Amor Mundi 6/28/15

Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.

Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.

Love--And Dignity--Win

Justice Anthony Kennedy finally put the shame of marriage inequality behind us. "The centrality of marriage to the human condition makes it unsurprising that the institution has existed for millennia and across civilizations.... That history is the beginning of these cases. The respondents say it should be the end as well. To them, it would demean a timeless institution if the concept and lawful status of marriage were extended to two persons of the same sex. Marriage, in their view, is by its nature a gender-differentiated union of man and woman. This view long has been held--and continues to be held--in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world. The petitioners acknowledge this history but contend that these cases cannot end there. Were their intent to demean the revered idea and reality of marriage, the petitioners' claims would be of a different order. But that is neither their purpose nor their submission. To the contrary, it is the enduring importance of marriage that underlies the petitioners' contentions. This, they say, is their whole point. Far from seeking to devalue marriage, the petitioners seek it for themselves because of their respect--and need--for its privileges and responsibilities. And their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment. Recounting the circumstances of three of these cases illustrates the urgency of the petitioners' cause from their perspective. Petitioner James Obergefell, a plaintiff in the Ohio case, met John Arthur over two decades ago. They fell in love and started a life together, establishing a lasting, committed relation. In 2011, however, Arthur was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. This debilitating disease is progressive, with no known cure. Two years ago, Obergefell and Arthur decided to commit to one another, resolving to marry before Arthur died. To fulfill their mutual promise, they traveled from Ohio to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal. It was difficult for Arthur to move, and so the couple were wed inside a medical transport plane as it remained on the tarmac in Baltimore. Three months later, Arthur died. Ohio law does not permit Obergefell to be listed as the surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. By statute, they must remain strangers even in death, a state-imposed separation Obergefell deems 'hurtful for the rest of time.' He brought suit to be shown as the surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate." It is worth noting as my colleague Omar Encarnación points out that 19 countries have already legalized gay marriage, including South Africa, Ireland, and Brazil. There is simply no reason for a constitutional state to tell two consenting adults of any race or gender that they cannot choose with whom to build a life. This is, as Hannah Arendt writes, a basic right of privacy and dignity. "The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which 'the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one's skin or color or race' are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."

A Politics Neither Mean Nor Small

President Obama eulogized the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney. "He was in the pulpit by 13, pastor by 18, public servant by 23. He did not exhibit any of the cockiness of youth, nor youth's insecurities; instead, he set an example worthy of his position, wise beyond his years, in his speech, in his conduct, in his love, faith, and purity. As a senator, he represented a sprawling swath of the Lowcountry, a place that has long been one of the most neglected in America. A place still wracked by poverty and inadequate schools; a place where children can still go hungry and the sick can go without treatment. A place that needed somebody like Clem. His position in the minority party meant the odds of winning more resources for his constituents were often long. His calls for greater equity were too often unheeded, the votes he cast were sometimes lonely. But he never gave up. He stayed true to his convictions. He would not grow discouraged. After a full day at the capitol, he'd climb into his car and head to the church to draw sustenance from his family, from his ministry, from the community that loved and needed him. There he would fortify his faith, and imagine what might be. Reverend Pinckney embodied a politics that was neither mean, nor small. He conducted himself quietly, and kindly, and diligently. He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas alone, but by seeking out your ideas, partnering with you to make things happen. He was full of empathy and fellow feeling, able to walk in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes. No wonder one of his senate colleagues remembered Senator Pinckney as 'the most gentle of the 46 of us--the best of the 46 of us.'"

Peculiar Manners

Ta-Nehisi Coates applauds South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for supporting the removal of the Confederate battle flag off of the grounds of that state's capitol, but he thinks her reasoning is based on a bit of intellectual slight of hand: "Nikki Haley deserves credit for calling for the removal of the Confederate flag. She deserves criticism for couching that removal as matter of manners. At the present moment the effort to remove the flag is being cast as matter of politesse, a matter over which reasonable people may disagree. The flag is a 'painful symbol' concedes David French. Its removal might 'offer relief to those genuinely hurt,' writes Ian Tuttle. 'To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred,' tweeted Mitt Romney. The flag has been 'misappropriated by hate groups,' claims South Carolina senator Tom Davis. This mythology of manners is adopted in lieu of the mythology of the Lost Cause. But it still has the great drawback of being rooted in a lie. The Confederate flag should not come down because it is offensive to African Americans. The Confederate flag should come down because it is embarrassing to all Americans. The embarrassment is not limited to the flag, itself. The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance. A century and a half after Lincoln was killed, after 750,000 of our ancestors died, Americans still aren't quite sure why."

Indexes and Atlases

Paul Ford thinks that Google Maps is changing the way we interact with our world: "In recent years, Google Maps has become increasingly three-dimensional. The early versions were built on top of a document-delivery platform: the Web. But now the experience is far smoother. Gone is the liminal space between layers and the pauses between zooms. You just zoom in and out of the world. Amidst all the maps, layers, and views, Google has created more map than territory. Google calls this the Ground Truth project, or its effort to map the world via an 'authoritative' mix of 'algorithms and elbow grease.' In the hot center of San Francisco, the amount of detail on Google Maps can feel overwhelming--each floor of the Nordstrom's on Market Street, for example, is mapped. God help us when store inventory systems are tied to this leviathan, and you'll be able to drill down from high above the ocean to the books on the shelves at the bookstore. Except there will be no bookstores. One thing you can do when you have Ground Truth, when you really, truly understand where things are, is make a self-driving car. You start with a set of points describing the roads, and then you turn a car into a rolling computer. It seems almost inevitable, in retrospect."

