Assignment task: This assignment is divided into 3 parts complete each one after reading the lectures.
Part 1: read the lecture and answer the worksheet.
Illegitimate Power
Our earliest historical records show us that not all rulers were legitimate. Often power was seized in a way that constituted an abuse of the tradition of a particular society. The succession of Fryptian dynasties, for example, indicates various struggles for control that went on for thousands of years. In Greece, the title of the tyrant was not, as it is with us, the name for a tyrannical ruler but for one who had seized power over the city-state by means that were not sanctioned. The struggle between Saul and David over who was anointed by God suggests how complex the question of who is the rightful ruler can become. Shakespeare's plays, the First and Second Parts of King Henry IV attempt to explore how a new form of legitimate kingship and therefore power can arise after a legitimate king Richard II-is overthrown and murdered. In the eighteenth century, many thinkers in France and the American colonies expanded their ideas about the foundations of government and the nature of the sovereign. In particular, they asked what would be required to establish a legitimate ruling power. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Jefferson agreed that what was required was the consent of the governed.
Our more recent awareness of illegitimate power is not focused on usurpations or lack of representation or palace revolutions. Instead, the instances of the exercise of illegitimate power many people find most vivid in recent history are slavery and the Holocaust. Through this unit's texts and worksheet, we will consider slavery and genocide, two variants of enslaving others through the illegitimate use of power that were both at one time legal.
The situations of the Holocaust and slavery raise some similar issues. In both circumstances, the perpetrators considered the victims to be of a different species. The Jews and African Americans were viewed as objects rather than as persons.
There are also significant differences. Historically, one justification made for slavery contends that certain beings are better off as slaves because they cannot take care of themselves in the world. Thus, this justification goes, it is the role of the master to rule the slave for his or her good. Aristotle presented a classic example of such a justification.
He claimed that certain people are slaves by nature. He argued that some people cannot reason for themselves but can follow the direction of others who can use their reason. Such people are the natural slaves, and it is to their benefit to be ruled. Aristotle was in fact taking a progressive step in his time by distinguishing between those who were enslaved by conquest and who were not necessarily natural slaves and those who were slaves by nature. Aristotle was probably thinking of people we consider as having various mental disabilities.
Furthermore, his approach places great responsibility on the master to care for those in his or her power. However, Aristotle's argument was used in Europe and in the United States to justify even the most horrifying forms of slavery. The Nazis' justification for enslaving and exterminating Jews, Gypsies, and people from many other ethnic groups was somewhat different. They contended that many groups of people were inferior and could and should be enslaved and ultimately exterminated in order to further the development of a specific elite race. These inferior peoples included Slavs, Jews, Africans, and Gypsies.
The texts for this unit consider the perspective and frame of mind of the perpetrators of such crimes. What does it mean to enslave another person or to commit genocide? The readings suggest that a person can act either intentionally or thoughtlessly in exercising power unjustly. Olaudah Equiano sees the slave owner's action as intentional; Hannah Arendt considers the action of a particular Nazi leader, Eichmann, to have been in an odd way thoughtless, almost mechanical. We must ask how one could be thoughtful about enslaving others. And also, we must ask how one could be thoughtless about such a task as exterminating a people. As we consider these things, we can also think about examples of both the considered and the thoughtless abuse of power as we have seen it arise in the discussion process itself. What do the dynamics of our own group reveal to us about the exercise of power in human relations?
As we form a discussion group, the traditional role of the Icader or teacher or professor is modified. In our day-to-day experience, the location of power is built into many of our activities. This presence of power gives the person or persons holding it an essential and therefore legitimate role to play. A president or governor signing bills into law or making political appointments, a policeman directing traffic, or a referee at an athletic event are instances of someone possessing and exercising legitimate power. In the army, there is a hierarchy of ranks, each of which has a specific role and therefore the power to accomplish certain tasks. These are roles that possess power because of the structure of our society. There are also more conditional situations. There are people with specific forms of expertise. When that knowledge is required, we all defer to the authority of the person or profession and bestow power for longer or shorter periods of time. Lowever, a discussion ditfers from either of these situations. It changes our expected roles and its evolution invites us to rethink our attitudes about power and its use and abuse.
