitless accumulation of wealth. This boundless pursuit of wealth and empire undermined the self-limiting structure of the nation-state and prefigured the totalitarian pursuit of global conquest.

Moreover, it represented, in Arendt’s eyes, the triumph of the bourgeois(who lusted after wealth and power at any price) over the citoyen (who was concerned with the public realm and the preservation of rights and freedoms).

Dissolving the stable boundaries of the public world in order to expand further and gain more, imperialism set the stage for political movements which were concerned no longer with care of a stable and limited public world, but with conquest and the self-assertion of national (ethnic or racial) identity.
https://pensarelespaciopublico.files.wo ... arendt.pdf

Is Arendt correct?
This thread is among the rare few worth going into and follow. i presume you would not be satisfied with a simple Yes or No to your question, but who can get through those three hundred pages in your link soon enough, before your thread would be off-screen.

The link starts with Page 2, under 1 The Origins of Totalitarianism.
"in Arendt's view it was a grave mistake to view totalitarian regimes as updated versions of the tyrannies of the old."
gad-fly
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Joined: October 23rd, 2019, 4:48 pm

Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by gad-fly »

PuerAzaelis wrote: January 25th, 2023, 5:46 pm
Terror, then, was not a means for totalitarian regimes but, in Arendt’s view, their very essence. But this raises two important questions. First, how can a regime whose essence is terror come to power in the first place? What was the basis of its mass appeal? Secondly, how is it that European culture, the culture of the West, gave birth to these pathological experiments in what Arendt calls “total domination”?

For Arendt, the appeal of totalitarianism lay in its ideology. For millions of people shaken loose from their accustomed place in the social order by
World War, the Great Depression, and revolution, the notion that a single idea could, through its “inherent logic,” reveal “the mysteries of the whole
historical process – the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, [and] the uncertainties of the future” was tremendously comforting.

Once the premise of the ideology was accepted – that is, once the idea that all history is the history of class struggle (Marxism) or a natural development resulting from the struggle between the races (Nazism) – every action of the regime could be logically “deduced” and justified in terms of the “law” of History or Nature. The idea of class struggle logically entailed the idea of “dying classes” who would soon be swept into the dustbin of history (and should be helped on their way), just as the Nazis’ conception of racial/cultural struggle entailed the idea of “unfit races” – races whose built-in inferiority would lead them to extinction in the ruthless Darwinian struggle for survival and domination. The unembarrassed claim of totalitarian ideology in both its Marxist and its National Socialist forms was that the logic of its central animating idea mirrored the logic of the historical or natural process itself.

Hence, totalitarian regimes could claim an authority which transcended all merely human laws and agreements (which the regimes treated with thinly disguised contempt), an authority derived directly from the “laws of motion” which governed the natural or historical process.

The certitude that arises from the apparent possession of such a “key to history” helps us understand the nature of totalitarianism’s appeal. But what about the second question? How is it that Europe, the home of the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, gave birth to a form of politics as brutally murderous as totalitarianism? Arendt’s answer to this question is complex and multi-faceted; any summary of it will be simplified to the point of distortion. Nevertheless, we can note that Arendt viewed modern European history as, in large part, a series of pathologies, with totalitarianism as “the climactic pathology.” Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism were not aberrations born of peculiarly dysfunctional national characters or political histories; rather, they were phenomena made possible by a particular constellation of events and tendencies within modern European history and culture. Foremost among these was the imperialism of the late nineteenth century, with its focus on expansion for the sake of expansion and the limitless accumulation of wealth. This boundless pursuit of wealth and empire undermined the self-limiting structure of the nation-state and prefigured the totalitarian pursuit of global conquest.

Moreover, it represented, in Arendt’s eyes, the triumph of the bourgeois(who lusted after wealth and power at any price) over the citoyen (who was concerned with the public realm and the preservation of rights and freedoms).

Dissolving the stable boundaries of the public world in order to expand further and gain more, imperialism set the stage for political movements which were concerned no longer with care of a stable and limited public world, but with conquest and the self-assertion of national (ethnic or racial) identity.
https://pensarelespaciopublico.files.wo ... arendt.pdf

Is Arendt correct?
This thread is among the rare few worth going into and follow. i presume you would not be satisfied with a simple Yes or No to your question, but who can get through those three hundred pages in your link soon enough, before your thread would be off-screen.

The link starts with Page 2, under 1 The Origins of Totalitarianism.

"in Arendt's view it was a grave mistake to view totalitarian regimes as updated versions of the tyrannies of the old."

She did not categorically deny that old tyrannies are indeed the origins, even if contemporary ones may be more than updating.

