Arendt - Between Past and Future - Chapter 2 - 4

Concepts of History, Authority, and Freedom

WHAT IS HISTORY:
Herodotus - "The task of history is to save human deeds from the futility that comes from oblivion."

Modern: patterns can be seen to support any premise AND any meaning that can be found will do.

With Marx  (the changing of) history became the means to an end and "making history" became a man-made process as well as a political activity. That is  the meaning of history was transformed into an end.


WHAT IS (or was) AUTHORITY:

Models:
    shepherd and sheep
    helmsman and passengers
    physician and patient
    master and slave
    father and children
   
Liberalism measures a process of receding freedom and conservatism measures a process of receding authority;  both call the expected end-result totalitarianism....

The difference between tyranny (totalitarianism) and authoritarian government has always been that the tyrant rules in accordance with his own will and interest, whereas even the most draconic authoritarian government is bound by laws.

"The law is the despot of the rulers and the rulers are the slaves of the law."

Because the Christian Church had been "politicized",  with the separation of Church and State, it lost all its authority.

Plato, Robespierre and Machiavelli agreed - you can not make a table without killing some trees, you can not make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and you can not make a republic without killing some people.  When change is desired, tyranny is the quickest and easiest solution.

Chapter ends with the question, "what kind of world came to an end after the modern age not only challenged one or another form of authority in different spheres of life but caused the whole concept of authority to lose its validity altogether?"


WHAT IS FREEDOM:

examples)
Aristotle - doing what a man likes
 - Civil Rights
 - Free Will
 - Freedom from fear
Montesquieu - being able to do what one ought to will

The difficulty may be summed up as the contradiction between our consciousness and conscience.
 Inner feeling on it's own remains politically irrelevant.

Freedom and politics are related to each other like two sides of the same matter.  However, freedom and sovereignty cannot exist simultaneously.  In fact, if men wish to be free, it is precisely sovereignty they must renounce.

To be human and to be free are one and the same.

Arendt - Between Past and Future - Chapter 1

Premise: There has been a gap created between the past and the future, namely the loss of tradition.

Proposition A: Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche serve as guideposts to a past which has lost its authority.

Proposition B: One of the losses suffered, gained in previous revolutions, is "public happiness" aka "public freedom".


Proposition C:  Thinking about the future is now more than simply an exclusive exercise in thought, but a very real political reality affecting and should be concerning everyone.

Concern:  Too many people, (most) are blinded or simply don't care that they no longer personally think and exchange ideas but rather wait for ideas to be distilled into values which can be weighed, not personally, but by society as a whole.