This is no paradox it only comes into conflict with society.ĭarning a further hole of inquiry into the assumed fabric of society and its false polarities, Arendt adds:

Another kind of life would not be worthwhile. The lover of equality actually says: I want everybody, literally everybody, to be like me, and whether this works out or not, I am going to live according to this assumption. Nothing can be greater than to be truly human. The passion for equality says: I want to be like everybody else out of pride. The apparent paradox: misanthropy plus love of solitude versus equality. She writes in a letter from May 28, 1971: It is in this spirit that Arendt reflects on some of the themes in McCarthy’s just-published fifth novel, the influential and controversial Birds of America. In their correspondence, Arendt and McCarthy often used each other’s published works and works in progress as a springboard for soaring meditations on various philosophical questions and existential puzzlements.

That’s what Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975) explores in a letter found in Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy ( public library) - the remarkable volume that gave us Arendt’s cautionary advice on love and McCarthy on human nature, moral choice, and how we decide whether evil is forgivable. But how wired by nature and primed by culture are we really to uphold true equality for our fellow human beings? “The truth is if you really care about the quality of somebody’s life as much as you care about the quality of your own, you have it made,” Edie Windsor observed as she won the equality of modern love.

The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt