“Arendt's laughter was the laughter of incongruence, the laughter that erupts when facing absurdity, a pause to catch one's breath. We happen upon something that makes no sense, we laugh, and respond with wit. For while laughter is a re-action, irony and wit are (spoken or written) actions. Irony expresses the unwillingness or the inability to put up with nonsense. Wit arises when people can easily and quickly see similarities between dissimilar things.” LaughterWitIronyNonsense Book:Unlearning with Hannah Arendt Source: Unlearning with Hannah Arendt
“In an article titled "The Ex-Communists," she analyzed how these McCarthy loyalists had simply switched allegiances. Instead of demanding communism as they had earlier, they now called for unconditional loyalty and cooperation in denouncing others for the sake of freedom and democracy. They still had a cause, just a different one from before. The new cause, the right cause, she continued, had a totalitarian catch to it. By turning democracy "into a cause," something that would arrive in the future and to which the present must be devoted, the present became unfree. The idea of futurity destroyed the present moment. How could one escape this destruction of the present by fear of the future....?” FreedomDissentFear Of The FutureMccarthyismRed ScareMccarthyEx CommunistsRight To DissentTotalitarian Democracy Book:Unlearning with Hannah Arendt Source: Unlearning with Hannah Arendt
“Where certainty ceases, thinking begins; the knower sets off into uncertainty. Both traditional ideas and their inverse had to be abandoned as supports. As the life of Katznelson shows, to achieve such freedom there has to be first the ability to allow oneself to be confused by intrusive reality along with diagnostic and intellectual courage.” UncertaintyQuestion EverythingIntellectual Courage Book:Unlearning with Hannah Arendt Source: Unlearning with Hannah Arendt