Wisdom On the Other Side of the World

Ross Arbes wonders at the Talmud's popularity in South Korea and describes the path it took to get there: "Every bookstore I visited in and around the [Seoul], including a small kiosk at the airport, sold at least one version of the Talmud. Rabbi Litzman, the Chabad rabbi in Seoul, told me that copies of the book are available in convenience stores and in some train-station kiosks. According to the Jewish Chronicle of London, the book can be found in book-vending machines. Most people I met in South Korea had at least heard of the Talmud, even if they had not read it. Aviya Amir, a master's student researching the translation of the Talmud and its popularity in Japan and South Korea, told me that, in Japan, 'nobody has a clue' what the Talmud is. 'It's not like in Korea,' she said, 'where you ask random people on the street and tell them you're researching Talmud, and they go, "Ah, Talmud."' Lee Kyou-Hyuk, a famous speed skater who carried the South Korean flag at the 2014 Olympics, recommended the Talmud to his fans. 'I read the Talmud every time I am going through a hard time,' he told reporters. 'It helps to calm my mind.' Kyobo, the largest bookstore in South Korea, keeps a list of the top two thousand 'steady-sellers,' books that have sustained strong sales for multiple years. Six different Talmuds are currently on the list. Dr. Jeongso Jeon, a professor of children's education at Bucheon University, near Seoul, said that, if you consider all of its versions, the book is 'the second-best-seller in South Korea,' behind the Bible. (Another scholar I spoke to disputed this claim as an exaggeration.)"

Our Technological and Functioning Selves

Santiago Zabala turns to Martin Heidegger in the LA Review of Books to ask: "[I]s it possible to live an authentic life in this metaphysical age, where Being has been forgotten in favor of entities? What does this world look like? As Heidegger once told Der Spiegel: 'Everything functions. That is exactly what is uncanny. Everything functions and the functioning drives us further and further to more functioning, and technology tears people away and uproots them from the earth more and more. I don't know if you are scared; I was certainly scared when I recently saw the photographs of the earth taken from the moon. We don't need an atom bomb at all; the uprooting of human beings is already taking place. We only have purely technological conditions left.' These technological conditions are the result of overlooking Being in favor of beings, that is, the disclosure of worlds for what gets revealed within those worlds. This is why science 'does not think' but rather 'calculates.' Ever since modernity, when the human subject became the point of reference for everything and nature was reduced to what can be subjected to human domination, the essence of the species has been framed (Ge-Stell) by a power we do not control. This, after all, is the sensation we all have today where 'the only emergency,' as Heidegger once said, 'is the absence of a sense of emergency.' The fact that in 2015 we are all monitored, spied on, and soon also biogenetically engineered confirms the German philosopher's prediction of a world 'where self-certainty has become unsurpassable, where everything is held to be calculable, and especially where it has been decided, with no previous questioning, who we are and what we are supposed to do.' This is why, as we can see in this video from 1969, Heidegger does not believe we need to better describe the world in order to change it; rather, we must learn to interpret it differently. Heidegger, like many other philosophers after him, was alarmed not only by human beings living inauthentic lives in technological societies but also by the way we are becoming technological ourselves. In this condition philosophy, as an analysis of our concepts, traditions, and world, would lose its educational and critical role within society."

The Repercussions

Neil Genzlinger reflects on how a new spate of popular culture TV shows is exploring the increasing dependence of humans on robots. "We are, we keep being told, right on the verge of having robots become omnipresent in our lives. 'Humans' invites us to contemplate the consequences of that, and look beyond the obvious problem of what happens when the robots achieve independence of thought (which, it bears repeating, they always, always, always do). One of the show's themes is how ceding our roles and choices to machines threatens us. What happens to motherhood when a robot can read a bedtime story to a child more entertainingly than Mom can, a reality Laura confronts? What happens to aging with dignity when an eldercare robot bosses you around as if you were a child? And let's not even get into how difficult it will be to make corrections once robots swarm our lives. It takes us years just to recall faulty airbags; imagine the obstacles to retreating from the robotic future if, 10 or 20 years into it, we decide we don't like the repercussions." As is so often the case, we are told this is happening, as if we humans have lost our political will to decide. If there is a warning in the package, one barely notices it from the shiny paper, which makes them more a celebration than provocation. Still, the overarching question is clear: as robots and drones take on more of the traditionally human activities and do so in ways that are rational, efficient, and cheap, will we humans embrace brain and bodily prostheses and implants and choose to become ever more like machines?

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From the Arendt Center Blog

This week on the Blog, Kazue Koishikawa discusses how Arendt's regard for storytelling reveals a difference between meaning and purpose, which in turn yields an important element of political and human life, in the Quote of the Week. Author H. G. Wells reflects on the clumsiness with which the human mind is able to grasp the truth in this week's Thoughts on Thinking. Finally, Mark Olson, one of our followers on Twitter, shares a picture of his personal library of Arendt, whose works he used to create two independent study courses while studying in college, in this week's Library feature.