[lit-ideas] Re: More on the Banality of Evil

[wokshevs@xxxxxx]

In that pahse of her life when she was concerned with the nature of judgment,
Arendt undertook a study of Kant's 3rd Critique, The Critique of Judgment. She
concluded that Kant's notion of "reflective judgment" provided a promising base
for the development of an account of political judgment. Arendt argued that the
keystone of worthy or legitimate judgment in the political sphere was the
capacity for imagination - the faculty that allowed us to understand the
situation of others as affected by our judgment. And yet, she insisted that
this capacity for imagination was not a capacity for empathy. Few - other than
scholars of Kant's Third Critique - ever understood what she meant by that
distinction. And the scholars themselves are still arguing over it. If anyone
wants to take a shot at it ... please.

Independently of the textual matter, how is the difference in English between
"imagining the situation of an other" and "empathizing with an other" marked?
Is there any difference at all? Interestingly, Arendt claimed that only the
person of imagination was capable of worthy political judgment; she who
confused imagination with empathy - or worse, with sympathy, - was not
competent in the realm of political judgment. 

Somebody once suggested something to the effect: When I try to think of how I
would feel in your shoes, I am relying on my powers of imagination. When I try
to understand how you feel in your situation, I rely on my capacity to
empathize (and perhaps sympathise) with you. 

Walter Okshevsky
MUN






Quoting Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> It is no coincidence that I encountered a  new publication of Eichmann in
> Jerusalem.   Her concern in that book is the modern concern many of us have
> with Islamofascism.  I don't mean to introduce this as a controversial
> issue.   What is controversial is how influential Islamofascism is and how
> many operatives they have.   What is not controversial is that some do
> exist; so it is fair to read Arendt's book on "The Banality of Evil" and see
> if her evaluation of Eichmann is applicable to this new form of Fascism.
> 
>  
> 
> Except, her book was unsatisfactory for that purpose.  I was left not
> completely sure of what she meant on this subject and so bought another of
> her books, The Life of the Mind.  I was surprised to learn that she
> apparently wasn't completely sure what she meant after Eichmann and began
> this three part work on Thinking, Willing, and Judgment, except she died
> before she could complete the third part.   The following evaluation of
> Eichmann and the Banality of Evil seems to take her later work into
> consideration.  It is from http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/arendt.htm 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> "6. Eichmann and the 'Banality of Evil'
> 
> "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. 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. 
> 
> "She controversially uses the phrase 'the banality of evil' to characterize
> Eichmann's actions as a member of the Nazi regime, in particular his role as
> chief architect and executioner of Hitler's genocidal 'final solution'
> (Endlosung) for the 'Jewish problem'. Her characterization of these actions,
> so obscene in their nature and consequences, as 'banal' is not meant to
> position them as workaday. Rather it is meant to contest the prevalent
> depictions of the Nazi's 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
> judgement. From Eichmann's 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. 
> 
> "Arendt concluded that Eichmann was constitutively incapable of exercising
> the kind of judgement that would have made his victims' 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 judgement, 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 judgement inspired the last phase of Arendt's work, which
> sought to explicate the nature of these faculties and their constitutive
> role for politically and morally responsible choices."
> 
> Lawrence
> 
> 



------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

• Follow-Ups:
  • [lit-ideas] Re: More on the Banality of Evil
    • From: wokshevs
  • [lit-ideas] Re: More on the Banality of Evil
    • From: Robert Paul

• References:
  • [lit-ideas] More on the Banality of Evil
    • From: Lawrence Helm

Other related posts:

[lit-ideas] More on the Banality of Evil

[lit-ideas] Re: More on the Banality of Evil

[lit-ideas] Re: More on the Banality of Evil

[lit-ideas] Re: More on the Banality of Evil