{"id":2444,"date":"2013-07-30T15:31:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T20:31:51","guid":{"rendered":" \r\n\r\nDr. Beck discussed the \u201cbanality of evil,\u201d a term coined by Hannah Arendt in her report of the Nazi war crime trail of Adolf Eichmann. What did Arendt mean when she said that evil was \u201c <\/p>\n

Dr. Beck discussed the \u201cbanality of evil,\u201d a term coined by Hannah Arendt in her report of the Nazi war crime trail of Adolf Eichmann. What did Arendt mean when she said that evil was \u201cbanal<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hannah Arendt\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Adolf Eichmann<\/h4>\n

Consider this description from the\u00a0Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“[Arendt\u2019s book about the Eichmann trial] controversially uses the phrase \u201cthe banality of evil\u201d to characterize Eichmann\u2019s actions as a member of the Nazi regime, in particular his role as chief architect and executioner of Hitler\u2019s genocidal \u201cfinal solution\u201d (Endlosung) for the \u201cJewish problem.\u201d Her characterization of these actions, so obscene in their nature and consequences, as \u201cbanal\u201d is not meant to position them as workaday. Rather it is meant to contest the prevalent depictions of the Nazi\u2019s inexplicable atrocities as having emanated from a malevolent will to do evil, a delight in murder. As far as Arendt could discern, Eichmann came to his willing involvement with the program of genocide through a failure or absence of the faculties of sound thinking and judgment. From Eichmann\u2019s trial in Jerusalem (where he had been brought after Israeli agents found him in hiding in Argentina), Arendt concluded that far from exhibiting a malevolent hatred of Jews which could have accounted psychologically for his participation in the Holocaust, Eichmann was an utterly innocuous individual. He operated unthinkingly, following orders, efficiently carrying them out, with no consideration of their effects upon those he targeted. The human dimension of these activities were not entertained, so the extermination of the Jews became indistinguishable from any other bureaucratically assigned and discharged responsibility for Eichmann and his cohorts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Arendt concluded that Eichmann was constitutively incapable of exercising the kind of judgment that would have made his victims\u2019 suffering real or apparent for him. It was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him. Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking, of having an internal dialogue with himself, which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds. This amounted to a failure to use self-reflection as a basis for judgment, the faculty that would have required Eichmann to exercise his imagination so as to contemplate the nature of his deeds from the experiential standpoint of his victims. This connection between the complicity with political evil and the failure of thinking and judgment inspired the last phase of Arendt\u2019s work, which sought to explicate the nature of these faculties and their constitutive role for politically and morally responsible choices.” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Discussion Questions<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. How much of the evil in the world, along with our personal contributions, do you think is a product of a failure to\u00a0think<\/em>? Of failing to have \u201can internal dialogue\u201d within ourselves about the moral and social consequences of our actions?<\/li>\n
  2. The description above says that Eichmann failed to display \u201cthe imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him.\u201d How would a university education–one that emphasized the humanities, arts, and literature–help in creating these \u201cimaginative capabilities\u201d?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Join the Conversation<\/em><\/h3>\n

    We welcome comments on this or other related topics on the main Spotlight page<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Return to Richard Beck’s Spotlight page<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Dr. Beck discussed the \u201cbanality of evil,\u201d a term coined by Hannah Arendt in her report of the Nazi war crime trail of Adolf Eichmann. What did Arendt mean when she said that evil was \u201cbanal\u201d? Hannah Arendt\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Adolf Eichmann […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8023,"featured_media":0,"parent":1444,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2444","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3T2tB-Dq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8023"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2644,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2444\/revisions\/2644"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}