[HN Gopher] Beyond Authenticity: Hannah Arendt's final unfinishe...
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Beyond Authenticity: Hannah Arendt's final unfinished work
Author : apollinaire
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-07-26 17:44 UTC (2 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Th idea of "will", especially from the German side, got a bad rap
| for obvious reasons. But I like Arendt's picture of it as an
| uncomfortable inner tension when we simultaneously see what what
| we want to be (or should morally do), and an alternative path set
| out by habit and company.
|
| To me, will is a very important component in security, it's that
| tense feeling you get just before you; - decide
| the video conference with your boss urging you to transfer
| $1m into a Swiss account might not be as it seems, and pull the
| plug (risking being fired) - walk out of the shop that
| stubbornly refused to take cash (risking social
| embarrassment) - refuse a significant discount in
| exchange for giving personal information (taking
| financial loss on principle) - tell someone in a more
| authoritative position, no you won't be joining them via
| Teams/Zoom because of its security risks (risking
| unpopularity)
|
| What we find in cybersecurity incident autopsies is that people
| say "I knew X wasn't right. All my spidery feelings and heckles
| were on red alert, but I didn't _act_ , and I don't know why."
|
| So in another piece I wrote; Our culture is now
| about to split into two camps; the normative and the
| secure. Instead of "the haves and have-nots", there will
| be "the will, and the will-nots". Those who will compromise and
| those who will not compromise security. Those who choose security
| over convenience. Those who choose security against the nagging
| "advice" of corporations and governments to adopt a weaker
| position favourable to "markets".
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| Thanks! Seems your adjacent concept should be relabelled "moral
| insecurity".
|
| "Ethics today means not being at home in one's house." --Adorno
|
| So that, the choice of moral freedom can still be the (more)
| ethical tradeoff
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Cheers, and +1 for the very fitting Adorno quote.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The problem with incorrect emphasis on "will" in our culture is
| that it takes you to voluntarism. The will is the appetite of the
| intellect, oriented toward the good (real or apparent), and so
| one cannot just will _anything_ , but rather, only of the things
| that the intellect first apprehends. (Of course, the will can
| also turn the intellect away from things we'd rather not know or
| have due awareness of, and this is the essence of the evil act;
| an act of self-blinding in order to move the will toward what we
| know we should not choose.) So freedom is in choosing or willing
| the good, what one ought, and for that, as the article notes by
| way of Augustine, we need the right habits, and this is what we
| call virtue. Here, the virtue of being able to choose the good is
| prudence. And since freedom classically understood is found in
| the ability to will the good, only a virtuous person is free.
| Compare this with the liberal (as in Hobbes, Locke, Mill) notion
| of freedom as the absence of external limitation. It becomes
| apparent what lunacy that is, as choosing anything but the good
| is, again to draw from Augustine, nothing short of the worst kind
| of slavery, a slavery to passions and vice. Thus, this modern
| notion of "authenticity" is, frankly, total bullshit, and a
| completely destructive notion at that.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I also got the sense the way authentic self was presented was
| kind of morally nullifying, a variation that reduced to "do
| what thou wilt," where the animal chaos is the true self,
| instead of the active exercise of choosing good. What Arendt
| was clearly onto has been said elsewhere as something along the
| lines of, nothing short of indefatigable exertion can induce
| the habit of virtue, where she notes Augustine emphasized it
| was this regular exercise of virtue that would render the soul
| pure, where Heidegger appears to be taking it for granted as a
| base state we need to strip away our experiences to find.
|
| I've been down both roads and have spent a lot of time alone in
| the woods at night to find the fears that only exist without
| others around, and really, it's dwelling on the past. The
| search for Heideggers authentic self is a substitute for
| engaging the present and the real. Worse, it's neutralizing. If
| you want prevail over hell, it's other people, and engagement
| the necessary condition.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| What I like about Sartre is his tremendous life journey from
| 'hell is other people' to a belief that solidarity and
| engagement with others is the only proper path.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| That doesn't necessarily take a journey (or even a
| returning?), if one were to start out by framing it as a
| project of terraforming hell?
|
| G*d: So, Peter, I heard you were visiting The Other Place
| the other day; how's ol' Lucey doing?
|
| St. Peter: It's amazing! Since I was last, they've really
| done a lot with the place... irrigation, orchards, pizza
| and community sings on the week-
|
| G*d: (pounding fist on Heavenly Throne) Those Me-damned
| mormons!
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| So what was Saint Al's project :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_First_Circle
|
| Although.. yeah it would be hard for Saint Al to depict
| Lucey as being as cooperative as the LDS (as you do..,
| but you didn't have to make the tradeoff for publication)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Project at Marfino (under "auspices" of KPSS), or project
| (in conjunction with ER) to cleanse the bessmertnaia
| russkaia dusha?
|
| (swimming in ice water and jumping over fires are said to
| be good for the soul, at least when properly timed, but I
| can't think of any equivalent atmospheric or chthonic
| rituals, and of course the chinese have a fifth element,
| so maybe we ought to be craving the strength and
| certainty of steel?)
|
| Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApvM0RxcxPg
|
| [EDIT re publication: _A film which followed the code of
| the Hays Office to the strictest letter might succeed in
| being a great work of art, but not in a world in which a
| Hays Office exists._ -- TWA]
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| The giant pachyderm in the room of modernism (arguably _the
| largest_ pachyderm):
|
| any post-liberal program of self-moderation needs to account
| for the magic of intragenerational QoL improvements (even if we
| restrict ourselves to considering only the inner life).
|
| We can all go Greek, Latin, Pali, or Classical Chinese in
| search of questions and answers, but those civilizations didn't
| have either mass literacy or tech.
