I.《責任與判斷》
本書集結鄂蘭生前最後十年未出版的文章與演講稿，這時，鄂蘭正在發展她的判斷理論，這些文章表達了她的問題意識，以及思辨的心路歷程。她一心搶救道德現象，在理論方面細究蘇格拉底、柏拉圖、耶穌、保羅、奧古斯丁、馬基維利、康德、尼采諸大家，又針對公共教育、梵蒂岡教廷、奧許維茲審判、水門案這些特定事件下判斷，斯人風采，如在眼前。
沒有人比鄂蘭更了解二十世紀的政治危機，這些危機可以視作道德崩潰，勢如瓦解，顯而易見。鄂蘭看到那困難的核心，不是由於人的無知或邪惡，未能辨識道德「真理」，而是道德「真理」竟不足以作為標準，去判斷人的行為。西方思想引以為神聖之事，全盤改變了。道德思想的傳統斷裂，再也無法復原。
雖然別人可能料想鄂蘭定會同意，她還是沒有同意。她提出有些人確實會去分辨是非，根據這項區辨而行動。雖然他們既非聖賢亦非英雄，雖然他們沒有聽到上帝的聲音，或藉由普世的自然之光而照見真理，但他們知道、也堅守著善惡的區別。這個事實對鄂蘭來說太具有預示性，太強大了，她無法把這東西只當作性格之高貴。
要跟上她，是讀者的艱鉅任務。主要並不是挑戰讀者的智力或知識，而是思考能力。她提出的並非理論性解答，而是豐富的刺激，刺激你自己去思考。她相信在真正的轉捩點，「過往無法給未來帶來啟示，人心徘徊在晦暗之中。」在這種時刻，心靈的晦暗就是最清明的指示，指示我們需要重新思考人類責任的意義，人類判斷的力量。
II.《政治的承諾》
極權主義和原子彈所帶來的經驗，點燃當前時代政治意義的問題。今天我們對政治所持的偏見底下，是希望和恐懼：害怕人性會透過政治、透過手中掌握的武力毀滅自身。而和這個恐懼相連結的是希望，希望人性會恢復理智，不是將人類從世間消除，而是把政治從世間消除。
漢娜．鄂蘭對整個西方政治思想傳統展開批判性檢視，她發現，該傳統未能充分解釋人類的行動。這個傳統起於柏拉圖和亞里斯多德：自蘇格拉底被判死刑，思想家全都輕政治洞見而重哲學真理，視政治為達成更高目標的手段。馬基維利的著作是窮究哲學實用性的第一個徵兆，而霍布斯首次提出一種對哲學沒有用的哲學，卻聲稱出自常識。馬克思試圖把這個傳統顛倒過來。因為馬克思的翻轉，這個傳統真正走到盡頭了。
政治哲學，如同所有哲學分支，不能否認它源自於「對事物實然的驚奇」。雖然哲學家還是必然與人類事務的日常生活有疏離，但如果要成就真正的政治哲學，就必須將造成整個人類事務領域之人的複數性，包括它的偉大和悲慘，變成驚奇投射的對象。以聖經的話來說，哲學家必須接受奇蹟，神創造的不是大寫單數的人，而是「祂創造了男男女女」。
作者：漢娜・鄂蘭
1906年出身於德國的猶太哲學家，是存在主義哲學家海德格與雅斯培的學生，在納粹統治時移居美國，一生關注猶太民族的命運，積極支持猶太復國主義運動，拯救猶太文化。鄂蘭著作豐富，當中《極權主義的起源》奠定了她政治哲學家地位，並一度成為左右美國學術潮流之思想家，是近代重要的女性哲學家之一。在鄂蘭眾多重要著作中，包括了《極權主義的起源》、《人的條件》、《在過去和未來之間》、《平凡的邪惡》、《論革命》、《共和危機》、《心智生命》、《黑暗時代群像》等。
Vita Activa
#Why does Ushpiz reorder Arendt’s sentences without alerting us to the change? Why does she change “fortuitousness” to “random nature”? And why does she change Arendt’s phrase “totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency” — one of the most iconic and felicitous of Arendt’s many quotable aphorisms — to read “totalitarian movements conjure up a false ideological and consistent world”?
Ushpiz had an editor go over Arendt’s text to make it read better, to simplify it, to make it more accessible to a film audience. Doing so would be understandable in a fictional film, but it is dishonest in a documentary. Still, we might wish to excuse these changes as minor. Do they change the meaning of what Arendt says? Not materially. And, yet, we should worry about these changes for two reasons.
