Hannah Arendt

--Born 1906 in Konigsberg, lives in Paris, moves to NY in 1940.

First book-1951-Origins of Totalitarianism—attempts to explain the appeal of totalitarianism. She becomes one of the first to say that Nazism and Communism are both issues of totalitarianism.

-Arendt ccvers Adolf Eichmann trial and writes that it’s all just part of a sickly bureaucratic system. This leads to the “banality of evil.” --Evil in the modern world has become common place; it’s just following orders, trying to be efficient, being part of the system.

Civil Disobedience

Civil disobedience is a group action. It’s about trying to make a difference in politics. à“Civil disobedience can be tuned to necessary and desirable change or to necessary and desirable preservation or restoration of the status quo—the preservation of rights…or the restoration of the proper balance of power in the government” (75).

It is different from the conscientious objector (which is what she calls Thoreau and Socrates).

Thoreau says, and Arendt agrees, that when wrongs committed are “of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another…then, I say, break the law” (60).

àBut Arendt says that this is something you’re obligated to do out of conscience; it is unpolitical—it’s not concerned so much with the world or the wrong; it’s just doing what is right.

àShe notes difference between “good person” and “good citizen.” Thoreau is being a “good person.” He’s doing what he thinks is right. “Good citizens” are acting consciously for their country’s benefit (62).

àThe civil disobedient comes into being when conscience gets changed to opinion in the “market place.” With numbers, opinion becomes public opinion, which is what gives it strength/possibility of being considered as truth. à“In the market place, the fate of conscience…[is that] it becomes an opinion, indistinguishable from other opinions. And the strength of opinion does not depend on conscience, but on the number of those with whom it is associated” (68).

àSo both numbers and institutions become essential. She’s taking from Tocqueville hereàif you want to be politically effective/have an impact, you have to create a movement and find allies.

à“The civil disobedient…never exists as a single individual; he can function and survive only as a member of a group” (55).

à“Civil disobedients…are in fact organized minorities, bound together by common opinion, rather than by common interest, and the decision to take a stand against the government’s policies even if they have reason to assume that these policies are backed by a majority: their concerted action springs from an agreement with each other, and it is this agreement that lends credence and conviction to their opinion, no matter how they may originally have arrived at it” (56).

àThe civil disobedient is separate from the criminal—instead of trying to get away with his action, the civil disobedient acts deliberately out of opinion/conscience, and he wants to show his actions.

àLaws will always strike some of us as imperfect; there will always be potential conflicts between laws and consciences. We have to honor those conflicts. We can’t just ignore them; we have to look at them, learn from them, and accept them as part of politics.

àThe civil disobedient is different from the revolutionary. He accepts the general authority/legitimacy of the system of laws (77). The laws are only legitimate as long as you have the right to dissent.

àAs good citizens, we have to keep our promises unless “unexpected circumstances arise, [or] the mutuality inherent in all promises is…broken” (93).

à“The law can indeed stabilize and legalize change once it has occurred, but the change itself is always the result of extralegal action” (80).

àCivil disobedience is essential to America. It’s not criminal act, it’s working to better your country. It’s the way to make change. She says we should “find a recognized niche for civil disobedience in our institutions of government” (99). It’s so important that it should be legally recognized.