In today's explosion of information and the rise of academic qualifications, people have unprecedented access to information and speak, and have never been more anxious about the rapidly changing reality and have given up the ability to judge. Everyone is self-media, but social media also subtly makes everyone give up thinking and analysis, fall at the feet of experts, and let their minds become a racetrack for other people's ideas. We are bound by the invisible confines of identity and mass culture, and no longer believe in a consensus that has metaphysical values and transcends individual experience.
At such moments, it seems imperative to revisit Arendt's work and reflections. The thinker, who was ridiculed by Aron and Berlin as "more like a media man than a scholar," possessed qualities rare in our time, and she was wary of the dangers of philosophicalization as pure contemplation, driving philosophy to care for the spiritual life of human beings, and trying to teach people to think and participate in public life. She describes the state of abandonment of thinking this way: "Nothing is a clearer indication of the loss of the modern public sphere than the almost complete loss of the true concern of modern man for immortality." "At a time when everyone retreats to their own unity in the hut of their personal lives, people who give up their responsibilities to think about are one step closer to becoming Eichmann.
Stills from the movie Hannah Arendt
Today we share the chapter on judgment and responsibility in Tongji University Professor Zhang Nian's work "Arendt: The Origin of Politics", which was published with permission from Nanjing University Press.
Written by | Zhang Nian
After modern times, intellectual reason from experimental science requires people to be as objective and neutral as possible in the face of anything, which means that man must exclude personal willfulness and preferences, that is to say, there are laws and norms--in Kant, which is the norm of moral law, and judgments in personal mental activity should be hidden and suppressed. In the view of intellectual rationality, the statement that things are not right in daily life experience is to emphasize the accuracy and effectiveness of judgment, and as for the question of "what is a person", it should be suspended as much as possible.
Correspondingly, the question of "who are you" is equally incomprehensible; intellectual reason does not ask questions from this point of view, but gives human behavior, whether social or psychological, to sociologists and psychologists respectively, that is, to give oneself to professional knowledge, to find answers in experts, and experts are the embodiment of knowledge. Listening to one's own voice is unreliable, on the one hand, aware of the finiteness of the individual, but on the other hand, it is precisely the right to think to anyone but oneself. The more knowledge we have, the less and less thinking, so that the knowledge we acquire about nature, society, psychology, culture, history, etc. is so abundant that the only reality of poverty is the ego: I have no judgment, I am excluded. And then there's, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, it's the system. Such everyday opinions can be heard everywhere, we say this ourselves, we also listen to others say this, in fact, the truth that is not said is: I have no judgment, I have no responsibility. Of course, in a world without saints, moral guidance is weak; since good or bad is only morally relevant, crude moral condemnation is not very convincing, but this does not mean that all people have the potential to become Eichmann. Arendt's requirement is to judge; it is the political faculties of man, as natural as you see, hear, smell.
Taste judgment and moral ability
The truth of man, like the truth of the self, is intertwined in this truth: man argues with himself with great political significance. I see the self, just as I see a painting, and I can say two sentences at once, which is a gift of faculty. In this sense, Arendt transformed Kant's taste judgment into a bystander ability. The ability to be bystander relies on a sense of commonality, that is, one can recall the delicious taste of a certain food, but cannot communicate, and it is impossible to persuade another person through language that a certain food must be delicious, but you believe that others may also have the same feeling, and this commonality exists but cannot be proved. Does not being able to communicate mean that there are no standards? The solution given by Kant's pure reason is the transcendental imaginary schema, such as the triangle, which is neither a thing itself nor a concept, but a triangle appealing to the visual senses, a conceptual schema that is visible. And aesthetic or taste judgment outside of rational thinking, but there is no such transcendental schema to rely on, when you say that a painting is good or bad, you also believe that anyone can evaluate it, not that the results of the evaluation are consistent, but that the function can work normally, you are so, others are also so, this is the factual basis of the judgment that Arendt emphasized. Taste is the sensory ability that anyone has, and taste says that a person has good feelings, and the judgment of feeling is distinguished from the content or result of any private feeling, and is communicative, so "especially taste judgment, always reflecting on the tastes of others and the tastes of others, taking into account the various judgments that others may have." From taste to taste, imagination and empathy are involved.
