Lying and Politics: The Relevance of Hannah Arendt

good evening I'm Max Rudin president and publisher of library of America and welcome to Loa live library of America is a non-profit organization dedicated to publishing authoritative new volumes of Great American Writers and to keeping our multi-vocal literary tradition a vital part of the culture a special welcome to Library of America fellows and members who support our non-profit mission 2022 is library of America's 40th anniversary year which were marking and celebrating with events like this one please check our website loa.org for updates tonight's program explores Hana Aaron's incisive and remarkably timely essays on lying and politics gathered in this library of America special publication with an introduction by David Bromwich who joins us tonight a link to the book will be dropped in the chat shortly special thanks to our promotional partners for this program the American historical Association the association of literary Scholars critics and writers Carnegie Council on International Ethics the Hana Aaron Center at Bard College and the National Council on history education truthfulness has never been counted one of the political virtues Hana aren't rights so how does truth survive and why does it seem especially fragile right now talking the basic facts about our past and present be found and preserved facts on which our freedom depends and how much organized lying can a democracy withstand to explore these questions we're incredibly fortunate to be joined by three distinguished guests Shayla benabe is Eugene Meyer professor of political science and philosophy emerita at Yale University and Senior research fellow and Adjunct professor of law at Columbia University her many books include The Reluctant modernism of Hana arant and as editor politics in Dark Times encounters with Hannah Aaron Roger Berkowitz is professor of political studies and human rights and director of the Hana Aaron Center for politics and Humanities at Bard College he joins us from Bard College in Annandale David Bromwich is Sterling professor of English at Yale University his books include how words make things happen and American breakdown the Trump years and how they befell us his writing on contemporary politics and the fate of civil liberties in the United States has appeared in the nation the New York Review of Books the London interview of books and elsewhere he joins us from New Haven the panel invites your questions and comments the Q a button is on your menu bar please let us know where you're viewing from now please welcome our moderator Roger Berkowitz thank you very much Max and welcome everybody uh hello to David and hello to Shayla it's nice to see you both um I thought I'd begin um by asking David um why in 2023 or 2020 uh three this book 2022 this book uh is timely um as we all know hanarenza's Truth uh has never seldom in a political virtue she wrote a lot about it in the 1940s and 1950s uh with regard to the attack on truth in in both Nazi Germany and also in in Soviet Bolshevik Russia um she wrote a lot about it in the 1960s uh in regards to the Vietnam War and and other aspects of American uh uh attacks on truth but she also wrote about it uh in regard to her own life uh with those who attacked her around her book Eichmann in Jerusalem um and so this has been a long-standing problem it's not new and certainly in in our in our present day um and yet obviously uh in the last five to six years these essays that you brought out together lying in politics and truth and politics have become touchstones in uh in our political debate David so um there's this I'm wondering what made you think that now was the right time to bring these out and and why did you do so um well to begin with uh and with appreciation I should make the the you uh the Wii that did it plural uh it certainly includes Max rude and and John Kulka of the library of America and it was John who wrote to me and asked me to write an introduction to these two essays um but it does seem to me that they are remarkable in themselves and timely almost as if they were aimed at the moment we're living in now um the proliferation of not just untruths but conscious lies and something more peculiar and um late coming that is to say Aaron wasn't alive to observe what we're seeing now I think is the availability and the attractiveness of let's call it alternative stories things that it suits me to believe and there's a whole network of people whom I can communicate with and whom I can listen to give versions of this story all consistent with something which has some overlap with reality that I can test but if I were better informed I might be able to see uh is false in a great many particulars and therefore false in the uh total drift of what it's trying to persuade me of I mean this comes from social media but it also comes from uh I think the the uh more and more zealous commitment that people on different sides in American politics have to making their narrative Prevail and I think the uh the weight that's given or rather the the um very frequent uh and careless use that's given to that word narrative is itself a clue to the fictionalization of desirable stories um Aaron was was alert to this and would have been in particular through having experienced the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany and I I don't wouldn't want to exaggerate the comparisons some people have made between uh fascism between the wars in Europe and anything we're undergoing now those comparisons are hyperbolic demagogic and ignorant and they are sometimes put forward by