text:
Born of Necessity, Blindness, or Strategy: On Greece and the Bureaucratically Divine
By Jennifer M. Hudson
"The force of the machinery in which the K. of The Trial is caught lies precisely in this appearance of necessity on the one hand, and in the admiration of the people for necessity on the other. Lying for the sake of necessity appears as something sublime; and a man who does not submit to the machinery, though submission may mean his death, is regarded as a sinner against some kind of divine order.… It has been characteristic of our history conscious century that its worst crimes have been committed in the name of some kind of necessity or in the name--and this amounts to the same thing--of the 'wave of the future.'"
-- Arendt, "Franz Kafka: A Revaluation (On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his death)", Partisan Review
Necessity signifies the absence of choice; therefore, freedom and necessity, as principles, are logically opposed. Enlarging the concept of simple necessity, imagining it as a type of perpetual motion "machinery" or "the 'wave of the future' amplifies this opposition. Necessity as "progress," or providence, becomes a deterministic force that would take away our capacity to shape our human world and future. Arendt's concern in this passage is not, however, the myriad ways in which real human needs restrict sovereign human action. Instead, she points to an ideology of necessity--"the admiration of the people for necessity"--through which human beings abdicate responsibility for their common world by way of false beliefs in their own helplessness in an uncertain world and, simultaneously, their power to control this world using artificial means. Bureaucracy, both symbolically in Kafka's novels and in Arendt's appraisal of actually existing configurations, is the tangible manifestation of this ideology.
Amor Mundi 3/1/15
Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.
Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.
Amy Ireland is thinking about a genocide at the level of "genus-cide," the eradication of humanity itself. The threat is not weaponry but technology. And the exemplary precursor is the horse: "In the United States--where competition with the automobile was at its most intense--there were about 26 million horses in 1915. By the 1950s only 2 million remained." The question Ireland asks is whether humans are going the way of horses to be replaced by more efficient machines. Will artificially intelligent machines consume humans' fuel? "Far from being actively malevolent, an artificially intelligent agent endowed with enough power only needs to be indifferent to become a murderer. What are we, after all, but fuel? Atoms that can be freely disassembled and reassembled into something else - a thousand paperclip factories, for instance, or a massive supercomputer, capable of mathematical calculations we can't even begin to imagine in our current state of technological paucity. Even the clearly delimited goal of creating exactly one million paperclips can warrant the wasting of an entire planet, for a fully rational AI would never assign zero probability to the hypothesis that it has not yet achieved its goal.... There is something satisfying about imagining a malevolent artificial intelligence that actively wants to destroy us because it fears us, loathes us, or at least finds our existence frustrating and inconvenient. But the notion that something will destroy us out of sheer indifference is much harder to swallow because it forces us to consider the possibility of our utter insignificance. Bostrom surmises with all the level-headedness of a pure statistician that the odds against humanity's survival are overwhelmingly high. The default outcome of our construction of a single strong artificial intelligence is, quite plainly, extinction. His intention, naturally, is to raise awareness of the risks that lie behind this seemingly anodyne technological innovation and encourage governments, corporations or other entities that may one day attempt to build strong AI to implement rigorously tested control measures before letting the thing out of the box. All this is well and good, but it rests upon a deeper anthropomorphic supposition. What if the most radical gesture a flailing humanity can make at this juncture is not to increase its investment in security and control, but to pass it on? What if we are entangled in a larger evolutionary process that we never had control over in the first place? The real question then, might not be how to survive the construction of strong artificial intelligence but whether or not the survival of the human race is a good thing after all." Ireland is right to pose the question of "genus-cide," although her tone is a bit blithe. The threat is not the eradication of human beings but, as Arendt writes in The Human Condition, the loss of the human condition, those characteristics of being human like labor, work, action, and (sometimes) thinking. As Arendt writes, "This future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself. There is no reason to doubt our abilities to accomplish such an exchange."
Karl Ove Knausgaard was commissioned to travel from Sweden to the Viking's first settlement in Newfoundland and then drive across the United States in order to reflect on the state of America. In part one of his two-part "Saga," Knausgaard offers this insight into a specifically American form of poverty, the poverty of imagination and the abandonment of distinction: "I'd seen poverty before, of course, even incomprehensible poverty, as in the slums outside Maputo, in Mozambique. But I'd never seen anything like this. If what I had seen tonight--house after house after house abandoned, deserted, decaying as if there had been disaster--if this was poverty, then it must be a new kind poverty, maybe in the same way that the wealth that had amassed here in the 20th century had been a new kind of wealth. I had never really understood how a nation that so celebrated the individual could obliterate all differences the way this country did. In a system of mass production, the individual workers are replaceable and the products are identical. The identical cars are followed by identical gas stations, identical restaurants, identical motels and, as an extension of these, by identical TV screens, which hang everywhere in this country, broadcasting identical entertainment and identical dreams. Not even the Soviet Union at the height of its power had succeeded in creating such a unified, collective identity as the one Americans lived their lives within. When times got rough, a person could abandon one town in favor of another, and that new town would still represent the same thing. Was that what home was here? Not the place, not the local, but the culture, the general?"
Peter Railton gave the John Dewey Lecture at the American Philosophical Association Meeting this year, where amidst reflections on philosophical thinking, personal courage, and political activism, he offered a guileless and moving account of his personal struggle with depression. "And what of depression? Perhaps we all know the mask of depression, that frozen, affectless face we catch glimpses of on our students, colleagues, and friends. I can't do anything about that. But perhaps I can do something about the face of depression--its visible image in the minds of our children and parents, teachers and students. Because in truth, we are still to a considerable degree still in a world of 'Don't ask, don't tell' with regard to depression and associated mental disorders, such as anxiety, even though these will severely affect one in ten of us over the course of a lifetime, and often at more than one point in a lifetime. So there's nothing for it. Those whose have dwelt in the depths depression need to come out as well. Some already have, but far too few adult men (big surprise!), and especially far too few of the adult men who somehow have come to bear the stamp of respectability and recognition, and thus are visible to hundreds of students and colleagues. It's no big deal, right? We're all enlightened about this. Then why do the words stick in my throat when I tell you that another theme uniting the three episodes I have recounted from my life, and that has played an equally important role in shaping my philosophy, is that they were all accompanied by my depression. This moody high school student, this struggling protester, this anxious young faculty member--they were all me and they were all living through major depressive episodes at the time. And there have been other such episodes, some more recent. Thankfully, for me and especially for my family who have been through so much already, not right now. Did others know? I don't know. Some must have guessed--perhaps those who themselves had known depression in their lives could see the mask of depression upon my face. But the thing is: I couldn't say it. I couldn't say, 'Look, I'm dying inside. I need help.' Because that's what depression is--it isn't sadness or moodiness, it is above all a logic that undermines from within, that brings to bear all the mind's mighty resources in convincing you that you're worthless, incapable, unloveable, and everyone would be better off without you. Not a steely-eyed, careful critique from which one might learn, but an incessant bludgeoning that exaggerates past errors while ignoring new information, eroding even the ability to form memories. A young man once had the courage to tell me, 'My brain is telling me to kill myself, but my body is saying "no."' Happily, his body won. But it doesn't always. Every year, thousands of young men don't win the battle. We are captive audiences to our own minds, and it can become intolerable." Depression, Railton suggests, is still in the closet, and this causes untold pain at colleges, where, as a recent study shows, the mental health of college Freshmen is at an all-time low--something that will not surprise any of us who teach in this nation's colleges and universities.
In Railton's speech on depression discussed above, he also has this tidbit on meetings: "Oscar Wilde is still right--because the cost of building a society where the people have more say in how their lives are run is still many, many meetings. What is a meeting, after all, but people deliberating together with a capacity to act as a group that is more than just a sum of individual actions, and this sort of informed joint action is a precondition for significant social change. Come together, decide together, act together, and bear the consequences together. We must own our institutions or they will surely own us. As Aristotle told us, one becomes a citizen not by belonging to a polity or having a vote, but by shouldering the tasks of joint deliberation and civic governance. And there is no civic or faculty governance, no oversight of discrimination in hiring and promotion, no regulation of pollutants, no organization of faculty or students to initiate curricular reform, no mobilization by professional associations to protect their most vulnerable members or to promote greater diversity, no increased humaneness in the treatment of animals and human subjects, no chance to offset arbitrariness and bullying within offices and departments, no oversight of progress and revision of plans in response to changing circumstances, without actual people who care spending long hours in the work of planning, meeting, and making things happens. The alternative is for all these decisions to be made at the discretion of those on high--or not at all." At a moment when faith and participation in all institutions is rare and the pursuit of individual pursuits comparatively common, Railton's reminder of what Arendt calls the power of talking and acting together is worth heeding.
