Human Rights and Post Metaphysics Essay

It is, relatively speaking, easy to associate Hannah Arendt with postmetaphysical thinking, if only by virtue of her emphatic issues with the metaphysical.  Arendt’s highly controversial presence in modern political and philosophical thought largely arises from what may be termed a visceral unwillingness to accept the metaphysical actions and responses of the world within the 20th century’s most traumatic events, the Holocaust, the two World Wars, and the subsequent trial of Adolf Eichmann.

She simultaneously applauds the Justices in the Eichmann trial, for example, while criticising their – to her – abject failure to comprehend the scope of the criminality.  This latter element goes to Arendt’s dissatisfaction with the metaphysical models employed in that case, which in turn would suggest a human rights essay theory relying on the postmetaphysical. There is a duality here, nonetheless, actually and inherently opposed to metaphysics.  On one level, Arendt champions the idea of a “broader” evil, one both exceeding any traditional conceptions and going beyond accepted explanations for monstrous behavior.

Eichmann’s crimes are too expansive to be judged by standards of the past, simply because they represent crimes against the state of all humanity.  On another level, however, and importantly, Arendt holds to evil as banal only in terms of a lack of specifically evil intent; no matter the degree, it is marked by an ordinariness because no agenda reflecting established ideas of malevolence applies.

Postmetaphysics essay exists to question the foundations of metaphysics, and essentially replace fundamental belief with an acceptance of fallibility as inescapable in all considerations of the world as humans know it.  Arendt, however, insists on something of a new metaphysical conception of human rights because she so adamantly demands that the unprecedented type of evil from an Eichmann be defined as a distinct quality or reality.

This is a philosopher then seeking, not a postmetaphysical concept, but an expanded metaphysical one; in essence, Arendt’s ideas of human rights still hold to basic thinking, but nonetheless identify a threat to them which, if novel, remains intact as emphasizing a rational reality human beings may know.  She dismisses the metaphysics in place, but only because they are insufficient for her, and a dispute with a philosophy does not equate to a rejection of it.  It may well be that Arendt wishes to convey a postmetaphysical ideology.  What she does instead, however, is promoted only a broadened platform of the conception of human behavior, and an approach to human rights fully in keeping with metaphysical thought.

Discussion

To understand how and why a potential human rights theory of Arendt would not be  postmetaphysical, it is, of course, necessary to examine the nature of her approaches and thinking in regard to human rights as she perceives them.  Clearly, Arendt’s focus is the abuses of human rights as perpetrated through the 20th century, her emphasis on the Holocaust.  If she employs antisemitism as a paradigm for her explorations of human conduct and human rights violations, Arendt nonetheless, and admirably, tends to expand her focus.  Even as she addresses the rise of the Nazis, for instance, she takes the time to investigate the motives going to one population’s detest of another; more exactly, she explores the mechanisms guiding human action as violating human rights.

Interestingly,  Arendt observes that the apex of antisemitic feeling in Germany occurred after the Jews had largely been stripped of power, and this goes to an Adlerian point of view; as she notes, the lack of power of the Jews coexisted with wealth, and this was perceived as a threat to the society.  Arendt does not discount “mean-spiritedness” as fueling the hatred, but she also observes that, as wealth without power is typically seen as parasitical, the society is then prone to despise such holders of wealth (Arendt 1973: 5).

She also and exhaustively traces the “utility” of Jews in Europe, from serving as bankers for the monarchies from feudal eras to the end of the 19th century.  The consistent element of the population, however, and no matter the European nation or period, is apartness.  This is a population utterly unique, in that for centuries it was simultaneously inter-European and consistently non-nationalist (Arendt 1973: 22).  Moreover, and for Arendt, Jews were a kind of barometer for social stability; they could be used and accepted as an expression of maintaining order, just as immense conflict generated disregard and, ultimately, contempt for them.

What is interesting in all of this is Arendt’s commitment to specific motive.  She is most certainly touching upon human rights as she documents the various ways in which nations both exploited Jews and accepted them as distinct and distanced populations.  There is in fact an undercurrent in her writing going to a perpetual, if varied in intensity, form of subjugation, and denials of basic entitlements.