people who know much better but it does seem to me that you know if you just look at take as an example claims that have been made about the 2020 election um you have now uh and I'll I'll stipulate as a truth that the the uh majority of the electoral votes as well as the popular votes votes on all the evidence we have that is in any way reliable Was Won by uh President Biden uh then candidate Biden and that there's no substantial grounds for controversy over that but somewhere between 35 and in the low 40 percent of the American people have grave doubts about that um fully half I think of the minority party of the country now um and their doubts are based on stories that have been planted in the alternative media and in some of the major media stories about computer hacking the harvesting of absentee ballots um and just straightforward uh crookedness and Corruption um that are uh attributed to uh media and to state legislatures but this this claim about um an election and the transition of power from one Administration to the next is a very necessary feature of democracy if democracy is to be maintained um this claim is not absolutely new it came out with surprising force and persistence in 2016 from the other side um Hillary Clinton said at least a dozen maybe two dozen times that the election was stolen that she was the real winner and she was the winner of the popular vote but her belief was that the election was was determined by Russian hacking and Russian ads that were placed in certain um you know accessible and um highly influential Outlets there's no evidence to support that um and this was relatively new uh in American experience but you would have it two in a row such claims being made the second of course much Graver because it led to an actual um semi-organized attempt to stop the transition of power but I mean such is the evidence for untrue or lying of a consistency that makes itself believed uh in our time that I I think Aaron would find both um you know uh a uh kind of offspring of the lies she saw in the reporting Vietnam War and in these public statements on it but also a change in a change in degree so great that it becomes a change in God thank you you know Sheila um there's a you know one of the few things in what David said that I'd love to hear you you reflect on um one is is the you know the claim that he made uh which is that you know this is indebted to but quite different from the kind of lies that were told um in the totalitarian periods um that this is not and I think one of the reasons for that is David I think actually brought out later is that it's happening on all sides it's not one central government making attempting to lie and push those lies out it's many different groups there seems to be um a multiplication of de-factualizations going on one time not a totalitarianism but many different simultaneous um uh rejections of a consistent factual truth or a public truth or a common truth and people being happy with their own truths in different groups the idea that there's lots of different um truths today and somehow what what's being lost in that is something called the common or the public or factual truth what does it mean for a democracy to be in a position maybe not of fascism and totalitarianism but where there is no common agreement on factual truth is that something we should be worried about um yes certainly certainly we should be worried about it I think I want to begin by making the observation that um partisanship in politics is not new partisanship and you know parties factions are the essence of the political I mean um people we used to read different newspapers or a cheer for different uh soccer groups or whatever you know and and so I think that we have to see that there always passions and partisanship that are uh part of uh part of the political process but certainly what we seem to be experiencing at the present and what makes us want to go back to events in the mid-century are are is quite uh quite uh quite unusual and I want to focus on this term de factualization um it's um a term that aren't associated with on the one hand the big lie of national socialism um sometimes even National Socialist bureaucrats themselves in the higher echelons knew that they were lying that what they were doing was propaganda that the Jews were not the root of all the evil that you know um so but they carried on the de factualization on the loss and then of course in the period of the Soviet communism we have the actual struggle for power where people like you know otrosky are factually erased uh to photographs that they were first placed in uh we are living in a period where I think it's through the availability of technology has uh created this hollow of mirrors and one doesn't quite know you know where where to go uh the printed press has lost its Authority uh that's not a minor um a factor and one can go into one's Echo chamber I mean we all do this and it's in some is inevitable how many newspaper websites do you look at in the morning I look at about three or four okay I've made up my my mind but nevertheless um nevertheless um uh you know I think it is about journalism and also the the the transformation of the media right now that has made it more possible to carry partisanship to such a point that what David talks about narratives is not only just alternative narratives it's almost as if we have come into a process of alternative reality and that is what is so uh so dangerous now let me just uh that I personally believe that there are much deeper uh socio-economic forces that are causing the current that are accounted