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POL1: Arendt - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Labour: biological and natural life, building objects that have no other purpose than to be consumed
      - Work: aka the artificial, man produces a world that is truly cultural by building long lasting objects
      - Action: what binds man to the others because it is an act of socialisation and of politics with the common good at its core in order to implement the means to produce a better existence for all
    - - Shouldn't be looking at politics in the sense of institutions and structures (Marx perhaps?) but we should consider it a manifestation of human plurality, one that is intimately linked to life and death
    - - Nostalgia for a world where the consequences are much more tangible than what they are now
- - - - Arendt wants to clear up this confusing by rearranging labour and work in the private sphere whereas action should be in the public domain
    - - Extend to modern day lobbying because political discussions that happen in the White House should not be influenced by discussions in corporate boardrooms
      - Sure, lobby's dictate politics but we have to also nuance that it is not considered as "political discussions" in Arendt's term because it is not a conversation between equals which is predicated on our willingness to be changed by the conversation. The lobbyist only has in mind the interest of their client, thus can't be wrong
      - Arendt would be critical of lobbying groups because they have pre-set interests and there isn’t a creative creation
  - - - Tradition in Western societies to associate politics to rulers and politicians
      - dismissed the "popular belief in a strong man" because we should not look at politics as a rulership dominated by institutional driven by the passion or the "Vocation" of some to govern
      - Instead we should regard the essence of politics as the banding of people who are talking/acting together
    - - People are at the structuring of the political arena (associations and journalism)
  - - - not supposed to be a major source of meaning
      - In fact, it was not supposed to be a source of meaning at all
      - But there was the emergence of an expectation for a Maning (personal fulfilment through politics)
      - also went any sense of the public realm as a site of collective freedom
      - Arendt complained of the re-evaluation of political thinking after Nazism
- - - - The realm of the polis, on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom,
      - Freedom is located in the realm of the social, and force or
        violence becomes the monopoly of government.
      - The fact that free political
        organizations, small and large, stand on the authority of opinion, preserving freedom for the exchange of opinions, debate, and argument, makes them anathema to those who look for authority beyond the common world.
    - - the problem of freedom is the problem of how human beings live together; it is political freedom, the freedom to start something new, the freedom to be human.
      - Freedom is the reason men live together in politics. To be free is to act. This makes you unique. Through your actions people notice you and you become meaningful.
      - Freedom is to create the new, not only to pursue the existing. Liberty as the birth of a new world that is not prisoner of the past but still take things from the past, sure. There are resources that we need to find to inform us about the present and the world of the past still shapes us
    - - Freedom exists where politics ends for Hobbes (freedom absence of politics) ch.21
        For Arendt freedom begins with politics (freedom as politics)
      - She points out that whilst for Thomas Hobbes safety and security were the highest values, these values lead to a retreat inwards. BUT freedom is not inwards
      - Lack of courage and the desire for safety and security encourages men to see freedom as an inward power, not as an outwardly action.
      - Quite apart from practical considerations about the size of states, however,
        
        Weber could never quite see most citizens as anything other than passive
        
        and incapable of understanding the complexities of modern social life.
    - - It is true because it's not a concept, it was an experience
        
        First an experience and a status, an equality report in the Athenian city (free men)
        
        Separate explicitly a Philo concept and the pol experience
      - To evaluate one must answer the question if we are still prisoner of the past/are able to break free from the tradition and repetition of the past or are we able to start the new
      - Liberty is only conceivable when there is a relationship with the Other (not individual faculty)
      - What would hamper liberty:
        
        Every single action has a new consequence therefore the idea that by acting freely, we give meaning to the world, is more precious than the desire that we have to control the world
        
        Can exercise control on the world with technological or political means. China with its social credit score system?
        
        Preserve the possibility of creating the new and preventing the world from being subjected to rules and regulations
        
        Link to China's obsession with re-writing history. Arendt critical of the desire for tot regimes to create a blueprint of what the perfect/ideal man (removing freedom and thinking). Critical of the Romans trying to foresee consequences (action special = unpredictable irreversible)
        
        Basically all this is to say that China's attitude towards the past, present, and future is all based around predictions and control, same as Putin's Russia, thus not a collective action (politics is the recognition of the public sphere)
      - Exercise of liberty:
        
        Immigrants creating the new and embarking on new journeys? Arendt could potentially qualify their actions as courage
        
        Snowden whistleblower, political act and courage
        
        The fight against climate change
      - Arendt claims that, nowadays, a new type of action is appearing, which aims to dominate others, and which has in fact become “the most dangerous of human faculties”. It takes the form of human action on nature, initiating and creating “natural processes which are brought into human artifice and the realm of human affairs”