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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Arendt+responsibility « Previous | |Next »
February 12, 2007

In Hannah Arendt's Concept of Responsibility Annabel Herzog says that:

Hannah Arendt defined responsibility in terms of political presence, not in legal or moral terms .... Arendt identified responsibility with the forming of opinions, that is, with the simultaneity of belonging or suffering and acting or doing. I will show that, for her, responsibility is ‘radical’ and stands in opposition to the ‘banality of evil’; and that, as a result, her concept of responsibility links her political theory to her conception of the world

Arendt links responsibility with the political sphere as does the republican political tradition. Arendt’s use of the word 'responsibility' is connected to the sphere of human plurality.This ‘s not simply an extension of the dual “I-and-myself ” to a plural “We”’ as she contends Rather, and somewhat paradoxically, she contends that responsibility pertains to the individual belonging to a community and, therefore, to the subject and not to the community.

Arendt links this to the refugees’ answer to their enemy’s denial of their political presence was ‘selfishness,’ that is, the acceptance of this denial. Being denied a presence within the political space led some of them to suicide - an enactment, as it was, of the fact that the refugees had nowhere to be. Most of them refused to consider their personal fate as a general, political fate.The refugees tried to escape their identity in that they refused to act and have opinions even before they were denied a political presence: For Arendt, the refugees’ relinquishing of their identity was a form of collaboration with the excluding forces.

She contends that the refugees’ fate represented a political problem that required a political response; a response in which one can no longer be just a bystander’ and become responsible in terms of doing something. So Arendt argues that one is responsible not because one acts under a predetermined law but only because one belongs to a group that acts, or has acted, independently of him/herself.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:08 AM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

Based on the paragraphs below from my favourite "philosopher" I would argue that the old concepts of responsibility do not really apply any more--because of the overwhelming nature of the current global insanity.

" There has already been a long chain of tyrants in the human sphere--but people everywhere seem to be unaware of the fact that the latest tyrant is EVERYBODY--or "Everyman". The latest--and the LAST--tyrant is "Everyman". The last tyrant is "the people". In this "late-time", the "people" have, as a collective, become merely another ego-driven, manipulatable, chaotic, and entirely mad entity--a kind of lunatic "herd", a chaos of gross collectivity. That tyrannical "herd" is subject to the same whims and absurdities as any individual tyrant ever was or is. That terrible "herd" know no limits--and even all and everything it merely thinks it "knows" is NOT Reality and Truth. The "herd" that "the people" have become is simply another tyrant--and the last to rise and fall in human-time.

The "tyranny of everybody" is what is happening NOW. In the now, every individual wallows in the "Narcissistic" self-idea, demanding immediate satisfaction of the every wanting-need and random impulse in the body-mind, and threatening all-and-All with "consequence"-to-come, if separate self is found still wanting or unsatisfied at end of any day. The "neighbourhood wars" between all egos, tribes, and cults of "thing" are what is happening now. The private wars of "Everyman",the society of "Everyman", the religiosity of "Everyman", the "late-Time" of "Everyman" is what is happening NOW. The "Everyman" is "Narcissus", the last tyrant--the ego itself. When the tyrant becomes EVERYBODY, that IS the end-time. When the tyrant is just somebody-in-particular, then there are revolutions, ups and downs and cycles. However, at the last, when the tyrant becomes everybody, there are no more cycles, but only a linearity of sames--and everyone and everything disintegrates in stops. Such is the awful nature of the opresent time, of ego's rule of all.

The "handling of REAL business" is not being done at the present time. Now, everybody is "on the brink" with everybody else. It is everywhere like that. The "daily news" is that. Everyone's daily life has become something like an insane sporting event--that is played to the death. The humanworld of nowtime is like colossal Reality-TV
--a dreadful mini-series, a few weeks until death. The common world of nowtime is mere insanity--Reality-madness. Everyone and everything is mad with "everyman" now--mad with ego, mad with "Narcissus". The LAST tyrant is EVERYBODY--everybody at war with everybody, to the death.

If this mad world-mummery continues unchecked, the present time of human history IS the END of humantime. It is no longer a matter of one principal tyrant somewhere, some head of state somewhere, who is the "whomever", or the
"whatever", that everyone loves to hate as everybody's enemy. In this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch), EVERYBODY is the "enemy". EVERYBODY is wrong. EVERYBODY is at fault. EVERYBODY is "Narcissus". EVERYBODY is "Everyman". "Everyman" is everywhere. The "objectified" self is at large. If "Everyman" is not soon disciplined by the Truth That IS Reality Itself--so that the world of "Everyman" discovers and accepts "its" limits, "its" place--then "Everyman" is going to destroy not only humankind but all of life, and the Earth-world itself".

The "cult of everyman" brought to one and all by TV, tabloid media, fox "news", Time Magazine's man/person of the year, and focus group poll driven politics.

John,
the article I linked to does say that Arendt breaks with some aspect of the philosophical tradition.Here is a quote:

Arendt resists the Kantian morality of law … and she resists any metaphysics that gives singular priority to foundational authority, law, regularity, routine or the unworldly. Arendt, indeed, is impressed by the
extent to which the morality of law was impotent under the onslaught of totalitarianism; she is even, perhaps, wary of the degree to which the vaunted simplicity of morality carries with it a disposition to obedience.

She makes a distinction between responsibility as belonging to the political realm and individual guilt which belongs to the moral or legal sphere.