David Cole writes that the Senate Torture Report, when read in full, leads to fundamentally different conclusions than most of the headlines and early accounts suggest. Above all, the report blaming the CIA for lying may have missed the real story: "The full story is more complicated, and ultimately much more disturbing, than the initial responses--mine included--suggested. And because these documents may be the closest we come to some form of accountability, it is essential that we get the lessons right.... So why did the committee focus on efficacy and misrepresentation, rather than on the program's fundamental illegality? Possibly because that meant it could cast the C.I.A. as solely responsible, a rogue agency. A focus on legality would have rightly held C.I.A. officials responsible for failing to say no--but it also would have implicated many more officials who were just as guilty, if not more so. Lawyers at the Justice Department wrote a series of highly implausible legal memos from 2002 to 2007, opining that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in coffinlike boxes, painful stress positions and slamming people into walls were not torture; were not cruel, inhuman or degrading; and did not violate the Geneva Conventions. The same can be said for President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and all the cabinet-level officials responsible for national security, each of whom signed off on a program that was patently illegal. The reality is, no one in a position of authority said no. This may well explain the committee's focus on the C.I.A. and its alleged misrepresentations. The inquiry began as a bipartisan effort, and there is no way that the Republican members would have agreed to an investigation that might have found fault with the entire leadership of the Bush administration. But while the committee's framing may be understandable as a political matter, it was a mistake as a matter of historical accuracy and of moral principle. The report is, to date, the closest thing to official accountability that we have. But by focusing on whether the program worked and whether the C.I.A. lied, the report was critically misleading. Responsibility for the program lies not with the C.I.A. alone, but also with everyone else, up to the highest levels of the White House, who said yes when law and morality plainly required them to say no."
The Little Voice Inside Your Head
Adam Phillips worries about what's inside us: "We are never as good as we should be; and neither, it seems, are other people. A life without a so-called critical faculty would seem an idiocy: what are we, after all, but our powers of discrimination, our taste, the violence of our preferences? Self-criticism, and the self as critical, are essential to our sense, our picture, of our so-called selves. Nothing makes us more critical--more suspicious or appalled or even mildly amused--than the suggestion that we should drop all this relentless criticism, that we should be less impressed by it and start really loving ourselves. But the self-critical part of ourselves, the part that Freud calls the super-ego, has some striking deficiencies: it is remarkably narrow-minded; it has an unusually impoverished vocabulary; and it is, like all propagandists, relentlessly repetitive. It is cruelly intimidating--Lacan writes of 'the obscene super-ego'--and it never brings us any news about ourselves. There are only ever two or three things we endlessly accuse ourselves of, and they are all too familiar; a stuck record, as we say, but in both senses--the super-ego is reiterative. It is the stuck record of the past ('something there badly not wrong', Beckett's line from Worstward Ho, is exactly what it must not say) and it insists on diminishing us. It is, in short, unimaginative; both about morality, and about ourselves. Were we to meet this figure socially, this accusatory character, this internal critic, this unrelenting fault-finder, we would think there was something wrong with him. He would just be boring and cruel. We might think that something terrible had happened to him, that he was living in the aftermath, in the fallout, of some catastrophe. And we would be right." In other words, critical thinking is essential, but let's also recall that it is dangerous. All thinking is an attack on the status quo and the common world in which we live. That is what Arendt means when she wrote, "There are no dangerous thoughts. Thinking itself is dangerous." That doesn't mean we should stop thinking critically, but it does mean that thinking requires knowing when thinking is, and when it is not, needed. That is the moment of judgment.
Novelist Gary Shteyngart spent a week watching Russian television and living like a Russian oligarch: "Here is the question I'm trying to answer: What will happen to me--an Americanized Russian-speaking novelist who emigrated from the Soviet Union as a child--if I let myself float into the television-filtered head space of my former countrymen? Will I learn to love Putin as 85 percent of Russians profess to do? Will I dash to the Russian consulate on East 91st Street and ask for my citizenship back? Will I leave New York behind and move to Crimea, which, as of this year, Putin's troops have reoccupied, claiming it has belonged to Russia practically since the days of the Old Testament? Or will I simply go insane? A friend of mine in St. Petersburg, a man in his 30s who, like many his age, avoids state-controlled TV and goes straight to alternative news sources on the Internet, warns me in an email: 'Your task may prove harmful to your psyche and your health in general. Russian TV, especially the news, is a biohazard.' I'll be fine, I think. Russians have survived far worse than this. But, just in case, I have packed a full complement of anti-anxiety, sleep and pain medication."
Andy Greenwald considers what made the recently concluded sitcom Parks and Recreation successful and what it's legacy might be: "Art doesn't always have to be a dark mirror reflecting reality. It can and should also be a window, thrown open to let in every last bit of possible light. Parks and Recreation never quite resembled the real America. But every episode was imbued with the idea that maybe it could, if only we, the people, cared a little more and tried a little harder. The Wire, the greatest drama of the young 21st century, left us with a tough legacy to reckon with. Parks and Rec, the best comedy of that same century, gifted us with a beautiful model to which we can collectively aspire. I doubt the future will be as bleak as David Simon's vision for it or as rosy as Mike Schur's. The joy of being a TV fan is that we get to consider both. That's not a cop-out, by the way. That's a compromise, and one that even President Leslie Knope could accept. After all, Parks was built on the bedrock belief that opposing ideas could not only have merit, they could coexist. Like the show itself, it's an idea that sounds simple but in practice is anything but."
Lunchtime Talk with Ari-Elmeri Hyvonen, a Hannah Arendt Center Visiting Fellow
"Arendt's Critique of Modern Society as an Analysis of Process Imaginary"
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
The Hannah Arendt Center, 1:00 pm
Now Accepting Applications for Post-Doctoral Fellowships!
The Hannah Arendt Center announces three post-doctoral fellowships for the 2015-2016 academic year.
To learn more about the fellowships, including how to apply, click here.
Application Deadline: Thursday, March 5, 2015
HAC Virtual Reading Group - Session #5
HAC members at all levels are eligible to participate in a monthly reading group led online via a telecommunication website by Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center.
For questions and to enroll in our virtual reading group, please email David Bisson, our Media Coordinator, at email@example.com.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Bluejeans.com, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Lunchtime Talk with Angela Maione, our Klemens Von Klemperer Post-Doctoral Fellow
"Figuring Rights: Wollstonecraft and the Right to Political Community
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
The Hannah Arendt Center, 6:00 - 7:00 pm
Film Screening, A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake and Director's Discussion by Michael Lessac
Synopsis: A diverse group of South African actors tours the war-torn regions of Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia to share their country's experiment with reconciliation. As they ignite a dialogue among people with raw memories of atrocity, the actors find they must once again confront their homeland's violent past, and question their own capacity for healing and forgiveness.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Weis Cinema, Campus Center, 6:30 pm
Courage To Be: Lecture and Dinner Series, with Uday Mehta
Putting Courage at the Centre: Gandhi on Civility, Society and Self-Knowledge
Invite Only. RSVP Required.
Property and Freedom: Are Access to Legal Title and Assets the Path to Overcoming Poverty in South Africa?
A one-day conference sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, the Human Rights Project, and the Center for Civic Engagement, with support from the Ford Foundation, The Brenthurst Foundation, and The University of The Western Cape
Monday, April 6, 2015
Bard College Campus Center, Weis Cinema, 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Courage To Be: Lecture and Dinner Series, with Jeanne Van Heeswijk, Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism
Invite Only. RSVP Required.
Thursday and Friday, October 15 and 16, 2015
The Hannah Arendt Center's eighth annual fall conference, "Privacy: Why Does It Matter?," will be held this year on Thursday and Friday, October 15-16, 2015! We'll see you there!
This week on the Blog, Johannes Lang explores the moral and political consequences of emotion entering into the public sphere in the Quote of the Week. American moral and social philosopher Eric Hoffer provides this week's Thoughts on Thinking. In a special feature, we recognize Aliza Becker, one of her Associate Fellows, and her creation of the American Jewish Peace Archive: An Oral History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Activists (AJPA). And we appreciate Arendt's engagement with Saint Augustine's "Confessions" in our Library feature.
This coming Friday, March 6th, the Hannah Arendt Center will host the fifth session of its Virtual Reading Group. We will be discussing Chapters 10-13 of The Human Condition.
The reading group is available to all members and is always welcoming new participants! Please click here to learn more!
Democracy and Disagreement
In the wake of Mozilla C.E.O. Brendan Eich's resignation over his support for California's 2008 Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage and has since been overturned in court, Andrew Sullivan laments the process by which Eich was compelled to step down.
In his post, Sullivan, a gay man who has been making the conservative case for gay marriage for nearly two decades, suggests that to simply label Eich a bigot and move forward under that presumption is too easy. Indeed, he says, that "the ability to work alongside or for people with whom we have a deep political disagreement is not a minor issue in a liberal society. It is a core foundation of toleration. We either develop the ability to tolerate those with whom we deeply disagree, or liberal society is basically impossible. Civil conversation becomes culture war; arguments and reason cede to emotion and anger." In this context, what is a crusade for tolerance also becomes a front for intolerance, something about which Sullivan is deeply troubled. The propagation of such a sure belief means the end of civil society and, in its face, he proposes we embrace uncertainty, concluding, finally, that "a moral movement without mercy is not moral; it is, when push comes to shove, cruel."
Sullivan makes a passionate and necessary plea for both moral uncertainty and, equally important, a willingness to live with and amongst those whose opinions we find both wrong and hurtful. What makes American democracy special is not that we have the right answers, but that we are committed to the conversation, not that we employ mandarins blessed with the right answers but that we trust everyday citizens to figure it out as we go along. Sullivan makes his case that Eich was honorable, open, and willing to engage in meaningful dialogue with those he disagreed with. Let's leave aside accusations of political correctness and such. The important point is that we are living in a country increasingly at odds with its democratic tradition of debate and disagreement. We bemoan the fact that Republicans and Democrats can't talk across the aisle; how is that we now won't even work with someone who respectfully disagrees with us politically?
