Anatomist of Evil
literaryreview.co.uk
literaryreview.co.uk
On the contrary I think it just underlines the futility of empathy, we can never truly imagine ourselves in another's shoes.
Sure you can never simulate the rationale that goes through somebody’s mind. But there are different types of empathy (cognitive, compassionate, …) some of which are more closely aligned with what most associate with this term.
Most of all a lack of empathy and good will is a good sign that you keep this person at a distance. I know I‘ve had my share with cluster B personality disorders.
I don't think that's true, really. I mean, you might be indifferent to a given person who you've never met, but to some extent its impossible to have no feelings about someone who in some way has come into contact with you, and I would say that the more intensely you have feelings for them, either attractive or repulsive, the more you have an imagined identification, which can either be one of a sublimated erotic narcissistic attachment (empathy), or one that is destructive (removal, death and replacement), in the latter case always as a defence mechanism in the same way as repression (recall the old "fort, da" story).
This review is kind of funny - it's like, "look how prescient and correct Arendt was about the Nazis. But then she was wrong about desegregation. Also her one-time lover Heidegger was a total Nazi! Hannah Arendt was a philosopher, but also a complicated and flawed person!" Anyone read the book, "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War"? It's an interesting sort of de-mythologization of 20th century American culture, where these intellectual and cultural giants of that time are argued to have not really _defined_ the thought of that time, but rather were elevated and canonized according to the needs of Cold War politics.
Of course it's not a surprise that Arendt got some stuff wrong! She was a Kantian, and Kantian ethics which stands out as a facially absurd theory, even in the already ridiculous field of philosophical ethics. The reviewer here sort of argues that she managed to liberate herself from the "grand systems" and tidy, comforting rationalizations of philosophy, instead bringing a messy, incoherent humanity to the philosophical enterprise. I can't help but shake my head at that representation of a Kantian, who thought all our moral duties were fricking a priori! Not to mention that this is all represented as feminist, when her whole idea that "just as for Kant, feelings could get in the way of proper moral judgement" still reeks of philosophy's delusional male chauvinism.
I admit I'm a weirdo and bring a very specific, partisan, and generally confused perspective to this matter. But I think something like Carol Gilligan's "ethics of care" (which came well after Arendt) is such a more powerful and relevant feminist critique of the grand systems of philosophical ethics.
I've often felt this, specifically with Arendt. Even though I have heard her referenced 100 times or more this was the first time I realized she was Kantian. I had actually just assumed she was an important voice in feminist philosophy that I just hadn't dove deep into, like a proto Judith Butler. I admit I am just ignorant of that vein of Western cultural philosophy.
But she is positioned so often as an expert on the cultural philosophy of WW2, especially the holocaust (again, another subject I'm not very read up on). When that characterization pops up I cynically assume that her intersectionality is the reason, since she is both Jewish and a woman which leads to a different perspective than found elsewhere. I started to resent my own cynicism and I have always had in the back of my mind the intention to actually read something by her, just to see if she is being tokenized or if there is really something there.
This article was more like gossip to me than a good introduction to Arendt. After reading it, I still don't know if there is much to gain from her thought outside of her unique perspective on the tragedy of the holocaust and some salacious talk about her affairs with Heidegger.
The trouble with Arendt is not that she is a Kantian, its that she is a very bad Kantian, and one who fails to see how Kant as phenomenological, via Schelling and Hegel, was instrumental in Nazi politics; only Heidegger was able to elucidate properly this problematic of Kantian "Freedom," especially political Freedom, which could be seen by later thinkers like Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari as in fact only an instrumental freedom, freedom to be instrumentalized in a grander machine.
But there are many people who like Adorno better since he seems to offer something more than an elucidation of the unfreedom of freedom; his "negative dialectic" contains within it the possibility of redemption.
One of the problems of being an amateur is that I don't really follow a systematic path through material. Critical Theory is probably the most contemporary connection in the timeline of philosophy that I am drawn to (Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger) although I am probably more interested in American Pragmatism (Peirce, James, Rorty). Postmodernism is a bit beyond me at this point, it just gets too political with its connection to Marx. I honestly would prefer to stay in the meta-physical.