In Arendt’s telling, Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. Request Permissions. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind 550 likes Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by political theorist Hannah Arendt. We should exploit their respective strengths, For a child, being carefree is intrinsic to a well-lived life. Arendt did not mean that banality is itself evil, nor did she assert that evil is always banal. Published in the same year as On Revolution, Arendt’s book about the Eichmann trial presents both a continuity with her previous works, but also a change in emphasis that would continue to the end of her life. [1] Her thesis is that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths , but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal . How Eichmann’s humdrum life could co-exist with that ‘other’ monstrous evil puzzled her. The History Teacher is the most widely recognized journal in the United States devoted to more effective teaching of history in pre-collegiate schools, community colleges and universities. Courtesy the Wellcome Collection, Fiddlesticks Country Club, a gated community in Fort Meyers, Florida. In this way, Arendt successfully avoids undermining the evil action performed in the Holocaust. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened’. They aren’t evil people, Arendt said, just good people who are unwittingly engaged in evil. Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. It proves, Lipstadt asserts in The Eichmann Trial (2011), that Arendt’s use of the term ‘banal’ was flawed: Lipstadt further argues that Arendt failed to explain why Eichmann and his associates would have attempted to destroy evidence of their war crimes, if he was indeed unaware of his wrongdoing. Photo by Ralph Crane/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty, Physiognomies of Russian criminals from The Delinquent Woman (1893) by Cesare Lombroso. ‘Arendt’s Such a critique does not diminish criminals plead insanity. Moreover, Arendt died in 1975: perhaps if she had lived longer she could have clarified the puzzles surrounding the banality-of-evil thesis, which still confound critics to this day. of Contents. Arendt, in studying Adolph Eichmann, after covering his trial in Israel, wrote a book on him and coined the term, “banality of evil.” She broke new ground in the study of the evil mind by arguing that, contrary to popular understanding, evil does not only reside in those who crave power and spend their lives hurting people to get it. This Email Newsletter Privacy Statement may change from time to time and was last revised 18 May, 2020. Purchase this issue for $16.00 USD. Hannah Arendt - The Banality of Evil - YouTube. We also send occasional donation requests and, no more than once a year, reader surveys. The email address/es you provide will be transferred to our external marketing automation service ‘MailChimp’ for processing in accordance with their. About Eichmann in Jerusalem. A rendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil remains a fascinatingly relevant read, delving deeply into the systems that drive our moral standards and consequent behavior. Norman Douglas (right), lounging in Capri in 1949. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, JPASS®, Artstor®, Reveal Digital™ and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. And though Arendt never said that Eichmann was just an innocent ‘cog’ in the Nazi bureaucracy, nor defended Eichmann as ‘just following orders’ – both common misunderstandings of her findings on Eichmann – her critics, including Wolfe and Lipstadt, remain unsatisfied. Mary McCarthy, a novelist and good friend of Arendt, voiced sheer incomprehension: ‘[I]t seems to me that what you are saying is that Eichmann lacks an inherent human quality: the capacity for thought, consciousness – conscience. We will retain your information for as long as needed in light of the purposes for which is was obtained or to comply with our legal obligations and enforce our agreements. By taking a narrow legalistic, formalistic approach to the trial – she emphasised that there were no deeper issues at stake beyond the legal facts of Eichmann’s guilt or innocence – Arendt automatically set herself up for failure as to the deeper why of Eichmann’s evil. However, while Arendt’s underlying principle of the ‘banality of evil’ stands, she seems to fall prey to the same fallacy of which she accuses the trial’s general proceedings – she had made up her mind that Eichmann deserved to die before the trial began. We cannot guarantee that the personal information you supply will not be intercepted while transmitted to us or our marketing automation service Mailchimp. But this we shall never know. Gershom Scholem, a fellow philosopher (and theologian), wrote to Arendt in 1963 that her banality-of-evil thesis was merely a slogan that ‘does not impress me, certainly, as the product of profound analysis’. At that point, her earlier imaginative thinking about moral evil was distracted, and the ‘banality of evil’ slogan was born. Drawing on audiotapes of interviews with Eichmann by the Nazi journalist William Sassen, Stangneth shows Eichmann as a self-avowed, aggressive Nazi ideologue strongly committed to Nazi beliefs, who showed no remorse or guilt for his role in the Final Solution – a radically evil Third Reich operative living inside the deceptively normal shell of a bland bureaucrat. Intellectually, she was an independent thinker, a loner not a "joiner", separating herself from schools of thought or ideology. ©2000-2021 ITHAKA. © 1981 Society for History Education Arendt’s major focus in her book Eichmann of Jerusalem revolves around a famous concept of hers, the “banality of evil”. Become a Friend of Aeon to save articles and enjoy other exclusive benefits, Aeon email newsletters are issued by the not-for-profit, registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd (Australian Business Number 80 612 076 614). This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. Though Eichmann’s motives were, for her, obscure and thought-defying, his genocidal acts were not. When you receive the information, if you think any of it is wrong or out of date, you can ask us to change or delete it for you. From the viewpoint of the banality of evil, the argument propounded by the American social scientist Scott Straus (as cited … By being sensitive to different viewpoints and scrutinizing everything we might otherwise adopt or … She controversially uses the phrase “the banality of evil” to characterize Eichmann’s actions as a member of the Nazi regime, in parti… Read your article online and download the PDF from your email or your account. Wolfe argued that Arendt concentrated too much on who Eichmann was, rather than what Eichmann did. But this view changed when Arendt met Eichmann, whose bureaucratic emptiness suggested no such diabolical profundity, but only prosaic careerism and the ‘inability to think’. She wrote that there was some Jewish (Zionist) culpability in the Nazi crimes. All Rights Reserved. The essay Arendt published about Eichmann had the title “The Banality of Evil,” which summarizes her view that “Evil” is nothing we should be “afraid” of, since it does not exist prior or outside