—RB h/t Josh Kopin
Amor Mundi 2/9/14
Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.
Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.
Simon Critchley at "The Stone" reminisces about Dr. Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man" series and specifically the episode on Knowledge and Creativity. At one point in his essay Critchley inserts a video clip of the end of the episode, a clip that suddenly shifts the scene "to Auschwitz, where many members of Bronowski's family were murdered." We see Dr. Bronowski walking in Auschwitz. He says: "There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization into a regiment of ghosts. Obedient ghosts. Or Tortured ghosts. It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some 4 million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality, this is how men behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of Gods. Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known. We always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell, 'I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.'" It is a must read essay and must see clip. And you can read more about in Roger Berkowitz's Weekend Read.
In the wake of President Obama's yearly promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, South African writer Gillian Slovo suggests that, just as important as closing the base is acknowledging what happened inside: "There are two qualifications for being in Guantanamo: you have to be male, and you have to be Muslim. And once you've had the bad luck to be shipped there, you're stuck. Ordinary prisons in democratic societies work because of the cooperation of prisoners, most of whom, if they behave well, know they will eventually be freed. Not so in Guantanamo: there are the voiceless who, the American government has decided, do not deserve a trial. That's why, as Lord Steyn said, the American government made every effort to stop us from knowing what was happening there and that is why it is the responsibility of those who do have a voice in our world to let it be heard."
In the midst of the debate concerning whether the allegations against Woody Allen should affect how his work is received and celebrated, Damon Linker discusses the philosophical nihilism underlying Allen's work and its moral implications. He points to the 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which a married man who murders his lover in order to prevent her from disclosing their affair not only gets away with the crime but manages to entirely overcome his guilt and find happiness. In a 2010 interview with Commonweal magazine that Linker quotes, Allen explained the existential meaninglessness that he wanted the film to depict: "[E]veryone goes to his grave in a meaningless way.... [O]ne can commit a crime, do unspeakable things, and get away with it, and some of them are plagued with all sorts of guilt for the rest of their lives and others aren't. There is no justice..." Nihilism threatens to bring about a world in which anything becomes possible and permissible because we no longer see human life as having meaning. And yet, nihilism, as Hannah Arendt saw, can also be central to the practice of thinking and acting that creates meaning. For more on Woody's nihilism, see Roger Berkowitz's Weekend Read.
In an interview, comics artist expresses her ambivalence about love: "Well, love isn't an end in itself, no emotion is. Emotions are signposts directing you to actions, and the actions have varied consequences beyond the scope of the events that instigated them. I'm more interested in examining the state of being in love, of accommodating that feeling and attempting to legibly express it, than I am with mapping the initial process of a romantic attraction. If the lovers in my stories seem to struggle to connect with one another, it's because that's what being in love mainly entails, this ongoing mutual desperate groping for communion. I don't mean to argue that I think love isn't worthwhile! I think it absolutely is, but whether I think that or not, love and every other strong emotion will still be rampaging through the animal kingdom, kneecapping all attempts at independent decision-making, compelling us to conform our behavior to its purpose, which is mainly procreative. In fact the inevitability of it is reassuring. Pulling these things apart a little is beneficial, and I'd like to see it done more, but questioning a concept doesn't equate to rejecting it outright. I question it precisely because I believe in it so strongly."
Of Fear, Cowardice, and Courage
Linda Besner, striking an Arendtian note, wonders what it means that we have abandoned the idea of cowardice. One worry is that if we no longer speak of cowardice we may no longer be able to praise bravery. Besner suggests that contemporary definitions of bravery-facing down your own fears-are useful for self development, but not so much for living with others: "without a moral category of cowardice, are we really entitled to a category of bravery? The argument that Fear is Courage sounds unsettlingly Orwellian, and paves the way for the simple admission of fear to replace overcoming it. The emotional risks of facing one's feelings matter; but an inward-looking process focused on self-actualization is different from a sense of duty to the wider world. If cowardice consists in failing the collective, bravery may be said to inhere in taking personal risks for the greater good."
On Miracles, Agony, and Optimism
In the same special issues on "Generation" that elicited Carol Becker's reflections discussed last week, Jan Verwoert asks "why would Capital exploit the miraculous, if it was not for the fact that it is a source of infinite generative energy?" He writes, "Miracles happen always and everywhere. Art presents us with evidence of their occurrence daily, in the most mundane fashion: every little instant in which the mind clears, an intuition takes shape, you see what you couldn't see before, and what couldn't be resolved suddenly can be; in the spot where the writing got stuck the night before, words fall into place; the morning after, you meet someone by chance who opens a door and a project that seemed unrealizable yesterday goes through no problem; the fingers find their way across the key--or fretboard and a song is born; the painting that has been staring back at you for weeks or months now, half complete yet incompletable because it's evident that it lacks something but is impossible to see what-well, that canvas suddenly opens up, and within the shortest amount of time things shift into perspective and the work is done. This is a miracle. It cannot be achieved, or caused by any known means (drugs don't work). It occurs."
Matthew Shepard: The Murder and the Myth - A Discussion with Stephen Jiminez
Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 7:00 pm
Olin 102, Bard College
Learn more here.
Blogging and the New Public Intellectual - A Discussion with Tom Goldstein
Sunday, March 9, 2014 , 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Bard Graduate Center, NYC
Learn more here.
From the Hannah Arendt Center Blog
This week on the blog, Bill Dixon reflects on the "sandstorm of totalitarianism" that is based upon "loneliness as the normal register of social life, the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude, mass poverty and mass homelessness, the routine use of terror as a political instrument, and the ever growing speeds and scales of media, economics, and warfare." And in the Weekend Read, Roger Berkowitz explore truth, creativity, nihilism, and the affaire Allen.
Arendt on Resentment
Until now the totalitarian belief that everything is possible seems to have proved only that everything can be destroyed. Yet, in their effort to prove that everything is possible, totalitarian regimes have discovered without knowing it that there are crimes which men can neither punish nor forgive. When the impossible was made possible it became the unpunishable, unforgivable absolute evil which could no longer be understood and explained by the evil motives of self-interest, greed, covetousness, resentment, lust for power, and cowardice; and which therefore anger could not revenge, love could not endure, friendship could not forgive. Just as the victims in the death factories or the holes of oblivion are no longer "human" in the eyes of their executioners, so this newest species of criminals is beyond the pale even of solidarity in human sinfulness.
-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Although Hannah Arendt never dedicated an entire chapter or essay to the emotion, she was nonetheless well aware of the insidious pull of resentment. In The Origins of Totalitarianism resentment is mentioned 16 times.
Early in the Origins, Arendt writes, "The social resentment of the lower middle classes against the Jews turned into a highly explosive political element, because these bitterly hated Jews were thought to be well on their way to political power." Here resentment refers to the mobilization of mass antisemitism and the driving force behind the scapegoating of Jews.
By the end of Origins of Totalitarianism, in the lengthy passage quoted above, Arendt refers to resentment as one of many "evil motives" that had in the past made crimes understandable. With the advent of radical evil typical of the Third Reich, however, crimes against human plurality that could neither be punished nor forgiven could also not be explained away by unsavory human emotions and intentions. Here we can see a shift in meaning: in the beginning stages of Nazi occupation, resentment is an emotion that helps to make sense of antisemitic attitudes. With the advent of the death factories we find that evil human motives of self-interest, lust for power and resentment are no longer able to make sense of the world.
I find the ambiguity of the meaning of resentment in Arendt's work fascinating. Origins begins with a fairly common understanding of the emotion as a kind of envious grudge that seeks revenge. But it would be a mistake to understand resentment as the psychological essence of totalitarian rule. For although Arendt acknowledges the role resentment played in the mobilization of social attitudes of antisemitism, she also reveals the limits of human emotions within the Nazi program of destruction. Resentment is not the cause of human destruction. Rather she says,
Propaganda and organization no longer suffice to assert that the impossible is possible, that the incredible is true, that an insane consistency rules the world; the chief psychological support of totalitarian fiction—the active resentment of the status quo, which the masses refused to accept as the only possible world—is no longer there.
But where does resentment go, and what replaces it? Ironically, Arendt saw resentment as the last remnant of humanly recognizable relations—relations that were quashed as a requirement of totalitarian destruction.
To illustrate this point, near the end of the book, Arendt makes a distinction in the torture practices first performed by the Nazi Party's "Brown Shirts," the Sturmabteilung (SA) and later by Hitler's paramilitary, the Schutzstaffel (SS).
Whereas torture for the SA officer was provoked by a heated resentment against all those the SA guard perceived to be better than himself, torture of the magnitude required for the annihilation of a people—the kind that was effectively able to exterminate people long before they became biologically dead—was not the result of any human emotion. It was precisely the total lack of human emotion that enabled this atrocity. Arendt contrasts the irrational, sadistic type of torture driven by resentment and carried out by the SA to the rational calculations of the SS:
Behind the blind bestiality of the SA, there often lay a deep hatred and resentment against all those who were socially, intellectually, or physically better off than themselves, and who now, as if in fulfillment of their wildest dreams, were in their power. This resentment, which never died out entirely in the camps, strikes us as a last remnant of humanly understandable feeling (GH emphasis). The real horror began, however, when the SS took over the administration of the camps. The old spontaneous bestiality gave way to an absolutely cold and systematic destruction of human bodies, calculated to destroy human dignity; death was avoided or postponed indefinitely. The camps were no longer amusement parks for beasts in human form, that is, for men who really belonged in mental institutions and prisons; the reverse became true: they were turned into "drill grounds," on which perfectly normal men were trained to be full-fledged members of the SS.
