Newsgroup: it.fan.scrittori.tolkien
Titolo: [LUNGO] OT - Arendt

Rispondo alla richiesta di Norbert.
Per i fans della rubrica "e chi se ne frega" aggiungo che rispondo fuori
thread e in ritardo perche' il benemerito 
news.tin.it
 si e' perso due
giornate di post per strada, e dunque sono andato su deja a cercarle.
Allora, sto postando cio' che ho trovato sulla Arendt. Non testi ma solo una
nota biografica che racconta soprattutto quelli che furono i suoi rapporti
con Martin Heidegger. Ora, personalmente non riesco a separare le opere dei
vari artisti, pensatori etc. dalle vicende della loro vita, e sempre per la
nota rubrica di cui sopra diro' che il fascino in me esercitato dalle
letture di Heidegger una decina di anni fa si e' nettamente ridimensionato
alla luce della meschinita' in cui si e' dibattuta la sua vita terrena,
quando insomma ho scoperto quel gran pezzo di merda che era come uomo.
Leggendo queste brevi note ho avuto la conferma di quello che gia' da tempo
maturavo nella mia mente, e inoltre ho pensato che se gia' non l'hanno
fatto, presto faranno un film sulla vita di H.Arendt.
Segue il cut'n paste (che e' piuttosto lunghetto) in inglese, perche' io -a
differenza di Soronel- sono troppo pigro per sbattermi a tradurre.
Chiedo invece a Gilian -che mi sembra la persona piu' indicata nel ng-
ulteriori notizie su questa donna, che assai mi ha incuriosito.
Ciao
Elu Thingol
#48 deIFeSToSi
"Saruman, your staff is broken."
PS. Ce l'ho fatta! Il primo post serio di dicembre!
A presto, per il primo post IT...
=)
ARENDT, Hannah, (1906-1975)
German-American political scientist who characterised 'totalitarianism'.
Received Doctorate from the University of Heidelberg at the age of 22 after
studying under Martin Heidegger. In 1933 she went to France to escape the
Nazis and, in 1941, fled to the U.S., becoming a U.S. citizen in 1951.
Arendt was research director, Conference on Jewish Relations (1944-46);
chief editor, Schocken Books (1946-48); executive secretary, Jewish Cultural
Reconstruction (1949-52); visiting professor, Princeton (1959), Columbia
(1960); professor, U. of Chicago at Berkeley (1963-67), New School for
Social Research (1967-75). Author of Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The
Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963), Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963),
On Violence (1970).
No romance could be stranger than the clandestine affair between the Jewish
anti-fascist Hannah Arendt and the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger- and
yet it spanned more than forty years, from their first meeting as student
and teacher in 1930s Germany, ‘till death in 1975.
As a teacher at Freiburg, when he first met the intense, 19 year old
Heidegger was the superstar of the German University. His lectures were so
demanding that his cult followers would debate their meaning into the small
hours. The brilliant young Jewess, from a family of leftists, immediately
aroused suspicion amongst the cult, but Heidegger embarked on an
intellectually and emotionally intense affair behind his wife Elfride’s
back.
Fear of discovery initially parted them, as Heidegger guiltily palmed his
brilliant student off on a colleague, Karl Jaspers. But with the growing
Nazi movement their paths divided. Heidegger was already on the right, and
his romantic, backward looking philosophy gelled with the rising nationalist
movement. Not ardently anti-semitic, Heidegger began to make anti-Jewish
remarks, pointedly to a young boyfriend of Arendt’s. Much as Arendt adored
Heidegger, she could not understand his identification with the Hitler
movement, putting his increasing enthusiasm down to careerism, and the
negative influence of Elfride. Hannah escaped the holocaust by the skin of
her teeth, leaving Germany only to end up in a French concentration camp
before escaping that. Meanwhile Heidegger’s star was rising: with his
promotion to the Rectorship at Freiburg he had instituted the Hitler salute,
and collaborated in the persecution of Jewish students and faculty-members.
Exiled to America, and with a new husband, a Marxist veteran of the
Spartacus uprising no less, Arendt put Heidgger to the back of her mind, and
began to develop an independent reputation as a brilliant scholar. Working
with Jewish organisations and for the American war effort Hannah’s lectures
on the real face of German ‘totalitarianism’ at the New School for Social
