Regimes

• Plato:

  • tomocracy - gov. by the brave
  • aristocracy - gov. by the best
  • oligarchy - gov. by the rich
  • democracy - gov. by the people
  • tyranny - gov. by one
• Arendt argues that totalitarian regiemes only appeared in the 20th century (Ex. Nazi Germany, Stalanist Russia)
• 1. totalitarianism erases classes by seeing everyone as belonging to the masses
  2. totalitarianism shifts power and authority from the military to the police
  3. totalitarianism engages in world domination
  4. totalitarianism seeks to align its efforts to a supreme, unavoidable law
• Totalitarianism and Ideology:

  • totalitarian regiemes can only prevail if the masses are able to accept a grand narrative transcending a face-value understanding of reality
  • mindlessly accepting an ideology or narrative by making everyone lonely and avoiding solitude
• loneliness in political sphere = lonliness in societal sphere (ie. cancel culture)
• The banality of evil refers to the idea that ordinary individuals can commit heinous acts when they follow orders blindly
• 3 things make up a human:

  • Labour - activities we bave to do everyday to maintain biological existence
  • Work - production of cultural artifacts
  • Action - realm of the political; words + activities of equal citizens who are engaged in the public realm
• Action gives meaning to things: without it, a tree would just be a tree, a building would just be a building, etc. Its not until equal, free human beings decide their cultural significance in a public forum that their identity or meaning can be established
• society must be structured in a way that, even if there aren’t intrinsic values or virtuous people, society still functions well anyways

  • contractatianism proposed in order to reduce arguments in the public realm
• Arendt argues against contractarianism because engaging in public discourse is a fundamental part of the human experience
• contemplative life will never fully answer the question of “who am i” only through participation in the public realm can one establish an identity for themselves; staking claim to values and identities
• “economic man” - stuck in a perpetual loop of labour and work, looking for action.

  • ex. “what do you want to be when you grow up” vs “who do you want to be when you grow up”
• modern day capitalism eliminates action because who you are is what you own

  • participation in politics is turning on the TV, receiving a pixilated update on the world, and then going into the panopticon of social media and screaming into the void
• Arendt on marxism: critiques how it views everyone as an economic entity and wants everyone to become a classless mass in a depoliticized society (totalitarianism)
• a mass society of labourers that Marx thought of when he spoke of “socialized mankind” consists of worldless specimens of the species of mankind - whether they are household slaves, driven into their predicament by violence, or free, performing their functions willingly

  • when the primary function of your life is reduced to work and labour, you are left to feel as a “worldless specimen” searching for meaning
• forcing people to live in a state if malaze - searching for identity or meaning behing what you do for a living/how it contributes to the global economy. Isolation and loneliness is created, forced to fester, and it gives rise to totalitarianism, which maintains its power by continuing to with hold action from the people
• Ex. Adolf Eichmann

  when put on trial he was an “ordinary guy”, not a super evil genius, and not filled with hate towards the people he was sending to death. He was following orders, motivated by wanting a promotion rather than racist hate
• systematic terrorism: totalitarian regimes as characterized by their use of terror and violence to maintain power and control over the population. This terror was not just random or chaotic but rather systematic, meaning it was organized and used as a method of governance.