I glean two points from this passage. First, Arendt believed that the human destruction perpetrated by the Third Reich was an exemplification of what she called the "banality of evil." This is to say that it was not pathologically sadistic and neurotically resentful and self-interested men, but rather "perfectly normal men" who, by following the rules, fulfilled the brutal logic of the Third Reich. Second, the annihilation of the Jews required cold calculation that in effect destroyed the very condition of possibility for resentment: human plurality. And this is where the irony of Arendt's thinking shines through: Resentment disappeared in the camps because understandable human sinfulness disappeared. Through this irony Arendt exposes her readers to a provocative ambiguity: Resentment appears in Origins as both the provocation of criminality and a vague remnant of human plurality.
-Grace Hunt
The Rationality of Breaking the Rules
Controversy is raging around Thomas Friedman's column today advising the presumptive Secretary of State John Kerry to "break all the rules."
In short, Friedman—known for his faithful belief that technology is making the world flat and changing things for the better—counsels that the U.S. ignore hostile governments and appeal directly to the people. Here's the key paragraph:
Let's break all the rules. Rather than negotiating with Iran's leaders in secret — which, so far, has produced nothing and allows the Iranian leaders to control the narrative and tell their people that they're suffering sanctions because of U.S. intransigence — why not negotiate with the Iranian people? President Obama should put a simple offer on the table, in Farsi, for all Iranians to see: The U.S. and its allies will permit Iran to maintain a civil nuclear enrichment capability — which it claims is all it wants to meet power needs — provided it agrees to U.N. observers and restrictions that would prevent Tehran from ever assembling a nuclear bomb. We should not only make this offer public, but also say to the Iranian people over and over: "The only reason your currency is being crushed, your savings rapidly eroded by inflation, many of your college graduates unemployed and your global trade impeded and the risk of war hanging overhead, is because your leaders won't accept a deal that would allow Iran to develop civil nuclear power but not a bomb." Iran wants its people to think it has no partner for a civil nuclear deal. The U.S. can prove otherwise.
Foreign policy types like Dan Drezner respond with derision.
Friedman's "break all the rules" strategy is as transgressive as those dumb-ass Dr. Pepper commercials. Worse, he's recommending a policy that would actually be counter-productive to any hope of reaching a deal with Iran. This is the worst kind of "World is Flat" pablum, applied to nuclear diplomacy. God forbid John Kerry were to read it and follow Friedman's advice.
I'll leave the debate to others. But look at the central assumption in Friedman's logic. If the leaders of a country don't agree with us, go to the people. Tell them our plan. They'll love it. But why is that so? For Friedman and so many of his brothers and sisters on the left and the right in the commentariat, the answer is: because our proposals are rational. Whether it is Friedman on Iran or Brooks on the economy or liberals on gun control or conservatives on the budget, there is an assumption that if everyone would just get together and talk this through like rational individuals, we would agree on a workable and rational solution. This is of course the basic view of President Obama. He sees himself as the most rational person in the room and wonders why people don't agree with him.
This rationalist fallacy is wrong. Neuro-scientists tell us that people respond to emotional and non-rational inputs. But long ago Hannah Arendt understood and argued that the essence of politics is neither truth nor reason. It is plurality and opinion. The basic condition of politics is plurality, which means people need to come together and pursue a common good in spite of their disagreements and differences.
For Arendt, Western history has seen politics had come under the sway of philosophy and thus the pursuit of rational truth instead of being what it was: a space for the public engagement of different opinions. The tragedy of the last 50 years is that philosophical rationality has now been supplanted by technocratic rationality, so that politics is increasingly about neither opinion nor common truths, but technocracy.
One lesson Arendt took from her fundamental distrust of unity and rationality was the importance of the diffusion of powers and her distrust of centralized power. Her embrace of American Constitutional Federalism was neither conservative nor liberal; it was born from her insistence that politics cannot and should not seek to replace opinions with truths.
Friedman wants rational truth to win out and believes that if we just talk to the people, the veils will fall from their eyes. Well it doesn't work here at home because people really do disagree and see the world differently. There is no reason to think it will work around the world either. A thoughtful foreign policy, as opposed to a rational one, would begin with the fact of true plurality. The question is not how to make others agree with us, but rather how we who disagree can still live together meaningfully in a common world.
Violence, and Thinking With Others
"All thought arises out of experience, but no thought yields any meaning or even coherence without undergoing the operations of imagining and thinking."
- Hannah Arendt, Thinking
In the wake of an extraordinarily brutal punctuation to an extraordinarily brutal year of gun violence in the United States and across the continent, the eye of American politics has finally turned back toward something it perhaps ought never have left, the problem in this country of the private ownership of the means to commit extraordinary brutality.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, public discourse around the problem has descended nearly instantaneously from fractiousness into what could now only generously be termed playground name-calling (to spend millions of dollars to publicly call one's opponent an "elitist hypocrite" should feel extraordinary, even if it doesn't). There are many tempting culprits to blame for this fall. The actors, of course, include some powerful players whose opposing ideologies so deeply inflect their understanding of the situation that it is entirely uncertain whether they are in fact seeing the same world, let alone the same problem within it. There is the stage on which the actors play, a largely national media structure whose voracious demands can be fed most easily, if not most effectively, by those who seek the currency of political power in hyperbole and absoluteness of conviction. Finally, there is the problem of constructing the problem itself: is it clear that private ownership of the means of extraordinary violence is so distinct a problem from that of its public ownership and (borderless) use? Can the line of acceptability between means of extraordinary brutality really be settled by types of implements, let alone the number of bullets in a magazine? What are the connections and disconnections between the events – Oak Creek, Chicago, Newtown,… – that have summoned the problem back onto our collective stage, and why had the problem disappeared in the first place when the violence so demonstrably had not? There is something in all of these instincts, but before we rush to decry our national theater (more Mamet than melodrama), it's worth remembering that the problem is an extraordinary one, and that many of the pathologies of our various reactions to it spring from the same seed as our best resources: the nature of thinking itself.
The rhetoric used in describing the problem of gun violence – formulated so readily and so intractably – coupled with the unavoidable connection of the problem with intense emotion make it tempting to suspect one's political opponents in this arena of ceasing to think altogether. I will admit to sometimes being convinced that there was no thought at all behind some of the words being splayed across television screens and RSS feeds (not, it should be said, entirely without reason). Arendt, in Thinking, describes thinking and feeling as inherently mutually antagonistic, and whether or not that is true it certainly seems that the tenor and pitch of the vitriol make thinking, let alone conversing, difficult. But that may point to a reality still more sobering than the perennially (and maybe banally) true observation that a great deal of what passes for public discourse did not require serious thought in its formulation: that when we deal with certain kinds of events, and try to engage in the process of translating them and reconstructing them into the form of a problem, we are running up against dimensions of the human experience so extraordinary that they shove us flatly against the limits of what we are able to do in thought. Perhaps the struggle now is less against a chronic inability to think, and more with recognizing the ways in which the limits of how we can feel and see and know – and then think – have created limits not just to how we can understand the problem, but to how we can understand each others' responses to it.
One permanent refrain in this debate is the culpability of violent media in generating cultures in which, it is said, such extraordinary brutality becomes possible (ignoring, it might be objected, that humankind has shown a rather vibrant aptitude for brutality for quite some time). The newest variation on this theme, which in structure has changed little since its revival by Tipper Gore and Susan Baker in the 1980s, is that violent video games, by wedding the sensation of the rapid pleasures of accomplishment unique to video games with a sense of agency in apparent violence have created a generation desensitized not just to images of extraordinary violence, but to the prospect of committing it oneself. A friend of mine who has good reason to be sensitive was so infuriated at the NRA's release of a mobile app promoting "responsible gun use" one month to the day after the Newtown shootings that he couldn't eat for several days.
If it is possible to set aside questions of titanically poor taste and worse (and its not clear that we should), there is something about this way of thinking about the problem of violent imaginaries that reflects what I am suggesting is an issue of pathologies arising from mental necessities.
There is little use denying that being intensively immersed in gaming environments (any gaming environments, and not just violent electronic ones) for extended periods of time can seriously, if usually temporarily, alter a person's phenomenal experience of their own agency and the realness of the world around them (I confess this as a recovering Sid Meier enthusiast myself). But the concept of de-sensitization is a difficult one in particular because, as Arendt points out, de-sensitization is precisely what thought does, and must do to carry out its work. Nowhere is this more clear than in those cases in which we are confronted with events that seriously strain the possibility of thinking about them at all.
Thinking about tragedies involves a twin process that need not, and should not, lessen the experience of their terribleness…but it always can. That twin process, as Arendt describes it, is one of de-sensation and re-sensation. When we try to think about what has occur, we have to call it up, we reproduce it "by repeating in [our] imagination, we de-sense whatever had been given to our senses." In remembering, we convert the data of our senses, including our common sense, into objects of thought. We do that in order to make them fit for the preoccupation of thought, our "quest for meaning;" in other words, re-sensation, the process of translation into narrative and metaphor by which facts become truths.
