Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism

 Aaron Petty Section #7

            As a holocaust survivor, Hannah Arendt witnessed the rise and fall of the Nazi regime firsthand. Being born Jewish in Germany before World War 1 placed her at the epicenter of what would become one of the most oppressive societies in the years to follow. Ever since the formation of the German Empire in the 1870s, they always wanted to expand their control. After waiting 40 years, the political climate in central and eastern Europe finally gave them the opportunity they had been cultivating. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire believed Serbia to be politically devious, with the primary goal of taking over Austrian land. In June 1914, a Serbian national assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.  

At the time, Germany was an ally of Austria, and was asked for their support of an invasion of Serbia. The Germans saw this as an excuse to conquer the rest of Europe and so they gave Austria the military aid needed to start a war. Both empires knew Russia would come to the protection of Serbia, but this wasn't enough for Germany. They needed more countries involved, so they provoked France in addition to invading Belgium. The Germans knew to conquer Europe, they couldn't risk involving the British. However, invading Belgium broke a treaty between Britian and Germany that would eventually lead to their demise. By provoking England, the Germans unknowingly involved the US, who changed the course of World War 1 upon their military entry in 1917.  

After their defeat in 1918, Germany was heavily sanctioned for their role in the war. The Central Powers were required to pay reparations to the Allies to cover civilian damages during World War 1. For Germany, this added up to over 30 billion dollars, forcing them to go into debt to cover the cost. Many German citizens saw these reparations as a national humiliation, which helped spark hatred towards the major European countries. This hate turned into strong nationalism, slowly poisoning the minds of everyday citizens who began to believe that Germany was being unfairly punished. As the public's mindset evolved, so did their government. Political officers began to use the same nationalistic rhetoric as the people, creating a culture where hatred became widely accepted.  

Throughout the 1920s, German nationalism continued to grow stronger eventually leading to the inclusion of antisemitism speech being widely accepted by the public. The political climate at the time signaled those interested in extreme nationalism that now was the moment to unite the country through the hatred of Jewish Germans. The rise of the Nazi Party was not a swift one. The timing had to be right for the public to accept their ideology. It took years for the party to gain enough support from the public to hold office in parliament. But once they became a major force in German politics, democracy in the country didn't stand a chance. Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, starting a horrific era of antisemitic oppression that culminated in the eventual murder of 6 million Jews.  

Totalitarianism is a system that thrives through conformity of the public and apathy towards freedom. In a democracy, the people have the power to change how the government operates. The court of public opinion matters to politicians in this system. But when the people willingly give the government absolute power, their voices no longer have influence. This is when totalitarianism grows. Many argue the people don't allow oppressive regimes to form, but when the public doesn't condemn undemocratic actions within a government, they allow totalitarianism to take root. 

Consider American politics today; both sides of the aisle use emotional rhetoric when addressing the other party. The purpose is to make voters emotionally invested in one side winning, which breeds contempt and eventually hatred towards the opposition. The worrying part of this is that the public accepts politicians using this type of language. The people hold the most influence in American democracy, so when they stop caring about the use of dangerous rhetoric in politics, it prompts the government to wonder what else they can get by with. Apathy of democratic responsibilities like keeping the government in check, is exactly what Hannah Arendt warned people about after the Holocaust.  

The belief that the Nazis were an isolated event is a dangerous position to take. Every government, society, and culture can commit the atrocities witnessed during World War 2. It’s up to the people to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Arendt predicted the West was headed towards a dark era, one that would breed the most extreme of totalitarianism. There are many warning signs she pointed out that are starting to appear in American society. Remember, the Nazis were not an overnight phenomenon. It took years of cultural change for Germany to become a place that encouraged antisemitism.  

The overt arrogance Americans have towards our democracy creates the perfect storm for someone to take full control. People in the US generally don’t consider the erosion of democracy to be an issue at all. The climate has started to change recently as more of the public realizes there are people out there who would gladly grab absolute power if given the opportunity. The capital riots in 2021 shocked the world, helping show that extreme dissent in democratic norms, especially when cultivated by a president, can result in a dangerous attack on one of the oldest and most stable democratic systems in the world. If people don’t take action to ward off undemocratic behavior, then the erosion of the American system may very well happen. Vigilance is the most important responsibility a citizen has. 

