----Man's existence lies in thinking----
Today in the circle of friends, I saw a teacher express this emotion: People are getting farther and farther away from human nature, and alienation is everywhere. Marx's theory of alienation is not out of date for explaining current Chinese society.
I haven't read Marx's relevant original texts, but I have heard a lot of the word "alienation". I understand it in a simple way that private ownership and social division of labor have changed and even distorted the "essence" of human beings (of course I don't know what human nature is). People have lost their subjectivity and initiative, and are subject to some spiritual or material power outside of them. People have become the one who follows the tide in the rolling red dust, but those who live in the torrent of the times are not aware of it. They (or rather, we) have lost their human subjectivity, and regard external intangible or tangible control as their own moral imperative or universal truth.
In the film, Heidegger, Hannah Arendt's teacher, said that thinking is lonely. Perhaps this kind of thinking is based on the "rational foundation" that has been rooted in Western culture since the time of ancient Greece. But what is logic, what is reason, what is thinking?
There is no meaning in the world, and meaning is created because of the appearance of human beings. And people have come from generation to generation to study the meaning of these meanings. This kind of meaning should be group, and the morals, laws, norms, good and evil that belong to these meanings need to be considered in a certain social situation. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, maybe there is no absolute standard.
I've seen a Disney movie "Crazy Primitives" before. It said that Homo sapiens replaced cavemen because Homo sapiens could think and create. In the film, the Homo sapiens boy can observe, imitate, adapt, and make, which may be the origin of human wisdom. And when our ancestors not only left behind a lot of material culture, but also passed on the way of thinking, cultural model, and even moral ethics, rules and regulations to us, when we found that there is not only a reality in this world, people also Why does it exist?
----The banality of evil----
In groups and in society, under the influence of various factors, certain moral laws created, transmitted, circulated and practiced by people affect people's thoughts and actions invisibly. The moral imperative is not an abstract existence, but consists of various principles or ethics that can function independently. There are often conflicts between these elements of morality. On the one hand loyalty to the upper echelons, on the other hand the lives of tens of thousands of Jews. To choose loyalty, or to choose the "trivial" lives of "things" that have been molded into "inhumans"?
Moreover, we cannot talk about morality (or "goodness") without disregarding distance. Sometimes, we would cry sadly because of a puppy's leg injury downstairs in the dormitory, and we would see the war in the Middle East published in the newspaper, swept away, and then forget about it at a very fast speed. Eichmann kept saying from the bench that he just did his job, and his job was to get those Jews on the train and take them to the concentration camps. On the one hand is a real responsibility, on the other is a concentration camp that is beyond the reach of his own eyes. Do you choose to follow orders, or be a car?
"Follow the order", in one sentence, put one's responsibilities out of the way. Listeners will of course feel angry. When looking down on others from the perspective of God, of course, you will feel that your morals are flawless, and you will feel that you are omnipotent and can freely choose. But what if you were really in it? If the angry audience was not born a suffering Jew, but a German of Germanic descent, into the party's bureaucracy, what would they do when faced with the pressures of the structure?
Hannah Arendt said, "I just try to understand him, but that doesn't mean I forgive him." Understanding means she knows that there are very different "existences" in the world; not forgiving means that she, as a person, also has her own position. And if this logic is put on Eichmann, does it mean that he would also think, but he has his social and cultural background, and the regulations imposed on him by his society are themselves contrary to the existence of the Jews ?
----He loves abstract human beings, not concrete ones----
"He loves abstract human beings, not concrete ones." This sentence is the title of an article I read about Gu Cheng. A lot of emotion. "Readers" and "thinkers" often place certain ideals in high places, out of reach of ordinary people.
Reminds me of the movie "Kingsman". There's nothing memorable about the plot, but I've thought about the villain's actions for a long time. The villain is rich enough to rival the country, and wants to use a high-tech method to let ordinary people kill each other, and through this "survival of the fittest" method, improve the "overall level" of human beings. He likened himself to God, and took his own chosen people into "Noah's Ark." This logic is surprisingly consistent with fascist thinking.
Although people are slamming fascism today, has this practice of "survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest" and "elimination of dissidents" really been sealed in the dust of history?
Hannah Arendt is frank, "You know I don't love anyone, I only love my friends." Don't love Jews, don't love Germans, don't love Americans. A loving husband, a friend who disagrees with him, a family member far away. Perhaps she loves both concrete and abstract human beings. However, what she thinks of human beings should refer to human subjectivity, that is, the distinction between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, and the choice of good deeds and beautiful things brought about by thinking.
----Intelligence and Emotion----
Sense and Sensibility, the title of a book by Jane Austen, is also a dichotomy in how people perceive the world. We tend to separate the two when we think. Philosophers think that the flood of emotions affects reason, while the masses think that philosophers are smart and indifferent.
I often wonder if people can think outside the dichotomy. Since reason and emotion exist in our thinking at the same time, why do we have to fight to the death and die.
The actions of the heroine and her opponents in the play are understandable. The heroine tries to observe Eichmann's trial "without bias" without her Jewish feelings; but as the heroine's friend in the movie said, this trial is not only for Eichmann personally, But with the vengeance of the entire Jewish nation. Eichmann, in the eyes of the victims of the war, was the executioner, the devil, and the most wicked man who ruined their relatives; but in Hannah Arendt's view, Eichmann on the judgment seat was just an ordinary man. He's not crazy or paranoid, maybe he's just an insignificant person in a larger structure. He is guilty, but it is not his fault. His fault lies in the structure behind him.
Arendt upholds her integrity as a scholar, and ordinary people live out their sensibilities. Which is right and which is wrong? Or there is no right or wrong at all. Today I read an anthropology teacher and wrote about his feelings when he read his students' field reports. Field observers, he says, see society "split". "Students always forget about people; when they see people, they see continuity, see the constant behind changes, feel the irreducible texture of life in people, touch the creation and derivation of human nature and society... Cases need rich types of materials. : language, behavior, emotion, experience, genealogy, historical documents…”
Well, maybe people should all go and see real ethnography. See how to understand the "other" and let the "other" understand yourself.
----smokes----
Barbara Sukowa looks so pretty when she smokes.
(After watching, finish)
View more about Hannah Arendt reviews
