Since we had such a good conversation during my midterm presentation about the banality of evil and Hannah Arendt, I thought it would be a good idea to talk a bit more about the controversy surrounding her 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, that covers the trial of Adolf Eichmann—the man responsible for designing and constructing the railroad system that would be responsible for sending millions to their death.
I think before we can move into the controversy surrounding the book and its ideas, we need to have an understanding of who Hannah Arendt is and what exactly she has said.
Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 in Hanover, Germany to a Jewish, non-religious family. Throughout her life as a young adult, she would discover her love of philosophy and go on to earn a philosophy degree from a German university in 1929. Shortly after her graduation from college, Hitler’s Nazi Party would rise to power causing her to flee Germany for Paris where she would live for a few years before moving again to the United States—it is in the states that Arendt would publish her most acclaimed works that primarily focused on political philosophy. These works include legendary titles like The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, Between Past and Future, On Revolution, and her highly controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem.
The uniqueness of her writing comes from its inability to be categorized. Her political philosophy cannot be classified by the traditional confines of conservatism, liberalism, and socialism. Arendt did not believe politics were to serve individual interests, she stood on the principles of active citizenship and the belief that what was most important is collective deliberation about all matters that may affect a certain political community. I bring this up to highlight the fact that Arendt has never been one to have ideas that fit neatly into boxes set up by common thought—and perhaps this is part of what led to the controversy surrounding Eichmann in Jerusalem.
Now that we have an idea of who Hannah Arendt is and the style of her philosophical thought, let’s dive into what exactly she discusses in Eichmann in Jerusalem that caused such a massive upset.
The most controversial aspect of Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was her newly expressed idea of the “banality of evil”. An article from Britannica does a good job of explaining this concept and what Arendt potentially meant. The article proposes that this concept of ‘banal evil’ begs the question of whether someone can do evil without being evil with deliberate intention. This is ultimately a large part of what Arendt is asking with the concept of banal evil.
**The video above is an excellent and relatively breakdown of the concept of the Banality of Evil if you’re wanting a bit more information about that.
She comments on the unextraordinary and ‘terrifying normality’ of Eichmann in her coverage of his trial—saying that he was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic'. His motivation to participate in the extermination of millions of Jewish people did not come from a true hatred of Jewish people but from a desire to advance his career. She points not to his evil nature and spirit as the driving force of his repulsive actions, but to his ‘thoughtlessness'. His inability to grasp the gravity and consequences of his actions made it nearly impossible for him to understand that he was wrong.
It is this point that she makes that upset many of her Israeli and Zionist counterparts that were still grieving the epic tragedy of the holocaust. Those in opposition to her statements about Eichmann believed that Arendt was absolving him of the guilt that should be associated with his despicable actions. They then pointed to her criticism of the Jewish council (Judenrat) that was designed to carry out Nazi orders within Jewish communities as another reason that her Eichmann in Jerusalem was deeply misguided. Members of the Judenrat had to partake in horrific tasks like providing Jewish people for slave labor and organizing the deportation of Jewish people to their death in fear of immediate execution by Nazi police. In her book she called the actions of these Jewish council members “undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story” because of the role they played in helping the Nazi party execute their own brethren. Some of her harshest critics called her an anti-Zionist and Nazi sympathizer for the statements she made in her commentary on Eichmann’s trial.
Due to Arendt’s reputation as a Zionist and acclaimed political philosopher in her community, the polarizing opinions on her Eichmann trial commentary caused a division in the Jewish community. With critics believing she had turned her back on her Zionist principles and supporters believing that her work was largely misunderstood and probed at a greater discussion of humanity and evil. There is an article that I read recently that was published by the New York Times in 2013 that I think does a good job encapsulating how harsh critics of Arendt may be misunderstanding her argument and intentions.
The article is part of the New York Times column called ‘bookends’ where two writers answer provocative questions about famous literature and in this edition, they answer the question of why 50 years later Eichmann in Jerusalem is still contentious. Both writers point to a misunderstanding of her writing and tone for why so many people still have negative reactions to her writing. They point out that Arendt had no intention of absolving Eichmann of his guilt or responsibility, she just truly found him laughable and mindless, incapable of thought deep enough to consider him an evil ‘mastermind’.
Her commentary on Eichmann’s thoughtlessness was, from my perspective, a way of unveiling the danger of brainless and unintentional behavior just because it is socially normalized. This idea of banal evil that Arendt highlights speaks to the common evil that lives in so many pockets of society. It is the type of evil that lives in the deafening silence of the masses when something despicable is happening just beneath their noses, the type of evil that drives people to comply with a violent and oppressive system, etc. Arendt doesn’t point to the ordinariness or normality of Eichmann to lessen the severity of his actions or to absolve him of responsibility—she does it to highlight that evil lives even in those who aren’t extraordinarily devious and hateful. Perhaps she was attempting to make commentary on the fact that ignorance is what gives breadth to evil and hatred.
If you’ve made it this far and have enjoyed reading a bit more about Hannah Arendt and her philosophical thought, there’s an awesome interview of her's I’ve linked below. It is lengthy and in German (with English subtitles) but it’s worth a listen if you’d like to get more insight into the type of person Arendt was.
Works Cited
It's hard to find a photo of Arendt NOT smoking. No wonder she didn't make it out of her 60s!
ReplyDeleteShe was brilliant, though. I wish she'd lived long enough to comment on the banal evil of OUR time. I'm sure she'd say she intends to offer no absolution, but wants us to be appropriately "terrified" by the harm done by un-thinking careerists. They're every bit as much with us as they were in the '30s and '40s.