Reckoning with Totalitarianism: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt

This program’s original recording transcript is below. This transcription was created automatically during a live program so may contain inaccurate transcriptions of some words.

Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Hi everyone, my name is Sydney Yaeger and I am the public programs coordinator at the Museum of Jewish heritage, a living memorial to the Holocaust.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): i'm honored to introduce today's program reckoning with totalitarianism, the legacy of Han or rent joining us today or samantha rose Hill and can Christine.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): samantha is a senior fellow at the ohana around Center for politics and humanities and associate faculty at the brooklyn Institute for social research and the University of the underground.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): she's the author of hot around the book, we will be discussing today and how to arrange poems which will be published in 2022.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles review books lid hub open democracy public seminar contemporary political theory and theory and event.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Can Christine is a cartoonist for the new yorker magazine and it's also the author of the graphic biography the three escapes of Hannah a rent.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): A tyranny of truth, which was a finalist for the national Jewish book award in history and has also been published in eight languages his new graphic history is when I grow up.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): The last autobiographies of 68 as teenagers, which came out last week.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): During the discussion, please feel free to share questions in the zoom Q amp a box and we'll get to as many as we can, during the hour.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): This program is being recorded and the video will be available tomorrow on the museum's YouTube channel, so thank you all again for being here and i'm now going to hand things over to Ken and samantha.

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Ken Krimstein: Thank you.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Sydney much.

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Ken Krimstein: hi samantha.

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hi.

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Ken Krimstein: Nice meeting you in the zoom and I have to say I wonder what kinda would think about I have to forgive me for calling her honor but i've spent so much time in her head well, what do you think of zoom.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Not you calling her haha.

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Ken Krimstein: No.

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No, no, she was.

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Samantha Rose Hill: A it's certainly a far cry from the public realm of appearances, where we can be present before one another, we are speaking, and we are acting, and this is something of a public space, so I think she may call this the triumph of the social since i'm in my living room.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah, I guess, so I mean, and we are looking into a bit of our private lives through the zoom zoom world but.

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Ken Krimstein: that's something we can we can talk about because you know something that I think know I know fascinates us both so much is this idea of showing up face to face, and that means it's very performative but while we're getting started um.

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Ken Krimstein: let's say by some amazing chance you run into somebody who doesn't know who has on our renters I can't believe that that would ever happen to you, but it might.

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Samantha Rose Hill: It does.

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Ken Krimstein: What do you say to them, and you only have a short amount of time, maybe an elevator ride what What do you say.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I see usually that was one of the most important German Jewish political thinkers of the 20th century that she wrote about the origins of totalitarianism and the nature of evil and the human condition that's my that's my quick.

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Samantha Rose Hill: introduction and most people are most people that I run into are familiar with the banality of evil, if nothing else, even as a.

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Samantha Rose Hill: concept or a phrase.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Right or they have some they have an idea of who aren't is, and I would say, especially after the 2016 presidential election when her name started appearing much more in news essays articles.

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Samantha Rose Hill: and on social.

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Ken Krimstein: Media right yeah I mean she seems to be kind of always on the fringe of of popular understanding um.

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Ken Krimstein: Before I get in a little bit more into your book, maybe a little bit more background on on Hannah and also to learn to lead us, maybe into the topic of totalitarianism, but i'm going to just get you started by saying that she was born in Hanover Germany.

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Ken Krimstein: By nine in 1906.

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Ken Krimstein: Go for it, I mean or.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So I do this when I teach how to aren't to.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Public audience, or when i'm doing an introduction i'll often start by giving people a little bit of a taste of her life before she emigrated to America so.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She was born in 1906 and London Hanover Germany, you know when she was three years old her family.

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Samantha Rose Hill: went to koenigsberg, which was the capital of East Prussia at the time, so that her father syphilis could be treated, he was very sick when she was young.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And when she was seven years old, he died so aren't was raised, mostly by her mother Martha aren't was very precocious from a young age.

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Samantha Rose Hill: By the time she was 14 she knew Greek Latin she had read all of content, also from an expert and she was reading carly aspergers who she would go on to study with one of the fathers of German existentialism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: By the time she was 15 though she got kicked out of school for leading a protest against one of her teachers and she went to Berlin to live alone.

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Samantha Rose Hill: to study and prepare for her exams, you know she studied with Martin heidegger at the University of Marburg and then she went to study with postural the great phenomenology is to have been heidegger's Dr father and then.

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Samantha Rose Hill: carly asperger's at the University of Heidelberg to study loving seeing a gustin in the classic so for people who have never studied philosophy what this basically means is that aren't studied.

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Samantha Rose Hill: With the two German fathers of existentialism and three of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, she published her first book when she was 23.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So that always makes everyone feel feel wonderful and she became a journalist she started writing her second work on roswell barn hugin the life of a Jewish woman, it was an attempt to understand a simulation.

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Samantha Rose Hill: In Germany, which made her attuned to what was happening at the time and in 1933 She was arrested by the Gestapo for conducting what the Nazis, called for propaganda.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She was collecting anti Semitic statements from the Prussian state library to be sent to world leaders, on behalf of the world Zionist organization, she was held for eight days and you write about this in your book as well.

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Samantha Rose Hill: lori.

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Ken Krimstein: Credible story, I mean she's full of incredible stories, but this one yeah pretty remarkable go ahead and tell it and, as you as you recall it yeah.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Well, so she told her gauss in her 1964 interview on German national television that it was by pure luck that she was able to escape she told him stories night after night.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Keeping him intrigued and he helped her to kind of maneuver and get out but aren't it was very aware of what the stakes were and the next morning she fled.

