{"id":1074,"date":"2014-06-26T14:54:44","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T14:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-rohan.sdsu.edu\/~arendt\/wp\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2014-06-26T14:54:44","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T14:54:44","slug":"education-and-ethics-agency-and-love-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/2014\/06\/26\/education-and-ethics-agency-and-love-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Education and Ethics: Agency and Love of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The question of character and education emerge in the course of our seminar on Arendt exploring the concept of judgment and Arendt\u2019s argument that those who failed to \u201cthink for themselves\u201d often became supporters of totalitarianism.<\/p>\n

In an essay on the subject of personal responsibility, Arendt stressed that those who refused to support the Nazi regime were able to judge for themselves and that they came from all works of life and backgrounds. They continued to utilize \u201can independent human faculty, unsupported by law and public opinion, that judges in full spontaneity every deed and intent anew whenever the occasion arises.\u201d (Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,\u201d in Responsibility and Judgment, ed. J Kohn, (2003), p. 41).<\/p>\n

Earlier in the essay she comments that:<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it seems to be much easier to condition human behavior and to make people conduct themselves in the most unexpected and outrageous manner, than it is to persuade anybody to learn from experience, as the saying goes; that is, to start thinking and judging instead of applying categories and formulas which are deeply ingrained in the mind, but whose basis in experience has long been forgotten, and whose plausibility resides in their intellectual consistency rather than their adequacy to actual events. (p. 37).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An article in Huffington Post<\/a> by philosophy professor Myisha Cherry discusses the importance of engaging everyone, even the marginalized, in a conversation about ethics and character, and describes a summer institute<\/a> she designed for this purpose, working with formerly incarcerated persons. She contrasts \u201ccharacter talk\u201d \u00a0with an educational approach that seeks to change individual behavior rather than engage everyone in \u201ccharacter talk\u201d while simultaneously exploring a critique of social conditions. As she argues:<\/p>\n

Social conditions can help us become more virtuous but being morally virtuous does not equate to a change in social conditions. Instead of letting the oppressor off the hook, character talk has the potential of challenging the state and other institutions to improve social conditions so that lives can be improved morally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, what is the relationship between education, including education in \u201ccharacter\u201d or the development of an ethical stance, and the nature of judgment as Arendt sees it\u2014becoming and remaining able to \u201cthink for one\u2019s self\u201d without a banister to guide us \u201cwhen the chips are down,\u201d as she used to say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The question of character and education emerge in the course of our seminar on Arendt exploring the concept of judgment and Arendt\u2019s argument that those who failed to \u201cthink for themselves\u201d often became supporters of totalitarianism. In an essay on the subject of personal responsibility, Arendt stressed that those who refused to support the Nazi regime were able to judge for themselves and that they came from all works of life and backgrounds. They continued to utilize \u201can independent human faculty, unsupported by law and public opinion, that judges in full spontaneity every deed and intent anew whenever the occasion arises.\u201d (Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,\u201d in Responsibility and Judgment, ed. J Kohn, (2003), p. 41). Earlier in the essay she comments that: Unfortunately, it seems to be much easier to condition human behavior and to make people conduct themselves in the most unexpected and outrageous manner, than it is to persuade anybody to learn from experience, as the saying goes; that is, to start thinking and judging instead of applying categories and formulas which are deeply ingrained in the mind, but whose basis in experience has long been forgotten, and whose plausibility resides in their intellectual consistency rather than their….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,41,10,13,16,22,23,24,25,27,34,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-education","category-ethics","category-hannah-arendt","category-human-rights","category-life-of-the-mind","category-neh","category-neh-summer-scholars","category-personal-responsibility","category-public-life","category-teachers","category-thinking"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}