Logic and totalitarianism: Arendt vs. Orwell

The final chapter of Hannah Arendt‘s 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism can be used as a good guide to schematize the construction of a totalitarian government as it was described in Orwell’s novel 1984. Namely, Arendt points out three steps that a state performs in order to obtain the murder of the juridical, moral and spontaneous person, and we find the same ones in Orwell. Still, in spite of this similarity, Hannah Arendt and George Orwell have very different opinions, if we consider their views about the role of logic in totalitarianism. For Orwell, the loss of sensitivity to the contradictions is the culmination of the totalitarian regime, which he sees strewn with them: if you do not notice contradictions in history, then do not feel compelled to change it. On the contrary, for Arendt it is the fear of contradiction that keeps people within the tunnel of totalitarianism: when you accept an initial idea (for instance: “history is a class struggle”), then you have to develop logically all its consequences and you are no more allowed to escape from them. In this paper, we will consider authors’ reasons in detail and try to take stock of them.