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Samantha Rose Hill: With her mother Martha they went through Prague to Zurich and then she went to Paris, where she spent the next.

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Samantha Rose Hill: eight and a half years, mostly working for different Zionist organizations, helping Jewish youth prepare to emigrate to move to Palestine to work on keep it seem to work the land and she was learning Hebrew she was learning yet she said she only wanted to do Jewish work at that time.

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Ken Krimstein: And this was really heard on.

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Ken Krimstein: The political right, this is all pre pre World War Two, this is all in the 30s late 30s up into the.

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Samantha Rose Hill: 1933 so she yes 1933 to 1941 is when she escapes and she meets her second husband in Paris and exile hundred fluker.

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Samantha Rose Hill: They get married and four months after they get married actually they're both required to report for in tournament luker was sent to the numbers internment camp aren't receptive to the internment camp in the south of France, which have been built to house.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Spanish.

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Samantha Rose Hill: fighters fleeing the civil war and after five and a half weeks she was part of a mass escape another escape upon aren't so i'm going to keep throwing and.

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Ken Krimstein: skates.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Your break you'll.

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Get.

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Samantha Rose Hill: yeah you should know it's an incredible story, as well as the as.

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Samantha Rose Hill: The German front approached and order started falling apart in the camp, the women made a plan to forge documents and walk out.

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Samantha Rose Hill: at the right moment and aren't made her way to learn notice Lord where she spent time with Walter venue mean and then she went to try and find her husband and move on and she was able to by chance, after.

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Samantha Rose Hill: A couple of weeks, and then eventually, with the help of varian fry she was able to they were able to secure exit ISAs and made their way to port.

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Samantha Rose Hill: bow where Walter venue mean had tragically died, and then to Lisbon, where they waited for three months before sailing to New York aren't arrived at.

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Samantha Rose Hill: On Ellis Island on may 22 1941 they have $25 and it was only with a stipend from the world Zionist organization of America.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That they were able to rent to furnish rooms on West 95th street one for them and one for her mother and they would live there for about seven years, and so that was the kind of the incredible backstory.

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Samantha Rose Hill: yeah like before she begins writing the work that we are.

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Ken Krimstein: Today, and she she.

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Ken Krimstein: is essentially stainless one she I mean what does she do when she fleas Germany does she I mean she try and get a French passport when when she do.

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Samantha Rose Hill: yeah so she's stateless she's stateless for 18 and a half years on aren't does not receive American citizenship until 1951 the same year, she publishes origins of totalitarianism, when she was an exile in Paris, she had.

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Samantha Rose Hill: applied for all sorts of grants and assistance to help place her as an academic and i've written a little bit about this online.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And unfortunately, none of those came through her first choice, have been to go to London and then the United States and then Israel.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And it wasn't until she was able to secure exit papers that she was able to get to the United States and then it was as a stateless person so she had those.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She had those kind of temporary visa documents, and I have them they're mostly in the New York public library, which is how I was able to include some of the information from them in the book.

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Ken Krimstein: Right, but just that part of her life even way before origins of totalitarianism or becoming a US citizen is is so packed with incident and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Yes, and traumas.

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Ken Krimstein: um, how do you feel that you know, there was something that I saw in a review that I shall not get too deeply into of.

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Something.

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Ken Krimstein: But, but the person quoted heidegger in a way, and said.

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Ken Krimstein: Well, you know there's two ways of dealing with you know, philosophy and philosophers and I guess I don't know if it's apart from he said.

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Ken Krimstein: Oh yeah Aristotle he lived okay now let's talk about his work or something to that effect, I mean, how do you think, why is the life, but the lived life.

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Ken Krimstein: Something that that attracted you to this story, especially these parts that aren't known, and how does it relate, do you think to her thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: it's a wonderful question and it's a complicated question of you know, I was trained as a political theorist and the first thing that I was taught in graduate school was not to confuse the life of a political thinker, with their work and and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I think was a window with a thinker like quantum are in one of my favorite quotes which I used to open the book is from this 1972.

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Samantha Rose Hill: panel on on our end she had been invited to attend as the guest of honor and she insisted on participating and instead.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And she says that all thinking moves from experience, all thinking moves from experience thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: moves from the experiences that we have in the world, our experiences become the material of our thought.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And I think in that way aren't word is much more about how to think, then, what to think and heidegger is an interesting figure to hold up.

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Samantha Rose Hill: In contrast to Honda aren't understanding of self reflective thinking and she was very critical of his own work on thinking, because for heidegger thinking was on worldly it was something you did in private alone by yourself, preferably up in the mountains and a hot.

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Samantha Rose Hill: cut off from other people, but for aren't thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And the ethical implications of thinking, how we make political judgments, how we act in the world how we act towards one another.

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Samantha Rose Hill: is deeply worldly is rooted in conversation is rooted in the two in one conversation of thinking that I have with myself and is rooted in the conversations that we have with other people.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And thinking as part of the process of understanding the world, and from a very early age Honda aren't was hungry to understand the world.

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Samantha Rose Hill: We see that in her early life, even in her mother martha's kindle book that she had kept about her intellectual development as a small child and her own self portrait the shadows and in her poems that were written before the war, you know I think for me.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I was drawn to artists work, the other side of this question because she she wrote in a way that open my imagination.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She kind of opened a window to be a part of the world and made me understand that thinking and academia is not this rarefied place or activity that happens appear in some isolated space that is is deeply worldly and concerned with the most pressing political problems that we are facing.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah i'm really glad that you.