At the same time, Arendt seems intent on probing rationales, rather than simple racial or ethnic bias, as accounting for the treatment.  She examines multiple facets of European history to note the trajectories of interaction and accommodation, and also of misguided hopes fueled by desperation.  The Jews are, for her, invariably vulnerable by virtue of their presences as accepted only when nations are enabled to function normally.  With international conflict comes a blatant disregard, and a “life or death” mentality with no room for them.

Consequently, the Jews seek to survive through precarious links to the society itself. When, for example, Arendt traces the fall of German Jewry, she holds to the people in question as having clung to various conditions of being which would affirm their “humanity” and thus save them from the coming destruction; the status of being a veteran, for instance, or being the child of a father who died for Germany in World War I (Arendt 1973: 22).  Nonetheless, in none of this does Arendt turn to actual hatred as promoting the abuse of Jews.  It is then a profoundly metaphysical, if not outright pragmatic, approach to a process of human rights abuses.

It is then necessary to turn to Arendt’s assessment of the Eichmann trial, which may be seen as her penultimate approach to human rights, to determine if she is inclined at all to a postmetaphysical view.  What famously emerges in this account is Arendt’s mistrust of, if not disdain for, a prosecution intent on establishing evil as Eichmann’s true motive or nature.

It was of course frustrated by Eichmann’s persistent declarations of never having killed at all, and of being guilty only of abetting the state, as was his duty, in the annihilation of Jews and other marginalized populations.  Arendt is disturbed that the prosecution wastes a great deal of time in trying to prove, for example, that Eichmann himself once killed a Jewish boy (Arendt 2006: 22).

Thus it is evident that Arendt takes extreme issue with a metaphysical approach here, in that the prosecution was insistent on proving absolute malice as the source of Eichmann’s crimes.  It is to her an antiquated and inapplicable perspective, which in turn goes to Arendt’s novel perception of what may be termed a “new evil,” one based only in utter disregard for human rights and not necessarily prompted by hatred.

The Eichmann court failed in her eyes because it operated from a conceptual base grossly inappropriate to the case, and consequently unhelpful – at best – to any future securing of human rights or punishment of abuses to them.  This is the banality, and it is a powerful and disturbing concept.

It is not, however, distanced from metaphysics, and it is then arguable that an Arendt conception of human rights would not be postmetaphysical in any real sense of the meaning. This is seen in a variety of criticism offered by Arendt herself as to the Eichmann scenario. She takes issue, for example, with a variety of external factors of the case, as she remarks upon the press as losing interest in the trial after several weeks (Arendt 2006: 8).

Arendt also objects, and strenuously, to how the court seemed to rely on its aspect of theatricality, presenting a gruesome “play” for the world to witness, and then degenerating into a “bloody show” (Arendt  2006: 9).  At the heart of the trial was, of course, the gross abuses of human rights, but Arendt’s concern is that the processes of jurisprudence be absolutely adhered to, and that no emotional impact be permitted to obfuscate or detract from the crucial purpose.

Arendt herself concludes her assessment of the Eichmann trial by reiterating the objective of any tribunal; it is in place only to serve justice, consider the realities, and mete out appropriate punishment (Arendt 2006: 258).  Given that the core of the affair is human rights, this is as metaphysical view as may be conceived.  Put another way, Arendt’s focus on the integrity of the proceedings reflects a dismissal of the evil as agent in any form, and this, in turn, relies on a conception of human rights as an unquestionable reality.

If one human being is in some fashion responsible for murders, the actions are irrefutably criminal, the criminality lies in the ignoring of human rights, and Arendt’s insistence on this as the guiding mechanism of such a trial then affirms a distinctly metaphysical view.

It may be argued that Arendt’s thinking touches upon the postmetaphysical, by virtue of how radically she redefines both evil and its presence as evolving in 20th century humanity.  For Arendt, this is a reality generated by totalitarianism, in that the political ideology has transformed ideas of human worth itself.

In a postmetaphysical manner, she asserts that totalitarianism created, not merely changes in the ways people act with one another, but changes in human nature itself, and of a kind distorting or obviating the idea of the human individual as meaningful (Lara 2001: 246).

This may then be seen as leading to a postmetaphysical theory of human rights; in a changed humanity, it is then necessary to redefine the subject, and likely in a manner avoiding precise definition because the human nature itself is perceived as mutable.