for the current moment I don't want just to focus on the transformations of the media transformations of the public sphere um uh there there is uh some much more serious um questions of redistribution uh uh to above and increasing inequality and these are pro proven I mean these are not just about this there shouldn't be uh debates the statistics are there and uh as a result of this there is also I think um maybe I don't know if just as a result of this but there is also increasing cynicism towards the work of government and here one other consideration of our end may help us and this comes from the origins of totalitarianism which he talks about as the alliance of the mob and the elite I mean I personally um stunned by how much political nihilism there seems to be nothing seems to make a difference if the you know Trump does not pay his taxes if he lies if he cheats if he do not answers you know I'm just like women nothing seems to make a difference and this kind of collusion of a kind of political nihilism bordering on criminality this is something that she talked about in the origins of totalitarianism and this seems to me to be an astonishing astonishing moment and not just a feature of Technology yeah thank you I mean I I think you've hit on something really important which is this idea of nihilism or or or or deep cynicism of the elite that um she she talks about way back in Origins terrorism but also throughout her work and what allows them to say well look the world nothing's nothing matters the world is corrupt maybe it's best to tear it all down and um and that is what allows the elite to Ally itself with the mob as as you said the the question that raises is what's the alternative where is truth right if nihilism is the idea that um there is no highest truth or no highest values part of the problem is that the age we're in which RN certainly believed is that while there may be truths in you know in reason or or in in other areas there are no truths in politics we live in a in a world in which um there isn't truth and so part of the the problem we're having right now is as people as technology emerges people are able to point out the lacunae in any Authority the the the parts they leave out and it's harder for any truth to become a public truth or establish itself what is what should you know we can talk about lying and we talk about de-factualization and we are and we will but what's the alternative what does it mean to establish a truth today whether it's the truth of the fact that Biden won the 2020 election or that Trump won the 2016 election um or the truth that the Earth is warming for for particular reasons what does it mean to talk about a political truth aren't they just opinions or or how do we make that distinction um I'll let David maybe start and Shayla can jump in if she'd like you know I'll just um refer to a an interesting sentence in the longer of the two essays that this book uh reprints uh the one on on truth in politics and she says there that that truth carries within itself an element of coercion um that's not an intuitively um comprehensible statement but she means that the truth is well I'll I'll paraphrase her by um using a statement from uh William Godwin's book um political Justice from a couple of centuries earlier the late uh late 18th century God would believe that and he was a high Enlightenment idealist um the truth is something that cannot be conveyed so as to be understood and not be believed it has that kind of compelling Force um and this is what we have felt for a long time about about science about certain recommendations that come from medical authorities and so on um but politics is a little different politics at a democracy really is a matter of choice um it is a kind of knowledge so you can call it science if you want very Loosely but it ain't rocket science and opinion is very much part of what politics uh is is embodied by so you know when people go to um one Elite or the other and I would point out that our cultural Elite is overwhelmingly anti-trump and it's a very widespread cultural lead of the educated and of the rich the Democrats are now the party of the rich unquestionably so you know there's that problem too um where do you go to find even your index effects when I was having trouble uh finding information about the summer 2020 riots and I couldn't find much in Google I went to an outlet that is smaller and this is not meant to be an advertisement for them but Duck Duck Go well DuckDuckGo has nowhere near the encyclopedic comprehensiveness of Google um but on current things it has the advantage of it doesn't track you and it doesn't give back more of what you gave in it doesn't give you what you what you asked for before I was also I mean I found appealing the fact that that's an outlet that is advertised on NPR and on Fox you know there's there's some claim to eclectus as well I mean so if you have time and as an academic I do have some time you can explore the options and you can find for example that you trust more stories that give you the text of the thing they're supposed to refer to that give you actual documents and this is possible online but you know if you're new to politics or if you're zealous or if you're heated by you know passions that are very strong because of people you know because of people you distrust um I think you stick with the the so-called Authority um that you believe in most and you know here's where I think the tendency to censorship which again we're seeing on more than one political side um is a very grave danger to democracy um Aaron says in an interesting passage