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Ken Krimstein: brought up the the concept of imagination and that's something that I i'd like to get back to, but I wonder.

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Ken Krimstein: let's talk for a second about this this word totalitarianism.

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Ken Krimstein: A big long word.

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Ken Krimstein: means a lot, which means a lot and and came out of you could say came out of her experiences, just so many other things.

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Ken Krimstein: In her did and i've been i've heard or read across the way that she's kind of often given credit for maybe even kind of coming up with that word i'm not quite sure.

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Ken Krimstein: You know, so if you could just talk a little bit about you know, for those who may not know and it's a difficult sometimes a difficult like what's the difference between, say totalitarianism and despotism or dictatorship or.

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Ken Krimstein: You know.

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Ken Krimstein: An absolute monarchy run by a really horrible person who you know you know, like.

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Ken Krimstein: Sure there's a difference there isn't there.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So all right, and has made several lasting contributions to politics political science political philosophy and philosophy.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Her concept of totalitarianism, is one of them, so aren't coins this term totalitarianism as a radically new form of government.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That emerged in the middle of the 20th century with the appearance of Nazi ISM and then she understood Bolshevism to be a more advanced form of Nazi ISM and for aren't totalitarianism, as opposed to.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Democracy fascism authoritarianism has a unique set of qualifying elements so aren't is using this language of elements and constellation and origins and that's her methodology for thinking about.

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Samantha Rose Hill: What totalitarianism is and she's taking that from Walter Benjamin and the CCS on the philosophy of history, but she wants to look at the various.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Elements of totalitarianism, to see how they crystallized into the appearance of totalitarianism as a radically new form of government.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So she's doing it this and i'll tell you what those are in a second but she's doing it this way.

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Samantha Rose Hill: intentionally because what it means is that the different elements of totalitarianism can last or linger or exist in a society.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Even if there isn't a totalitarian form of government in place.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So origins is 597 pages it's three books in one it's a history of anti semitism and how anti Semitism has changed over time it's a history of imperialism and colonialism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That traces the collapse of the nation state in Europe from the 19th into the 20th century and it's a history of totalitarianism and what this is, and so, for our to solitary aneurysm as a new form of government.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And just just to kind of add emphasis on this, you know political thinkers from Plato onward had been thinking about democracy oligarchy, you know the kind of the traditional three forms of government to solitary aneurysm aren't says isn't interested in new beginnings.

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Samantha Rose Hill: It for closes the possibility of anything new to totalitarianism erases any possibility for spontaneity within society in speaking or an acting because people live in a total state of terror.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And she talks about the iron band of totalitarianism, which compresses us together the atom ization of the masses and she doesn't mean that people are so physically.

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Samantha Rose Hill: bound together she means that society has been atomized and that people subscribe two forms of ID logical thinking which doesn't allow for movement and thought it doesn't allow for an active process of thinking and totalitarianism is defined by the use of concentration camps.

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Ken Krimstein: hmm.

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Ken Krimstein: And it is another word i've another thing i've heard about phrase applied to is it, there are circle, they called surplus people people become.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Less people.

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Ken Krimstein: superfluous yes and um you know one thing that strikes me as you're talking about this.

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Ken Krimstein: To tell we know, one of the terms, one of the things that's very, very important 100 right night I actually wrote something about it myself is this idea of neutrality newness I love that about her.

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Ken Krimstein: And what you said, is that this for closes that possibility, there can be no generative thought there can be no mentality in this world, but what about are there, it is, it proposes to a thought and the question one is.

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Ken Krimstein: totalitarianism, is a new idea like someone came up with it, but it's like the last idea right because it's like we came up with this were the beneficiaries of it, I mean are there, some people who are in the in crowd and they're really loving the state.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Well, certainly, we know that to be true, and so one of the things that aren't there are a couple things that aren't kind of changes your mind about.

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Samantha Rose Hill: After she finishes to talk the origins of totalitarianism and the origins of totalitarianism, she argued that the people were so radically disappeared.

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Samantha Rose Hill: from the world of appearance by being disappeared into concentration camps and murdered and without any form of remembrance, that it was this radical act of aeration that was radical evil.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And so aren't Those are the two things that aren't kind of changes her thinking on and she says that there will always be somebody left to remember, there will always be somebody to tell the story.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And she argues that it wasn't radical evil it wasn't the appearance of hell on earth, that the hell on earth was created by people people had done this, and that this was not some other worldly force okay cause.

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Samantha Rose Hill: The Second World War and but this idea of Sub purposelessness is also very.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Important to aren't argument about understanding the nature of totalitarianism, because underlying all the various elements she outlines in that book from the privatization of political institutions to the loss of class society.

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Samantha Rose Hill: To the instrumental ization of the state for economic imperialism to mass joblessness she offers us three existential conditions of totalitarianism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: homelessness which isn't just a house, but our language our gestures all the things that make us comfortable and forming habits and our daily lives homelessness rootlessness a sense of not being rooted into a Community tradition.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And loneliness.

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Samantha Rose Hill: When she gets to the last 10 pages of the book she talks about loneliness is the underlying cause of all too tall attarian movements and then word that she uses for that is actually not our word loneliness.

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Samantha Rose Hill: it's the German word for last and height just taking it from each other, and it means abandoned ness a sense of feeling abandoned in the world.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And this this word superfluous of feeling oneself to be superfluous I think it's a resonant to our contemporary political situation today, thinking about the loss of dignity community.

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Samantha Rose Hill: meaning in life.