----
『執筆之時，正值德國哲學家漢娜•鄂蘭（Hannah Arendt）的108歲誕辰，我在佔領的旺角街頭中看過有人貼起印著她頭像的宣傳單張，粗略地闡釋了她最為著名的「平庸之惡」這個概念。然而，她在《黑暗時代的人們》中，曾經寫過這段話︰
Review: Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition | The ...
isocracy.org/content/review-hannah-arendt-human-condition
The vita activa, or active life, is necessarily distinguished by what has been more popular ... Labour is defined as the biological process of the human body, and ...
#Arendt’s thinking.Vita Activa opens as would an argumentative essay, announcing its thesis on three imageless black and white slides. The film begins with a definition of Arendt’s phrase “The banality of evil.” Ushpiz then offers catalogue of major Arendtian themes, arguing that her insights into “the prevalence of totalitarian elements in non-totalitarian regimes,” “the danger of ideology, any ideology,” “the need for pluralism,” and “the banality of evil” are deeply relevant in the world today.”
While the film features interviews with renowned scholars, the overwhelming majority of the film is dedicated to Arendt’s words. Long segments show Arendt speaking in television and radio interviews. When Arendt’s recorded voice is unavailable, the Canadian actress Allison Darcy gives voice to Arendt’s writing; in more than 30 extended quotations, Darcy reads Arendt’s sentences, quoting Arendt in extended arguments about refugees, totalitarianism, ideology, and evil.
It is a testament to the power of Arendt’s ideas that a documentary based on her words can both achieve a major theatrical release and receive critical acclaim. New York Times critic A.O. Scott, who calls the movie “a vigorous and thoughtful new documentary,” highlights two of the film’s main theses. First, he notes that Ushpiz rightly situates totalitarianism amidst the rise of imperialism, the challenges to nation states, and emergence of refugees in Europe after WWI. Second, he writes that Ushpiz highlights Arendt’s argument that central to the totalitarian form of government is a preference for a “lying world of consistency [that] is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself.”
The fictional nature of totalitarianism is a response to the homelessness, rootlessness, and loneliness of modern society. Friedrich Nietzsche famously remarked that man can bear any pain and suffering so long as he believes that suffering is for a purpose. Arendt saw the modern world as deprived of the traditional and religious verities that give individuals purpose. Without a sense of meaning, modern mass individuals are particularly susceptible to lying worlds of consistency, the offering of fantasies that give purpose to their complicated, messy, and senseless realities. For Arendt, totalitarianism provides a fictional identity so that individuals can escape the tragedy of their lonely lives.
The masses follow ideologues, Arendt writes, “not because they are stupid or wicked, but because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self-respect.” The genius of Nazi propaganda about the Jews, she argues, was that it gave Germans a self-definition and Identity. Nazi ideology
“gave the masses of atomized, undefinable, unstable and futile individuals a means of self-definition and identification which not only restored some of the self-respect they had formerly derived from their function in society, but also created a kind of spurious stability which made them better candidates for an organization.”
The powerful need to believe in the ideology of a movement to secure self-respect goes a long way to explaining Arendt’s understanding of Adolf Eichmann (it also can help explain in part the passionate movements driving the support for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders). Eichmann came from a middle class family that fell on hard times after WWI. He was a lost soul. Seeking firm ground, Eichmann joined various secret societies and movements throughout the early 1930s. The fact that he eventually found his sense of purpose and pride in the Nazi party was less a matter of ideological conviction than a product of circumstance. Surely, he would not have succeeded as a Nazi without a base level of anti-Semitism; but it was not anti-Semitism that made Eichmann a Nazi. It was the combination of a deeply felt human need for meaning, provided in this case by an ideological movement, along with a thoughtlessness that allowed Eichmann to fully internalize the lying world the Nazi’s created.
Ushpiz highlights Arendt’s complicated understanding of totalitarianism as a lying world. In one extended quotation in the film, we hear these words attributed to Arendt:
“Before they seize power and establish their world according to their doctrine, totalitarian movements conjure up a false ideological and consistent world. Which is more in tune with the needs of the human mind than reality itself…What the masses refused to recognize is the random nature of reality. They’re predisposed to all ideologies because they explain facts as mere laws and eliminate coincidences and spontaneity by inventing an all-embracing omnipotence, which is supposed to be at the root of every accident. Totalitarian propaganda and ideology thrives on this escape from reality into fiction, from coincidence into consistency, logic is its core.”....
