The condition in which human beings are made expendable, through statelessness or atomized conformity; Arendt ties it to the emergence of radical evil.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
Human beings become superfluous, Arendt says, along two paths: losing the protection of a state, and being atomized into conformity.
Put simply Arendt: people are made "superfluous", that is, expendable, in two ways: by losing the protection of any state, and by being cut off from one another and pressed into conformity.
In Arendt's analysis, victims are not the only ones made superfluous: the perpetrators, recruited from an atomized, lonely mass, trade isolation for collective organization and lose their selves.
Put simply Arendt: the victims are not the only ones made "superfluous", unneeded. The perpetrators come from lonely, isolated people who trade their isolation for belonging to a movement, and lose their selves in it.
Arendt ties the emergence of radical evil to a system under which "all men have become equally superfluous."
Put simply Arendt links the rise of "radical evil", a new evil beyond ordinary motives, to a system in which "all men have become equally superfluous": everyone has become expendable.
Where to read it Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, end of ch. 12.
1 link between claims that both use the term. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
ArendtHuman beings become superfluous, Arendt says, along two paths: losing the protection of a state, and being atomized into conformity. L15 · 34:46
ArendtArendt ties the emergence of radical evil to a system under which "all men have become equally superfluous." L15 · 38:14
Reverse direction (arendt-L15-12 -> arendt-L15-09): radical evil is named as where superfluousness becomes total.
Throughlines that pass through one of these claims.
Terms that appear in the same claims.