 

Totalitarianism is not an abstract concept created for fiction. Currently, the nations of Russia, China, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Venezuela all exhibit the dangerous warning signs Arendt spoke about. Each have the highest probability of surpassing the Nazis in the amount of control, oppression, and mistreatment of their citizens. None are considered a democracy, but some once were. The fact that other countries can go down this path must be noticed by every American. The question is, will the people allow the United States to fulfil the dark predictions Hannah Arendt originally proposed after World War 2? 

Gun Violence in America (Chris Barnes #12)

The crisis of gun violence in America seems to become harder and harder to stomach with every passing month. Incidences of mass gun violence serve as a grim reminder of what we have all allowed our reality to become. Even more of these tragic incidences, categorized as one-off homicides or suicides, go unseen. Our fellow Americans become silent victims of a broken system. For years, debates have raved on regarding what to do about this problem, but an apparent solution has yet to present itself. The politicization of the issue has only worsened governmental feet-dragging, setting us back even further as even more Americans are reduced to statistics. 

Considering the politicization of gun violence, it's important to take a look at facts when discussing it. I found the American Psychological Association's article Gun Violence: Prediction, Prevention, and Policy to be very informative on the topic. Within the article, the APA delves into the root causes of gun violence, as well as "what works" to prevent gun violence. 

It seems that at many impasses in the life of a perpetrator (or a self-inflicting victim), preventative efforts could have been taken to prevent the perpetrator from resulting to gun violence. "Woefully insufficient" mental healthcare resources, as the APA describes it, seem to be a significant missing link.

In many cases of death by gun violence, if an at-risk individual had been given the proper resources, death could have likely been prevented. Such resources can come in any number of forms. Resources like mental health services, community outreach, and social work have been shown to be effective as a preventative measure against gun violence. The sad reality is that those not forced to be directly involved in a crisis tend not to take an active role in doing so.

A significant portion of gun deaths that must not go unseen are suicides. In 2020, 54% of gun deaths in the United States were suicides. Deaths like these would likely decrease with the aforementioned access to mental health resources. Sometimes, all it really takes is a trusted loved one to recognize the signs to prevent suicide. I'd like to stress this next part:

Check on your friends.

While researching, I found myself wondering why, considering all of the media coverage and statistics on gun violence, nothing has changed? I wanted to explore why it might be that people seem to stand idly by as this problem becomes worse and worse. 

The Bystander Effect, seen in the murder of Kitty Genovese (as explained in bystander effect hyperlink), is a theory that spoke to me while exploring why it is that so many Americans choose not to speak up. The theory asserts that when a person is faced with some type of emergency in which they, as well as others, have the power to help another person in need, they often don't. The thought process behind this lack of action is that someone else will assist the person in need; "Since others have the power to do something, there is no need for me to do anything about it."

Could it be that gun violence in America has been allowed to grow so out of control due to a simple case of the Bystander Effect? And are we all somewhat guilty of being a bystander?

In asking myself this question, I was reminded of a concept I found interesting while reviewing for our final exam: Jean-Paul Sarte and Bad Faith.

Sarte holds that one has 'bad faith' in running from one's freedom. We, as conscious beings, get to make our own decisions. The choice not to advocate for action on gun violence, in my opinion, is a splendid example of being in bad faith. Allowing oneself to remain tuned into the problem only when incidences of mass gun violence make headlines is categorically bad faith. 

I do firmly believe that our regard for one another's lives is still very much prevalent, and that we still care if human beings live or die. However, I firmly believe that we have created or at least participated in a society and culture which allows us to disconnect ourselves from the problem, and that is lethal. It would appear that to fully conquer this problem, we need to use a healthy dose of empathy.

Why do you think is it that we continue to tolerate the level of gun violence that we do? Have you taken action on this problem in some way? 

The process of identifying a solution and finding a practical application for said solution can only be described as murky. Many solutions have been thrown around over the years. Most commonly, gun control. Gun control boils down to being any legal measure meant to prevent or restrict firearm ownership. This could include anything from stricter, more in-depth background checks to the outright banning of civilian firearm ownership. 

