Tag: Eichmann

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?’

What puzzles me about Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem

After reading the material  I have posted on,I saw that Arendt  believed Eichmann was not psychotic or crazy.She said he “did not think”.It puzzle me because one factor above all would seem to me to be relevant.That if a senior Nazi had decided he  did not agree with the Final Solution or any policy of the Nazis he would have been shot and/or his family would have been attacked.So fear would have played a  major role even if he had wished to stop what he ws doing.A big factor that allows humans to murder others en masse like the witches is to define them as somehow not human.And secondly to criticize their behaviour when it is cause by the conditions they are forced to live in.Jews were moneylenders because Christians were not allowed to do it [ charging interest was not allowed them]Being  rather intelligent some Jews became wealthy and were criticised as being only interested in money,grasping and avaricious.Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.Now in the UK this is happening to the sick,poor and unemployed.Scapegoats are attacked when times are hard. Whenever people meet a murderer they are surprised how normal they look.And other people look weird but are in fact good and kind,maybe a little handicapped in some way or just eccentric.Judging by appearances is an error; and especially if they are first  impressions

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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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