It's not difficult to see how extraordinary brutality challenges this double operation to the point of impossibility. On the one hand, this model of de-sensation by the reproductive imagination presumes a kind of voluntarism to the recollection, when often, and most especially in the cases like those of immediate victims where the stakes are highest, recollection comes unbidden, and far from de-sensing involves the cruel and incessant reiteration of sense that is renewed in all of its thought-destroying power. On the other hand, extraordinary brutality by its very nature resists re-sensation in proportion to its extraordinariness: to read the trial of Anders Breivik, for example, is to watch a play of the utter failure of not only the killer's own efforts at narrative, but those of every single speaking person involved. It is not a surprise that these trials test the law's own limited strictures of re-sensation to the breaking point, which often comes as nothing more than quiet acquittal (as with Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, in whose case international law was forced to confess the inadequacy of its categories).
What's more difficult to see is how that terrible challenge presented by extraordinary brutality to our very capacity to think is simultaneously a challenge to our politics, one perhaps graver still for our hope, as Arendt puts it in her Denktagebuch, to share a world with those with whom we must live. Extraordinary brutality makes a shamble of our narrating powers, and the failures of others to make sense of it which incite our scorn – as when, I will admit, even as someone who grew up in a gun culture, I literally cannot make sense of the suggestion that high-capacity magazines would be better combated by their increased prevalence in the school environment itself – are no less replicated by our own attempts, whether or not we can see and admit it. Imagination's other function, its most political function for Arendt, is to put ourselves in the place of others in order to more fully see the political world that confronts us. If this is true, then it is not our capacity to put ourselves in the place of a killer that most threatens our political capacity to respond, whatever the prevalence of this problem in popular discourse. This may often be an impossibility, but the stakes are much lower than that of the impossibility of putting ourselves in the places of others who are also trying – and like us mostly failing – to respond. In trying and failing to renarrate tragedy in order to construct political problems and solutions, we come up against the limits of our imaginations, limits are themselves defined by the bounds of our prior experiences and our thought itself. When it comes to the world of the gun (and here, I can only urge a look at the truly remarkable The Language of the Gun), we are running up against the reality that contemporary American polity covers experiences of the world divergent to such an extreme – how much, in terms of sensory experience in their personal history do David Keene and Alan Padilla share, really? – that answers truly are being constructed from worlds which, in the senses that matter to policymaking, don't overlap. And in an environment where that is true, the first, most critical order must be the one that is neglected most: not to analyze why our competing solutions are right or wrong, but to understand why the solutions we are proposing arise from the experiences of the world we have had, including our experiences of the tragedies we cannot re-sense.
Responses cannot be crafted out of worlds that are not shared, and tending to the former requires a kind of tending to the latter that we see vanishingly rarely, thought the torch still carried by a few radio producers and documentary filmmakers. Absent that kind of dedicated world-making – and perhaps that process requires a time and restraint that too is threatened by extraordinary brutality – we will simply be left with what we have, an issue politics without common sense because the only sense that is common, the event, is insensible. When they respond in ways we cannot abide, understanding our political others is an almost impossibly difficult task. It is also one that a polity cannot possibly do without.
-Ian Storey
Arendt & Gun Control
In The Stone yesterday Firmin DeBrabander references Hannah Arendt to buttress his argument for gun control in the wake of the tragic massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. I've wanted to avoid turning a true tragedy into a political cause, but DeBrabander's thoughtful essay merits a response.
The thrust of DeBrabander's reflection is that the presence of guns in society does not promote freedom. He is responding to the pro-gun argument that, in his words, "individual gun ownership, even of high caliber weapons, is the defining mark of our freedom as such, and the ultimate guarantee of our enduring liberty." In other words, guns make us independent and give us the power to protect ourselves and thus the freedom to take risks and to live boldly. Against this view he enlists Arendt:
In her book "The Human Condition," the philosopher Hannah Arendt states that "violence is mute." According to Arendt, speech dominates and distinguishes the polis, the highest form of human association, which is devoted to the freedom and equality of its component members. Violence — and the threat of it — is a pre-political manner of communication and control, characteristic of undemocratic organizations and hierarchical relationships. For the ancient Athenians who practiced an incipient, albeit limited form of democracy (one that we surely aim to surpass), violence was characteristic of the master-slave relationship, not that of free citizens.
Arendt offers two points that are salient to our thinking about guns: for one, they insert a hierarchy of some kind, but fundamental nonetheless, and thereby undermine equality. But furthermore, guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name — that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspirations: for, guns chasten speech.
I'll admit that I don't fully understand parts of this argument. First, yes, "violence is mute." Arendt does insist that violence cannot create conditions of political power. Power, on the contrary, has its roots in speech and action, by which Arendt means that any political regime lives upon the continuing support of its people, something that only persists amidst freedom. Political support does not issue from the barrel of a gun.
DeBrabander's last point that guns chasten speech is also suspect. Revolutionaries have long found guns helpful, not only because they can kill, but because they command attention. When weaker elements of society have been overlooked or overheard, they have traditionally found weapons and guns a useful megaphone. There are of course other megaphones like civil disobedience. I may prefer the latter to the former. But that doesn't erase the fact that guns can equalize an unequal political playing field and can, and often are, symbolically important. Political support may not issue from the barrel of a gun, but attention for one's platform might very well.
But what does any of this have to do with gun violence like what happened in Newtown last week? The muteness of violence in politics that DeBrabander highlights does not mean that Arendt thinks it possible or right to exclude all violence from society. Contra DeBrabander, violence can be associated with freedom. The human fabrication of the natural world—man's freedom to act into and build upon nature—is a kind of violence. And violence is, at bottom, an often justified and positive human emotional response to injustice. As Arendt writes in just one instance:
In private as well as public life there are situations in which the very swiftness of a violent act may be the only appropriate remedy. The point is not that this will permit us to let off steam—which indeed can be equally well done by pounding the table or by finding another substitute. The point is that under certain circumstances violence, which is to act without argument or speech and without reckoning with consequences, is the only possibility of setting the scales of justice right again. (Billy Budd striking dead the man who bore false witness against him is the classic example.) In this sense, rage and the violence that sometimes, not always, goes with it belong among the "natural" human emotions, and to cure man of them would mean nothing less than to dehumanize or emasculate him.
I am not sure why DeBrabander wants to employ Arendt to oppose violence itself. That is certainly not her point.
What Arendt opposes is the reliance on violence in politics. The massacre in Newtown is not, at least so far as I currently know, an example of political violence. Arendt's distinction between power and violence and her assertion that mere violence is politically mute seems, quite simply, out of place in the discussion of gun violence.
But Arendt does have something to offer us in our thinking about the excessive dangers of powerful guns. In her essay "On Violence," Arendt considers the rise of extraordinary new weapons like nuclear and biological weapons and robot warriors. These super-powerful weapons threaten to upend the usual relationship between power and violence. If traditionally the more powerful and hence more free nations were also better able to marshal the implements of violence, the existence of weapons of mass destruction mean that small, weak, and irresponsible nations can now practice violent destruction well beyond their relative power. In short, the existence of excessively destructive weapons elevates the impact of violence over and against power.
The same can be said of the kind of automatic and semi-automatic guns used in the Newtown massacre and other recent attacks. In each of these cases, loners and crazy people have been able to murder and kill with a precision and scope well beyond their individual strength or capacity. Whereas killing 27 people in a school would at one time have required the political savvy of organizing a group of radicals or criminals, today one disturbed person can do outsized and horrific damage.
What might be an Arendtian argument for gun control is based upon the dangerous disconnect between strength and violence that modern weaponry makes possible. When individuals are capable of extraordinary destruction simply by coming to possess a weapon and without having to speak or act in conjunction with others, we are collectively at the mercy of anyone who has a psychotic episode. It is in just such a situation that regulating weapons of mass destruction makes sense (and that is what automatic weapons are).
As for DeBrabander's larger point about freedom and guns, carrying a gun or owning a gun may at times be a legitimate part of someone's identity or sense of themselves. It may make some feel safer and may help others feel powerful. Some are repulsed by guns, others fetishize them. I have little stake in a debate about guns since they aren't part of my life and yet I respect those who find them meaningful in theirs. We should not reject such freedoms outright. What I worry about is not people owning guns, but their owning automatic and semi-automatic weapons capable of mass executions.
Let's concede that the vast majority of gun owners are good and responsible people, like Adam Lanza's mother seems to have been. Why in the world do we need to allow anyone to own automatic weapons with large clips holding dozens of bullets? If Adam Lanza had stolen a handgun instead of a semi-automatic, the trail of terror he left would have been shorter and less deadly. We cannot prevent all violence in our world, but we can make political judgments that weapons of mass destruction that put inordinate power in single individuals should be banned.
What Arendt's thoughts on violence actually help us see is not that we should expel violence from society or that guns are opposed to freedom, but that we should limit the disproportionate and tragic consequences of excessively violent weaponry that dangerously empowers otherwise powerless individuals to exercise massive injuries. We can do that just, as we seek to limit biological and nuclear weapons in the world.
The Marriage of Reason and Emotion
"We need to learn 'simplicity' and to unlearn 'the simplification of abstract thinking', to become fluent in the art and the language of 'concrete' thoughts and feelings, and thus to comprehend that both abstract notions and abstract emotions are not merely false to what actually happens but are viciously interconnected."