While the film features interviews with renowned scholars, the overwhelming majority of the film is dedicated to Arendt’s words. Long segments show Arendt speaking in television and radio interviews. When Arendt’s recorded voice is unavailable, the Canadian actress Allison Darcy gives voice to Arendt’s writing; in more than 30 extended quotations, Darcy reads Arendt’s sentences, quoting Arendt in extended arguments about refugees, totalitarianism, ideology, and evil.
It is a testament to the power of Arendt’s ideas that a documentary based on her words can both achieve a major theatrical release and receive critical acclaim. New York Times critic A.O. Scott, who calls the movie “a vigorous and thoughtful new documentary,” highlights two of the film’s main theses. First, he notes that Ushpiz rightly situates totalitarianism amidst the rise of imperialism, the challenges to nation states, and emergence of refugees in Europe after WWI. Second, he writes that Ushpiz highlights Arendt’s argument that central to the totalitarian form of government is a preference for a “lying world of consistency [that] is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself.”
The fictional nature of totalitarianism is a response to the homelessness, rootlessness, and loneliness of modern society. Friedrich Nietzsche famously remarked that man can bear any pain and suffering so long as he believes that suffering is for a purpose. Arendt saw the modern world as deprived of the traditional and religious verities that give individuals purpose. Without a sense of meaning, modern mass individuals are particularly susceptible to lying worlds of consistency, the offering of fantasies that give purpose to their complicated, messy, and senseless realities. For Arendt, totalitarianism provides a fictional identity so that individuals can escape the tragedy of their lonely lives.
The masses follow ideologues, Arendt writes, “not because they are stupid or wicked, but because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self-respect.” The genius of Nazi propaganda about the Jews, she argues, was that it gave Germans a self-definition and Identity. Nazi ideology
“gave the masses of atomized, undefinable, unstable and futile individuals a means of self-definition and identification which not only restored some of the self-respect they had formerly derived from their function in society, but also created a kind of spurious stability which made them better candidates for an organization.”
The powerful need to believe in the ideology of a movement to secure self-respect goes a long way to explaining Arendt’s understanding of Adolf Eichmann (it also can help explain in part the passionate movements driving the support for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders). Eichmann came from a middle class family that fell on hard times after WWI. He was a lost soul. Seeking firm ground, Eichmann joined various secret societies and movements throughout the early 1930s. The fact that he eventually found his sense of purpose and pride in the Nazi party was less a matter of ideological conviction than a product of circumstance. Surely, he would not have succeeded as a Nazi without a base level of anti-Semitism; but it was not anti-Semitism that made Eichmann a Nazi. It was the combination of a deeply felt human need for meaning, provided in this case by an ideological movement, along with a thoughtlessness that allowed Eichmann to fully internalize the lying world the Nazi’s created.
Ushpiz highlights Arendt’s complicated understanding of totalitarianism as a lying world. In one extended quotation in the film, we hear these words attributed to Arendt:
“Before they seize power and establish their world according to their doctrine, totalitarian movements conjure up a false ideological and consistent world. Which is more in tune with the needs of the human mind than reality itself…What the masses refused to recognize is the random nature of reality. They’re predisposed to all ideologies because they explain facts as mere laws and eliminate coincidences and spontaneity by inventing an all-embracing omnipotence, which is supposed to be at the root of every accident. Totalitarian propaganda and ideology thrives on this escape from reality into fiction, from coincidence into consistency, logic is its core.”....
#Why does Ushpiz reorder Arendt’s sentences without alerting us to the change? Why does she change “fortuitousness” to “random nature”? And why does she change Arendt’s phrase “totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency” — one of the most iconic and felicitous of Arendt’s many quotable aphorisms — to read “totalitarian movements conjure up a false ideological and consistent world”?
Ushpiz had an editor go over Arendt’s text to make it read better, to simplify it, to make it more accessible to a film audience. Doing so would be understandable in a fictional film, but it is dishonest in a documentary. Still, we might wish to excuse these changes as minor. Do they change the meaning of what Arendt says? Not materially. And, yet, we should worry about these changes for two reasons.