|
| Once upon a time (last century) we had to contend with the
| Eastern Bloc's moral positioning, but since the end of That no
| one who suggests putting personal growth (of the psychological
| kind) ahead of the economic one has been taken seriously.
|
| (And this is why @nonrandomstring above gets upvoted, even
| though I like your post better)
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Compare this with the liberal (as in Hobbes, Locke, Mill)
| notion of freedom as the absence of external limitation
|
| You put your finger methinks on one of the reasons for the
| slippage downhill of our society: Everybody wants to be the
| "wrong" kind of free. (Also: All rights. No duties ...)
| bbor wrote:
| Just to save people some time, since it's halfway through: the
| article is about _The Life of the Mind_. It's an incredible work
| - cannot recommend it enough! The completion of Kant's project,
| in her own way.
| 39896880 wrote:
| Arendt makes a compelling case, but unfortunately one that does
| not stand up to our advances in neuroscience. The will as
| described here does not exist. There is nothing beyond
| conditioning.
| phreeza wrote:
| Not sure how you come to this conclusion, neuroscience is
| nowhere near advanced enough to have clarity on such a thing,
| it could well be an emergent property of neural activity.
| 39896880 wrote:
| I came to this conclusion by reading the book "Determined" by
| Sapolsky.
|
| https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780525560975
| phreeza wrote:
| Ok maybe I read it differently than you, but the will in
| the article doesn't sound like me like what is typically
| discussed as "free will"? It sounds more like what could
| also be called "drive" or "striving".
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > but unfortunately
|
| Says one who does not believe in will but believes in fortune.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| One can believe in making fortune submit to the will :)
|
| (Like Machiavelli & Napoleon I)
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| The compelling case, as you say, is simply that we can find
| ourselves for various reasons choosing to resist conditioning
| and conformity. And this resistance can be enlightening to the
| individual and to broader society.
|
| The personal search (self-examination) can of course be
| beneficial. There's no need to slip into nebulous metaphysics
| to understand that any challenge to a power structure may have
| an enlightened outcome or a disastrous outcome.
|
| The article is hagiographic and is reaching for something deep,
| but this passage is perhaps the essence: "But
| for Arendt, the will was the means to our freedom [...] The
| will is a space of tension inside the self where one actively
| feels the difference between where they are and where they
| would like to be. [...] "Willing is the mental
| activity that goes on between thinking and judgment. It has the
| power to shape us by drawing us into conflict with ourselves.
| Without inner conflict, there is no forward movement. These are
| the basic principles of willing: Willing is
| characterised by an inner state of disharmony. Willing
| is experienced as a felt sense of tension within the body where
| the mind is at war with itself. Willing makes one aware
| of possible decisions, which creates a feeling of being pulled
| in multiple directions at once. Willing can feel very
| lonely. Decisions and choices are shaped by one's environment,
| by the everydayness of being, but ultimately the responsibility
| for deciding is up to oneself. Willing makes one aware
| of the tension that exists between oneself as a part of the
| world, and oneself as an individual alone existing in
| relationship to the world. Willing is the principle of
| human individuation. Willing relates to the world
| through action. The will is the inner organ of freedom.
| "
| leobg wrote:
| Changes nothing.
|
| Thief: I'm not guilty. There is no free will, so I couldn't
| have acted otherwise. Judge: I sentence you anyway. Because my
| actions, too, are predetermined.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Nasruddin is asked to judge a village dispute:
|
| Accuser -- tells a tale of woe
|
| Nasruddin -- "You're right!"
|
| Accused -- mounts a defense
|
| Nasruddin -- "You're right, too!"
|
| Village elder -- "But Mullah, they can't _both_ be right... "
|
| Nasruddin -- "All three of you are right!"
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Yeah she was a genius.
| lysecret wrote:
| Everyone who even vaguely cares about psychology should read
| Eichmann in Jerusaelm from her.
| hiatus wrote:
| Could you elaborate on your recommendation?
| lukeasrodgers wrote:
| I believe the consensus now is that her analysis of Eichmann
| was wrong, he had fooled her (and others). Personally I still
| think the concept of the "banality of evil" overall still has
| merit.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The non-appearance of "monstrous psychopaths" is only part of
| it. I don't know much about Eichmann but there's a rather
| good treatment of the Nuremberg trials in the Adam Curtis
| documentary The Living Dead [0], in which Hermann Goring is
| shown as setting a tone that later resurfaces with Eichmann
| and in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings of post-
| apartheid South Africa and many other trials of atrocities
| and war crimes - namely an intransigent adherence to the
| defence that "everything was done legally".
|
| I don't think any culture has fully digested the implications
| or had the courage to approach the questions Nuremberg and
| subsequent trials posed 80 years ago; where does the law run
| out? When does it become not just okay but _morally
| necessary_ to defect /rebel/rise-up against your own side,
| and its so-called "laws" when it's become degenerate and run
| by criminals ?
|
| In this way I don't think the difficult issue is that evil is
| _banal_ (as in C. R. Browning 's "Ordinary Men" [2]) but that
| it's "everyday, procedural and institutionally backed". It's
| defended by social organisations held dear, right up until a
| point of collapse and pivot of history when those
| institutions themselves become seen as evil.
|
| Eichmann and Goring went beyond "Kadavergehorsam" [1] and
| were indignant that anyone dare judge them. Goring tried to
| school the judges in moral philosophy.
|
| I don't think anyone is comfortable revisiting this topic,
| especially as it's still relevant and playing out today in at
| least two theatres of war.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Dead_(TV_series)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpse-like_obedience
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_R._Browning
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