Arendt, The Human Condition, Sections 31, 31, (33 and 34), 35 and 36

 Arendt, The Human Condition, Sections 31, 31, (33 and 34), 35 and 36

Questions:

1. How or why are faculties of forgiving and promising contingent upon or tied to plurality? Why is forgiving (or promising?) unpredictable? (p.g 237)

2. Sect. 31→ Ruling others and ruling oneself, how or in what ways can the care of the self, governmentality, and pastoral power in Foucault be connected to Arendt’s discussion of ruling or action as “rule”? Especially in her reading of “ruling” as making in Plato?

3. Relation of ruling to fabrication (of city-state)?

4. Critique of idea theory in politics, what is the relation to the critique of the mathematization of science?

5. What is the relationship between mathematization critique and Arendt's concern with worldlessness, or alienation? Are these two separate points? Concern with modern science and earth alienation? 

6. Section 31→ The substitution of acting for making: How should we understand Arendt’s critique of Aristotle and her celebration of the polis as the exemplary of the realm of action? Contradiction or no?

7. Tracking the decoupling of ruling and beginning in “archein,” what is this?

8. (256): Is there something we can say in regard to a transition from sovereign to biopower in Arendt’s account of the stages of alienation (family/ home to society and state)

• Do we want to invite the pragmatist discussion?

• Nope

• Status of forgiveness as disclosive and possible for Arendt: interesting that Arendt says that no one can forgive himself, and the dependency of others as ontological (plurality) for the possibility of action

• Comparing to Nietzsche and promising

• Moving to a discussion of freedom: (237), Arendt sees forgiveness as essential for freedom, how?

• Domination and freedom, domination becomes ubiquitous in the modern age, wherein the wanting to overcome plurality and action result in arbitrary domination of all others.

• (259): Return of the notion of the idea, Arendt seems to have an issue with “idea” as distinct from event, which are never unprecedented. Why is that?

• Having an idea is never unprecedented? 

• Very hard to get a grasp on this, especially because what Arendt means by “idea” may or may not be what she is attributing to Plato’s sense of “idea,” but again, how would we agree to this premise that ideas are never unprecedented?

• Maybe it’s not that deep… Maybe idea means something that “comes and goes” but isn’t acted upon, doesn’t enter the realm of objectivity until it is instantiated in an event or deed.

• Comparing and contrasting Arendt and Foucault. Arendt seems so interested in redemption given the mourning or nostalgia for a political action that has been foreclosed, so this book could not be written today.

• How did this become our present?

• Both Foucault and Arendt as tracking how deep and layered our present has become. 

• If Arendt is trying to uncover the piles of sediment to see what has been lost, then Foucault is looking is looking at the cloth that was doing the covering.

• Wondering if we can still have principles and rules, and still have indeterminacy for Arendt, or unpredictability (essential for action, or tantamount to it).