To abolish the fences of laws between men - as tyranny does - means to take away man's liberties and destroy freedom as a living political reality; for the space between men as it is hedged in by laws, is the living space of freedom. Total terror uses this old instrument of tyranny but destroys at the same time also the lawless, fenceless wilderness of fear and suspicion which tyranny leaves behind. This desert, to be sure, is no longer a living space of freedom, but it still provides some room for the fear-guided movements and suspicion-ridden actions of its inhabitants.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Arendt on terror and tyranny
What do you make of this passage from "The Origins of Totalitarianism"?
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6 comments:
You've got me. Are you sure it's from Arendt and not some quasi-random AI string?
Straight from the book. But wouldn't that be remarkable if we discovered that somephilosophers' minds work just like random AI generators?
How do we know that hasn't been discovered already? We might have to accept the testimony of such philosophers themselves. Not me. If it's not from the mouth of Yoda or Yogi Berra, I'm dubious.
Yeah, you're right. I only believe what Ray Davies tells me to.
It depends on which laws you're talking about. It can be said of totalitarianism that there is an absence of laws, if we consider laws to be that framework in which we conduct ourselves vis-a-vis our neighbors. In a totalitarian system, laws governing contract, for example, are unenforceable with any predictability, in that the outcome of any dispute will always be that outcome which is most useful to the state. This demolishes the framework within which all of us (to some extent and whether we realize it or not) operate and interact with others.
Or, as Kant observed:
I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in grey
Got no privacy, got no liberty
Cos the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me.
Oh, no, wait. That was Ray Davies...
I feel it's more like the famous Hegelian line:
Can't stop
Can't be late
Mustn't make the people wait
Can't stop to comb my hair
Or even change my underwear.
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