Tag: Banality of evil

What did Hannah Arendt really mean by the banality of evil? | Aeon Ideas

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil

he banality-of-evil thesis was a flashpoint for controversy. To Arendt’s critics, it seemed absolutely inexplicable that Eichmann could have played a key role in the Nazi genocide yet have no evil intentions. 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’. 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. But then isn’t he a monster simply?’

I had finished with Arendt but came across another good article

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil of Kant

Interesting as it gives a better definition of what she meant by thinking.And horrifyingly

Eichmann claimed to be a follower of Kant

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A very full review of “The Jewish Writings” by Hannah Arendt

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n09/judith-butler/i-merely-belong-to-them

This broad ranging review  gives a very good account  of Arendt’s political views on Jews and on Israel.I learned a lot and have sympathy for her position.I am fearful of the current state of the middle east in  general

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Keeping reality at bay

       “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.”
― Hannah Arendt
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Hannah Arendt and thinking

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/05/30/lonely-thinking-hannah-arendt-on-film/

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/26/hannah-arendt-reviewThe reason I am writing this is that at the end of this film,Arendt gives a seven minute monologue on,what is thinking?

She believed the people like Eichmann who carried out Hitler’s Final Solution were not psychotic monsters but were people unable to think.I feel unqualified to comment on that except to agree with her that true thinking is not easy and how can we learn to do it.It cannot be just a mental process but must involve the whole of a person.If we fear to think we will join a movement, a church or any other organisation which we will obey in order not to have to think.I believe many of us still do that.Thinling can be a lonely business as she said

[By the way,I am not  Jewish]

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