In We Refugees, Hannah Arendt primarily talks about the real struggle of the refugees, based on a bunch of historical evidences. Arendt starts the whole article with the refugees’ unwillingness of being refugees--what they want is be ordinary people in the new country. But their special identity and previous experience, it’s extremely hard for them to achieve the normality that they've been seeking. According to the article, “We started our new lives and tired to follow as closely as possible all the good advise our saviors passed on to us. We were told to forget; and we forgot quicker than anybody could imagine… the new country would become a new home.” Nonetheless, albeit the refugees’ willingness to forget their language, culture, their …show more content…
Based on the long dark history of persecution of Jewish people, I totally understand the author’s pain and her willingness to forget her culture and identity, but I just want to point out that even if it’s possible for Jews really get rid of their current identity, they might still have a multitude of new problems to …show more content…
At the right beginning of the essay, she questions that “How can I tell right from wrong, if the majority of my whole environment has prejudged the issue? Who am I to judge? ” and “To what extent, if at all, can we judge past events or occurrences at which we were not present?” Throughout the essay, Arendt keeps examining the relationship among human being’s morality, responsibility, and ability to make judgment that is purely personal. “Unfortunately, it seems to be much easier to condition human behavior and to make people conduct themselves in the most unexpected and outrageous manner, than it is to persuade anybody to learn from experience,.... that is, to start thinking and judging instead of applying categories and formulas which are deeply ingrained in our mind.... whose plausibility resides in their intellectual consistency rather than in their adequacy to actual events. “ Under dictatorship or within today’s political atmosphere, more often than not, people tend to effortlessly say “Yes”, rather than say “No”; because people make judgment based on “preconceived standards, norms and general rules’, in additional to moral consequences that they have witnessed or been told. The judgment by no means can be called
“Modern anti-Semitism, in contrast to earlier forms, was based not on religious practices of the Jews but on the theory that Jews comprised an inferior race. Anti-Semites exploited the fact that Jews had been forced into exile by extolling as ‘fact’ that their ‘rootlessness’ had a genetic basis. A Jew was a Jew not because he or she practiced any particular religion, but because it was a character of his or her blood.”
First , when refugees flee their homes they are put on a boat to a different place . When Ha and her family got on the boat she said “ Everyone knows the ship could sink , unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest “ . When Ha fled her home , she was upset she had to leave her things behind . Plus she had to leave some of her father’s things too , her mother said “ We cannot leave evidence of father’s life that might hurt him “ . It’s pretty hard for them to flee their homes because that was their home where they were born at , I know when i moved houses or states i’m sad . At least they find better homes now and they don’t have to deal with the wars .
Refugees share similar experiences and emotions when they move to a new country. The book Inside Out and Back Again splits these feelings into two categories, “inside out” and “back again”. Refugees from around the world experience these feelings. For instance, it is easy for a refugee to feel “inside out” when learning a new language, or they can feel “back again” when they find a familiar object that reminds them of their past. Many refugees mainly struggle with learning a new language, but to make them feel more comfortable, they can find satisfaction in items from their home land.
Stavans, I. (2005). Assimilation and Jewish Ethnic Identity. The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography, Rpt. In Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Uma Kukathas. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Contemporary Issues Companion. Retrieved Apr 4, 2014, from http://ic.galegroup.com.proxy.hvcc.edu:2048/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&prodId=OVIC&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=false&displa
Living without loved ones and their precious belongings will make refugees face the point of turning “inside out”. All refugees have lost loved ones and their precious belongings. For many refugees they lose their parent’s or siblings. Some don’t have family there anymore so they lose their belongings that remind them of their home, family, and country.
Elie Wiesel’s hope, as well as the rest of the hundreds of Jews’, diminishes tremendously. They originally suppress their
There was light inside the container. He looked around. Two dozen anxious faces stared at him. It seemed he wasn’t going to make this part of the journey alone.” This text evidence supports the idea because when you are surrounded by refugees who live a life completely different from yours, it might be okay to them to do something that might never ever be done in your country.
Regine Donner, a famous Holocaust survivor, once said, “I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, and never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, and my Zionist idealism” (“Hidden Children”). Jewish children went through a lot throughout the Holocaust- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Life was frightening and difficult for children who were in hiding during the rule of Adolf Hitler.
During World War II, the Nazi regime, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, attempted to eliminate all the Jews and other “inferior peoples” of Europe. The Nazis and their collaborators killed millions of people, including six million Jewish people and other minority groups, such as 200,000 gypsies and 200,000 disabled people ("Introduction to the Holocaust”). This terrible period in history is now referred to as the Holocaust ("Background to the Holocaust”). A young girl named Anne Frank wrote one of the most notable Jewish texts from this period. Her optimism about the future should inspire the resolution of the modern religious and racial conflicts which stem from WWII era prejudices.
Introduction Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous, especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to, but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority; for example, the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience, reflecting how this can be destructive in real life experiences. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid, hence useless.
(36) The first part of the Morality Lectures 1995, given by Arendt at New School, was published as "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy." In Social Research, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Winter 1994), pp. 739-64. The other three parts remain unpublished as "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy". Morality Lectures 1965, New School for Social Research, Hannah Arendt's Papers, The Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, container 45. We will take the following systematic: 'Some Questions of Moral Philosophy I' for the part published and 'Some Questions of Moral Philosophy II' for the unpublished one. This quotation is in 'Some Questions of Moral Philosophy II' 024633.
Ordinary people are willing to go against their own decision of right and wrong to fulfill the request of an authoritative figure, even at the expense of their own moral judgment and sense of what is right and wrong. Using a variety of online resources including The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram this paper attempts to prove this claim.
Hannah Arendt was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. After witnessing the atrocities of both World Wars and the worldwide tension during the Cold War, no concepts or theoretical understandings of the crimes and events that occurred were developed, inciting Arendt to comment on political violence. She considers these events to be a failure of politics and tradition. However, On Revolution seeks to provoke revolutionary thought, ideally with society reverting to the opulence of public life and politics as seen in Ancient Greece. Modern warfare echoes that of Roman antiquity, as we begin to see justifications of these conflicts, with rationalisation of violence accepted by society, seeing the amalgamation of violence and politics, as Marx highlights. Therefore, this structural violence must overcome with an overhaul of the political realm, with emphasis on speech, conversation and debate, creating radical upheaval and reform. Arendt emphasises this separation of politics and violence with great conviction, as politics in the modern world has greatly failed humanity as evidenced through the atrocities of the 20th century. This goes against the theories of Marx, who argues that the ruling class’ violence struct...
First, I will look at Arendt’s criticism of violence. She believes that violence is not an idle concept. It needs to be justified by ethics and philosophy and often cannot be referred to without regard to
In relation to social transformation I have gathered materials that focusses on programs provided for ‘refugees’ living in New Zealand. The purpose of my findings are based on the societies support for ‘refugees’ in terms of human security and directions of life before settling in their new destination. There are stories about ‘refugees’ that need to be shared and stories that need to be forgotten, because it can produce controversy within the society or the universe. But where can these ‘refugees’ go if the place they call home is unsafe or too risky for the lives of their families and for themselves. It’s hard enough to migrate into a new country, but it is devastating for refugees who have experienced the loss of homes and loved ones.