Tag: Arendt

Vivan Gornick reviews Hannan Arendt’s first 30 years of writing

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http://bostonreview.net/vivian-gornick-hannah-arendt-on-being-jewish

I came across this because I am interested in Vivian Gornick’s writing but as it is about Hanna Arendt that makes it doubly interesting.I find it hard to comprehend the development of Israel and why some Jewish people are so against it.This clarifies it a little

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I had finished with Arendt but came across another good article

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil of Kant

Interesting as it gives a better definition of what she meant by thinking.And horrifyingly

Eichmann claimed to be a follower of Kant

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A very full review of “The Jewish Writings” by Hannah Arendt

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n09/judith-butler/i-merely-belong-to-them

This broad ranging review  gives a very good account  of Arendt’s political views on Jews and on Israel.I learned a lot and have sympathy for her position.I am fearful of the current state of the middle east in  general

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A very good and rightly criticaI review of the film about Hannah Arendt

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/05/hannah-arendt-and-the-glorification-of-thinking.html

I came across this in the New Yorker,It has a lot of links e.g.to Claude Lanzmann’s film about the Shoa where his judgment is much  superior to that of Arendt.

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“The evil of banality”

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2009/10/the_evil_of_banality.html

A very interesting and disturbing discussion of books about Heidegger and Arendt.Heidegger’s silence after the war about the

And looking at the quote below it seems they lacked wisdom

Image

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What puzzles me about Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem

After reading the material  I have posted on,I saw that Arendt  believed Eichmann was not psychotic or crazy.She said he “did not think”.It puzzle me because one factor above all would seem to me to be relevant.That if a senior Nazi had decided he  did not agree with the Final Solution or any policy of the Nazis he would have been shot and/or his family would have been attacked.So fear would have played a  major role even if he had wished to stop what he ws doing.A big factor that allows humans to murder others en masse like the witches is to define them as somehow not human.And secondly to criticize their behaviour when it is cause by the conditions they are forced to live in.Jews were moneylenders because Christians were not allowed to do it [ charging interest was not allowed them]Being  rather intelligent some Jews became wealthy and were criticised as being only interested in money,grasping and avaricious.Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.Now in the UK this is happening to the sick,poor and unemployed.Scapegoats are attacked when times are hard. Whenever people meet a murderer they are surprised how normal they look.And other people look weird but are in fact good and kind,maybe a little handicapped in some way or just eccentric.Judging by appearances is an error; and especially if they are first  impressions

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Hannah Arendt and thinking

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/05/30/lonely-thinking-hannah-arendt-on-film/

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/26/hannah-arendt-reviewThe reason I am writing this is that at the end of this film,Arendt gives a seven minute monologue on,what is thinking?

She believed the people like Eichmann who carried out Hitler’s Final Solution were not psychotic monsters but were people unable to think.I feel unqualified to comment on that except to agree with her that true thinking is not easy and how can we learn to do it.It cannot be just a mental process but must involve the whole of a person.If we fear to think we will join a movement, a church or any other organisation which we will obey in order not to have to think.I believe many of us still do that.Thinling can be a lonely business as she said

[By the way,I am not  Jewish]

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