An example may make this clearer. In a recent discussion class, a group of first-year college students was engaged in a highly cooperative and sustained exploration of a text and a topic. The leader was delighted that he could hold back and watch the discussion evolve.
Suddenly, a student spoke up and entirely changed the direction of the conversation. Startled, the leader and others moved it back to the question the group had been pursuing. Afterward, the student somewhat indignantly approached the discussion leader. The student wanted to know why the leader had acted that way since the leader had told the class at the start of the term that the group had to share responsibility for the direction and success of the discussions. The student believed that he was doing just that. The student had wanted to change the direction of the exploration and had taken the initiative to do so. This is an interesting case of power misused. The student acted without any thought of the needs and progress of the rest of the group. The student wanted something to happen and, somewhat unknowingly, treated the other members of the group as objects. He thought he was being helpful.
Several examples of abuse can occur within a discussion. For instance, a participant can refer to a passage in the text in a seemingly helpful way. However, sometimes in a discussion, a participant is actually using a textual reference as a device to assert power over the discussion. Another instance occurs when we entirely neglect to respond to what someone has just said. We speak as if that person had not spoken, as if the other participant were making noise that we simply ignore. These are brief episodes that can happen either intentionally or unthinkingly and that may seem insignificant. However, they contain the seeds of the deeper issues explored in the texts.
Worksheet:
The texts by Equiano and Arendt take up horrifying examples of the illegitimate use of power and its effects both on those over whom it is exercised and on those who employ it. The unit's introduction suggests that the problem of illegitimate power is also one we must consider in situations closer to home, even in our everyday interactions with one another. In the worksheet, we consider roles in which power is held legitimately and ask how likely it is in each that the legitimate use of power might verge into an abuse of power.
1. The following people hold power over others either generally or in certain situations. How would you rank them with regard to how likely it is that they would abuse their power? Rank each position on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least likely to abuse power and 10 being the most likely.
a) Doctor
b) Federal prosecutor
c) Military official
d) Prison guard
e) Teacher
f) Police officer
g) Psychiatrist
h) State governor
i) Biological parent
j) Stepparent
2. Choose an item that you ranked with a 1 (or the item to which you gave your lowest ranking) and an item that you ranked with a 10 (or the item to which you gave your highest ranking).
Briefly explain your ranking of these items.
3. After reading the texts, write 3 opening questions about the lecture.
Part 2: Read the following lectures and answer the questions at the end.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African by Olaudah Equiano
These practices were not confined to particular places or individuals. In all the different islands in which I have been (and I have visited no less than 15), the treatment of slaves has been nearly the same. Indeed, the history of slavery in one island or even on one plantation might well serve as a history for the whole practice. The slave trade destroys men's minds and hardens them to every feeling of humanity. For I refuse to believe that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men. No, it is the result of this mistaken greed that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into bitter gall. Had these men pursued different activities, they might have been as generous, as tenderhearted, and as just as they are now unfeeling greedy, and cruel. Surely, this trade in slaves cannot be good. It spreads like a disease and changes everything it touches. It violates the first natural rights of mankind equality and independence.
The practice of slavery gives one man a rule and a dominion over his fellow men that God could never have intended. It raises the slave owner to a state far above a human being, for it forces the slave into a position below it. One pretends to be a god, the other is made an animal. Through the arrogance of human pride, it places a difference between them that is immeasurable in distance and endless in time. Yet how mistaken and self-defeating is even the owner's greed! Are slaves more useful by being made animals than they would be if they were allowed to be men? When you make men slaves, you take away half of their virtue and ability.
And by your own action, you set for them the example of fraud, rape, and cruelty. You force them to live in a state of war with you, and then you complain that they are not honest or faithful. You beat them, you keep them ignorant, and then you claim that they cannot learn.
You claim their minds are such poor soil that education would be lost on them. Yet they come originally from a climate where nature has given great riches to everything. Should we think that men from there alone were left unfinished and incapable of enjoying the treasures nature has poured out for them? Such a claim is absurd!
