{"id":611,"date":"2011-09-28T18:30:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T18:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-rohan.sdsu.edu\/~arendt\/wp\/?p=611"},"modified":"2011-09-28T18:30:46","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T18:30:46","slug":"public-happiness-action-in-concert-with-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/2011\/09\/28\/public-happiness-action-in-concert-with-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Happiness: Action in Concert with Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1970, Hannah Arendt was interviewed by Adelbert Reif, a German writer, who asked her to expand on comments she had made in On Violence<\/em> about the revolutionary student movements of the 1960s. Her remarks, published in Crises of the Republic<\/em> in 1972, have bearing on the points made in today’s New York Times article <\/a>about dissatisfaction with “political classes”.<\/p>\n

“What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations…is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one\u2019s own efforts….For the first time in a very long while a spontaneous political movement arose which not only did not simply carry on propaganda but acted, and moreover, acted almost exclusively from moral motives.<\/em>…It turned out that acting is fun…When man [and woman!] takes part in public life he [\/she]opens up for himself [\/herself]\u00a0 a dimension of human experience that otherwise remains closed to him [\/her] and that in some ways constitutes a part of complete \u2018happiness\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Marta Ramoneda for The New York Times SPAIN The weekly general assembly of the protest movement in Madrid's Puerta del Sol. Spain's unemployment rate is 21 percent. \t<\/p><\/div>\n

The joy of action in concert with others, emerging out of a deep sense that fundamental moral principles have been violated, sacrificed on the altar of greed for the betterment of the \u201cpolitical classes\u201d and their cronies seems to be represented in the actions outlined in the story covered by the NYT on its front page. \u201cIncreasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sense of \u201chappiness\u201d that Arendt\u2019s comment evokes springs not from the false promise of happiness represented in a consumer society, but the happiness of being able to stand for something greater than one\u2019s own personal satisfaction, aiming for something grander than one\u2019s own personal security\u2014the common good.<\/p>\n

Important to note is the sense that the political and economic systems of liberal democracy and free market capitalism that were trumpeted \u201cin the wake of the Soviet Union\u2019s collapse in 1991\u201d as \u201cthe only path forward…by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in his book<\/a> \u201cThe End of History and the Last Man,\u201d has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although some fear that the protests augur efforts to bypass institutions of representation, endless stalemates and the apparent capture of these institutions by special interests have called into question the ability of many of these institutions to function. What these new protests demand is nothing less than a \u201cnew beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may be that we face a \u201ccrisis of legitimacy.\u201d But the response of ordinary citizens to this crisis can be seen in terms of what Arendt would have called politics at its best\u2014not partisan lobbying for special \u201cinterests\u201d, but morally motivated action in concert with others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1970, Hannah Arendt was interviewed by Adelbert Reif, a German writer, who asked her to expand on comments she had made in On Violence about the revolutionary student movements of the 1960s. Her remarks, published in Crises of the Republic in 1972, have bearing on the points made in today’s New York Times article about dissatisfaction with “political classes”. “What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations…is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one\u2019s own efforts….For the first time in a very long while a spontaneous political movement arose which not only did not simply carry on propaganda but acted, and moreover, acted almost exclusively from moral motives.…It turned out that acting is fun…When man [and woman!] takes part in public life he [\/she]opens up for himself [\/herself]\u00a0 a dimension of human experience that otherwise remains closed to him [\/her] and that in some ways constitutes a part of complete \u2018happiness\u2019.\u201d The joy of action in concert with others, emerging out of a deep sense that fundamental moral principles have been violated, sacrificed on the altar of greed for the betterment of….<\/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":[13,25,26],"tags":[42,57,94,95],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hannah-arendt","category-personal-responsibility","category-politics","tag-action","tag-democracy","tag-protest","tag-public-happiness"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","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=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arendt.sdsu.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}