Arendt: The Origin of Politics, by Zhang Nian, Nanjing University Press, April 2022.
In Critique of Judgment, Kant distinguishes between two kinds of pleasure: one when you are having a good meal, and the other when you recall the pleasure of that good meal. More often, it is precisely the latter pleasure experience that is more intense. It is also pleasant to think back and tell others what pleases you, because it is only when shared that the good becomes greater. Always expect to show others the good things, and to believe that others can also feel the good, this is the result of human taste, but at this moment, the delicious meal is neither in your mouth nor in the mouth of others, you are based on your understanding of the delicious, together with your partner, to recreate a "delicious", an inner feeling, which is more than when you were eating in the first place, which Kant called "the joy of judgment".
There can be no conceptual participation in taste judgment, Kant compared the five sensory abilities, he believes that only taste and smell are more personal, more picky, more sensitive, more non-communicative, that is, taste inherently contains stronger judgment, this judgment is almost a physiological instinct, for the unpalatable and unpleasant, the body immediately makes a rejection response, which is the most original judgment phenomenology. When we think about judgment, we should not forget the physical responses in judgmental behavior, so Kant stated in the preface to the Critique of Judgment that it is necessary to supplement this intermediary link in the concept of reason and practice, which he calls judgment. In this way, the goodness of the moral concept, at the scene of its occurrence, the taste judgment comes into play, which is an inner consciousness endowed by the psychological faculties of man. Thus we find that one of the most important differences between the post-modern conception of morality and the classical concept of virtue is that the former comes from individual consciousness and the latter from transcendental regulations.
Then imagination can be understood as I feel my taste buds, how can I share such a personal feeling with others? This feeling may or may not be felt by others, and if others have the same reaction as me, this is what Kant calls "common sense." The presence of others must be present when the sense of commonality occurs, so that the feeling I feel becomes what I feel with others, and this feeling may produce some commonality, and what we dislike is more obvious than pleasure. But sometimes people will conflict with each other's feelings and therefore be frustrated, but this is not important, communicatibility does not mean consistency, communicatibility lies in taste judgment, self-feeling can be recalled, and can be recalled with others. The same is true of thinking, which requires loneliness, and at the same time thinking needs to go to others and manifest in the world. At this time, with the help of imagination and common sense, the reproduction of distance changes from feeling to bystander, and presence-bystanding jointly forms what people call public reason.
Just as the birth of cinema – which appeals to your watching – is judged only by images, imagination and a sense of commonality make reproduction possible. Any representation is some kind of existence that is both in front of and not in front of the eye, neither subjective nor objective; just as you cannot say that cinema is subjective because the picture is real, but you cannot say that it is objective because it is not something that really happened. Just as we cannot see our own eyes, "seeing" requires distance, and to see is to watch. The ability to behold is actually the ability to replay consciousness, and when something happens, your judgment holds even though you're not there. Man himself demands this judgment from himself, which is the moment when political responsibility is revealed.
Examples serve as schemas for political judgments
When pampotentist politics uses aesthetic principles for ideological agitation, it uses the subsensory sublime experience to create a uniform grandeur, not to appeal to the rational moral ability of the individual, but to borrow exaggerated shapes and occupy the common place of freedom of birth. Reflective judgment is erased here, leaving no link in seeing the individual himself. The formal or formulaic obsession with the concept of the sublime is like a person who is addicted to a certain taste, indulges in the private sexual feelings of the taste buds, and becomes a glutton of beauty, and the common ability of the human senses can only be grasped. At this point, the ability to watch should appear as a defense mechanism, that is, whether you become a work of art or you are watching a work of art is two different things. It can be seen that the premise of judgment is distance, and recall itself is distance, but it is not enough to think back, and it must be answered well or badly, and together with others, examine whether the judgment as a moral function is still playing a normal role.
