[HN Gopher] Anatomist of Evil
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       Anatomist of Evil
        
       Author : Caiero
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2024-02-11 06:41 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (literaryreview.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (literaryreview.co.uk)
        
       | b450 wrote:
       | Interesting, thanks for sharing! I'm gonna trash the review now,
       | but really just because I'm a bit bored at work and I enjoyed the
       | review and it got me thinking.
       | 
       | This review is kind of funny - it's like, "look how prescient and
       | correct Arendt was about the Nazis. But then she was wrong about
       | desegregation. Also her one-time lover Heidegger was a total
       | Nazi! Hannah Arendt was a philosopher, but also a complicated and
       | flawed person!" Anyone read the book, "The Free World: Art and
       | Thought in the Cold War"? It's an interesting sort of de-
       | mythologization of 20th century American culture, where these
       | intellectual and cultural giants of that time are argued to have
       | not really _defined_ the thought of that time, but rather were
       | elevated and canonized according to the needs of Cold War
       | politics.
       | 
       | Of course it's not a surprise that Arendt got some stuff wrong!
       | She was a Kantian, and Kantian ethics which stands out as a
       | facially absurd theory, even in the already ridiculous field of
       | philosophical ethics. The reviewer here sort of argues that she
       | managed to liberate herself from the "grand systems" and tidy,
       | comforting rationalizations of philosophy, instead bringing a
       | messy, incoherent humanity to the philosophical enterprise. I
       | can't help but shake my head at that representation of a Kantian,
       | who thought all our moral duties were fricking a priori! Not to
       | mention that this is all represented as feminist, when her whole
       | idea that "just as for Kant, feelings could get in the way of
       | proper moral judgement" still reeks of philosophy's delusional
       | male chauvinism.
       | 
       | I admit I'm a weirdo and bring a very specific, partisan, and
       | generally confused perspective to this matter. But I think
       | something like Carol Gilligan's "ethics of care" (which came well
       | after Arendt) is such a more powerful and relevant feminist
       | critique of the grand systems of philosophical ethics.
        
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