Why do you use those instruments of torture? Should one rational being use them on another? Aren't you ashamed to see people of the same nature as you brought so low? And aren't there great dangers for you in treating others this way? Aren't you always afraid of revolt by them? But by changing your conduct and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, intelligent, and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness would be yours.
1- Write a summary of the reading including details and reasoning.
2- Write 2 questions with which you would like to start a discussion about the reading.
Part 3: Read the lecture and complete the questions.
Banality and Conscience by Hannah Arendt
There is of course no doubt that the defendant and the nature of his acts as well as the trial itself raise problems of a general nature that go far beyond the matters considered in Jerusalem. 1 have attempted to go into some of these problems in the Epilogue, which ceases to be simple reporting. I would not have been surprised if people had found my treatment inadequate, and I would have welcomed a discussion of the general significance of the entire body of facts, which could have been all the more meaningful the more directly it referred to the concrete events. I also can well imagine that an authentic controversy might have arisen over the subtitle of the book; for when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon that stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not lago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III "to prove a villain." Lixcept for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing. It was precisely this lack of imagination which enabled him to sit for months on end facing a German Jew who was conducting the police interrogation, pouring out this heart to the man and explaining again and again how it was that he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in the S.S. and that it had not been his fault that he was not promoted. In principle, he knew quite well what it was all about, and in his final statement to the court he spoke of the "revaluation of values prescribed by the [Nazi government." He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness-something by no means identical with stupidity that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is "banal" and even funny- -if with the best will in the world, one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Lichmann-that is still far from calling it commonplace. It surely cannot be so common that a man facing death, and, moreover, standing beneath the gallows, should be able to think of nothing but what he has heard at funerals all his life, and these "lofty words" should completely becloud the reality of his own death. That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together that, perhaps, are inherent in man -that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem. But it was a lesson, neither an explanation of the phenomenon nor a theory about it.
Seemingly more complicated, but in reality far simpler than examining the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil, is the question of what kind of crime is actually involved here; a crime, moreover, which all agree is unprecedented. For the concept of genocide, introduced explicitly to cover a crime unknown before, although applicable up to a point is not fully adequate, for the simple reason that massacres of whole peoples are not unprecedented. They were the order of the day in antiquity, and the centuries of colonization and imperialism; the English deliberately rejected such procedures as a means of maintaining their rule over India. The phrase has the virtue of dispelling the prejudice that such monstrous acts can be committed only against a foreign nation or a different race. There is the well-known fact that Ilitler began his mass murders by granting "mercy deaths" to the "incurably al," and that he intended to wind up his extermination program by doing away with "genetically damaged" Germans (heart and lung patients). But quite aside from that, it is apparent that this sort of killing can be directed against any given group, that is, that the principle of selection is dependent only upon circumstantial factors. It is quite conceivable that in the automated economy of a not-too-distant future, men may be tempted to exterminate all those whose intelligence quotient is below a certain level.
Of course, it is important to the political and social sciences that the essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men and thus to dehumanize them. And one can debate long and profitably on the rule of Nobody, which is what the political form known as bureaucracy truly is. Only one must realize clearly that the administration of justice can consider these factors only to the extent that they are the circumstances of the crime; just as, in a case of theft, the economic plight of the thief is taken into account without excusing the theft, let alone wiping it off the slate. True, we have become very much accustomed by modern psychology and sociology, not to speak of modern bureaucracy, to explaining away the responsibility of the doer for his deed in terms of this or that kind of determinism. Whether such seemingly deeper explanations of human actions are right or wrong is debatable. But what is not debatable is that no judicial procedure would be possible on the basis of them, and that the administration of justice, measured b such theories, is an extremely un-modern, not to say outmoded, institution. When Hitler said that a day would come in Germany when it would be considered a "disgrace" to be a jurist, he was speaking with utter consistency of his dream of a perfect bureaucracy.
1- Write a summary of the reading including details and reasoning.
2- Write 2 questions with which you would like to start a discussion about the reading.