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Ken Krimstein: I mean another quote, that I forgive me i'm sure you mentioned it in the book, but I remember coming across it very, very early on, when I was starting to learn about her and somebody said she had a genius for friendship.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And that.

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Ken Krimstein: This notion of friendship as an antidote to loneliness or a way of getting meaning, could you speak a little bit about that because she's saying, if you look at her life, as I did you think that she had there had to be five of her because she lived so many lives, at the same time right.

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Samantha Rose Hill: just looking at her correspondence.

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Samantha Rose Hill: You start to think there must have been.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So you really have their reality.

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Ken Krimstein: Special special in relate, I mean she she really privileged these types of creative or.

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Ken Krimstein: I mean, can you talk a little bit about her relations with people since it seems to be such an important part of her thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Friendship was very important RN it was very important to how she understood home in the world how she understood love how she understood community.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She says in the venture gas interview that I mentioned a few minutes ago, when he asks are so you don't love any people and she says no, I only love, my friends and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: friendship for aren't existed in the realm of privacy policy an intimacy friendship is where she could retreat from her public life.

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Samantha Rose Hill: As an IT public intellectuals, a thinker as a writer, and she could nourish these intimate relationships one of her closest female friends, which some people might know some people might not was hilda frankel.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Who she had met through Paul Tillich the theologian, and she writes these beautiful letters to her saying you're the only person in the world that I can fully be myself of.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Her correspondence with Mary McCarthy, the American novelist is exquisite it's this beautiful love relationship that they cultivate and nourish were they not they don't just exchange ideas they care.

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Samantha Rose Hill: For one another in the way that family cares for one another and she called her close circle of friends for tribe she had her tribe.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And they were a home for each other, she called her husband for four walls and she understood this space of friendship to be a space of deep personal and intellectual nourishment.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Which made her work, which made the work of thinking and understanding possible but you see all of these incredible acts of friendship throughout her correspondence sending care packages to Carl and Gertrude yes, first a project.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Protecting you H audit.

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Samantha Rose Hill: didn't do many.

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Ken Krimstein: Friends right.

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Ken Krimstein: it's a very deep concept, I think it even goes back to some Greek thinkers talk about the importance of.

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Ken Krimstein: Friendship or bottles Aristotle would be one yeah.

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he's yeah.

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Ken Krimstein: um so it struck me when I was doing my book and and I I kind of touched on this and you know when she gets to.

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Ken Krimstein: The Eichmann affair, which I wanted to kind of not talk about in my book, but you kind of can't avoid it one of the things that was a.

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Ken Krimstein: I would have felt would have been very particularly painful to her was that she lost many friends, she also had some people that held close to her, but she's still in my in my interpretation of it um.

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Ken Krimstein: That was her, she courageously bore that I mean I think she That was a it was a pain that she had to carry perhaps I don't know I mean she was she.

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Ken Krimstein: hurt by the abandonment of some people are others, I mean wish you know, this is a woman who seems so strong you know tough a tough woman yet.

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Ken Krimstein: What things affect her.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Absolutely absolutely um you know I think two stories kind of come to mind one is that you know after i'd been in Jerusalem was published in 1963.

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Samantha Rose Hill: aren't spent a good portion of her career after that trying to understand what had happened.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And by what had happened, I mean why people had responded in the way that they did, and her mind, as she spoke about it on many occasions, she had gone to Israel, she had seen the trial and she had recorded what she saw that was her factual truth.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And people told her that no.

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Samantha Rose Hill: that's not what happened, and she wrote about it and people responded to things she had never written.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And so, she wanted to understand what happens to not just to herself, but to the world when that understanding of common sense factual truth falls apart.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And so I think the sheer amount of time that she spent trying to grapple with the aftermath of her repertory on Eichmann is testament to how deeply that affected her and how much space that occupied in her thinking.

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yeah.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah and you know, I think.

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Ken Krimstein: The famous comments yeah I don't love people and you meant you mentioned those sorts of things.

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Ken Krimstein: before she speaks a little bit about a concept that is very, very important to her and I don't think people we hear about it enough, but she talks about being a pariah a conscious pariah.

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Ken Krimstein: Yes, where is it could you explain a little bit what that means, and why that is important, and on the heels of that you could say that a pariah might be like somebody who's trying to be a provocateur.

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Ken Krimstein: Or is there a right way to be a pariah or wrongly, I mean just speak.

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Samantha Rose Hill: that's a very good question Ken and I think that's a question with Percy and our contemporary political boba today but let's set that we i'm happy to talk about it but let's i'm going to set it in brackets for a second.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And let me just start by saying, I think your illustrations of Honda aren't captured the cheekiness of her conscious pry attitude I I can always see it in the way that you brought her to life, for us, and so I know you can answer this question.

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Ken Krimstein: And it's something known as a cartoonist and you know we it's we're we're a pariah profession in many ways, just being alive today i'm real curious.

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Ken Krimstein: medians yeah.

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Ken Krimstein: The word pariah people don't really know what it means, but.

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Ken Krimstein: What yes.

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Samantha Rose Hill: It comes from her early work on raw whole barn hugin who had had a salon and then a friend and people have ghettos.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And raw hell aren't said aren't said Rocco was her best friend, it was only that she she died 100 years before she had been born.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And at the end of that book which aren't didn't finish until after the war, it was interrupted by the way it was meant to be her ability on her second book to secure a teaching position in Germany.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She comes back to something that Raphael said on her deathbed, which is that it was only then.

