Quote of the Weeks

Anti-Fascism 101

The hidden heart of this quote, and of Arendt's thought in my view, is thoughtlessness. And the pathetic paragon of thoughtlessness in her body of writings is of course Adolf Eichmann, whom she treats—with a surprising degree of humor—as a comical figure. Arendt describes the "horrible" phenomenon of Eichmann's thoughtlessness as "outright funny." For example, “officialese,” as she terms it, “became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché.” As such, Eichmann’s role as an actor in the theater of his trial, according to Arendt, is “not a ‘monster’,” but rather “a clown.” The reason for this clownishness, Arendt concludes, is that Eichmann was—shockingly—too completely “normal,” specifically in a horrific Nazi context in which “only ‘exceptions’ could be expected to act ‘normally’.”

Stubborn Things: The Problem with a World that Won’t Fade

In The Human Condition, which is where the quote I have chosen comes from, Arendt famously assigns a central theoretical place to the distinction between the perishable character of the outcome of labour – goods that are either extinguished by consumption or immediately returned to nature – and the durability of the products of work – things that outlast their use. She is also very clear, however, that such durability – this unnatural, artificial attribute that men willingly bestow to the products of their work – is never absolute. It is only for a limited time, indeed, that things can escape the metabolism of nature.

Hannah Arendt, Pearl-Diving, and the Humanities

This is one of the most arresting passages and images in Arendt’s works. I read it as a highly original defence of the humanities, which are now greatly endangered throughout the world. It is rarely interpreted in this light, but I think it distills better than many other accounts the essence of a genuinely meaningful vocation of a humanities scholar and/or teacher. At least personally, it provides me with a self-interpretation that illuminates my teaching experience at the university.

When the World is at Stake: Arendt on The Value of Emersonian Wisdom

"What attracts me to this quote is that Arendt is expressing the value of Emersonian wisdom in the context of a world facing unprecedented meaninglessness. More specifically, this is a world where totalitarianism and the Nazi regime revealed to us that anything is possible, and our abilities to confront both understanding and independent judgment have become increasingly difficult. Further, Arendt identifies Emerson as occupying a unique space in the Western Tradition that is concerned with chiefly human matters and who embodies a kind of thinking that does not belong to the vita contempletiva – the philosopher’s way of thought that Arendt critiqued as detached from the world, experience, and the unpredictability of the realm of human affairs."

Time as Broken in the Middle

Arendt understands Kafka’s parable, "He," as describing what happens when we think. When we think about anything – and, Arendt is interested in thinking through political questions – the past exerts a force on our thought. But, contrary to expectation, the past is not some ‘burden’ or ‘dead weight’ placed upon the shoulders of the human person. The past is never simply dead, nor even past. It propels thought into the future and battles with it, which, again, contrary to expectation, drives the human person back into the past and seems to want to be rooted in something in the past.

What would an “Arendtian naturalism” look like?

I have always been intrigued by Arendt’s relationship to materialism and the natural sciences. On a first reading, Arendt seems to be a committed humanist, in the sense that she sees human beings as possessing a distinct set of qualities that are the basis of morality and politics. As a consequence, she is distrustful of observing human affairs through the lenses of the natural sciences, which disregard freedom and spontaneity. This quote, however, shows that things are not so simple.

In the midst of darkness

In the 1968 preface of Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt invites us to explore the life of some extraordinary human beings that, with their unconventional lives, shed some light when darkness prevailed in history and freedom was not in sight. Seeking the exemplary dimension of deeds and actions of these non-ordinary individuals is a practice common to politics, philosophy, historiography, or poetry, but Arendt’s unique way of doing it has a strong appeal for the reader and it still has it for us now.

What Happens When We Theorists Cease to Believe in What We Are Doing

This Arendt-Bay exchange has stayed with me throughout my intellectual career. It’s more and more the case that academics are committed to the view that intellectual activity is justified by “engagement” in the sense of helping to solve the world’s problems. They are less and less committed to the life of the mind as something that is self-justifying, as something that is humanly essential whether or not it’s successful in addressing “modern problems.” The instrumentalist view embraced by Bay has continually gained ground; the non- or anti-instrumentalist view defended by Arendt has steadily lost ground. If the implications for “this whole discipline” (philosophy and social and political theory) looked worrisome in 1972, they look positively dire in 2024.

Hannah Arendt and The Poetics of “The Pursuit of Happiness”

Clifford Brooks
“The pursuit of happiness” must be the most poetic phrase in the Constitution. Of course, the language throughout is elegant, the “felicity of pen” of Thomas Jefferson. However, his way about the pursuit of happiness grabs me by the heartstrings. No doubt this term lifted from Kant’s, “life, liberty, and property’ drew Arendt’s attention.