How Love of Truth Led to Radical Good: Hannah Arendt's Philosophical
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UNIVERSIDAD DE NAVARRA FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS PROGRAMA DE DOCTORADO EN FILOSOFÍA HOW LOVE OF TRUTH LED TO RADICAL GOOD: HANNAH ARENDT’S PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNEY Jennifer Kentaro Byarugaba TESIS DOCTORAL DIRECTOR: DR. LOURDES FLAMARIQUE ZARATIEGUI Pamplona, 2018 1 2 UNIVERSIDAD DE NAVARRA FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS PROGRAMA DE DOCTORADO EN FILOSOFÍA HOW LOVE OF TRUTH LED TO RADICAL GOOD: HANNAH ARENDT’S PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNEY Jennifer Kentaro Byarugaba TESIS DOCTORAL V°B° DR. LOURDES FLAMARIQUE ZARATIEGUI Pamplona, 2018 3 4 For Love and for all truth 5 6 Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................... 7 ABBREVIATIONS USED ...................................................................... 11 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 1: HANNAH ARENDT’S LOVE FOR THE WORLD ..... 23 1.1 PERSON AND CONTEXT ......................................................... 23 1.2 DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND ...................................................... 28 1.2.1 Existentialist ideas .............................................................. 32 1.3 LOVE AND SAINT AUGUSTINE ............................................... 40 1.3.1 Formation of the concept of love ......................................... 46 1.3.2 Love of the world ................................................................ 49 1.3.3 World and Appearance, but together .................................. 53 1.4 THE CONCEPT OF PLURALITY ................................................ 57 1.5 THE CONCEPT OF NATALITY.................................................. 70 CHAPTER 2: POLITICAL ACTION ............................................... 79 2.1 MAN AS BIOS POLITIKOS ........................................................ 80 2.2 CONCERN ABOUT THE WORLD ............................................... 85 2.2.1 The polis ............................................................................. 85 2.2.2 Public and private sphere ................................................... 88 2.2.3 Equality as a political concept ............................................ 93 2.3 SPEECH AND ACTION AS ACTUALITY ................................... 101 2.3.1 Performance as an actuality ............................................. 103 2.3.2 Unpredictable and Irreversible ......................................... 114 2.4 MODERATION OF POLITICAL ACTION .................................. 119 2.4.1 Power of Promise ............................................................. 122 2.4.2 Power of Forgiveness ....................................................... 128 2.4.3 Unforgivable and Unpunishable ....................................... 137 2.5 REFLECTION ON HUMAN ACTION ......................................... 139 7 2.5.1 Freedom and political action ............................................ 143 2.5.2 Human action, will and freedom ....................................... 150 CHAPTER 3: FROM RADICAL EVIL TO BANALITY OF EVIL . 159 3.1 FACING EVIL ............................................................................ 159 3.1.1 The concept of evil ............................................................ 163 3.2 RADICAL EVIL .......................................................................... 167 3.2.1 The supposedly social function of radical evil ................... 186 3.2.2 Superfluousness unveiled .................................................. 193 3.2.3 Eradicating initiative ........................................................ 197 3.2.4 Radical evil and freedom .................................................. 204 3.2.5 Radical evil and responsibility .......................................... 207 3.3 BANALITY OF EVIL ................................................................... 210 3.3.1 What it is not .................................................................... 217 3.3.2 The case of Eichmann ....................................................... 223 3.4 RADICAL EVIL VS BANALITY OF EVIL ........................................ 227 CHAPTER 4: THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE ..................... 235 4.1 THE CHALLENGE OF TELLING THE TRUTH ............................. 235 4.1.1 Need to understand for reconciliation ............................... 238 4.1.2 The Strength of Factual Truth ........................................... 249 4.1.3 Truthtellers acting in politics ............................................ 262 4.2 THOUGHTLESSNESS OF EICHMANN ...................................... 267 4.2.1 Socrates revisited.............................................................. 269 4.2.2 Spectators and Judging ..................................................... 276 4.2.3 Plurality and thinking ....................................................... 284 CHAPTER 5: TOWARDS RADICAL GOOD .............................. 291 5.1 CONCEPT OF GOOD ................................................................... 291 5.1.1 Goodness and its sphere ................................................... 303 5.1.2 Natality, plurality and doing good .................................... 309 5.2 POLITICAL GOOD ...................................................................... 314 8 5.2.1 Doing good today ............................................................. 319 5.3 RADICAL GOOD ........................................................................ 323 CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................... 331 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................... 345 SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................... 350 VIDEOS .......................................................................................... 359 9 10 Abbreviations used AJC Arendt, H., Jaspers, K., Hannah Arendt Karl Jaspers: Correspondence 1926-1969 BPF Arendt, H. Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought. CR Arendt, H. Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics. Civil Disobedience. On Violence. Thoughts on Politics and Revolution. EJ Arendt, H. Eichmann in Jerusalem A Report on the Banality of Evil. EU Arendt, H. Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954. HC Arendt, H. The Human Condition. JP Arendt, H. The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern age. JW Arendt, H. Jewish Writings 11 LMT Arendt, H. The Life of the Mind. I: Thinking. LMW Arendt, H. The Life of the Mind. II: Willing. LSA Arendt, H. Love and Saint Augustine. MDT Arendt, H. Men in Dark Times. OR Arendt, H. On Revolution. RJ Arendt, H. Responsibility and Judgment. TOT Arendt, H. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 12 Introduction “It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never ‘radical,’ that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is ‘thought defying,’ as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its ‘banality.’ Only the good has depth and can be radical.” Hannah Arendt (The Jew as pariah) Hannah Arendt’s status as an intellectual celebrity has in recent years given way to an Arendtian revival to the extent that her work is being discussed, written about, and is being taught in virtually all fields in the humanities today. Then there is a way in which she was able to elevate the excellence of politics as human action to such an extent that others have been forced to rethink and question its true essence. Outstanding, without doubt, is her style based on a reflective attitude that seeks to understand through experience by engaging in a kind of Denken ohne Geländer (thinking without boundaries). This is contrary to the rigor that has typically been employed by traditional philosophers and has been rejected by some of her readers. Nevertheless, the real question that was posed from the outset without doubt was, “Why does Arendt say that 13 How Love of Truth Led to Radical Good only the good is radical?”. Everything hereafter, revovles around this question. This research follows Hannah Arendt´s intellectual journey, which is characterised from the beginning by search for truth and the concern for human life. The prime intention and aim of this study is to analyse how Hannah Arendt comes to conceive evil and good, two concepts that play a central role in her philosophy and around which, her concept of evil revolves and acquires meaning. The aim is also to illustrate that her first inklings or intuitions and decisions about the factors or categories, that she identified as relevant and necessary to address the problems of her time, were maintained and continued to be in full coherence right from the outset of her philosophical formation up until her last papers and writings. I posed a few primary questions as necessary guides to help me address my research. I found that the principal research question that needed to be answered was: Is Arendt’s ethics possible without metaphysics? This was a necessary question because Arendt was notoriously known for her rejection of traditional metaphysics. Having started reading Arendt’s work, it quickly became clear that she had drawn her own map of anthropological categories that she applied and which served to help explain historical events and phenomena in a philosophical way. Here I am obliged to explain that Arendt does not