Taste judgment is loose because language takes over everything, and when each word has a stable meaning, people neglect to use perception, intuition, and understanding to ask why a concept is being experienced. Feelings are certainly not trustworthy, but that doesn't mean that you have to actively turn off such a function; even if you, as an autistic person, actively close your body's contact with the world, it is because he feels his depression and despair. Thus Arendt developed the two conditions of imagination and empathy in "taste judgment", in which taste judgment is hidden, and the superficiality of evil emerges: man operates like a machine part, busy with this and that, without stopping to think. The phenomenological reduction of thinking about behavior, in Arendt, is a dialogue between man and himself, so where does this habit of dialogue come from? This question propelled her towards a phenomenon-based examination of the activity of the human mind. If I can recall my feelings and expect them to share them with others and to be responded to by them, then judgment becomes a natural bond between man and himself, between man and the world, and truth always approaches the political realm through this ability.
Kant's Lectures on Political Philosophy, by Hannah Arendt, translated by Cao Ming, Shanghai People's Publishing House, November 2013.
Unlike the phenomenological genesis of early concerns with political action, Arendt associated Kant's taste judgment with political judgment, which is no longer an ideological battle in the general sense. Arendt was concerned with the need to have a full understanding of a political phenomenon before judging it, just as taste judgments can only be achieved with imagination and a sense of commonality. Therefore, political judgment, as an expression of behavior, can be divided into obedience and resistance, both of which are negative and positive. It is always understandable that people behave in this way and in this way. If the will directs action, political judgment should also be placed before action. Either resistance or obedience, as far as politics is concerned, does not bring about the fragility of placing human nature in the middle, or the so-called obscurity of human nature. So where does the imagination of political judgment come from? Arendt argues that such an imagination can only be activated by example, and that there is no need to tell how tragic an event is—the degree of misery has nothing to do with judgment, and the source of political judgment lies in historical stories, myths, and epics. There is no transcendental schema in the Kantian sense to help us visualize what a triangle is and what is not a triangle, and this unconditional necessity is the idea of triangles, but in politics, a phenomenon unique to human beings, judgments occur in intuition and taste, cannot be confirmed, but can be "enlightened" and "praised".
In Homer's epics, the most murderous are worshipped as heroes. Heroes are the descendants of the gods, each hero has his own protective god, some are jealous of the gods because of their special endowments, the only difference between them and the gods is that they will eventually die, but the difference between heroes and mortals is that their life and death are related to the will of a god. Heroes are heroes because they know their fate, never excuse themselves to escape — the difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey — and are willing to bear everything, but immortal for extraordinary achievements. The destruction of the city of Troy and the extermination of the Ilyons were not decided by mortals, but the will of hera the Queen of Heaven, so the dynamic mechanism of tragedy was the transcendental framework of destiny, and it was this incomprehensible phenomenon of life that the ancient Greeks sang. The gods of Mount Olympus, even the truth (necessity) itself, quarreled with each other, while mortals, specifically mortals in action, could only comprehend the will of God on the basis of the fact that the bow and arrow in his hand were handy.
Paradigms can help us form certain political judgments, and the heroes of epics are not historical figures, but cut into our imagination as examples. Achilles can still be felt by people today through thousands of years, and the judgment of taste convinces us of the hero's existence. The important thing is not that he is brave; his bravery lies not only in the fact that he is blessed by God, but also that he will be abandoned by God, and he knows and gladly accepts these two contradictory facts, but he himself does not contradict himself, and fighting is the only option he can make. Thus, in the face of the model, as George Steiner said of his own feeling of reading the epic: "The classics will ask us, do you understand, have you reimagined responsibly... Are you ready to act on this? ”
Imagine responsibly
Political judgment means that conceptual truths seem to be less handy when we deal with politics. Arendt sought to think outside of philosophical truths about the possibilities of politics, arguing that judgment is always with factual truths. Although Arendt did not explicitly mention it, in the direction of her thinking, she had already linked political philosophy to the poetic tradition of ancient Greece. Imagination creates an illusion that is rejected by concepts, and the objective properties of this illusion are preserved, recorded, and described. It is the truth that it is not allowed to kill, but the fact is that killing accompanies history, and the sense of commonality does not mean that there is a common fear of tragic facts, and fear will make people close their eyes, imagine fear, and let us believe in the truth together in order to avoid fear. Political judgment, on the other hand, is to never cease to confront this depressing fact, that the imagination can create this object of what is called objective fantasy, and that when disaster strikes, you can be glad that you are not in it, but your imagination does not allow you to have such fluke thoughts. What Steiner calls "responsible imagination" is precisely this political judgment derived from the functionality of taste judgment, which, like truth, has a certain coercive force. The difference between this coercive power and intellectual cognition is that the concept does not bring you terror, and the horror comes from the factual truth, which does not need to be deductive or inductive, it occupies your conscious activity like a movie picture, and this occupied conscious space can be revealed as a political space.