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Samantha Rose Hill: When she was about to die that she realized what she thought had been the greatest curse of her life for Jewish identity had been the greatest blessing of her life.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And so, through rnc engagement with Raphael she comes to these terms park avenue pariah and then aren't conceptualize is the self conscious pariah.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And then, when she's in Paris and exile, the story that she uses to illustrate is it comes from an experience that she had so good example of how experience and forms for conceptual thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And she tells the story of a Mr Cohen, who was forced to leave germany's we went to France, he became the best French citizen and then he had to go to Switzerland, he became the best Swiss citizen.

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Samantha Rose Hill: and on and on and aren't says that he would be due to live a miserable life as long as he was one of these Ulysses type wanders who was unwilling to accept what he was a Jewish.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And for art that's it that's the kind of classic example the park avenue the pariah The self conscious pariah and she does.

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Samantha Rose Hill: make some distinctions there, but the self conscious pariah is somebody who proudly carries their identity with them through the world it's a there's a great letter and her correspondence with carly asperger's.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Shortly after the war ends and she hasn't been in the United States for that long and she writes to him, you know this whole American melting pot is a myth.

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Samantha Rose Hill: The great thing about the United States is that there are all of these communities where people are free to bring their traditions with them.

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Samantha Rose Hill: hmm and for our that was very important, and the other side of this is that aren't in origins and in her work on the Jewish prior connected, the history of assimilation, is to anti semitism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And, yes.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah I mean you, you know, and I hope we're getting some questions from suitably have some people out there.

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Ken Krimstein: But uh you're bringing up some some really and the thing that's wonderful about renting the thing my I quoted the old.

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Ken Krimstein: any of you have been in New York City, for a long time used to ride the subway there was this great.

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Ken Krimstein: Ad campaign for the Roach motel and it had one of the great headlines the roaches check in but they never check out, and I say with Han or rents world what you check into on a random you can never check out it's.

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it's endless.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That rings, a little bit to cheer for me well.

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Ken Krimstein: Because we're all your apartment is, but you have read about the question of identity and you bring up the question of plurality, which is a very, very word that we again, you know a lot of times the way around us is words are very easy to not understand them.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah and.

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Ken Krimstein: I feel that this is in your description of what she kind of liked about America it sort of sounds like a pluralistic vision that that attracted her to it, whether or not you know that is fulfilling its promises, another topic, but can you talk when was plurality.

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Ken Krimstein: I hate to be so simple but like an antidote or a, something that would help against totalitarianism, I don't wanna is there any connection there talk a little about morality, because that's a hard one.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So how are it writes about morality and the human condition, which was the book she published after the origins of totalitarianism in 1958.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And it was meant to be kind of follow up to origins and I always say if origins is about the emergence of totalitarianism than the human condition is about how we can protect spaces of freedom and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: aren't talks about the fundamental elements of the human condition so.

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Samantha Rose Hill: For any kind of politics philosophy nerds who might be listening in within the tradition of philosophy that aren't emerged out of there is a kind of.

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Samantha Rose Hill: tradition of talking about the social contract of imagining what the kind of fundamental elements of the human condition our art rejects this.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She says there's no kind of ontological feeling or position that every single human being possesses no So what is it it's plurality for art and what does that mean it means that nobody.

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Samantha Rose Hill: This year alone, we appear in the world with others, no man is an island.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And that we're all unique and we're only equal in the sense that we're different from one another and it's very much tied to her conception of mortality.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Which aren't is the root of all action in the world, but in totality is our ability to act, but we can never predict the outcome of our actions.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And so, for example, when she gets to the end of Eichmann in Jerusalem and she makes the extra legal argument that I admin has to die, she says he has to die.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Because of his crime against humanity, what was his crime against humanity, it was that he had violated this fundamental principle of the human condition plurality.

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Samantha Rose Hill: The fact that we all have a right to be here because we all appeared here and just because we appear differently from one another doesn't mean anyone else has any greater right to be here.

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Ken Krimstein: Right, and I think you know that.

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Ken Krimstein: That feeds into a lot of things that come out of her life growing up in a world where really.

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Ken Krimstein: emotion and the destruction of people could just barge into your home and take away your your name your possessions your you know it just Willy nilly had to have a massive effect on her psyche and.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah and I don't think she ever said, you know, and I we've talked about this she wasn't the kind of philosopher who you know, and I won't name any names had 14 acolytes following them around lighting their cigarette briefcases.

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Ken Krimstein: really want that, in fact.

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Ken Krimstein: To go she very.

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Ken Krimstein: Famous because I don't even think of myself as a philosopher.

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Ken Krimstein: um so you know, and I think it really For those of you who you know there's a lot I hate this term to unpack but you know you've got you've got these outside the promise and forgiveness forgiveness, is another incredibly subtle.

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Ken Krimstein: notion, but very, very important I, I think, but I want to get to some questions, because we have questions, and I said I wouldn't read them, but one popped up and i'm i'm sorry to chuck this one, at your right now, but we only have.

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Samantha Rose Hill: 20 minutes left bring on the.

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Ken Krimstein: Susanna remer line dress says how would you apply 100 rented today's society and global challenges that we have to grapple with and what message, maybe resonates with you most in if there is one thing that I know we've got a world of problems, but you know what would you think.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So Iran says that to look to the past in order to solve the problems today is a mythological error.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Hot our work is not about telling us what to think it's not a frame to look through but it's about how to think.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And I think in that way, our in sport can help give us a language for making sense of the political crises we face today, and I think this goes to what Ken was just saying to what you were saying and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: and drawing out is that aren't was very attentive to language and the idea that speaking is a form of action, but you know wh auden the poet said that aren't could almost be read like a dictionary she gives us a really rich vocabulary of ideas that we can.