Research amazed New York’s intelligentsia. And though their subject was the
fascism that Heidegger espoused, Hannah’s thesis was still the romantic
anti-technology and anti-mass philosophy that Heidegger taught her, only now
turned against Fascism, instead of against liberal democracy.
But as Hannah’s star waxed, Heidegger’s waned. He had already been called to
task by the Nazi party for his excessive zeal in reorganising the
university, and was dangerously allied with the Goering/Strasser wing of the
party that had lost out in the night of the long knives. But with the Allied
victory, he had become an outlaw in his own home town of Messkirch,
disgraced, denied the use even of his library, pending the outcome of the
denazification hearings.
When Heidegger called in favours from the many students he had taught it was
a roll-call of the emigre European intelligentsia: Herbert Marcuse, Jean
Paul Sartre, Karl Jaspers and the new star Hannah Arendt. It was a testament
to his teachings that they still inspired a generation of intellectuals,
despite his political disgrace. But much as he was admired for his
philosophy, none could stomach his active support of the regime, and, even
though Jaspers and Marcuse were tempted to speak up in his favour, Heidegger
’s unwillingness to apologise for his past sickened them all. All but one:
Hannah.
It was the ruthless Elfride, who swallowed her pride and told Heidegger to
get in touch with his former mistress. Arendt’s love for Heidegger was
complex, mixing elements of hero-worship and philosophical imitation. It
prevented her from seeing the truth, and she continued to deceive herself
that Heidegger had merely been naďve, so elevated was his thinking. She
advised him on how to handle the de-nazification hearing, and used her
influence to help him. So loyal was Hannah that she mercilessly attacked all
those that criticised him like Adorno and Marcuse - even to the point of
accusing Adorno of hiding his Jewish ancestry by changing his name from
Wisengrund.
The excuses that Hannah cooked up for Heidegger’s trial were too convincing.
In a curious interrogation she had only half-consciously led him to a
version of events that would satisfy the hearing: He had in reality been a
dissident (as he had, for being too right wing), he had followed an ideal
that had been cruelly betrayed by Hitler, he thought that Fascism was a
rebellion against the machine age, but it had turned out to be modernism
gone mad. This apology that they worked out between them was the retention
of Heidegger’s philosophy, now disassociated from Fascism: it was the
lectures against Totalitarianism, and Heidegger enthusiastically adopted it
as his own. But critics suspected that Heidegger’s philosophy now was only
the rejection of the actuality of Fascism in favour of its ideals.
Relations between the reunited lovers were tense. She really wanted open
affection, but could not understand that his feelings for her were as
pragmatic as they had been before. She even blamed Elfride’s interference
for his coldness, unaware that it was Elfride that had reunited them.
And as Hannah’s reputation grew, she sensed that Heidegger was jealous of
her. His past was a barrier to future success. But Hannah faced no such
problems. Her war record reinforced the moral authority of her ideas.
Heidegger grew bitter as she became famous, as he saw it, with his ideas.
Hannah was stung when Heidegger made a point of not reading her books,
starting with On Totalitarianism. Between them, she remained the diligent
pupil, even though he was in educated circles an embarrassment from the
past, whilst she was an established star.
Heidegger’s bitterness continued throughout the rest of his life, and Hannah
’s love was unrequited. The more waspish he became, the more solicitous she
was, nervously asking friends what she could have done to offend him. With
her husband’s death Hannah renewed the relationship, and thought she felt it
thaw. The suspicion must remain that after their initial ecstasy he always
saw her as a useful tool, rather than a lover. Foolish as she was in love,
though, he had become dependent on her intellect to sustain his own
philosophy, in ways that they could never acknowledge. To do so would have
disturbed the ritualised role of the despised pupil and the indifferent
master, even though she had long before become his teacher.