-Hannah Arendt: Introduction to J. Glenn Gray: The Warriors. Reflections on Men in Battle, New York: Harcourt 1970, p. viii
This is not a declaration of intent: passions and emotions play an essential role in Arendt's work.
In her book about totalitarianism Arendt described the "Eiseskälte", the ice-cold reasoning (Hitler), of the totalitarian ideology withdrawing itself from each concrete earthly world into the self-motion of the logic of abstract ideas, where no concrete feelings towards others existed anymore but only abstract feeling towards the own people, the nation or the enemy.
When there still existed any concrete feelings, then they were feelings of impotence, loneliness and of fear not to conform oneself in the right way to the coercive force of logicality but to contradict it. This fear according to Arendt can be compared with the fear of death.
The totalitarian ice-cold reasoning was already germinating in the early part of the 20th century after the catastrophe of WWI by "behavioral theories of coldness" (Helmuth Lethen), noticeable in the "Neue Sachlichkeit" (the New Objectivity) and the writings of Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn and Carl Schmitt, but also of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin.
Hannah Arendt criticized the coldness and addressed the warmth. She spoke of the impartial but not indifferent spectator of our common world which only appears through interpersonal relationships, and of passions accompanying the right use of reason: the critical attitude to the world, laughter as an emotion of thinking and friendship being more important than truth. Reading the police interrogations of Eichmann, Arendt had to laugh several times, "but loud!", because of the discrepancy between his words and deeds. At another occasion she highlighted Brecht's remarks about Arturo Ui in 1948 portraying Hitler: "The great political criminals must certainly be exposed, and preferably through ridicule. Because above all, they are not great political criminals, but the perpetrators of great political crimes, which is something utterly different." Very moved, in her book about the Eichmann trial, Arendt described the scene when the story of the rescuer Anton Schmidt was told: "A hush settled over the courtroom; it was as though the crowd had spontaneously decided to observe the usual two minutes of silence … which were like a sudden burst of light in the midst of the impenetrable, unfathomable darkness".
In her sympathetic characterization of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Arendt shows that critical thinking can go along with passions.
Lessing "never made his peace with the world in which he lived. He enjoyed 'challenging prejudices' and 'telling the truth to the court missions.' Dearly though he paid for these pleasures, they were literally pleasures. Once when he was attempting to explain to himself the source of 'tragic pleasure', he said that 'all passions, even the most unpleasant, are as passions pleasant' because, they make us ... more conscious of our existence, they make us feel more real."
More real were also the feelings of the French resistance fighters during WWII, the insurgents in Budapest in 1956 and all those spontaneously acting persons, whom Arendt always mentioned. To act, to dare the risk of entering the public space means to feel the reality more intensively, to be more alive. Her book Men in Dark Times deals with examples of this liveliness. In her 'Thought Diaries' Arendt wrote down: "An excess of reason is indifference: the created space makes an unbridgeable distance; the relation breaks off. An excess of feeling is destructiveness, together with the in-between, the object is being destroyed, even and particularly the loved object'." (1968)
In 1967 during the Vietnam War, Arendt wrote the introduction cited above for the new edition of her friend's book, The Warrior. Jesse Glenn Gray was a professor of philosophy at Colorado College and in 1957 published for the first time his memories of being a US agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps during WWII in Italy, France, and Germany. For Arendt it was a "singularly earnest and beautiful book", talking about "life and death, love, friendship, and comradeship, about courage and recklessness, about sensuality and the 'surge of vitality', about 'inhuman cruelty' and 'superhuman kindness', not as stereotypical opposites but as being simultaneously present in the same person." Especially moving, also for Arendt, is the description of the friendly encounter J. Glenn Gray had with an illiterate hermit in the Italian mountains who did not even know that there was a war going on. Glenn Gray was dismayed with himself after the encounter, for though he held a PhD in philosophy, he was left wondering what he actually knew about life?
-Wolfgang Heuer
Contending with Youth Crime
There has been much attention paid to the arguments before the Supreme Court concerning the 2010 health care law. And such attention is entirely justified, for the upcoming decision will have a decisive impact on the availability and quality of medical care for millions of Americans. But we should not forget another question that has recently come before the Court: whether it is constitutional for states to sentence juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole.
This case raises important questions not only about the purpose of criminal prosecution and incarceration, but also about our conceptions of personhood and the legal, moral, and other boundaries we construct between youth and adulthood. These issues have been on my mind a great deal these days: as part of my work with the Bard Prison Initiative, I am currently teaching a writing-oriented anthropology course entitled "Youth and Youth Politics" to two groups of incarcerated students. But they came even more pointedly to the fore as I was listening to the March 24th edition of NPR's "All Things Considered." This broadcast reported on a recent gathering that brought families of victims together with families of offenders sentenced to life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. Significantly, all those in attendance hope that the Supreme Court would declare such sentences unconstitutional.
If you have not already heard the report, I would recommend that you take a listen (and not merely read the text available on the NPR website). Aside from the power of the emotions expressed, I appreciate the way it neatly outlines and complicates the terms of debate. On the one hand, it presents the viewpoint of Scott Burns, head of the National District Attorneys Association, who sketches the potential reasons for long criminal sentences in starkly dichotomous terms. "Is it the goal [of prosecution and incarceration] to rehabilitate someone to see if they change? Or is the goal to do justice for the victims and others?" He inclines to the latter position, as is evident in the brief he filed that urged the Court not to overturn life sentences without parole.
On the other hand, the NPR report also includes the perspective of people like Mary Johnson, a mother whose son was shot and killed at a party by a sixteen-year-old boy. In the immediate aftermath, she regarded her son's killer as an "animal": "I wanted him charged with first-degree murder, imprisoned for the rest of his life." But she now contends that retribution and rehabilitation cannot be easily separated from one another, and she suggests that offenders should not be defined for the entirety of their lives by the crimes they committed as young people.
This report does not offer nuanced arguments for one position or another on the constitutionality of life sentences without parole. But by providing a vivid account of how some people have sought to work through, and live with, the conundrums of "juvenile crime," it offers a useful starting point for reflecting on our own moral intuitions.
You can listen to the excerpt here.
-Jeff Jurgens


text:
U.S. Army War College >> Strategic Studies Institute >> Publications >> Details
Time's Cycle and National Military Strategy: The Case for Continuity in a Time of Change
Authored by Dr. David Jablonsky.
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Every April the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute hosts its Annual Strategy Conference. This year's theme, "Strategy During the Lean Years: Learning from the Past and the Present," brought together scholars, serving and retired officers, and civilian defense officials from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to discuss strategy formulation during times of penury from Tacitus to Force XXI. Dr. David Jablonsky, Professor of National Security Affairs at the Army War College, posits that the current challenge is to understand the role of both change and continuity in the dual aftermath of the end of the Cold War and a great military victory in the Persian Gulf War. The seeming end to the threat posed by the East-West confrontation of the past fifty years notwithstanding, the international community still looks to the United States, the world s only superpower, for leadership. But, argues Dr. Jablonsky, the U.S. military is caught between having to trim its size and force structure on the one hand, while preparing for a plethora of nontraditional missions on the other. Dr. Jablonsky makes the case that despite the vastly changed world order, basic principles of international relations still apply, and the United States would be ill-served by abandoning those principles. The current U.S. national security strategy and its derivative national military strategy are, indeed, products of change and continuity resulting from the dynamics established in inter-state relations over the past fifty years as well as by the end of the Cold War. For whatever else may have changed, national security remains the primary duty of the nation-state and the responsibility for achieving that mission still belongs to the military.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Paramount Pictures
November 24, 2011
"Ghost Protocol" will play these special sessions in IMAX cinemas, VMAX at Event Cinemas, VMAX at Village Cinemas, Titan Screens at Reading Cinemas and Xtremescreen and IMAX at Hoyts locations around the country ahead of the broad national release on Thursday, December 15. These cinemas have been chosen to showcase this first look at the spectacular action sequences, daredevil stunts and stunning cinematography of the latest film in the "Mission: Impossible" series.
Directed by Oscar winner Brad Bird and featuring an all-star cast including Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Josh Holloway, Anil Kapoor and La Seydoux, "Ghost Protocol" has been described as the most inventive, action-filled and visually arresting yet.
In the film, the IMF is shut down when it's implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization's name. No help, no contact, off the grid.
You can watch a TV spot for the Australian release below:
« NBC apologizes to Michele Bachmann, 'severely reprimanded' Fallon band The Inside Man »


text:
HMS Northumberland (1798)
Destruction of the French Frigates Arianne & Andromaque 22nd May 1812.
