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http://hdl.handle.net/11375/16044
Title: | Evil and Appearances: Clarifying Arendtian Political Ontology |
Authors: | Klassen, Justin D. |
Advisor: | Kroeker, P. Travis |
Department: | Religious Studies |
Keywords: | Hannah Arendt;conception of evil;political theory |
Publication Date: | Jun-2004 |
Abstract: | <p> This thesis explores and clarifies Hannah Arendt' s conception of evil and its impact on her political theory. While following Arendt' s reflections on evil over the course of her career-from The Origins of Totalitarianism through Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Life of the Mind-I make the argument that the common thread in her apparently divergent accounts is a certain understanding of evil's negative ontology. I then demonstrate that Arendt's alternative "ontology of appearances" results in an account of "conscience" that prevents action based on cognitive certainty, and thus, evil. In the third chapter, I suggest that Arendt' s political theory, with its opposition to biological "life," is a direct response to totalitarianism's emphasis on animality and its de-emphasis on appearance. I claim furthermore that the difficulties of Arendt' s political thought (particularly her vacuous account of freedom and its troubling connection to immortality) are best explained in relation to her account of evil. On this point I suggest critically that her notion of political freedom is paralyzing or preventative in a way that resonates with her account of conscience. Finally, I propose that in seeking to articulate the meaning of immortalizing action, Arendt might have instead elucidated the difference between a totalitarian perversion of human desire, where desires become cognitive prescriptions, and a Platonic notion of properly erotic desire, where action manifests a desiring orientation to an independent object, but in a decisively non-totalitarian fashion.</p> |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/16044 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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Klassen Justin D..pdf | Main Thesis | 5.6 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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