----
『執筆之時，正值德國哲學家漢娜•鄂蘭（Hannah Arendt）的108歲誕辰，我在佔領的旺角街頭中看過有人貼起印著她頭像的宣傳單張，粗略地闡釋了她最為著名的「平庸之惡」這個概念。然而，她在《黑暗時代的人們》中，曾經寫過這段話︰
「即使是在最黑暗的時代，人們還是有期望光明的權利，而光明與其說是來自於理論與觀念，不如說是來自於凡夫俗子所發出的螢螢微光，在他們的起居作息中，這微光雖然搖曳不定，但卻照亮周遭，並在他們的有生之年流瀉於大地之上。」』
Hannah Arendt
by
Derwent May
Paperback, 144 pages
Published
September 2nd 1986
by Penguin Books
《漢娜鄂蘭》黃怡譯， 台北:聯經，1990
這本書我90年代末讀過，因為我習慣將精彩部分折頁. 不過 ，現在多忘記了. 或許受 I. Berlin 對她的評價之影響，我沒深入她的著作---過去十年，她的作品多已有翻譯本了. 2013年，更有她的電影，所以大家經常談她
2013.5 我把她與人弄成一詞條: Gershom Scholem A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 / Han...
Gershom Scholem A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 / Hannah Arendt: “the banality of evil.”
http://hcbooks.blogspot.tw/2012/06/gershom-scholem-life-in-letters-1914.html
----又有人說江宜樺是她的學說之專案.......
2013.5 我把她與人弄成一詞條: Gershom Scholem A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 / Han...
Gershom Scholem A Life in Letters, 1914-1982 / Hannah Arendt: “the banality of evil.”
http://hcbooks.blogspot.tw/2012/06/gershom-scholem-life-in-letters-1914.html
----又有人說江宜樺是她的學說之專案.......
漢娜鄂蘭23歲博士論文是雅斯培指導的《奧古斯丁愛的概念》16. (後來，漢娜鄂蘭是其師之遺囑執行人，生命末期整理過其師之書信110......)
Arendt wrote about love in her book The Human condition when she fell in love with Heidegger who was her professor.
‘Love, although it is one of the rarest occurrences in human lives, possesses an unequalled power of self- revelation and an unequalled clarity for the disclosure of who, precisely because it is unconcerned to the point of total unworldliness with what the loved person may be, with his qualities and shortcomings no less than with his achievements, failing and transgressions…Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.’
Arendt wrote about love in her book The Human condition when she fell in love with Heidegger who was her professor.
鄂蘭生於1906年10月14日。
Karl Jaspers死後，終生和他通信的學生輩和摯友鄂蘭(Hannah Arendt)在瑞士的追悼會上讀出以下一段的文字。
「當一個人死了，我們並不知道會發生甚麼。我們只知道，他離開了我們。我們依賴他的作品，但我們但知道作品並不需要我們。作品是人死後留在世界的東西——世界早於他來到世上，在他身後仍然存在。作品會變成怎樣，在乎世界變成怎樣。但是基本的事實是，這些書曾經是活著的生命，這個事實不會直接走入世界，或者免受遺忘。一個生命最短暫的人，而且也許最為偉大，他說過的話，他獨特的行為，隨著他而逝去，因而需要我們，需要我們想起他。想起他就把我們帶到和死者的關係裡去，在這關係裡，談起他的對話在世界裡重新湧現、響起。跟死者的關係——這必需學習，而要開展這種關係的話，我們現在要一起，在彼此分擔的悲傷裡聚首。」
「當一個人死了，我們並不知道會發生甚麼。我們只知道，他離開了我們。我們依賴他的作品，但我們但知道作品並不需要我們。作品是人死後留在世界的東西——世界早於他來到世上，在他身後仍然存在。作品會變成怎樣，在乎世界變成怎樣。但是基本的事實是，這些書曾經是活著的生命，這個事實不會直接走入世界，或者免受遺忘。一個生命最短暫的人，而且也許最為偉大，他說過的話，他獨特的行為，隨著他而逝去，因而需要我們，需要我們想起他。想起他就把我們帶到和死者的關係裡去，在這關係裡，談起他的對話在世界裡重新湧現、響起。跟死者的關係——這必需學習，而要開展這種關係的話，我們現在要一起，在彼此分擔的悲傷裡聚首。」
‘Love, although it is one of the rarest occurrences in human lives, possesses an unequalled power of self- revelation and an unequalled clarity for the disclosure of who, precisely because it is unconcerned to the point of total unworldliness with what the loved person may be, with his qualities and shortcomings no less than with his achievements, failing and transgressions…Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.’
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