Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Arendt On Totalitarianism and Truth

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
                            Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

I'd quibble about the identification of "fact and fiction" with "the reality of experience," and with "true and false" with "the standards of thought"...but I'm 100% down with the general idea here. Though 'the reality of experience' may be ambiguous. So maybe my quibble is with a misunderstanding. And "the standards of thought" are more on the side of justification than of truth...unless we're talking about some kind of Peircean limit of inquiry...
   Note to self: stop quibbling, stupid. Arendt is on the mark.

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