on Authority I think it comes up in this essay on truth and politics that Authority um in the nature of it is in advance if you have to use persuasion to prove your authority and authority fails utterly what it tries to use Force to establish it's it's uh it's true it's reality and we're seeing a great deal of you know frantic heated attempts at persuasion very fast reactions um with you know best agreements and a fair amount of you know borderline use of force too again January 6th comes to mind but it's not the only event like that have been academic disruptions of speakers who are felt to be unfriendly to the politics of the crowd even at Yale law school recently I mean you know places where you would have thought you know part of the Covenant of the profession these people are involved in is not to shut down a speaker but these these things are interconnected they have to do with with habits of conduct which Aaron saw were much more important for citizens in a democracy than they are for citizens in another kind of polity more responsibility rests on the individual citizen for the preservation of democracy than for other sorts of political Arrangements thank you David yeah I mean when you you brought up the Godwin quote about how truth compels and you said that RN says at one point truth carries coercive elements with it it's also important to remember that she opens the essay truth and politics with a question which is whether truth is impotent or not um you know and especially in politics where we're dealing with factual truths and not rational truths um the question is whether can truth has any power at all um outside of force or persuasion um and I I I I'm not sure she thinks it does Shayla what do you what do you make of this question of what do we do with truth I mean we keep talking about de factualization and the dangers of it the dangers of lying and politics and yet aren't as you well know is suspicious of Truth in politics she says truth has no place in politics she says truth may be infinite factual truth so what what's when we talk about you and you started with saying you know that partisanship is not new plurality is not new um it's unclear there's so much worry about de factualization and lying and part of it is that there doesn't seem to be much Clarity at all about what what it would mean to not have that what would be the other side of that I I think that there is a danger here of uh exaggerating the claims that she makes a little bit and um I'm looking at a page from an old edition of uh truths in politics where she says the chances of factual truth surviving the onslaught of Power are very slim indeed and it's always in danger of being maneuvered out of the art of this world and um no um we think there are varieties of factual truths as well aren't there I mean uh she gives several examples you know of factual truths but let's take let's take something about um a scientific um uh a factual truth I think what we are um going through is as a result of the very widespread skepticism also towards um reason and rationality uh there is also no longer any faith let's say in the protocols of science being able to establish something yeah I mean and I don't want to talk about truth as if it were metaphysical reality right I mean science establishes truth as a result Natural Sciences of it being reproducible by hundreds of people who engage in similar processes and experiments right you know and this is not the same thing as the truth of history or you know as um the truth of everyday events which are which are a mixture a mixture of of the two so I'm not myself quite comfortable with uh truth with the capital T I would much rather talk about uh truth also in terms of the different kinds of claims that we make in different knowledge Fields right the truth that you know in medicine needs to be proven differently than so this may sound a little bit like you know philosophical hair splitting but it is important because the kind of truth that we are that she's talking about that also that we are concerned with here is also opinion about the Affairs of the world right I mean for me the one of the best examples of what you know what wrong is take the case of Colin Powell in front of the United Nations with fallacious uh evidence about how uh Saddam Hussein uh possessed weapons of mass destruction because there was some kind of yellow powder Etc that demonstrated this or that here's one of the most honorable public servants in my opinion that this country is overknown and here he was being forced to lie in front of the United Nations now there was a truth there and if we cannot agree that this was a lie that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction even though he was a tyrant okay in many other ways then this is the kind of question that Aaron says I mean if we can't agree on this we lose our faith in the public sphere and so in I think in Democratic politics that no matter how much partisanship there is we may disagree still about what to do concerning Saddam Hussein that is a agreement maybe maybe David and I have different opinions about this that disagreement is fine but we don't need to lie or we don't need also to you know go in front of the United Nations and lie to the uh to the world about this and I think the same goes um and David mentioned this for uh saying that the machines were voting machines were compromised or were tampered with or that there were undocumented migrants you know who were voting uh it's not as if this has never happened in American elections it has happened in American elections that dead people have that