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Hannah Arendt and the Problem of War, Hypocrisy and Wars on Hypocrisy
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Hannah Arendt and the Problem of War,
Hypocrisy and Wars on Hypocrisy
Paper Presented at American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
September 2, 2006
Dr. Patricia Owens
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Seton-Watson Research Fellow, Oriel College, Oxford
Comments Welcome, Citation allowed with Permission
patricia.## email not listed ##
There is a great temptation to explain away the intrinsically incredible by means of liberal rationalizations. In each one of us, there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of common sense
- Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 439-40
Michael Walzer begins his theory of the just war with a claim about hypocrisy. The exposure of hypocrisy, he argues, ‘is… the most ordinary, and it may also be the most important form of moral criticism’ (1992: xxix). Wherever hypocrisy, the Greek word for ‘play-actor’, is located moral knowledge is also found: hypocrites presume ‘the moral understanding of the rest of us’ (1992: 29). Unmasking the hypocrisy of politicians and generals, putting their words to the test of ‘moral realm’, he suggests, can uncover the moral reality of war. But is it always right to do this unmasking? Does hypocrisy matter, and how much (Glaser, 2006; also see Turner, 2003)? What happens when hypocrisy and rage against it become central to public debate? Can a little dose of hypocrisy be good? The rancorous debates about the invocation of human rights as part of the justification for recent Western wars can be analysed as a debate about hypocrisy. Should we reject such wars because Western states evoke human rights hypocritically, that is, while also taking actions that abuse human rights? What does it mean for normative theory to accept the reality of hypocrisy?
In an article titled, ‘Hannah Arendt on Human Rights and the Limits of Exposure, or Why Noam Chomsky is Wrong about the Meaning of Kosovo’, Jeffrey C. Isaac suggests that there are good reasons for supporting ‘human rights’ wars even if the human rights justification is hypocritical. At a minimum, he suggests, Hannah Arendt’s thought provides reasons for not condemning these wars on the grounds of hypocrisy alone. As the title suggests, this argument is made through an attack on prominent anti-war critic Noam Chomsky’s exposure of Western hypocrisy (1999; 2000). Isaac does not challenge the content of his argument.
1
Of
the 1999 Kosovo intervention, he writes, ‘Chomsky effectively demonstrates that the policy and its rhetoric are hypocritical. The policy serves other interests, and its official rationales are typically self-serving… Chomsky proves this’ (2002: 524, emphasis added). Instead, the cynical tone of Chomsky’s writing is condemned as well as his failure to offer a viable alternative to military intervention in cases of systematic abuse and ethnic cleansing (also see Brown, 2003).
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Also see Robert Fisk, ‘Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s War Dossier: Blindness, Hypocrisy, Lies’,
Independent, September 16, 2002.
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Hannah Arendt and the Problem of War,
Hypocrisy and Wars on Hypocrisy
Paper Presented at American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
September 2, 2006
Dr. Patricia Owens
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Seton-Watson Research Fellow, Oriel College, Oxford
Comments Welcome, Citation allowed with Permission
There is a great temptation to explain away the intrinsically incredible by means of liberal
rationalizations. In each one of us, there lurks such a liberal, wheedling us with the voice of
common sense
- Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 439-40
Michael Walzer begins his theory of the just war with a claim about hypocrisy. The exposure
of hypocrisy, he argues, ‘is… the most ordinary, and it may also be the most important form
of moral criticism’ (1992: xxix). Wherever hypocrisy, the Greek word for ‘play-actor’, is
located moral knowledge is also found: hypocrites presume ‘the moral understanding of the
rest of us’ (1992: 29). Unmasking the hypocrisy of politicians and generals, putting their
words to the test of ‘moral realm’, he suggests, can uncover the moral reality of war. But is it
always right to do this unmasking? Does hypocrisy matter, and how much (Glaser, 2006; also
see Turner, 2003)? What happens when hypocrisy and rage against it become central to
public debate? Can a little dose of hypocrisy be good? The rancorous debates about the
invocation of human rights as part of the justification for recent Western wars can be
analysed as a debate about hypocrisy. Should we reject such wars because Western states
evoke human rights hypocritically, that is, while also taking actions that abuse human rights?
What does it mean for normative theory to accept the reality of hypocrisy?
In an article titled, ‘Hannah Arendt on Human Rights and the Limits of Exposure, or Why
Noam Chomsky is Wrong about the Meaning of Kosovo’, Jeffrey C. Isaac suggests that there
are good reasons for supporting ‘human rights’ wars even if the human rights justification is
hypocritical. At a minimum, he suggests, Hannah Arendt’s thought provides reasons for not
condemning these wars on the grounds of hypocrisy alone. As the title suggests, this
argument is made through an attack on prominent anti-war critic Noam Chomsky’s exposure
of Western hypocrisy (1999; 2000). Isaac does not challenge the content of his argument.
the 1999 Kosovo intervention, he writes, ‘Chomsky effectively demonstrates that the policy
and its rhetoric are hypocritical. The policy serves other interests, and its official rationales
are typically self-serving… Chomsky proves this’ (2002: 524, emphasis added). Instead, the
cynical tone of Chomsky’s writing is condemned as well as his failure to offer a viable
alternative to military intervention in cases of systematic abuse and ethnic cleansing (also see
Brown, 2003).
1
Also see Robert Fisk, ‘Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s War Dossier: Blindness, Hypocrisy, Lies’,
Independent, September 16, 2002.
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