In the aforementioned article by the APA, a number of methods of gun control are explored. They identified a number of effective gun control methods such as requiring licenses for handgun ownership, background checks for firearm purchases, close oversight on retailers, and similar checkpoints on ammunition. 

There are also whispers of non-traditional solutions such as "Smart Guns", or firearms equipped with technology that ensures they may only be used by their rightful owner. This solution is largely aimed at gun theft, a significant issue in the United States. Gun theft is often committed in order to commit other crimes, including homicide.

Many of the philosophers we've studied over the course of the semester would likely advocate for some form of gun control beyond what currently exists. Even those such as Locke, who had a notable influence on the creation of our nation's declaration of independence, would likely agree that today's policies are outdated and dangerous. This need for more up-to-date regulation stems from advancements in weapon technology. Changes in everything from magazine capacity, to the number of rounds a firearm is able to fire per minute, to the types of ammunition available require policy to be reviewed and amended to fit the modern definition of a firearm. 

Essentially, the same laws which oversee muskets and other outdated firearm technologies should not oversee the artillery of the modern era.

The struggle, in my mind, really seems to be about choosing a method or methods and applying them. There is no mathematical formula that will tell our government precisely how much funding to place into which methods in order to end this problem. This means trial and error are absolutely necessary to accomplish the goal. With that being said, this process of trial and error can and should be occurring much faster. The longer we spend trying to appease all sides of the argument, the more human beings lose their lives.

Is there a solution you believe would solve, or at least curb this problem?

Is life worth living by William James

                                   

      William James was an American philosopher and psychologist. He was one of the founders of American pragmatism: which is the philosophy that held the truth should be judged by its practical consequences; it is a philosophy that is supposed to make your life more live able. He is also a founder of the psychology movement of functionalism. Is life worth living was an essay of William James given as a speech at Harvard in 1895. In this essay he is convincing his listener or readers that maybe life is in fact worth living. William James had suffered from depression and chronic illnesses and was suicidal. He felt as if his life had no meaning and that freewill was as illusion. He was able to leave this state of mind with the help of Charles Renouvier. He began to believe that freewill was perhaps not an illusion and that he could change his life by believing in free will. 

 Here is a pretty cool picture of William James :)

        He starts off his speech by saying that there are some people who are optimistic. They find happiness in the little things life has to offer. Some examples James listed of those with an optimistic temperament and view on life were the poet Walt Whitman and the philosopher John Jacque Rousseau. Unfortunately, this optimistic temperament cannot be made universal. If it were then there would be no reason for William to give reasons as to why life is worth living.  
 
   Then are those who are inclined to have a pessimistic view of life and happiness seems to be impossible in their lives. William James asks us to imagine reasoning with someone who is on such terms with life that their only comfort lies in knowing that they may end it when they please. What would you say to that person? What could you possibly say that will convince them to not take their own life? William offers solutions for those driven to suicide by reflection. He is aware that his advice would be unhelpful to the vast majority.  "Most of you are devoted, for good or ill, to the reflective life. Many of you are students of philosophy and have already felt in your own persons the skepticism and unreality that too much grubbing in the abstract roots of things will breed. Constant questioning and little to no responsibility lead to pessimism and a suicidal view of life. Pessimism is essentially a religious disease. In the form of it to which you are most liable, it consists in nothing but a religious demand to which there comes no normal religious reply." 

     

                                         Two Paths to "Happiness"

   The first path to recovery from the disease of pessimism is for those who come from a religious background. For those who believe in divinity of nature the first step to making life more bearable is to abandon religion. William James says that we were taught through religious books and sacred texts that god made heaven and earth and decided that they were good.  "Yet, on more intimate acquaintance, the visible surfaces of heaven and earth refuse to be brought by us into any intelligible unity at all. Every phenomenon that we would praise there exists cheek by jowl with some contrary phenomenon that cancels all its religious effect upon the mind. Beauty and hideousness, love and cruelty, life and death keep house together in indissoluble partnership; and there gradually steals over us, instead of the old warm notion of a man-loving Deity, that of an awful power that neither hates nor loves, but rolls all things together meaninglessly to a common doom." How are you to come to terms with the fact that evil and good can reside in this world  if there is supposed to be a human living god. William James answers that question that plagues many minds by telling us to rid ourselves of the idea that such god exists. By getting rid of this divine nature element, you are free to act as you please. You may even commit suicide without feeling religious guilt.  Whatever turmoil you may have had before on why there was so much evil in the world if there was a human loving god is gone. You are now free to act.  You are now able to face these issues and injustices on your own since you have taken out the element of a higher being. Life is now worth living now that you have a purpose, now that you are able to act as you wish, and now that you are living for yourself. 