everybody talks about mayor Dale in Chicago it's not as but it did not happen in the elections in Georgia in 2020 and that makes that makes a difference so I think that we need to talk about truth you know at various um at various levels and also restore the confidence that we have whether it is you know I don't know if it is Authority or if it is um confidence in procedures um that had a certain a certain um Valen or tell on credibility I mean these are they bring out different questions also about you know um uh theories of knowledge and so on but yeah so that's they're all stop there it is one option for even a Greek Colin Powell is one of the more honorable public servants of this last generation but it is an option for a person in that position to register what aren't in another a different essay not in this book but it's a relatively late and great essay called personal responsibility under dictatorship it is possible to show non-support which doesn't mean defecting necessarily from from the country or even the administration quite that you are responsible to but it means you will not lie on an important occasion I mean we saw that kind of conduct from one of the one of the witnesses um in the January 6th hearings that young woman Cassidy Hutchinson who at the time didn't say um you know I want Trump to to uh to uh declare himself the loser but did say what you're doing is wrong and trying to get people um not to go along with it and now has as in indeed the people responsible for uh publicly announcing the tally in Georgia did too those Republican state legislatures showed non-support for Trump that's possible to do and Colin Powell is an interesting example of someone who saw all the weakness of the casings making he tells a story of going over the materials with his assistant Lawrence Wilkerson seeing most of it was crap and tossing out one thing after another and trying to hold on to what he could of the case that he was supposed to make in front of the United Nations but there is a great responsibility for the um what to say uh enacting of an exemplary character by public servants in a democracy much more than in a in a more hierarchical regime and we have seen just far too little of that in recent years far too little of um you know people with in the in a high position let's say in the cabinet of this or that Administration um without you know uh showing ingratitude or um you know rudeness or you know base conduct towards those two whom they owe their positions nevertheless saying that they disagree and say why um there's a I think it goes back in American Democratic matters a long way it goes into observed something of this too there's a greater pressure for Conformity at the top and a greater profession need a pressure for Conformity among Neighbors in a democracy than there is in other sorts of society um but it's a real disservice when we have people who know the truth and won't say it and then is later discovered that they do it and didn't say it yeah absolutely absolutely agreed I think that's an excellent point and that's an Iranian point right isn't it civil courage she's always looking for those for those moments for those in you know when somehow as she puts a delight the light breaks through and even in the Iceman book there is the example of this young uh German uh Soldier uh Sergeant Schmidt who who just resists and you know her phrase there is that it's as if at that moment you know a light Sean that broke through the that broke through the the darkness you know we're talking about Civic courage without that yes um I agree that just completely yeah yeah and I mean there were a couple of examples in the art in the Eichmann book I mean there's also the the one example of one of the Jewish leaders who committed suicide uh rather than um uh participate in in in sending people to camps based on lists um and and this brings us to for our end this idea that um thinking and one of the ideas of thinking is to stop and question what other people and she says thinking is has no impact on the world usually but the one time when thinking has a impact on the world is when everyone else is unthinkingly going along The Thinker simply stops at her example for that is Socrates and the Symposium it just stops on the way to the Symposium and stands there for hours thinking and that even that act of not going along with others as Cassidy Hutchinson was was doing as David suggested is is for her an act of civil courage or at least personal Integrity um that that that stops the motion yeah I like the word integrity uh not instead of Courage but as a kind of clarification of it and making sure we don't estimate courage always as a dramatic and life-risking thing um you know it can be just non-support when you you're making visible the fact that this is something you can't go along with and you know um my mother's family well no we knew people um who in Germany at the time had refused to do the Hitler salute um this and that kind of it wasn't always punishable by death or he even present but very few people who had the thought came forward and were willing to do it yeah I mean I think I think there's a I don't want to start getting into the names but there are differences there are people who are actively calling out the LIE the LIE of 2020. and there are people who are simply saying we all know it's alive but we're not going to say anything about it and it's just very different attitudes I just want to bring up one other part of this essay or these essays before we turn to questions which is near the end of the second essay the longer essay truth in politics