Between Speechless Horror and Wonder

10-10-2024

“For the speechless horror at what men may do and what the world may become is in many ways related to the speechless wonder of gratitude from which the questions of philosophy spring.”
(Hannah Arendt, “Concern with Recent European Political Thought.” In Essays in Understanding 1930-1954 (1996), p. 445).

Hannah Arendt belongs to a generation who lived through the unprecedented violence of the twentieth century, as well as the creation of the postwar international order that underpins our volatile and vulnerable world. In trying to understand the political events of her time, she cautioned against the philosophical tendency to retreat from worldly affairs. Building on the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, and Jaspers, Arendt wrote about wonder as the origin of philosophical questions in various essays and books – e.g., “Philosophy and Politics,” “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing,” The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind. However, she reflected on the relationship between horror and wonder most directly in “Concern with Politics in Recent European Political Thought.” Originally presented at the American Political Science Association in 1954, a few years after the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and her trips to Europe on behalf of the organization, Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, the essay offers insights into three areas of Arendt’s interest: philosophy, politics, and the world. 

Philosophical questions emerge from two very different but related sources: speechless horror and speechless wonder. While wonder is the ancient source of philosophical questions, its relation to speechless horror is not immediately clear. Why then does Arendt link wonder, horror, gratitude, and philosophical questions with the world? As she writes, wonder and horror share the experience of speechlessness. To be rendered speechless is to be at a loss for words, to be unable to express what one has seen, or to put experience into words. Speechlessness means that one has difficulty understanding what one has seen or lived through. ‘Speechless horror’ and ‘speechless wonder’ thus share the limitation of language to express profoundly moving experiences. While wonder is often associated with the divine, beauty, nature or art, horror is linked most strongly with the transgression of taboos, a traumatic event, war and violence. Hence, wonder is an overwhelmingly positive experience akin to an epiphany while horror is its opposite. And yet, as Arendt writes, neither horror nor wonder are entirely solitary because they are reactions to worldly experiences that we seek to understand.       

Arendt’s approach to the origin of philosophical questions emphasizes that ‘speechless horror’ is the result of ‘what men may do’. Unlike natural disasters, horror addresses the suffering that human beings cause. Such horror is represented in Greek tragedy by Oedipus, Creon, or even the Olympian gods when faced with the wrath of Achilles as he defiled the body of Hector. However, while the speechless horror of Greek tragedy and Homer’s epics focuses on the individual hero, Arendt’s horror stems from the unprecedented violence of the twentieth century that crystallized in the concentration camps. Thus, she was concerned with how human cruelty on a mass scale affects ‘what the world may become’. However, as she argues, ‘speechless horror at what men may do’ is related to the ‘speechless wonder of gratitude from which the questions of philosophy spring’. As she writes in “Philosophy and Politics”:

“Thaumadzein, the wonder at that which is as it is, is according to Plato a pathos, something that is endured and as such quite distinct from doxadzein, from forming an opinion about something. The wonder that man endures or that befalls him cannot be related in words because it is too general for words.”

Speechless wonder is something that a person endures and has difficulty communicating to others. Philosophical wonder, as the question of why there is something and not nothing, often retreats from the world of appearances to the internal realm of the self. Arendt’s experience of wonder, however, is grounded in appearances and opinions. Amor mundi, as love of the world, is an attitude of ‘the speechless wonder of gratitude’. While speechless wonder has historical roots in theology and philosophy, Arendt redirects thaumadzein from the philosophical realm of contemplation to the fragile world of appearances, plurality, and new beginnings. Although philosophical inquiry may originate from speechless wonder, the desire to express and share one’s opinions is a human and worldly endeavour: “Philosophy, political philosophy like all its other branches, will never be able to deny its origin in thaumadzein, in the wonder at that which is as it is. If philosophers, despite their necessary estrangement from the everyday life of human affairs, were ever to arrive at a true political philosophy they would have to make the plurality of man, out of which arises the whole realm of human affairs – in its grandeur and misery – the object of their thaumadzein.”

By redirecting wonder from philosophical forms to the fragile world, it is not only speechless wonder that there is something and not nothing, but wonder suffused with gratitude for ‘that which is as it is’. Recalling Heidegger’s etymological link between denken and danken, thinking and thanking, philosophical questions are intrinsically connected to gratitude. Arendt’s gratitude for the world is perhaps most vivid in her acceptance speech for the Lessing Prize in 1959: “Nothing in our time is more dubious, it seems to me, than our attitude towards the world [...].”

Today our capacity to destroy the world is even more pronounced than when Arendt wrote. Her speechless wonder of gratitude occurred during the twentieth century horrors of totalitarianism, war and genocide. Although horror and wonder are often the sources of philosophical questions, they reflect very different attitudes towards the world. While each person’s experience remains unique, our capacity for imagination creates different viewpoints and possibilities for understanding one another. Moreover, our capacity to remember allows for historical comparisons and the potential to learn from the past. The postwar warning and imperative of Never Again is perhaps the starkest manifestation of ‘speechless horror at what men may do’. The question – then and now – is whether such horror inspires responsibility and new beginnings or withdrawal from the world and further horror? Cautioning against being transfixed by wonder and horror, gratitude demands thinking about our actions with others in the world. Moving between the philosophical origins of speechless horror and wonder, Arendt sought ways in which we might love the world enough to take responsibility for it.
 
References:
Arendt, Hannah. 2004. “Philosophy and Politics.” Social Research 71, no. 3: 427–54.
Arendt, Hannah. 1968. “On Humanity in Dark Times: Some Thoughts on Lessing.” In Men in Dark Times. New York: Harcourt Brace.
 
About the Author:
Siobhan Kattago is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tartu in Estonia. She is a member of the COST Action CA20105: Slow Memory – Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change (2021-2025), and an advisory board member for the Memory Studies Association. She is the author of Encountering the Past within the Present: Modern Experiences of Time (2020) and editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies (2015).