Just as Kant pondered the possibility of taste judgment, Arendt pondered the possibility of political judgment. Imagination allows one to remember, and a sense of commonality allows one to set one's position, just as artistic truth can be absorbed, political judgment has poetic power beyond the capacity of reason. The stubbornness of memory has its own political connotations, as evidenced by the poetic tradition laid down by Homer, is manifested in the fact that no one gives up the habit of telling stories when everyone turns their heads in the face of tragic facts.
Arendt often said that their generation was the survivors of the Great Flood, and that surviving did not mean that after the Great Flood receded, survival had nothing to do with the Flood, and that the factual truth of the Great Flood was preserved in the habit of telling stories. Factual truths are not demonstrated in the form of reason, but are revealed again and again in the narrative, in the recollection. The act of telling and listening exists, and the story exists. If the story offends common sense, it will provoke comedic laughter, and the action of laughter becomes an immediate judgment, and the stupidity of man is manifested in laughter; if the story touches the commonality of taste judgment, it will trigger people's pleasure, disgust, sadness, fear, and other psychological activities, and then think about the disgusting evil deeds in the story, after all, it is the fact of man's behavior against man, not the action of demons against man, nor the behavior of man against a stone. Thus, closely related to political judgment is precisely this poetic experience, in which facts are stubbornly preserved by imagination, where the past and the future converge in the present moment, confronting misery, confronting others, and building human confidence in the chain of sensibility.
Hannah Arendt: Love, Thought and Action, by Wang Yinli, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, October 2021.
Responsibly imagine that this humanistic proverb of Steiner is not limited to the literary classics, but also applies to everything that happens. Like the ancient Greek bard Homer, he did not selectively remember, nor did he selectively lose his memory. As a model of taste judgment, when emotions cannot bear the harshness of facts, he appeals to the muse in his heart, give him strength, and tell the story. The two Homeric epics, the most common of which is the dialogue between man and God, which is actually a dialogue between man and himself in modern understanding. Accepting oneself, accepting the facts, is the only starting point for man to understand himself, the most basic responsibility of man; and lying, no matter what the reason, or hiding behind a good motive, appears in the face of power, even if it can cover up and distort the facts, the strength of the facts itself will illuminate this fragility.
Arendt argues that storytellers are secretly confronting two dangers, one is to treat what has happened as a helpless necessity, and the other is to forbid memory in order to erase the facts. When people say that history judges everything, of course, it does not mean judgment in the judicial sense, and the historian is actually the storyteller. The story is told to all, and the speaker and the listener put aside for the time being all the so-called antagonism based on various reasons, and accept it as it is, accept it, and then judge it yourself, which is the final right of are what Arendt said about the facts of human nature.
The axiomatic deduction after scientific reason seems to have forgotten this oldest earnest scientific attitude, judging within the political sphere, falling into the fog of partisan interests and ideologies; moreover, as far as politics is concerned, conceptual truth is weak, and the only thing that can change reality is action, and once it is action, there will always be things that people do not want to accept. Political apathy has become widespread, and politics is superfluous if basic biological activity can be sustained. If we restore this indifferent position, we will find that indifference comes from man's deliberate forgetting of his own nature.
Especially in society after the brainwashing movement of plenipotentiarism, this brainwashing may also be understood as I have been deceived, I will not be moved by anything other than my own interests, and what was once eagerness has become an aversion to eagerness itself, and whoever wants to agitate me in the name of moral feelings will not play any role. The subtlety of such indifference lies in the fact that there is still a small reflection here, but the result of reflection is not to think about what else I can expect, but to mutate into a kind of cynicism with a dead heart; there is also judgment, but the occurrence of judgment finds a reason to escape from the fact, and the fact here is a derivative of a certain result, and this fact is to live, but not to care about what kind of environment and world I live in.