"Terror, then, was not a means for totalitarian regimes, but their very essence . . . pathological experiments in what Arendt called total domination."

The very essence is "total domination", not terror, which is only means to the end.

I shall talk about evil later.
gad-fly
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Joined: October 23rd, 2019, 4:48 pm

Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by gad-fly »

GE Morton wrote: January 27th, 2023, 1:26 pm
PuerAzaelis wrote: January 25th, 2023, 5:46 pm
Is Arendt correct?
That is an interesting question, one I would have expected to elicit more comments. I bought and have almost finished her essay on "The Origins of Totalitarianism." She's not wrong, but I don't think her explanation really answers the question --- "How could such totalitarian movements as Naziism and Stalinism have arisen in Europe, the birthplace of liberalism and the notions of equality and natural rights?"

More later, after I've finished her essay.
How could, or rather, how can?

Why not? History has shown that it has happened regulary, from time to time. Contemporary example: McCarthyism in the United States; national security laws in Hong Kong, which can put in jails for years before trial.
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thrasymachus
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Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by thrasymachus »

gad-fly wrote
This thread is among the rare few worth going into and follow. i presume you would not be satisfied with a simple Yes or No to your question, but who can get through those three hundred pages in your link soon enough, before your thread would be off-screen.

The link starts with Page 2, under 1 The Origins of Totalitarianism.

"in Arendt's view it was a grave mistake to view totalitarian regimes as updated versions of the tyrannies of the old."

She did not categorically deny that old tyrannies are indeed the origins, even if contemporary ones may be more than updating.

"Terror, then, was not a means for totalitarian regimes, but their very essence . . . pathological experiments in what Arendt called total domination."

The very essence is "total domination", not terror, which is only means to the end.

I shall talk about evil later.
The question is, then, what is the rationality behind the drive to Totalize? What made the Nazis and the Soviets so far beyond despicable? The answer lies here: "the logic of its central animating idea mirrored the logic of the historical or natural process itself." A dangerous thing to insist you know the way things should be, but it is interesting to note that the fascists of the 20th century were not obsessed with a bad religious metaphysics (though among the people in Germany there was a prevailing German "folkism" that was dear to Himmler, Hitler and others; not exactly religious thinking, but it did play into the collective nostalgia of a privileged people of a privileged race and history). But this wasn't simply a German thing. There was a strong belief among many that those who were genetically inferior, race notwithstanding, should be eugenically removed from society. This thinking circulated throughout the educated world. God was not the standing rationalization; it was science. And science is cold and and calculating, though eugenics was often defended with talk of compassion. At that time, many believed that the true calling of our social endeavors was to perfect the human race. This is evidenced everywhere at the time, from Francis Galton, who was a half-cousin of Charles Darwin to the US's Oliver Wendell Holmes

Behaviorism was also popular in the scientific community. Note how Arendt talks about reducing a human being to a Pavlovian responder, delivering the subject from all spontaneity. The concentration camp was an experimental microcosm of what was occurring throughout society: a propagandistic conditioning free of the errancies independent thought. In the camp, there was no longer any illusions of personhood. And when she writes that the concentration camps reflected an attitude that morally "everything is permitted" in such a place, one can hear in the background Dostoevsky's Dimitri saying, 'without God and immortal life? All things are lawful then, they can do what they like?' This does lead up to my point:
Though I have only read part of Arendt's book on totalitarianism (I am reading The Portable Arendt)I see no sign that she sees at the heart of it all displacing of God with science. God historically did serve as moral justification for committing the worst atrocities, but this "totality" was inherently moral itself, that is, doing the right thing was not some vacuous notion of organizational efficiency. It's aim was intentionally the fulfillment of a metaphysics of morals, as it were. Science has no such aim, and its brutality can thereby be as absolute and the moral vacuum of its nihilism. Just witness the likes of Josef Mengele. This was the first age to acknowledge that if there is no God, everything indeed is permissible.
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Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by gad-fly »

thrasymachus wrote: January 29th, 2023, 4:33 pm
The question is, then, what is the rationality behind the drive to Totalize?
The answer? Plain and simple: To totally dominate. The drive: because partial domination is not strong enough. Difference between dictatorial regime from totalitarian regime: The former may have one voice, but it is not good enough for the latter, who must have a single uniform voice by all.
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thrasymachus
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Re: Arendt's views on totalitarianism and racism

Post by thrasymachus »

gad-fly wrote
The answer? Plain and simple: To totally dominate. The drive: because partial domination is not strong enough. Difference between dictatorial regime from totalitarian regime: The former may have one voice, but it is not good enough for the latter, who must have a single uniform voice by all.
Plain and simple? Really?
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