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Samantha Rose Hill: bring into our thinking, I think the Book of Han ahrens that's most important to.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Our political condition today is the human condition if you want to think with one upon ahrens books right now the human condition talks about the specter of technology.

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Samantha Rose Hill: man's desire to escape earth she talks about the loss of distinction between public life and private life.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She talks about the need for remembrance what is political action she talks about identity politics, she talks about forgiveness, she talks about alienation and loneliness and thinking, and I think that book right now really speaks to a myriad of the conversations that we're having.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah i'm Sydney do you want to jump in and moderate a little bit.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Sure yeah and I.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): mean and also feel, for I know you're both quite knowledgeable about this topic so i'm.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): samantha when I when I was reading your book, I was particularly interested sort of by her relationship with heidegger and kind of how complicated it got and I wonder if you can kind of just expand on what the relationship was like and really.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Really long term impact yeah I know.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): You know, doing again.

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Samantha Rose Hill: ya know, so this is this is, you know, certainly a very complicated part of fanta orange.

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Samantha Rose Hill: legacy when Elizabeth young rule granted access to one correspondence at the German literature archives and marbach.

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Samantha Rose Hill: In the 1980s after oren stuff the world became aware that she had had a romantic relationship with Martin heidegger, who was a Nazi.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And had joined the Nazi party and aren't broke off their relationship in 1933 when she found out about his.

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Samantha Rose Hill: activities and she resumed the relationship after the war and that's the part that is, I think, very difficult for a lot of people who engage with Honda arts work, and this for her goes to forgiveness to reconciliation.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And how it is that we think about who a person is in relationship to what a person does and whether or not the whole of a person.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Whole of a person's life can be reduced to horrible decisions to a horrible act and for our and forgiveness was something that was always interpersonal that happened between people.

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Samantha Rose Hill: One on one to not for the person who's doing the forgiving but for the person who needs to be forgiven so that they're not.

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Samantha Rose Hill: bound by whatever thing that they had done and for heidegger for aren't aren't those T asperger's and her correspondence he's guilt he's basically guilty of murder.

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Samantha Rose Hill: In my mind I can't believe what he did, to Mr oldest missing signing the letter that dismissed all Jewish people from academic post and the German university system.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And she really wrestles with her relationship with him, and we see this in her most clearly in her correspondence.

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Samantha Rose Hill: But she he was and there's no other way to say, this is the great passionate love of your life, and that was something that remained with her.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Her husband was her home her husband what is what gave her the sense of freedom to go careening through the world and do the work that she had to do and heidegger was the kind of poetic romantic love affair that she had throughout her life there's there's a lot to say about it and.

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Ken Krimstein: Let me, you know.

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Samantha Rose Hill: What do you think.

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Ken Krimstein: Well, no.

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Ken Krimstein: Well, you know in my book, I tried I made my own.

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Ken Krimstein: Determination based on the fact that I read many books at the time, and I know a lot of correspondences and out there and basically.

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Ken Krimstein: You know you read four or five of them and they get four or five different answers, so I felt it was sort of fair game for me to make my own interpretation and you'll have to read the book to find that out, but.

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Ken Krimstein: Since some some Samsung kind of that on the hot seat, I see some questions in the Q amp a and i'll try to see what you do with them.

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Ken Krimstein: All right, i'll just bring up.

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Ken Krimstein: The F word no not that one feminism i'm.

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Ken Krimstein: saying yes somebody says, what do you why do somebody says, and I don't know if this is correct or not, but i'll read you the question why do you think that around was so uncomfortable with feminism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So Hannah aren't sore holy o's she writes in one letter to never touch the question of feminism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: By which she meant specifically second wave feminism in the United States there's a there's one letter I was looking at recently from Gloria steinem that have been sent ohana aren't asking her to sign a petition for row no response from orange.

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Samantha Rose Hill: aren't did not consider herself to be a feminist and she writes about this most clearly and a 1929 book review that she wrote, while she was living in Frankfurt.

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Samantha Rose Hill: it's a review of a German book called on the women problem on the following problem, and she makes an argument there that she sticks with throughout her life that.

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Samantha Rose Hill: The problem of women, as it were, as it was putting that book is an economic problem that this is a question of economic and social equality and not identity for aren't and there's that.

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Samantha Rose Hill: distinction that she draws again between who we are and what we are and she says that just because somebody is born a woman doesn't mean that they belong to a woman's movement.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And she saw any kind of political movement as having a kind of prescription, a kind of ideological way of thinking that said, this is the right way to think about this.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And that kind of framework for aren't was always a non starter it didn't matter if it was Marxism feminism.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Socialism Bolshevism conservatism she avoided all isms isms were hurt for her were signs of ideological thinking, but having said that.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I will also say that you know hot aren't is one of the most important and famous political thinkers of the 20th century.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I don't think being a feminist necessarily implies a set of political beliefs.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And if you watch that 64 interview with gunter gauss she's very cheeky with him in a playful way you really get a sense of her irony.

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Samantha Rose Hill: You know, he asks her you know so you're a woman in philosophy, how is that is it a problem, and she says, of course, it's always a problem, but I do my work.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And, of course, this drove many feminist mad Adrian rich probably most famously wrote about it, trying to really understand how the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, who was a woman when it talks about women's issues.

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Ken Krimstein: You know in it and there's a couple of questions on on this and there are other isms you know being being brought up but.

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Ken Krimstein: um.

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Ken Krimstein: You know how do, how do.

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Ken Krimstein: You know, and maybe you could say it's part of the social sphere that in between place, but how does plurality work to make sure that social groups or constructs are protected.