Once one moves from believing in some truth to not believing in any truth, then for what is happening, one will have a functional obstacle, not judging, and the result is that perception will change from shaking to complete paralysis. Of course, you can also say that I am willing to accept the paralysis of myself and coexist with paralysis, which is also semantically contradictory, because paralysis is a loss of self-perception and self-knowledge, but you know the fact that paralysis itself proves that you have not been completely paralyzed. Therefore, as far as normal people are concerned, you can avoid the whole world, you can avoid anyone, but you cannot avoid yourself, which is a human fact determined by the faculties of man. With this as a foundation, I, feeling myself, feeling delicious, happy, and more importantly, feeling hurt, feeling resistance, feeling what is suffocating in the air.
In the final analysis, even if man is deprived of everything, he cannot be deprived of the right to feel, which is with life. The awareness of rights is closely related to the preservation, maintenance and practice of sensory abilities. In this way, the two themes of Arendt's thought, positive action and political judgment, echo this tone in different aspects, which is "love".
Take yourself seriously, communicate with yourself often, and delight yourself in a way that is not just sensory pleasure. It is a shallow pleasure for people to read a book, to hear a good tune, to taste a unique delicacy. Do not forget that the Nazis would also be so pleased with themselves, they would also listen to Bach and read Homer, but such artistic appreciation would not form their judgment of themselves, as Eichmann admitted, he knew himself only by taking orders, but they forgot Bach's compassion and his connection to himself, and forgot that the heroes of the epic also had disdain for the divine will.
Pleasure itself necessarily includes knowing itself on a deeper level, and the pleasure of judgment that occurs in such a process has moved from the direct stimulation of the senses to the awakening of consciousness. Here, Kant speaks of judgment of taste done alone, as Arendt said, of thinking alone in loneliness, without the participation of others, without principles and concepts, but this alone thinking is through the wings of imagination, which alone becomes you and yourself through imagination, man and God in epics, present and past in historians, so that judgment saves us from blindness and obedience and acquires the integrity of man himself.
Taste judgment can help people to move towards self-esteem, dignity is not given by external forces, external forces can help you maintain dignity, but can not produce dignity. A person with a sense of self-esteem cannot bear to live in the pigsty, and this mentality of seeking good will inevitably require a good environment, a good society and a good world, and others to be good and good, which is also said in traditional Chinese culture that gentlemen can prosper and be able to gather. "Xing" is the ability to imagine, the ability to perceive, the ability to dialogue with oneself, the "group" is to coexist with partners, the group is to have the conditions to make political judgments and have political ability, and according to the meaning of the giant Kant of Enlightenment thought, this can be understood in reverse, that is, the true gentleman of the group is a modern person who is generally free from ignorance and independent thinking.
"Did you imagine it responsibly?" George Steiner then asked, "Are you ready to do this?" "Then from loving yourself to loving the world." Although it is theoretically impossible to argue whether the Holocaust will repeat itself, whether the Great Purge will happen again, everything that has happened is in memory. The political nature of memory is related to perception, recall, remember and then accept, and accept facts that you can't accept, and it's crucial to be clear about that. Unacceptable but indeed happened, since it is unacceptable, it means that man cannot contradict himself and once again accept the repetition of what he does not want to accept, so that the contingency and necessity in logical corollaries will not help us to be exempted from responsibility. Trying to stop, to change, to create, to start doing something, are linked to what Arendt calls politics-active life, because the political judgments bred by imagination and empathy always tend to win small victories in bad worlds.
No one can tell us in advance the specific content of political life, but political life has unfolded in the direction of loving ourselves and the world, and it comes to us in such a way that Arendt writes: "The kind of happiness and satisfaction that comes to us in the midst of our companions, to act with our companions, to openly reveal ourselves; the kind that allows one's words and actions to cut into the world, and thus to acquire and maintain the identity of our personality, and to open up new things." ”