all right um has a section where she says well look truth is Inc you know there is there are no truths in politics and politics is about opinion and we need to hold on to facts but it's hard and some of these and the nihilism and these questions we've been talking about and she says but one thing that maybe we learn is that politics while it itself doesn't have a truth it can't function without a realm outside of politics where truths can exist and she gives a number of examples very quickly lawyers law uh journalists uh scientists or academics um and she says that it's in these Realms which are supposed to be non-political where we as a culture or a society or a civilization develop the kind of truths that then in politics we're supposed to hold on to and stand on and become the the ground we walk on in the sky above us and she's worried there about the politicization of the academy the politicization of Journalism the politicization of the law this is something that is very uh in a sense anachronistic in in in in certain current debates I'm wondering to what extent either of you believe how important you believe that is is is our political is our problem with defactualization and political truth may be part of the politicization of these other Realms that are now impacting politics from outside um if either one of you can take it David you want to start uh so I'll just give one example um and I take you to be um bringing up the relationship between our attitude towards truth that ought to be acted on in society and the way that is taken hold of in politics um consider as an example um the covid pandemic and the discovery and dissemination of the vaccines um part of the skepticism or nihilism a few if you like about uh what seemed by and large truthful claims uh stems from uh the the arrogance the the lack of scientific humility by the expert class whom we rely on so what we all know now I think can agree on as a fact is that the vaccines help you stay out of the hospital that the dis that the virus is much worse for older people than it is for very young people um and that uh nevertheless there's a great deal that isn't yet known and people can give others the uh virus even though they've been vaccinated and they can catch it even though they've been vaccinated all that is there when you have an expert on at the in one or two or three experts at the top of the field of giving orders about National conduct on the vaccine claiming that once you have the vaccine it comes to a dead end in you you can't give it to anyone else um and uh and claiming at different times that masks help you or masks don't help you two masks are better than one and so on saying more than they know in order to persuade people of their Authority a lot more epistemological or just Public Health humility on that score I think would have you know taken um uh a great deal of the bad energy out of the vaccine Skeptics and you would have had a less contested scene um in that area too and that has to do with the social uses of authority and the way that's come to be understood in in American society so there's a real um there's a there's a new chaotic element at work there too Shayla did you want to add something well I mean I have watched this phenomenon of vaccine skepticism also in European countries um even in countries such as Germany and Italy where there is a bit more confidence and I think it's a more orderly public political system and there were different kind of uh different kind of voices there so I'm not sure uh if the question is also just a question of Authority or um they're linked let me just say let me just say something here maybe I'm uh in this respect I may have a slight difference of opinion than both of you I don't think that the critique of established paradigms in the historical and the human and social sciences what is generally referred to as the critical theory of such is um objectionable and I don't think that this is the crisis of the University if there is a Moment of Truth there is a moment of truth if you want to analyze you know uh the history um of the of Oppression the history of exclusion that is also a moment of truth so I want to I want to just say that I am not one who sort of accepts that of course uh you know a critical thinking is also undermining authority and so no critical theory thinking is itself in the service of truth even though it can be taken it can be taken to extreme so Roger what you talked about positization I don't want to just say oh well uh you know or um if excluded groups do not find themselves in the narratives we are telling and want to raise their voice services in order to be included that this is politization I'm not there I'm not I'm not there so there may be a disagreement um about this about this I think it's a matter of degree I think it's a matter of how far this criticism goes but I think uh critique uh political critique is also part of the process of Truth uh of Truth uh seeking well I I don't I won't speak for David I certainly don't think critical theory is is um you know or or challenging uh assumptions is is is is problematic in in the academy or in journalism I don't I don't think that's what I was suggesting um okay I I was simply suggesting that to the extent people in whether it's in journalism or in Academia or in law people come to see themselves as um activists or as advocates um the the helpful and important constant questioning which is part of what the The Pursuit Of Truth is doing comes to be seen as politicized and and and and those fields become uh less able to uh articulate um common common truths