     The second path to recovery is for the science minded people who only look at the hard facts in the material world.  There are those who only believe in things that there is hard evidence to support. William James says that science is helping us to better understand the world around us, but it seems that there is so much that we do not know. “Our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea.” So, for those who are suicidal and do not believe in religion; the cure from pessimism William James says is to believe in religion. maybe this life is worth is it, and there will be a reward for us in the end. ".......What, in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic "thou shalt not believe without coercive sensible evidence" is simply an expression (free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of a certain peculiar kind."

         This view may be hard for the science minded people to believe. This is wishful thinking and there is no hard evidence to prove the existence of an unseen world. However, it is better to have this view than to have a nihilistic one.The mere action of believing despite not knowing of its truth can have the biggest effect on your life. So many of the greatest accomplishments in science have been on maybes, they have been on a whim that perhaps it could be true. So why are we to doubt that one’s life can be saved by a maybe. Maybe there is meaning to our lives and maybe we will be rewarded for sticking around for the battle."Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself. You make one or the other of two possible universes true by your trust or mistrust,—both universes having been only maybes, in this particular, before you contributed your act." It is what YOU believe in that makes all the difference in your life. So why waste your time and force yourself to live a miserable life when there are far better perspectives out there. 

   "This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view; and we are determined to make it from that point of view, so far as we have anything to do with it, a success. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."

   So I hope I've given you some answers on the question is life worth living. I'll leave you with one more; as some would joke, it depends on the liver. 

This video sums up the essay "Is Life Worth Living" in a brief and easily digestible manner. 

- Sabirin Elmi #11

Is Life Worth Living? Thoughts from William James

 

Leah Knight #12

Background of William James

William James was an American psychologist and philosopher who lived from 1842-1910.

    James is one of the key founders of Psychology along with: Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, and Wilhelm Wundt.

    He also began the pragmatism movement along with Charles Sanders Peirce. This is a reminder that the meaning of pragmatism is an emphasis on the practical function of knowledge as an instrument for adapting to reality as we know it and controlling what we can. 

    William James wrote many things of note such as: The Principles of Psychology, The Will to Believe, and my focus for this post Is Life Worth Living?

"Is Life Worth Living?"

    William James presented this work as a lecture at Harvard in 1895. In which he makes the the argument that life is worth living and starts his argument with the objection against suicide.

 

    The quote above comes from Is Life Worth Living? and demonstrates that James wishes to help people who are contemplating suicide. However, above he admits that not everyone can be talked out of suicide and the reasoning that William James gives for life being worth it would be lost on someone thinking of suicide in a moment of deep sorrow. 

    James claims that those who are willing to hear his words and participate in critical thinking may turn against their suicidal thought in favor of the belief that life is still worth living.

    William James says that pessimism is the product of our desire to attribute the facts of life to the will of a higher power. However, humans have a contrasting observation of the facts themselves.

The two factors that William James gives in order to cure one's pessimism are:

    1. To ignore religious longing and deal with the facts themselves

    2. One may find supplementary facts that they believe in, permitting religious readings to continue

    There is much of the world that science cannot explain. For example, before it was common knowledge that the sun is the center of our galaxy rather than the Earth, scientists found different bits of information that was "proof" that the Earth was the center. This example helps us understand that based on our beliefs is how we react to and interpret the world around us. 

    Which was William James's main belief that life is what you make of it. If you believe life to be worth living than the actions you take will make it so. You will see the good in the world and believe that life can be a wonderful thing. Thus, leading me to James's pun response to the question, is life worth living? William James replies with it depends on the liver. 