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Ken Krimstein: Yet not maybe you could say privileged I don't exactly know how to put that some Elizabeth kaplan wrote a question saying you know how, how can you build consensus.

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Ken Krimstein: Without becoming sort of us then becoming like dominated by states, you know or or authoritarianism like how do.

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Ken Krimstein: We were when social movements and it's very tricky for me, because we, and she make some mistakes on it, but yeah How does she deal with.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That i'm sorry, are you thinking of something specific.

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Ken Krimstein: Zionism i'm also thinking of little rock i'm thinking of.

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Ken Krimstein: And she you know, and she does say you know I will make mistakes, but i'm you know i'm getting back to the fact of like.

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Ken Krimstein: kind of pluralistic, I think I might have even asked you this at one time, you know Plato, or you know comes up with this ideal world that we're not really supposed to live in is as hot as pluralistic world attainable.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I don't think she gives us an idea of what that world is, I think that she's trying to understand what is happening, while she's alive.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She says, at the end of her preface to the human condition that the point is to stop and think what we are doing and that we have to continuously be doing that, from the vantage point of our most recent experiences fears desires and so there is no.

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Samantha Rose Hill: She is she's not.

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Ken Krimstein: A utopian thinker yeah but.

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Samantha Rose Hill: When she and that, but in that book that idea of political action.

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Samantha Rose Hill: of appearing in the public realm of acting.

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Samantha Rose Hill: together in concert we can't act alone, we have to act in concert with others for aren't if the tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, it doesn't fall and so.

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Samantha Rose Hill: When I when she's talking about social equality, I think there's kind of two things happening one she makes the argument that we have to make the argument.

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Samantha Rose Hill: One on one, we have to actually go out into the world physically talk to people make arguments, but for our and social discrimination is part of the fabric.

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Samantha Rose Hill: of life or people make judgments people have opinions, people are going to have taste, she doesn't have a kind of utopian.

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Samantha Rose Hill: vision of living in a society where there's not going to be any more tragedies and I think that's very difficult for some readers of aren't to to wrestle with and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: It is you know I think you said contradiction, I think it does appear as a contradiction in her work in some places, she says in the human condition that every part of our life has touched by politics.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And then she does this very you know kind of sharp any a porous distinction between our private life and our public life, she talks about how the greatest political.

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Samantha Rose Hill: virtue is courage to appear in public and make an argument and perhaps be attacked physically verbally but she doesn't talk about how not everybody.

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Samantha Rose Hill: has equal amounts of courage to appear in a public space or how we get to a place where everybody feels.

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Samantha Rose Hill: comfortable enough or okay enough to appear in that public space and say what they're thinking and so she doesn't give us answers on that she just gives us this kind of framework for thinking with her through some of these questions.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah talk for a minute and I know keep an eye on.

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Ken Krimstein: The time Cindy but about thinking she's a very you know she has a wonderful quote and I and and I think you know she condemns people who don't think through are thinking, the right way, not the right, not the right way she's not trying to be.

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Ken Krimstein: authoritarian about thinking, but she says that you know you have to you have she says, there are no dangerous thoughts thinking itself is a dangerous act and she's saying that everybody should think.

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Ken Krimstein: yeah saying we should live in a dangerous world shouldn't it be a safe worlds and everybody just.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Be that act right about that kind of dangerous so far it has a very idiosyncratic understanding of what.

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Samantha Rose Hill: thinking is when she's talking about thinking she's talking about self reflective thinking, where the self conscious can draw on to conversation the conscience, the conscious being.

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Samantha Rose Hill: The moral sensibility that we have that tells us what's right and what's wrong and how to act in the world, and why we should drive the speed limit down the road and why we should you know not slam the door in our neighbors face right so.

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Samantha Rose Hill: thinking is a space where we can open up this conversation and ourselves to hold ourselves accountable to how it is we act in the world and she's taking this from content and the idea of having an expansive.

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Samantha Rose Hill: imagination it's a kind of political empathy that allows us to expand our thinking so outside of ourselves.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And for aren't thinking is dangerous because it has the ability to approve what we believe what we take for granted in our thinking it makes us aware of how we think and why we think.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Certain things thinking for aren't is very much at the heart of her work, her last work the life of the mind begins with a book.

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Samantha Rose Hill: On thinking, and this is the great kind of negative claim that she makes and talking about the banality of evil is that this form of self reflect.

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Samantha Rose Hill: This form of self reflective thinking might have the ability to prevent evil from happening in the world, she says.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That Eichmann obviously thought he was very smart he was very good at thinking about what he did, but he lacked the ability to imagine the world from the perspective of another yeah and.

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Ken Krimstein: doesn't she say doesn't I mean, of the other guy it almost becomes like a.

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Ken Krimstein: Maybe it's a translation i've seen a bit, but she talks about like common it's it gets very like he didn't think about it from the perspective of the other person it's like we might call that empathy today but i'm not quite sure.

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Samantha Rose Hill: it's not it's not the kind of empathy that we talk about colloquially today it's the kind of philosophical conception of empathy that doesn't have anything to do with feelings, but is about imagining the ethical consequences of our actions so that we might judge differently.

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Ken Krimstein: You know somebody asked question here, and I think it's it's maybe kind of somewhat related to it and evil she quote this person i'm not sure anonymous says evil is thought defying cliches are it's comfort, please what.

