Arendt You Through Yet?

I must confess, not only was the title of this post unforgivably corny, but I have also not yet finished Human Condition. There are several reasons for this.

First, I devoted more of my time to Vogue than to serious reading in California. Hey! I was at the beach and Ann is a bad influence!

Second, abstractions don't agree with me. I do much better with narratives--history and literature. Philosophy only makes sense to me when it is placed in a context. Is that why I find Neitzsche appealing (or perhaps he just helped me recognize my status as an uberwomenschen)? I don't know if I even approve of abstract thinking, at least not of the moral sort. As Dorothy Sayers said, the first thing a principle does is kill somebody. But aside from my abstract stance against abstraction, I just find a lot of it dull. Like Kant. I would have NEVER gotten through Kant on my own (but I'm glad we read him, so now I have license to mock his ethical imperatives).

Which brings me to my third point. Higher learning usually warrants discussion. For example, it is virtually impossible to learn French unless you are around people with whom you can speak it (which is why Emma is so wise to take it up right now). I could certainly use a discussion group to grasp Arendt.

I'm confused about the distinctions between the social, the political, and the private in Arendt. The historical examples serve to make her more confusing, because the realms change over time. In Roman times, the highest expression of humanity was being in "public,"--i.e. pompous men making pompous speeches, wars, and legislation with their "peers," while the women and slaves stayed quietly at home sustaining art, learning and life (yes, I am being a feminist and yes, I am being emotive). Now, the public has been taken over by the social, or the transference of characteristics of the private realm into the public. The social has been unable to maintain individuality as the public, so we suffer from replication, or the fact that everyone basically thinks the same thing--mass culture.

Comments on Arendt? A virtual discussion is better than none.