which have to change and have to constantly evolve uh under questioning but questioning governed by certain institutional and um hopefully uh intellectual norms but maybe absolutely and standards and standards um there are some there are a lot of questions in the chat David do can I go to those questions or did you want to say something no I have nothing to add so there's a couple of questions that I thought we would try and get to we've got 12 minutes left um one is I think one that's on everyone's mind um and that's about technology right um I think both of you have mentioned it at times uh you know obviously when arent was writing we didn't have the internet we didn't have Facebook we didn't have Twitter we didn't have YouTube um and in some ways what she was describing doesn't depend on those Technologies and yet I think for many people there's a sense that technology is if not the cause of the problem making it worse so um Lewis Altman writes do you believe that modern technology makes lying more pernicious the watching us that George Orwell so poignantly warned about in 1984 in the sense that Tech makes political oversight more difficult to evade in the coming years I'm wondering uh if either of you have thoughts on technology and watching us and Truth uh one uh thought that I had in addition to this observation or in response to it is this idea of generating artificial emotional reactions because uh if you are on Facebook or other forms of media you will click on it the artificial solicitation of anger and outrage right I mean this is part of rhetoric it has existed before but um this is really quite quite outrageous and quite pernicious that websites do this in order to be able to augment the number of clicks something receives that that really is I don't know if this can be a if there can be policy that can be articulated about this if this can in anybody in any way be controlled but certainly this is a whole new domain okay just a couple of obvious points that the um you know it's clear to me the the internet um the uh screens we all use the medium-sized screens like this one and the and you know iPhones and whatnot um create a um something new in manners which aren't wasn't around to see uh and that is uh not only uh um you know cutting down of people's uh habitual span of attention just going from one thing to another to another to another so you can't concentrate on examining your own feeling and evolving a thought from your examination of your feeling but also I think the habit of seeing and being seen um that is uh uh not necessarily friendly to what aren't called judgment and what she called thinking um she stresses this in many different places it's in the I command book it's it's in the very end of the origins of totalitarianism that thought that personal Integrity uh is something that requires privacy it requires Solitude the individuality that goes with intellectual conscience is not a matter of coming to be seen and seeing other people and this very American and very Democratic habit we've all required and seen you know expanded explode to such a degree that I am rape I Made Real by How public I am by how many likes I get um I think that is uh I'm saying the obvious hundreds of commentators have said it nevertheless I think it's true and it and it is a large factor in um what we've been calling here de factualization yeah I mean the loss of the private where one can think for oneself I mean one sees that with Just For example what happened in Los Angeles last week where private conversations are taped and put out in the open I mean we can have our own opinions about what the results of that should be but you the the assumption that you're at a loan in your home and able to have a private conversation anymore is is fading away quickly and and even in what is uh in a conversation that has the format of a serious discussion such as for example an academic seminar and I don't want to exaggerate the changes in matters that have come about there but it's been noticed Again by many people that students at the level of your college and university are more reserved and more cautious than they used to be and it's very hard to argue against the assumption that governs that new piece of behavior they're afraid they might be quoted and taken out of context and yet we all know we who have dealt with ideas that you know uh to quote em Forster how do I know what I think till I see what I say um hearing yourself say it is part of knowing what you think and that has to happen in a in an environment where you feel you know your experimental thoughts some of which may be very silly and rarely but occasionally even worse than silly that those won't be held against you as sort of a permanent scripture that you laid your hands on and said this is what I believe there's a question from Arya Sherman um Can the distortions of Truth in politics be traced to the distorted history of the American Experience de-emphasizing the annihilation of the Native populations the Persistence of racial subjugation and the demonization of our immigrant experience maybe the national identity we've created requires us to ignore the truth so I take this to be um you know maybe part of the uh de-factualization is the fact that the truth we've been told for so long is into truth and we're struggling with that how do you guys do you have what are your thoughts on on this question from Arya uh I I don't think that the the the Fable the falsehood the you know George Washington chopping down this cherry tree and black people were always treated better than we thought and you know slavery we got