Hannah Arendt, undeniably admirable, but quite difficult
Okay so I’m continuing with Hannah Arendt for the time being. In ‘The social question, chapter 2 of On Revolution, Arendt expatiates for a while on hypocrisy, a term I’m pretty sure I’ve never used in the 1000-plus pieces on this blog, or elsewhere. It might be that I’ve never understood what it means, or more likely I’ve never felt the need for the word.
According to Arendt, ‘Hypocrisy is the vice through which corruption becomes manifest’. I’m pretty sure I don’t know what this means, even after thinking about it for a moment, or an hour. I probably just use other language. I know for example that the Trump administration’s attempts to censure and ban liberal comedians and commentators, while ignoring or promoting conservative (or more precisely pro-Trump) media, and then using language about ‘public duty’ and ‘preventing harm’, are examples of hypocrisy. So, very well, I contradict myself, and so I’ll look at Arendt’s statement again, and ask, Is hypocrisy the only, or principal vice through which corruption becomes manifest?
Well, maybe it’s true, at least with a certain type of vice – and we must scrutinise the term ‘vice’, the other important term in the sentence. Come to think of it, that’s another term I can’t remember ever using. What is a vice? Smoking? To some maybe. Killing people? Maybe not if it’s a Hitler or Genghis Khan or Vlad the Impaler. Anyway, common usage tells me that gambling and ‘philandering’ are vices, but not invading other countries. Words can be evasive when you try to pin them down (and only then, funnily enough).
So I’v gotten into the third chapter of Arendt’s book and I’ve decided to give up – sorry Hannah, RIP. Much of this is in a foreign language to me, though the topics she focuses on – the French Revolution and how and why it went so pear-shaped, the American War of Independence (as I would definitely prefer to call it) and how it, unsurprisingly, leaned so much on British constitutional elements – as well as the writers she names and quotes – Rousseau, Burke, Tocqueville, Montesquieu, Hume and Locke – are all of interest, and make me want to return to these men, especially as explicated by historians or other specialists (preferably women) whose aim is to clarify and contextualise.
So it’s time to return to bonobos and sexuality, methinks.
Reference
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, 1963