Carl Schmitt’s confrontation with the work of Hannah Arendt: A debate on totalitarianism, power, and banality of evil (original) (raw)
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We locate Arendt's and Shklar's writings within what Katznelson has identified as an attempt to create a new language for politics after the cataclysm of the twentieth century, and Greif has called the new 'maieutic' discourse of 're-enlightenment' in the 'age of the crisis of man'. More specifically, we compare and contrast two related, but in many ways also differing, ways of thinking about totalitarianism and its legal repercussions. To this end, we examine two sets of studies: Arendt's The origins of totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil and Shklar's After utopia: The decline of political faith and Legalism: An essay on law, morals, and politics. While The origins of totalitarianism and After utopia discussed totalitarian ideology and its consequences for modern political thought, the Eichmann report and Legalism dealt with the question of whether and how justice is possible after the extreme experience of totalitarianism. We argue that the maieutic impulse led Arendt and Shklar to find distinct routes to address a common concern. Our paper ends with a discussion of some of the surplus meaning that was generated by the different maieutic performances of the two thinkers.
This article traces the similarities between the theories of totalitarianism developed by Hannah Arendt (1951) and Erich Fromm (1941). It argues that Arendt and Fromm's invocation of social theory are quite similar, relying upon the atomization thesis originally developed by Fredrich Tönnies, to explain the transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, community to society . Ironically, though Arendt is the existentialist philosopher, it is Fromm, with his use of Kierkegaard, who puts to use existentialist philosophy toward a convincing analysis of totalitarian movements. This begs the question: why is Fromm forgotten and Arendt remembered? Particularly given the similarity in their careers, intellectual refugees fleeing Germany, trying to comprehend the horrors that transformed their home into a Fordist factory for the production of human corpses.
Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Social Sciences
This book examines the nature of totalitarianism as interpreted by some of the finest minds of the twentieth century. It focuses on Hannah Arendt's claim that totalitarianism was an entirely unprecedented regime and that the social sciences had integrally misconstrued it. A sociologist who is a critical admirer of Arendt, Baehr looks sympathetically at Arendt's objections to social science and shows that her complaints were in many respects justified. Avoiding broad disciplinary endorsements or dismissals, Baehr reconstructs the theoretical and political stakes of Arendt's encounters with prominent social scientists such as David Riesman, Raymond Aron, and Jules Monnerot. In presenting the first systematic appraisal of Arendt's critique of the social sciences, Baehr examines what it means to see an event as unprecedented. Furthermore, he adapts Arendt and Aron's philosophies to shed light on modern Islamist terrorism and to ask whether it should be categorized alongside Stalinism and National Socialism as totalitarian.
Eric Voegelin and Hannah Arendt on the Nature of Totalitarian Regimes
VoegelinView, 2023
are two of the greatest political thinkers of the 20th century. With similar background and stories (both Germans who fled from Nazism and established themselves in America), they differ on their account of the regime that made them immigrate. Their debate, however brief, can enlighten us not only about that dark period of human history but also some present predicaments that we face. The debate began with the publication of the book The Origins of Totalitarianism, which for the first time made Arendt one of the most famous political thinkers of the 20th century. After the book's release, Waldemar Gurian, founder of the magazine The Review of Politics, commissioned Voegelin to write a review of the book. In the same publication, a few months later, Arendt publishes her response. Before the formalization in the form of essays, Voegelin sends a letter to his compatriot anticipating some topics that would appear in the review and is answered with a brief letter.
Analysis of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt
(Cızık, C. 2019. Analysis of Totalitarianism in Hannah Arendt's Views, Ankara) In this study, based on the views of Hannah Arent, the place of totalitarianism in the historical scene, the factors that prepare totalitarianism and the elements that provide dominance of totalitarianism are discussed. The aim of the study is to present Arendt's thoughts on totalitarism with a general evaluation. In accordance with first of all, the place of the concepts of antisemitism and imperialism in the preparation stage for totalitarianism is tried to be examined and the meaning of these concepts for Arendt is examined. In the following parts, the elements such as mass, terror, secret police, propaganda and organization which are considered as elements of totalitarianism are tried to be explained. Those examples are considered as tools of totalitarianism and with those tools as an unique and modern phenomenon, absolute domination of totalitarianism is discussed.
Debating Totalitarianism: An Exchange of Letters between Eric Voegelin and Hannah Arendt
In 1952, Waldemar Gurian, founding editor of The Review of Politics, commissioned Eric Voegelin, then a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, to review Hannah Arendt's recently published The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). She was given the right to reply; Voegelin would furnish a concluding note. Preceding this dialogue, Voegelin wrote a letter to Arendt anticipating aspects of his review; she responded in kind. Arendt's letter to Voegelin on totalitarianism, written in German, has never appeared in print before. She wrote two drafts of it, the first and longest being the more interesting. It contained an early reference to her thinking about the relationship among plurality, politics, and philosophy. It also invoked her notion of the compelling “logic” of totalitarian ideology. But this was not the letter Voegelin received. Because of this, he misunderstood significant parts of her argument. Below, the two versions of Arendt's letter are translated. They are prefaced by a translation of Voegelin's initial message to Arendt. An introduction compares Arendt's letters, offers context, and provides a snapshot of Arendt's and Voegelin's perceptions of each other. Their views of political religion and human nature are also highlighted. Keyed to Arendt and Voegelin's letters are pertinent aspects of the debate in The Review of Politics that followed their epistolary exchange.
Political Characterology: On the Method of Theorizing in Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism
American Political Science Review 2016
Notwithstanding its status as a modern classic, Hannah Arendt's study on The Origins of Totalitarianism is generally considered to be lacking a clearly reflected methodological basis. This article challenges this view and argues that in her study Arendt implicitly applies a characterological method of political theorizing that provides a genuine conceptual framework for systematically connecting structural analysis with ideographic historical investigations and with a political theory of action. On this conceptual basis, the study renders an analysis of anti-Semitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism not merely in terms of abstract structural concepts, but in terms of dynamic character-context constellations. Arendt's account not only shows interesting parallels to a number of similar conceptual reflections, especially in the 20th century's theory debate; it can also serve to inspire the current debate on methodology in political theory.
A Paper on The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
The paper analyzes the Jewish matter and how the totalitarian movement was structured and organized around this matter within the frame of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism book. The paper commences with mentioning Jews' importance in the society within the scope of court Jews. Afterward, it gives reasons for the rising of antisemitism and, after antisemitism how Jews separated into two groups which are the pariah and parvenu. Following, the paper mentions overseas imperialism to show that how it rise the racist discourse. It elaborates the racial discourses more. Later, it examines the stateless and lawless situation. Lastly, the paper analyzes the structure, contents, and acts of totalitarian movements.
2006
For partisans of a contemporary wave of interest in the rediscovery of ‘the political’, the thought of Hannah Arendt offers a seemingly ineluctable intellectual resource. Inasmuch as the problem of totalitarianism is at the core of Arendt’s thought, her sympathy towards this attempt to enlist her in the service of this cause must be imagined to bear heavily upon the place of ‘the political’ in her treatment of totalitarianism itself. This note on Arendt’s thinking on the political thereby proceeds from the claim that there are, at heart, two divergent conceptions of totalitarianism in the cumulative literature on the subject. The first of these, I want to argue, is presently the dominant conception of totalitarianism. It is the dominant conception in social science, among historians and (to a lesser extent) among political theorists. Moreover, it has a special kind of import, in the light of at least two things. At one level, it is informed by the attempt to fashion plausible accoun...