The image shows the last stages of the Action of 22 May 1812. From left to right: Mameluck, Ariane, Andromaque and Northumberland.
|HMS Northumberland
|10 June 1795
|Barnard, Deptford
|Laid down:
|October 1795
|2 February 1798
|Honours and
|Broken up, 1850
|Hulked, February 1827
|General characteristics [2]
|Class and type:
|America class ship of the line
|Tons burthen:
|1907 (bm)
|182 ft (55 m) (gundeck)
|48 ft 7 1⁄2 in (14.821 m)
|Depth of hold:
|21 ft 7 in (6.58 m)
|Sail plan:
|Full rigged ship
HMS Northumberland was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at the yards of Barnard, Deptford and launched on 2 February 1798.[2]
Northumberland, Alexander, Penelope, Bonne Citoyenne, and the brig Vincejo shared in the proceeds of the French polacca Vengeance, captured entering Valletta, Malta on 6 April 1800.[3]
On 8 January 1801 Penelope captured the French bombard St. Roche, which was carrying wine, liqueurs, ironware, Delfth cloth, and various other merchandise, from Marseilles to Alexandria. Swiftsure, Tigre, Minotaur, Northumberland, Florentina, and the schooner Malta, were in sight and shared in the proceeds of the capture.[4]
Because Northumberland served in the navy's Egyptian campaign (8 March to 8 September 1801), her officers and crew qualified for the clasp "Egypt" to the Naval General Service Medal that the Admiralty authorized in 1850 to all surviving claimants.[Note 1]
Northumberland participated in the Battle of San Domingo (1806), where she was damaged, and suffered 21 killed and 74 wounded, the highest casualties of any British ship in the battle.[citation needed]
In 1807 Northumberland was part of a squadron under the command of Rear-Admiral Alexander Cochrane, who sailed in HMS Belleisle. The squadron, which included HMS Prince George, HMS Canada, HMS Ramillies and HMS Cerberus, captured the Telemaco, Carvalho and Master on 17 April 1807.[6]
Following the concern in Britain that neutral Denmark was entering an alliance with Napoleon, Northumberland participated in the expedition to occupy the Danish West Indies. The British captured St Thomas on 22 December and Santa Cruz on 25 December 1807. The Danes did not resist and the invasion was bloodless.
On 22 November 1810, Northumberland, while in the company of HMS Armada, a 74-gun third rate, captured the 14-gun French privateer ketch La Glaneuse.
She received a measure of fame when she transported Napoleon I into captivity on the Island of Saint Helena. Napoleon had surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of HMS Bellerophon, on 15 July 1815 and was then transported to Plymouth.[7] Napoleon was transferred in Tor Bay, Devon from the Bellerophon to the Northumberland for his final voyage to St. Helena because concerns were expressed about the suitability of the ageing ship. HMS Northumberland was therefore selected instead.[citation needed]
She was converted to a hulk in February 1827, and returned to Deptford to be broken up in 1850.[2]
Notes and citations[edit]
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 21077. pp. 791–792. 15 March 1850.
- ^ a b c Lavery, Ships of the Line vol.1, p185.
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 15717. p. 842. 7 July 1804.
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 15358. p. 447. 25 Apr 1801.
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 17915. p. 633. 3 April 1823.
- ^ The London Gazette: no. 16236. p. 330. 11 March 1809.
- ^ Tracy, N, Who's Who in Nelson's Navy: 200 Heroes, Chatham, 2006, p. 237
- Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
- David Cordingly, The Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon (Bloomsbury USA, 2003) ISBN 1-58234-468-X
- Lavery, Brian (2003) The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-252-8.


text:
|Reviews for Over You
| XxCliche-SpicexX chapter 14 . 7/4/2012
Wow that was a great read
| Choukou chapter 14 . 6/12/2012
Ah! That was so cute, cliche, but cute. It still managed to make my heart do funny things and I seriously had to hold back tears because I'm at work. Even though I'm taking a break, how bad would it have looked if I burst out into tears? :P
| Destiny2RoseClan chapter 4 . 1/21/2012
Yayy! Go Callie!
River, you sly dog... You and your romance and...strange nicknames xD
| LoveAntiquity chapter 14 . 1/21/2012
After your coments on how much you love your reviews, I could not possibly deny dropping you a line ;) I really enjoyed 'Over YOu' (River is scrumily yummy and very lovely), I'm glad they got their 'happily ever after.'Thank you for sharing!
| leavemeialone chapter 14 . 1/16/2012
I am so glad to see Charlie get over that stupid douchebag. I can't even believe how long River has liked her and he finally swooped in once they broke up. I seriously hate the douche. Charlie deserved a good guy. River sounds like such a dream. :)
| InkWitch chapter 14 . 1/7/2012
Strange. To me, the best part of the story was how mature every one was being. I always have a stupidly teenagerly reaction to everything, even when in my head I'm going like "COME ON. Stop being such a BABY." I just CAN'T act mature even if I think maturely. The whole time I was going like "Don't forgive him Charlie DON'T FORGIVE THE BASTARD" but then when she did I just went like, hmmm. Okay. That makes total sense. Why was I thinking so bitchy?
River is a total child.
| InkWitch chapter 9 . 1/7/2012
Nope, sorry, I hate her. Despise her actually.
Poor River :(
| InkWitch chapter 2 . 1/7/2012
What I love the most about this story so far is the best friend. Seriously. She's just AWESOME, and I love the fact that you only made one super close best friend rather than a whole bunch of friends. I don't want to sound horrible and cynical but I always believe that girls find it harder to make good and best friends because they're always so emotionally scary :P
| ffh chapter 14 . 12/18/2011
adorable .. absolutly loved it !
| Roman Candles chapter 14 . 12/10/2011
Love it!
| C.K.Genes chapter 13 . 11/19/2011
Chapter 13's opening line was amusing, ""I hate him," I said savagely, repeatedly stabbing my coffee ice cream with a spoon. At this point, I wasn't sure which him I hated, but saying it had a way of making me feel better. " It kinda reminds me of the beginning of the story, and it draws attention to the fact that history is seemingly repeating itself but not exactly... It also feels to me, that her grief is much more less than when she was dumped by Adam...
I love how the tide has changed, Adam is continuously sending her text messages saying things like "sorry" which is completely opposite to the text he sent her when the broke up asking about how to get Meghan back !
Again you can see River's playful personality, ""I'm sorry I'm bad, I'm sorry I'm blue, I'm sorry about all things I said to you," I looked at him, puzzled. Why did this sound so familiar? "And I know I can't take it back.""
One of my favourite lines in this chapter: "By the time the third phone call came about, I answered and reamed him a new one, telling him if he ever tried contacting me again, he would finally understand the meaning of sorry."
Alas, the finale chapter, Chapter 14:
I think that this chapter was good for an ending. No new problems, no resolutions, just a nice conclusion and show of Charlie and River's life after overcoming their problem in their relationship. I also like how you suggested the possibility of Callie overcoming her hurt from Jeff with Alex after she let it slip that she saw the christmas tree at his house. The way you showed that she was completely over Adam was great ! The ringtone and the lyrics, smart ;)
Overall I really liked this story as it made me laugh and get serious. I also liked how at times I could relate to the characters and I admire the different personalities of the characters. Kudos for not going on and on about her birth mother, instead mentioning it, and helping her get over it to some extent.
Good job ! I hope you continue to write more stories ! I shall look out for them ! Now excuse me while I go to pop some popcorn :)
| C.K.Genes chapter 12 . 11/19/2011
Now I'm up to reviewing Chapter 12. Is Adam going to show up ? Or was Chapter 9 the last of him ? :)
Haha I can definitely say that River and Tim are my favourite characters ! Despite the small appearances of Charlie's dad, he never fails to crack me up ! Again his blunt personality is apparent as he says to Char, "Charlotte. You're my daughter and I love you, but you need to stop acting like such a bitch and talk to your friend." Ahahahaha !
Thank goodness Charlie has realised that she is over Adam ! YESSSS ! Haha sorry about that. I just found the whole Charlie and Adam thing tiring.
Sigh. I know its realistic for a character to have insecurities but why River, why ? I like how Charlie was strong enough to threaten them to leave. I also like how she kept in her tears until she reached her apartment. To me, it shows that she has grown as a character, especially in this chapter, how she outright rejects Adam and is strong enough to talk back to River after his accusation. Great job ! :)
| C.K.Genes chapter 11 . 11/19/2011
Chapter 10: please please please do not hurt River :( I like him too much ! I think Charlie deserves someone who will treat her right, unlike Adam who treats her as a reserve.
Alright back to the reviewing, I'm amazed at how calm Charlie is when River bursts into her bathroom when she's in the bath! But then again, that is Charlie's character, and I guess she is just acting calm. I liked how you described River frantically trying to unknot the robe that she so tightly tied before walking out of the bathroom. I could picture the whole thing, them making out while River fumbles for the knot! Haha !
HALLELUJAH ! River FlNALLY confesses to her ! And Charlie FINALLY understands that he likes/loves her !
OMG Jeff just HAPPENED to 'forget' to mention that he was MARRIED ? When I read it, I was like, WHAT ? This was really unexpected, I thought Callie would say that he had a fiance or something, but MARRIED? Woah ! Step back ! And I cant believe all the things Jeff said to Callie about getting and divorce and stuff - how cliche. Now the only thing to do is keep reading to see if he really does divorce his wife or not !
In Chapter 11, I could really feel the conflict inside Charlie when she was contemplating on contacting Callie or not. I could also sympathise with her when she thought that it was the best friend's job to tell her the truth. I know how it feels as I've been in a similar situation with my friend.. Anyway, just wanted to say, a job well done ! :)
Haha you made me laugh when Charlie replied to River that she was in a hurry because they had to go before he changed his mind ! And I love River's character ! How he decided to ask her to prom depending on whether the ice cracked or not ! Too cute ! ;)
| C.K.Genes chapter 9 . 11/19/2011
Chapter 8: "It was never a game to me." aww come on Char ! When are you gonna realise he's in love with you ? Oops ! Haha sorry for being so perverted ! lol ! Its cute how they JUST slept next to each other though :) Aww finally they kiss when they are alone after so long ! I like the way you described their kiss, like a first kiss with someone, but for them, it's their second ? If you count the one at the shop that is...
