In Our Time - Hannah Arendt Flashcards
Final speech in film:
The trouble with a Nazi criminal like Eichmann was that he insisted on renouncing all personal qualities, as if there was nobody left to be either punished or forgiven. He protested time and again, contrary to the Prosecution’s assertions, that he had never done anything out of his own initiative, that he had no intentions whatsoever, good or bad, that he had only obeyed orders.
This typical Nazi plea makes it clear that the greatest evil in the world is the evil committed by nobodies. Evil committed by men without motive, without convictions, without wicked hearts or demonic wills, by human beings who refuse to be persons. And it is this phenomenon that I have called the “banality of evil.“
I never blamed the Jewish people. Resistance was impossible. But perhaps there is something in between resistance and cooperation. And only in that sense do I say that maybe some of the Jewish leaders might have behaved differently.
It is profoundly important to ask these questions, because the role of the Jewish leaders is the most striking insight into the totality of the moral collapse that the Nazis caused in respectable European society. And not only in Germany, but in almost all countries, not only among the persecutors but also among the victims.

I wrote no defense of Eichmann, but I did try to reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds. Trying to understand is not the same as forgiveness. I see it as my responsibility to understand. It is the responsibility of anyone who dares to put pen to paper on this subject.
Since Socrates and Plato we usually call thinking to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself.
In refusing to be a person Eichmann utterly surrendered that single most defining human quality, that of being able to think. And consequently he was no longer capable of making moral judgements. This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which one had never seen before.
It’s true I have considered these questions in a philosophical way. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. END
To preven totalitarianism, she argued that everyone should engage in political life, as in an idealised Greek state.
When we’re thinking, we’re having a conversation in our heads all the time (Socrates). The non-thinking self (like Eichmann) will not have this conversation.
Aim of Origins of Totalitarianism is to describe the essence of totalitarianism - a philosophical enquiry to describe what is at its core.
She finds 2 essential things:
1/ Ideology
Totalitarianism arises when people are disconnected from each other, when they’re atomised and when social bonds are not as strong as they had been. A movement or strongman then arises. Totalitarianism COLONISES the insides of people’s minds, rendering them unable to think.
2/ Terror
Emerging out of Aristotle, there are 2 bits to being a human: a) the animal bit (the body) and b) the social/political/legal bit (name/rights/identity)
Totalitarianism terror splits these 2 components. It takes away your name, identity and rights and reduces you to just a body. You’ve been dehumanised and you’re no longer a person. You’re superfluous and can be killed like a flea. This is the logic inherent in totalitarianism.
“The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.”
Central to her reading of the Greek philosophers is a contrast between the active and contemplative life. Aristotle/Socrates had a very positive conception of the active life - this came to be degraded by Plato.
Socrates was, for her, the last great philosopher-citizen. He moved amongst his fellow men and was interested in their opinions (DOXA).
Socrates wanted to help Athenians negotiate between the plural perspectives of others.
‘Man by nature is a political animal’ (Aristotle)
Aristotle thought we should realise a distinct human freedom in having the capacity to debate and reason in public.
Plato’s despair at the trial and death of Socrates motivated an inward turn and a flight from the political realm.
Here we can see a rejection of the senseless doings of men in their plurality (in the world of politics), in favour of the solitary reflection of the isolated philosopher.
At the heart of any political arena, Arendt wanted consent and dissent. There had to be a conversation.
She was nostalgic for the marketplace of ideas not necessarily the Greek polis.
polis - a city state in ancient Greece, especially as considered in its ideal form for philosophical purposes.
She borrows the concept of isonomia fro Herodotus.
Isonomia = equal before the law
There are these moments of ‘that’s not fair’. Therefore, we need a political space without risk and one of forgiving and promising.
If you have civic engagement and bonds, a strong civic culture and respect for others, this will prevent totalitarianism.
Philosophy should not begin with ‘I’ but with ‘Us’
Eichmann Trial
Eichmann was a high-level desk killer who was tried in Jerusalem. He spoke in linguistic cliches, he couldn’t understand a train of thought.
Arendt was opposed to the idea of Nazi satanic greatness. The banality of evil can be seen as the normalisation of evil.
Eichmann was thoughtless. He was unable to talk to himself about what he was doing.
She received vitriolic criticism for using the ‘banality of evil’ phrase.
She makes a very robust distinction between the doer and the deeds. There is nothing banal about the deeds. They were monstrous and wicked. Critics did not make this distinction.
By banality she did not mean commonplace. She was NOT claiming that there was a little Eichmann in everyone.
She meant specifically that it wasn’t rooted in some evil motivation or satanic greatness. In a sense, she can be seen in a Platonic tradition of thinking about evil as a privation or absence of goodness. It was an entirely negative phenomenon for her - a thoughtlessness.
The bureaucratisation of modern life means that we become alienated by how we relate to each other. We relate through systems.
Kafka could already see that when people are reduced to jobholders, to identities, to names, it allows you to function without having that 2-in-1 conversation. There is a context for radical thoughtlessness and it’s all to do with how we organise our social life together.
The notion that the banality of evil has “no-roots” is inherently connected with Arendt’s understanding that only the faculty of thinking can reach the profundity, and consequently reach the roots.
Arendt emphasizes that evil could spread “like a fungus on the surface” mainly because there is no depth, and that solely stopping ,and starting to think, can reach the depth.
Arendt emphasizes: “It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never ‘radical’, that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension.
It is ‘thought-defying’, as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its ‘banality’. Only the good has depth and can be radical.”
She spent a lot of time in the 1960s trying to explain what she meant by the ‘banality of evil’. She talked about the 2-in-1, evil as a fungus, but she’s trying to articulate a new sense of evil which emerged prior to the Holocaust. She is the first person to try and analyse it as a fungus, that isn’t deep, that isn’t rooted and that comes out of an atomised society.
She says that our society is like a desert, and totalitarianism is like a sandstorm that’s whipped up in that desert.
The Human Condition is related to her concerns in the O of T, because she held that political thought had been ruptured.
She takes on the task of rethinking our established categories of political thought. She goes back to the Greeks.
One of the central strands of that work is trying to clarify the active life, which was dethroned by Plato.
The 3 fundamental actives are labour, work and action and she assesses each of these activities in terms of their contribution to human self-realisation and freedom.
She liked America and the notion of republicanism.
She said what constantly needed protecting were places of dissent and creation of the new.
dissensus = widespread dissent
dissent = or expression of opinions at variance with those commonly or officially held.
The notion of dissent is a civic responsibility or duty.
She wrote with 2 voices in an ironic way.
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