ulteriori notizie su questa donna, che assai mi ha incuriosito.
Si, si!!
[final cut]
-- 
Mandos
# 11 deI FeSTosi
"Oh Boromir! The Tower of Guard shall ever northward gaze
To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days."

Per i comuni mortali come me che non sono in grado di leggere i testi 
filosofici della Arendt suggerisco la lettura di un suo libro "normale" 
intitolato "La banalità del male", che è il resoconto dal vivo del 
processo celebrato in Israele nei confronti di Eichmann, ossia 
dell'organizzatore materiale dello sterminio degli Ebrei sul piano 
logistico, che a mio parere, per quanto strana ad alcuni la mia opinione 
possa sembrare, rimane il piano più terribile e l'unico realmente 
"specifico" che differenzia e rende incredibilmente peggiore QUELLO 
sterminio rispetto a tutti gli altri, e sono tanti, che la storia e i 
vari totalitarismi hanno causato.
Io ho letto molto SUL libro ma purtroppo non ho mai avuto il tempo di 
leggere IL libro. In ogni caso è uno dei primi nella mia personale lista 
di "libri del dopo pensione", che leggero (spero) tra una venticinquina 
di anni.
Se poi a qualcuno interessa l'argomento Ebrei consiglio un altro 
libretto di cui ho esperienza diretta, si legge in  un giorno e quindi 
ce l'ho fatta, che si intitola, guarda un po', "La banalità del Bene" e 
che è la storia (vera) di Giorgio Perlasca, che oltre ad essere una di 
quelle cose che ti fanno pensare che se esiste gente così dopo tutto si 
può ancora vivere, è una storia che se Spielberg l'avesse letta prima, 
quella di Oskar Schindler non l'avrebbe nemmeno presa in considerazione 
(in qualsiasi paese con un cinema serio ci avrebbero fatto un film da 
una vita, ma al cinema italiano certe cose non si possono chiedere...).
Se a qualcuno interessa, BUR Rizzoli, sotto Enrico Deaglio come autore, 
che però ha solo scritto quello che Perlasca raccontava.
Bye
Gwindor/Giampaolo

 che però ha solo scritto quello che Perlasca raccontava.
// mode scherzo on//
Basta consigli di libri; ho già speso sulle 200.000, più almeno altre
150.000 in preventivo!!
// mode scherzo off //
Grazie per le segnalazioni!!
Ok, la lista dei libri per Natale cresce a vista d'occhio...  bene, bene
Mandos at work

 ulteriori notizie su questa donna, che assai mi ha incuriosito.
Non so se sono proprio la persona più indicata...io in realtà ho letto solo
qualche spezzone della "Banalità del Male" in occasione di un esame
universitario e le notizie che ho non sono maggiori rispetto a quelle
fornite da più persone (o soltanto da Daniele Ercoli, non ricordo...) nel
tread "Eucatastrofe e realismo". Il punto è che, da quelle poche frasi che
ho letto, è nata una delle più belle discussioni che abbia mai fatto col mio
migliore amico il quale aveva scelto come programma di un esame proprio il
tema della banalità del male (e ha studiato anche Todorov).
Il punto centrale della questione è: com'è possibile che persone
normali -come si rivelarono la maggior parte dei nazisti sottoposti a visite
psichiatriche-possono essere capaci di macchiarsi di crimini tanto nefandi?
Il dubbio è atroce e sottintende un altro problema: la "razionalizzazione"
della violenza rende talmente distanti chi compie l'azione e chi la subisce
da far sì che non ci si renda neppure contro di cosa si stia realmente
facendo?
Gilian

 processo celebrato in Israele nei confronti di Eichmann, ossia
In primo luogo, è proprio a proposito di tale libro che è cominciato tutto
il dibattito! E poi quello E' il testo filosofico per eccellenza della
Arendt (o siete convinti che si faccia filosofia solo nei "Prolegomena ad
ogni metafisica futura"?). Cmq io sapevo che Eichmann fosse stato processato
a Norimberga, ma potrei sbagliare...
Ciao ciao
--
Daniele il DEmone
Mastro Umorista
Principale e Massima Calamità
l'Onnipresenza di ogni Kill-file
# 8 deI FeSTosi