OMG the nerve of Adam ! I cant believe he sent sunflowers to her office ! What a douche ! Even if its just a form of apology, seriously ! Dude you HAVE a girl, and its NOT Charlie ! Somehow you changed my annoyance to amusement as I read Char say to Alex, "You speak Male, I need you to translate." haha oh how I wish there was a dictionary to translate ! Alex is so funny, reminding her to bring the pictures ! Hahaha ! I like how you do that, create a serious atmosphere, but somehow make me break into a smile when something unexpected and funny happens ! And Charlie, dont you dare go to Adam, think of River and the roses ! :)
You got my hopes up in Chapter 9 when her phone vibrated ! But alas, it is Adam. Geeze cant that guy just leave her alone ? He lost his chance ! And WHY did Charlie keep reply ? She shouldnt have ! It just encouraged him more ! Argh ! But on the plus side, River is back ! :) I like how they understand each other so well that sometimes, some words are not needed.
When you said that Charlie woke up to the sound of someone screaming, I could feel her alarm and I felt suprised myself ! I would have never thought it to be his phone ! "If I have to listen to that go off again, I'm going to kill you. And it will mask your screams." haha this line made me laugh ! Spoken like a true sleep lover ! :)
I like how you described the meeting of Jeff and River, shaking hands and talking about hockey. Such typical manly actions. Lol ! I love how you seemed to always show a bit of Rivers character in each chapter, his cheekiness and playful nature can be seen - especially when he failed to mention to Charlie the hickey on her neck !
But reeallly ? Text Adam cause she misses having a connection with someone ? Sigh. Oh Charlie, cant you see River who has always been there for you ? :(
| C.K.Genes chapter 14 . 11/19/2011
Hello :) new reader here ! Honestly, despite the story having a cliche storyline with the whole best friend's brother, dumped broken hearted girl; I cant help but laugh while reading !
In Chapter 2, when River came up to her and said, "hey beautiful", I thought, 'ahhh !' I love the way you introduced him in the next chapter and that she dreamed of kissing him ever since she was thirteen ! wish fulfilled ! :)
The whole 'propositioned' thing was funny and Callie made me laugh out loud when she said, "My brother did pretty much volunteer to be your bedroom buddy." haha if I was her I would be pretty grossed out but I find it pretty amusing how calm she is with the situation !
My favourite lines in Chapter 4:" I shook my head... "Are you on something?"
"The couch," he admitted, as if telling me something secretive. "Is that bad?"" LOL ! Love it ! :) haha the way you described her house was great ! I could imagine all the lit candles and rose petals with the music playing softly in the background, but I never thought that River would be stripped down to his boxer briefs on her couch ! And it again reminded me of the conversation Charlie JUST had with River ! He is so sweet and I love the way he chose to comfort her, instead of saying sorry for making her remember what Adam did with the candles, River told her to make new memories instead, kinda implying to make them with him ! Aww ! Haha my lilypuff !
Honestly, I didn't really find Chapter 5 as amusing as the previous chapters, but I understand that this chapter was needed to show the beginning of their new 'relationship'. I hope you don't misunderstand, in no way was it boring, it just wasn't as funny as the ones before. But you made me smile when River said that he was going to help her make a 'new memory'. :)
When I read this in Chapter 6, you confirmed my suspicion. "I want you to be happy," he said. "And when I saw you in the coffee shop, staring at Adam like he'd just crushed all the happiness right out of you, I couldn't stand it, okay?" - oh honey he likes you ! Especially when she remembered him serial dating, "...almost like he was looking for something that he could never find. "
"You're not everyone else" - awwww !
I love Charlie's dad ! He's so blunt and to the point ! No going around corners ! "Enough," my father Tim interrupted gruffly. River only smiled at him. "Did you knock my Charlotte up or not?" If my dad said this to my boyfriend, I would have died with embarrassment ! But seeing it here in this story, made me laugh ! :) And he sounds like a child when he said, "What?" my dad grumbled, "You all want to know. There's no point in dancing around it."
Oh River you cute thing ! :) "I'm not Harry!" he shouted after her. "I'm Draco Malfoy." haha I love the frequent references to Harry Potter in Chapter 7 ! "Come home with me?" :O ooooh are they going to do what they think they're gonna do ? Haha ! Nice ending for the chapter !


text:
SDCC: "Gotham" Cast, Producers Tease Court of Owls, Cult of the Joker in S3
Comic Books, TV
Showing results 1-21 of 21
Avengers #28
Red Hulk takes on the X-Men in "Avengers" #28 -- he can't win (otherwise the crossover would come to an abrupt end), but how much damage can he do before Marvel's merry mutants stop him?
|July 30th, 2012
Everybody Loves Tank Girl #1
"Everybody Loves Tank Girl" #1 begins a new Tank Girl series by original creator Alan Martin and Jim Mahfood for an unbalanced first issue.
|July 30th, 2012
American Vampire #29
To try and root out vampires, Skinner Sweet and Pearl Preston pose as House of Un-American Activities Committee agents in Scott Snyder and Rfael Albuquerque's "American Vampire" #29.
|July 30th, 2012
Prophet #27
Once I realized "Prophet" #27 is like an epic poem in comics form, everything was fine. "Prophet" doesn't walk, talk or look like your average comic, but the rewards of reading it are equally unusual.
|July 30th, 2012
Axe Cop: President of the World #1
In "Axe Cop: President of the World" #1 by 8-year old Malachai Nicolle and his 31-year old brother Ethan, Axe Cop faces the possible return of bad guys and promises to help new friends Goo Cop and Junior Cobbb with their family issues.
|July 30th, 2012
Secret Avengers #29
Recovering from the "Avengers Vs. X-Men" crossover, "Secret Avengers" #29 sees the team short on Avengers, choosing to play up the secrets with an appearance by the new Masters of Evil.
|July 30th, 2012
Star Wars: Darth Maul -- Death Sentence #1
Tom Taylor writes some new adventures for everyone's favorite Zabrak Sith apprentice in "Star Wars: Darth Maul -- Death Sentence" #1, an issue that might surprise comic book readers unfamiliar with the "Clone Wars" animated series
|July 30th, 2012
Green Lantern #11
In "Green Lantern" #11, Hal Jordan gets a more inflated ego and Sinestro is freed from the Indigo Tribe's control, while Black Hand returns to Earth, gets some Chinese takeout and has dinner with his dead family.
|July 30th, 2012
Winter Soldier #8
"Winter Soldier" #8 marks a transition for the narrative, as set pieces move the players to new locations, making writer Ed Brubaker's slow pace build tension for the conclusion.
|July 27th, 2012
Justice League Dark #11
A few issues into their "Justice League Dark" run, Jeff Lemire and Mikel Janin have an excellent game plan as they layer mysteries and betrayal effortlessly.
|July 27th, 2012
X-Treme X-Men #1
"X-Treme X-Men" #1 by Greg Pak and Stephen Segovia has an interesting universe hopping adventure idea that's sadly buried in sloppy writing and art.
|July 27th, 2012
X-Men Legacy #270
"X-Men Legacy" continues to flounder under Christos Gage and David Baldeon, even as they try their best to tell smaller more personal stories related, but not critical, to "Avengers Vs. X-Men."
|July 27th, 2012
Uncanny X-Force #28
Rick Remender and Julian Totino Tedesco take X-Force to the future for "Uncanny X-Force" #28, a Psylocke-centric issue with the creative team's take on "Days of the Future Past."
|July 27th, 2012
Debris #1
"Debris" #1, written by Kurtis J. Wiebe with art by Riley Rossmo and Owen Gieni, is like a certain kind of blind date. It's gorgeous, but the conversation is awkward and slow, and you're heard it all before.
|July 26th, 2012
National Comics: Eternity #1
Jeff Lemire, Cully Hamner and Derec Donovan revive an old character in "National Comics: Eternity" and it's easily the best revamp formerly-Kid Eternity's had in ages.
|July 26th, 2012
Resident Alien #3
"Resident Alien" #3 brings Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse's first mini-series to a conclusion, but with more scheduled for later this year there isn't a sense of finality present.
|July 26th, 2012
Batman: The Dark Knight #11
Two issues into the updated creative team of Gregg Hurwitz and David Finch, "Batman: The Dark Knight" #11's story of the Scarecrow's latest experiment is turning out to be a hit.
|July 26th, 2012
Masks & Mobsters #1
Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson's "Masks & Mobsters" #1 is a cape/crime mash up that takes the tone of '50s pulp and blends it with modern story sensibilities in a fantastic manner.
|July 26th, 2012
Wolverine & the X-Men #14
"Wolverine & the X-Men" #14 lets Jason Aaron and Jorge Molina show us a side-story of "Avengers vs. X-Men" as Colossus and Shadowcat go on a date -- and unsurprisingly, disaster ensues.
|July 26th, 2012
"FF" #20 is now more than ever an overflow title for "Fantastic Four," its apparent purpose being to help Jonathan Hickman wrap up storylines like the Inhumans' status in the Marvel Universe.
|July 26th, 2012
B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Exorcism #2
"B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: Exorcism" #2 brings Mike Mignola and Cameron Stewart's story of a long term possession to an attractive-looking but slightly predictable conclusion.
|July 25th, 2012


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