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Ken Krimstein: Can yet cliche is a word that she again she uses a lot not we have it in our common language that's a cliche does she think of it differently, what does this mean.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So this goes back to our conversation about language for aren't a person's speech reflects the quality of their thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: If a person only speaks and pre populated sentences if they only speaking cliches are idioms then they're not thinking.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Presently, responding to what's in front of them they're just reactive Lee responding.

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Samantha Rose Hill: One of my favorite quotes which is just a sentence she writes, and one of her notebooks is kept us i'm thinking destiny through anish justice.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Is there a way of thinking is there a way of thinking that's not tyrannical.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Is their way of thinking that's not tyrannical and she she follows that by saying, the point is to not be swallowed in the tide at all.

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Samantha Rose Hill: How can you remain independent, self conscious critical thinker and somebody who speaks and cliches is revealing a kind of absence of thinking thinking is something that we do.

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Ken Krimstein: Now, how do you.

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Ken Krimstein: So how can you how can you not fall into that like how, what do you, what do you do.

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Samantha Rose Hill: What do I do.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I live.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I isolate myself in the.

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Samantha Rose Hill: woods and sit alone with my book is no I that's only slightly an exaggeration, but I, you know our our kind of describes the conditions for this form of thinking it requires a space of privacy.

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Samantha Rose Hill: It requires that we be alone by ourselves and that doesn't mean having our cell phone in our hand or having the laptop open in the corner it's that space of being alone with oneself and being.

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Samantha Rose Hill: In harmony with oneself, it requires solitude and solitude is that pleasurable state of being able to keep ourselves company and it's there where we can have this conversation with ourselves, and we can become aware.

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Samantha Rose Hill: of how it is that we think that that's also and can I know, maybe you know something about this, she says that's also where we tell stories to ourselves about the experiences.

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Samantha Rose Hill: That enough.

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Samantha Rose Hill: and make me.

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Ken Krimstein: Well, yes, I mean.

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Ken Krimstein: So the whole topic of Han or rent as a.

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Ken Krimstein: curator cultivator appreciate or story and how ethics may even come out of it, I mean if you look in the book that I really, really liked as men in dark times.

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Ken Krimstein: Which interesting interestingly, two of them are women.

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Ken Krimstein: So you know we're not talking about you know men but i'm sure there's a sprays somewhere in her writing but it's cheese truck stories reveal meaning without committing the error of defining it.

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Samantha Rose Hill: yeah and.

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Ken Krimstein: If you think about that that's why you know I think you know that empowers me because Cinderella isn't just about like oh.

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Ken Krimstein: Well, you know her parents didn't like her and she was misunderstood and we wouldn't be listening to that story 1000 years later, whatever it's about.

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Ken Krimstein: A way to live that and and, in many ways, you know I look at some of her writing and I see it all is poetry um but that's how I read but it's not it's not to me a mistake that arguably probably.

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Ken Krimstein: The greatest America, one of the greatest American poets and critics critics of the last century, and one of the greatest British poets and critics of last century Arden and.

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Ken Krimstein: It will McCarthy and the other guy who wrote the tail gunner.

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Ken Krimstein: The great American poet laureate.

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Samantha Rose Hill: mandrell.

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Ken Krimstein: were really, really recommend.

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Ken Krimstein: Her way of thinking.

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Ken Krimstein: And I think it's it's yeah these are wonderful stories of how we live, but then you find truth and stories and it's hard to define them that's the game that she's playing.

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Samantha Rose Hill: yeah it's about meeting and making meeting and for fun darrelle is one of the people who taught her to write in English.

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Ken Krimstein: that's right yeah general randall Joel an incredible but um this has been an amazing conversation Cindy.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Can you, I have one final question for the both of you, I we've had a couple people asked besides your wonderful books are there any other books that you can recommend that people should read to sort of get an introduction to 200 rent and.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): You know, but also besides her books, I guess.

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Ken Krimstein: i'll take the easy one, you got to read Elizabeth young girls book I think that's she was her student, it was the major tome and there's a lot of wonderful stuff in there, so I think it was called for the.

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Samantha Rose Hill: love of the world.

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Ken Krimstein: For the love of the world or Monday so that's that's definitely one also works very well as a doorstop if you.

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Yes.

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Ken Krimstein: I me somewhere Sam what have you got.

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Samantha Rose Hill: So I I didn't interview on this for five bucks and.

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Samantha Rose Hill: And I broke it down into what you're interested So if you want to see artists more poetic side, if you want some beautiful portraits of people who were important to her thinking go for men and dark times.

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Samantha Rose Hill: I think the human condition is the book that's most relevant to our contemporary political situation right now there's a wonderful volume called thinking without bannister also a great doorstop it will.

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Samantha Rose Hill: filed by Jerome Cone hundred artists.

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Samantha Rose Hill: literary sector, and it is a great overview of the all of the key ideas and our events.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Work it really touches on everything from totalitarianism to Marxism to private, public Labor work action freedom, the promise of politics loneliness heidegger American political elections it's all in there it's a great kind of introductory Volume I used for teaching intro to art classes.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): Well, thank you both so much, this has been such an interesting conversation to listen to i've learned so much i'm sure i'm going to go on and aren't.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): very deep dive now and i'd like to thank you all so much for joining us all of you out there, everything we do at the museum is made possible through donor support.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): To those of you watching me hope you'll consider making a donation to support the museum or becoming a member and joining us for upcoming programs, one of which will also include Ken.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): of which you can check out at the link in the zoom chat so have a great night, and thank you again for joining us, and thank you again to Ken and samantha.

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Samantha Rose Hill: Thank you, thank you Cindy Thank you can.

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Sydney Yaeger (she/her): buy Sam thanks thanks.