over it very fast I don't think that was ever a happy story that many even halfway educated people were asked to believe and the sources that would tell you otherwise have been available for a long time so the idea that we've just now discovered that ours is a history full of stains tarnishes um dense um bad faith bad conduct I don't think that's a recent discovery it is true that the more naive you are the more shocking you will find the bad facts about the history of the United States which can be said of other countries too but um I don't think I don't think this is a sudden breakthrough um against an old old lie that millions and millions of people believed as to be the truth channel do you want to add to that or not no not at the moment no um we had about five minutes left uh I'm gonna I'm gonna start use one question that's here that I think is a great question to to start us moving towards a conclusion which is this the question is from Diana Rosen in Los Angeles and it's very simple what makes you hopeful um she says besides voting regularly and staying informed what can the ordinary person do to contribute positively to discourse within their own communities I think it's a great question Shayla do you want to take a crack at that um there can be no politics without hope and um hope is not about optimism or pessimism it's something that's very often misunderstood and one thinks that that's poorly on our statement uh rather um by hope I mean what aren't would call New Beginnings okay it's always possible to act differently it's always possible to break somehow the chain of inevitability and for something new to emerge if we don't think that that's possible uh there is actually no no not only no politics but you know our our common life um uh would become worse than even under a totalitarianism because even under totalitarianism there were individual acts of resistance uh there you know even in the camps people produced art people produced music as crazy as example as this maybe it's important to remember so in that sense I think um what I understand is absolutely important that is we we must not fall into either an nihilism or this extreme skepticism which is a form of knowledge um there is nothing to be done what can I do it's all lost anyway and it is um it's a form of believing in the nothing you know that's what nihilism means it means believing in the nothing so in that sense I uh think uh one other Edition uh I would put I don't want to sound to preach to here and of course you know one cannot do politics uh by oneself right I mean politics is always acting with acting with others and however you do this whether you know you go uh you know on ballot watching whether you go out on the streets or the weather you try to contribute something so in that in that orientian sense we always have to keep the possibility of the beginning in mind and I certainly think this country is not at the point that new beginnings are not possible I mean it's at a critical point it's at the turning point but there is plenty of possibility to intervene uh constructively still I believe uh thank you very much David I I'll just say if you scale it down from politics to society to just persons um I'm I am made hopeful uh when I talk to some some students that I meet here um young young men or women um who by whatever experience uh of what I'll call education um have been induced to think and are and are and have are showing having the experience of changing their mind about something um and I don't mean that on again to to do with one sort of political Discovery or another I think that as long as um candid conversations can go on between almost strangers between people you're interested in and you discover um you know someone from a such and such a background thinking a thought you would never have guessed they'd have I mean that's always surprising and that's the surprise of it gives me hope yeah I think that's going to be a way to end Max I see you telling us so as well yeah no I think that was a great place to to um to wrap up and just to say uh how grateful um we all are for this you know intelligent and passionate conversation about a huge subject uh and um and how you know much you've given us to think about in the hour that we've had um you've been listening to uh Shayla benabe Roger Berkowitz and David Bromwich discuss Hana orange lying in politics introduced by David Bromwich I hope you'll join us for more online events from library of America on November 14th it's the unknown Kerouac is the All-American Jack Kerouac best understood as an immigrant writer join Kerouac editor Todd teachin and quebecois Scholar Jean Christophe Cloutier for a Centenary akarovac Centenary conversation about kerouac's French Canadian roots and their connections with his legendary masterpieces with readings by actor Bill heck the tales about this and other upcoming Loa Live Events can be found on our website loa.org where you'll also find information about the Hana aren't and Kerouac volumes and links to purchase those and other editions of Great American writing you'll also find recordings of tonight's and previous Loa Live Events thanks so much again to professors benabe Berkowitz and Bromwich for a really terrific hour um and thank you for joining us and have a wonderful evening

Channel: Library of America

Views: 4,291

Keywords: Library of America, Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib, Roger Berkowitz, David Bromwich, Max Rudin, Politics, Political Philospher, LOA

Id: TLUPsLp88tM

Length: 59min 58sec (3598 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022