of human existence or moral evaluations, which makes it banal at last. This was the puzzling question that the philosopher Hannah Arendt grappled with when she reported for The New Yorker in 1961 on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for organising the transportation of millions of Jews and others to various concentration camps in support of the Nazi’s Final Solution. Many of you may have heard of the term ‘The Banality of Evil’ - in passing, or perhaps mentioned in a book somewhere. No physical or electronic security system is impenetrable however and you should take your own precautions to protect the security of any personally identifiable information you transmit. Even 10 years after his trial in Israel, she wrote in 1971: The banality-of-evil thesis was a flashpoint for controversy. The Society for History Education, Inc., an affiliate of the American Historical In fact, Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt & Elon, 2006) is not a human condition, as Milgram (1974) claimed for his ‘agentic state’, neither is it about diverting responsibility. This wasn’t Arendt’s first, somewhat superficial impression of Eichmann. We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. insightful professional analyses of traditional and innovative teaching techniques. By clicking ‘subscribe’ you agree to the following: You can change your mind at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link in the footer of emails you receive from us, or by contacting us at support@aeon.co, If you want to review and correct the personal information we have about you, you can click on ‘update preferences’ in the footer of emails you receive from us, or by contacting us at support@aeon.co. The History Teacher Association, supports all disciplines in history education with practical and Eichmann faced 15 charges for war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and crimes against humanity, and the … American Philosophical Association Arendt never did reconcile her impressions of Eichmann’s bureaucratic banality with her earlier searing awareness of the evil, inhuman acts of the Third Reich. For Arendt’s critics, this focus on Eichmann’s insignificant, banal life seemed to be an ‘absurd digression’ from his evil deeds. Achetez neuf ou d'occasion Amazon.fr - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil - Arendt, Hannah - Livres Thus we are left with her original thesis as it stands. Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil” while covering the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official charged with the orderly extermination of Europe’s Jews.Arendt herself was a German-Jewish exile struggling in the most personal of ways to come to grips with the utter destruction of European society. We will try and respond to your request as soon as reasonably practical. Retrouvez Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil et des millions de livres en stock sur Amazon.fr. People are specific. In a correspondence with Grafton, in 1963, Arendt distinguishes between banal and commonplace with regard to the banality of evil. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The philosopher Alan Wolfe, in Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It (2011), criticised Arendt for ‘psychologising’ – that is, avoiding – the issue of evil as evil by defining it in the limited context of Eichmann’s humdrum existence. The Banality of Evil : Hannah Arendt On How To See Evil And Survive It In 1961, The New Yorker commissioned Arendt to report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975) understood that evil does not announce itself with fanfare and a … Select the purchase We have taken reasonable measures to protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse or unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. She saw the ordinary-looking functionary, but not the ideologically evil warrior. Photo by Michael Siluk/UIG/Getty, After losing his sight, a skateboarder takes an unexpected path to realising his dreams, Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past, Algorithms are sensitive. Episode #136 ... Hannah Arendt - The Banality of Evil. But then isn’t he a monster simply?’. By declaring in her pre-Eichmann trial writings that absolute evil, exemplified by the Nazis, was driven by an audacious, monstrous intention to abolish humanity itself, Arendt was echoing the spirit of philosophers such as F W J Schelling and Plato, who did not shy away from investigating the deeper, more demonic aspects of evil. Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil. 4 The thesis of the banality of evil is based on a series of observations by Hannah Arendt during her coverage of the April 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the man in charge of the deportation of Jews to the Third Reich death camps, for the New Yorker. The controversy continues to the present day. Arendt wrote works on intellectual history as a philosopher, using events and actions to develop insights into contemporary totalitarian movements and the threat to human freedom presented by scientific abstraction and bourgeois morality. ABBYY GZ … Hannah Arendt, a German-born Jewish American political philosopher, covered the trial for The New Yorker. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil. There were no purely good innocents nor and purely evil … Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. eichmann-in-jerusalem-a-report-on-the-banality-of-evil-by-hannah-arendt Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3wt7dt29 Ocr ABBYY FineReader 11.0 (Extended OCR) Ppi 300 Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.4. plus-circle Add Review. (Whereas Eichmann held a series of conven-tional jobs in Argentina-managing a farm, working for a citrus business and at an automobile plant, Josef Mengele, the mephitic doc-tor at Auschwitz, is reportedly alive in Paraguay, actively engaged in This only underscores the banality – and falsity – of the banality-of-evil thesis. Rightly understood these experiments allow us to make sense of Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" without concluding, as Wolin does, that this commits us to regarding the Holocaust itself as banal. Published By: Society for History Education, Read Online (Free) relies on page scans, which are not currently available to screen readers. This work marks a shift in her concerns from the nature of political action, to a concern with the faculties that underpin it – the interrelated activities of thinking and judging. Yet in her writings before Eichmann in Jerusalem, she actually took an opposite position. Can one do evil without being evil? Photo courtesy Wikipedia. We will not disclose your personal information except: (1) as described by this Privacy Policy (2) after obtaining your permission for a specific use or disclosure or (3) if we are required to do so by a valid legal process or government request (such as a court order, a search warrant, a subpoena, a civil discovery request, or a statutory requirement). Reviews There are no reviews yet. In fact, it has nothing to do with obedience at all. Her view on evil’s banality suggests its antidote begins in active thinking. 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