 

    Personally, I like this outlook on life. When you believe that life is what you make it, that then puts responsibility on you to make your life better when you want change and reduces the victim mentality when life gets hard. William James starts off his book confident that he could convince someone out of a suicidal mindset if they are willing to have a real and thoughtful conversation. He could be confident when he was working to convince people that their life is their creation and they may be in a bad spot right now, but they have the ability to make it better.

Sartrean Existentialism

For my final report, I want to take you on a philosophical journey to Paris in the 40s and 50s. My previous report was on the French existentialists (Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus). This time, I would like to focus on Jean-Paul Sartre and expand on his views on existentialism, a philosophical movement that he popularized. To set the right atmosphere, I made a small playlist of popular French songs of that period.

Who was Jean Paul Sartre?

Sartre was born on June 21st of 1905 in Paris as the only child of a bourgeois family. His father, an officer of the French navy passed when he was two years old. He was raised by his mother, his grandfather who was a celebrated physician, and his grandmother a respected writer. Sartre went to the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and, later on, after the remarriage of his mother, to the lycée de La Rochelle. From there he went to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, from which he graduated in 1929. During his time in college, Sartre was known for spending much of his time in cafés writing and discussing philosophy with his peers. He and his peers were also known for partying in a district called Saint Germain des Près, which later got the name "The Existentialist district". From 1931 until 1945 Sartre taught high school philosophy. Twice his teaching career was interrupted, once by a year of study in Berlin and the second time when Sartre was drafted in 1939 to serve in World War II. He was made a prisoner in 1940 and released a year later. During his years of teaching, Sartre published multiple philosophical novels, but it was above all in L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness; 1943) that Sartre revealed himself as a philosopher of remarkable originality and depth. Sartre places human consciousness, or no-thingness (néant), in opposition to being, or thingness (être). In 1964 he declined the Nobel Prize for Literature, which had been awarded to him “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age.”

What is existentialism?

 

-       English definition: A philosophical theory which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

-       Translated French definition: Doctrine according to which Man is not determined in advance by its essence, but free and responsible of his existence. 

Since I'm bilingual, I conducted my research in both French and English. I found it interesting that the Anglo-Saxon definition failed to mention the ideas of essence and existence together. Probably a testament to the impact of Sartre on France and the Francophonie in general.

“Existence precedes essence”

                                        -Jean-Paul Sartre

•  Essence: The intrinsic nature of something
• Existence: The act of being, existing.

As an example to illustrate these ideas, let's watch a clip from Rick and Morty where Morty acts as the higher power assigning a robot the essence of his existence.

Sartre views on Existentialism     

-       Anguish of freedom: Jean-Paul Sartre believed that human beings live in constant anguish, not solely because life is miserable, but because we are 'condemned to be free'. While the circumstances of our birth and upbringing are beyond our control, he reasons that once we become self-aware (and we all do eventually), we have to make choices — choices that define our very 'essence'. Only by existing and acting a certain way do we give meaning to our lives. According to him, there is no fixed design for how a human being should be and no God to give us a purpose. This lack of pre-defined purpose presents to us infinite choices is what Sartre attributes to the “anguish of freedom”. With nothing to restrict us, we have the choice to take actions to become who we want to be and lead the life we want to live.

-       The burden of responsibility: Sartre believed that as free beings, people are responsible for all elements of themselves, their consciousness, and their actions. With total freedom comes total responsibility (Like uncle ben said to Peter, with great power, comes great responsibility). He believed that even those people who wish not to be responsible, who declare themselves not responsible for themselves or their actions, are still making a conscious choice and are thus responsible for anything that happens because of their inaction.

    

-    Bad faith: Jean-Paul Sartre was against the idea of living without pursuing freedom. The phenomenon of people accepting that things have to be a certain way, and subsequently refusing to acknowledge or pursue alternate options, was what he termed as "living in bad faith". According to Sartre, people who convince themselves that they have to do one particular kind of work or live in one particular city are living in bad faith. In Being and Nothingness, he explains the concept of bad faith through the example of a waiter who is so immersed in his job that he considers himself to be first a waiter rather than a free human being. This waiter is so convinced that his present job is all that he can do, that it's all that he's meant to do, that he never considers the option of doing anything else in life.