Jewish Thinkers of Otherness ⟩ Hannah Arendt — Part II
Details
This very phenomenological passage from high modernist Virginia Woolf should sssslllllooooowwww you down and get you in the mood:
Mr. Ramsay buttoned his coat, and turned up his trousers. He took the large, badly packed, brown paper parcel which Nancy had got ready and sat with it on his knee. Thus in complete readiness to land he sat looking back at the island. With his long-sighted eyes perhaps he could see the dwindled leaf-life shape standing on end on a plate of gold quite clearly. What could he see? Cam wondered. It was all a blur to her. What was he thinking now? she wondered. What was it he sought, so fixedly, so intently, so silently? They watched him, both of them, sitting bareheaded with his parcel on his knee staring and staring at the pale blue shape which seemed like the vapour of something that had burnt itself away. What do you want? they both wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will give it to you. But he did not ask them anything. He sat and looked at the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it; but he said nothing.
Then he put on his hat.
“Bring those parcels…for the Lighthouse men,” he said. He rose and stood in the bow of the boat, very straight and tall, for all the world, James thought, as if he were saying, “There is no God,” and Cam thought, as if he were leaping into space, and they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a young man holding his parcel, on to the rock.
[…]
“He must have reached it,” said Lily Briscoe aloud, feeling suddenly completely tired out. For the Lighthouse had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and the effort of thinking of his landing there, which both seemed to be one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost. Ah, but she was relieved. Whatever she had wanted to give him, when he left her that morning, she had given him at last.
“He has landed,” she said aloud. “It is finished.” Then surging up, puffing slightly, old Mr. Carmichael stood besides her, looking like an old pagan god, shaggy, with weeds in his hari and the trident (it was only a French novel) in his hand. He stood by her on the edge of the lawn, swaying a little in his bulk and she said, shading his eyes with his hand: “They will have landed,” and she felt that she had been right. They had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood there as if he were spreading his hands over all the weakness and suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly and compassionately, their final destiny. Now he has crowned the occasion, she thought, when his hand slowly fell, as if she had seen him let fall from his great height a wreath of violets and asphodels which, fluttering slowly, lay at length upon the earth.
Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was—her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. IIt would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.
Welcome to Part II
I, too, have had my vision, which I aim to share with you in this sequel to “Action, Plurality, Judgment Parts 1 and 2” (which I intend to retroactively rename). Your prep (tho optional as always, but I think you’ll really like it) is …
- Try out the outline of last week’s talk Outline of Action, Plurality, Judgment. It follows the talk rather closely, and helps by:
— Showing the structure better
— The writing style is less like Arendt’s (which is difficult to ‘scan’) and more like a summary
— Like any written account, lets you pause to reflect whenever you feel like it - You will have an outline of the Feb 19 talk ahead of time, it being at the same link as above. It doesn’t show the sections that haven’t been written yet, because for me the outline is not a plan but just a summary. I’m opposed to plans! But I’ll be updating it as I go. You might be interested in following, but more likely you’ll just scan it in the hours before the meeting.
The meeting will be conducted similarly to last time, the main difference being you’ll be armed with the outline. Though from a content perspective, we will spend some time on the Eichmann episode of Arendt’s life, maybe show a clip from the films many of you watched from last time. But on the assumption that you are interested in philosophy more than history, even history of philosophy, I’d like to keep direct treatment of the historical angle limited to aspects that would light a fire under what significance Arendt’s thought holds for me—though, again, these are more intertwined than is usual for thinkers.
From a format perspective (I guess if I’m going to keep you abreast with the outline I needn’t avoid spoilers here), we will be exploring presentational modes that may let you feel what she’s about, rather that confining ourselves to always dispassionately describing her ‘ideas’—which, you might recall, this “maverick didn’t label”. Much of Part 3 will be about making a case that Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem might be productively seen as an exploration of “Judgment!” One reason Arendt didn’t attend that many sessions of the actual trial was she realized it was a ‘show trial’ and she could avoid the pageantry and emotional gloss and get to the (intellectual) ‘substance’ of trial more cleanly by poring over the transcript of it. Many points in Parts 1 and 2 could be brought to bear on this.
Once the trial is over, the long postscript to Arendt’s career begins (On Revolution which I’ve been recommending as the best summary of what Arendt wants us to ‘do’ came out in 1963, same year as the Eichmann book, which was just her compiled magazine articles.) Using the structure of ‘the trial of judgment’ constructed in Part 3, Part 4 will attempt to conduct that trial. I anticipate Arendt herself will be ‘called to the stand’—portrayed by our very own Shawna—to testify, perhaps as a defendant! So yes, I’ll be leaning heavily into the drama, as well as the dramaturgy, of trials in general, but likely with emphasis on show trials like Eichmann’s. (And now I see Google has identified Lessing as an expert in dramaturgy, and Arendt wrote a profile of him for her Men in Dark Times, from 1968, as she did for Brecht, but these probably won’t make it into this version.) As previously announced, the scholarly basis for this move will be the content of the Thinking volume of Life of the Mind, published posthumously, which I promise will be fascinating, once transposed to a dramaturgical framework. (Example: it is the dramaturgist who is responsible for specifying the ‘props’ to be used to stage a play, short for ‘properties’, which is how philosophers like to describe ‘attributes’ of ‘objects’.) Long story short, this approach brings the ‘punch’ of Arendt’s writing in The Human Condition to many more topics near and dear to philosophers’ hearts. You’re not ready!
If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about this, even if it will have to be crisp, for sake of time limitations on both development and presentation.
P.S.: Shawna was disappointed she didn’t see the ‘blurbs’ for the first session. You can check them out here.
METHOD
Do as little or as much prep as you like. But please check out the truly massive trove of materials we’ve spent way to many hours assembling for the current episode:
Among them are two amazing Hanna Arendt videos, both of which are gripping and essence conveying. Here’s a link that will take you straight to those videos:
As always, summaries, notes, event chatlogs, episode transcripts, timelines, tables, observations, and downloadable PDFs from all our episodes can be found in THORR:
ABOUT PROFESSOR TAUBENECK
Professor Taubeneck is professor of German and Philosophy at UBC, first translator of Hegel’s Encyclopedia into English, and SADHO CΦO. Most impressively, he has also been wrestling with the core texts of 20-cent. phenomenology and existentialism for over 30 years, and has worked and collaborated with Gadamer, Derrida, and Rorty.
View all of our coming episodes here.