[lit-ideas] Die Banalität des Bösen -- aber nicht des Guten?
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:37:39 EDT
Thanks to L. Helm for further comments. I'm still elaborating on what Arendt
may mean too.
In Wikipedia, I found
"In the wake of one of their breakups, Arendt moved to Heidelberg [Andreas'
alma mater], where she wrote her dissertation on the concept of love in the
thought of Saint Augustine."
-- which was good to learn, as this concept has always _troubled_ me. As
someone says in the film, "The Real Dan" (Have I become Americanized), "Love is
not a feeling, is an ability". Anyway, I was always fascinated by the so-many
faces of love. Think Greek 'agape', 'philos', eros'; Think Roman 'amor',
'cupiditas'.
I quote below from what the Wikipedia says about the Eichmann trial:
"In her reporting of the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, which evolved
into the book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1963), she coined the phrase "the
banality of evil" to describe Eichmann. She raised the question of whether
evil is
radical or simply a function of banality - the tendency of ordinary people
to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without critically thinking about
the results of their action or inaction. Arendt was extremely critical of the
way that Israel conducted the trial. She was also critical of the way that
many Jewish leaders acted during the Holocaust, which caused an enormous
controversy and resulted in a great deal of animosity directed toward Arendt
within
the Jewish community. (The book was translated into Hebrew only recently,
many decades after it was written.) Nevertheless, Arendt ended the book by
endorsing the execution of Eichmann, writing: "Just as you supported and
carried
out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the
people of a number of other nations - as though you and your superiors had
any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world - we
find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want
to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you
must hang.""
But back to the comment in Wikipedia:
"She raised the question of whether evil radical or simply a function of
banality -- the tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to
mass
opinion without critically thinking about the results of their action or
inaction."
I suppose we can rephrase that question in Aristotelian-Nassbaum-Gricean
terms.
Evil (and Good) can be, using Arendt's terms, *radical* -- or I'd prefer,
INTRINSIC.
Or else it can be 'extrinsic'. Evil and good are extrinsic when they are
defined in terms of something other than themselves. In the case of 'the good',
the Aristotelian-Gricean-Nissbaum line is to define it in terms of 'telos'
(Cicero, "De finibus") and ultimately desire.
For Socrates, though, it had to do with _knowledge_. Every philosophy student
is fascinated by that casual remark by Socrates that only "ignorant people
are evil".
If we provide the reciprocal for Socrates, he would be saying that "good
people _know_" (or _just_ *know*). In either case, we are defining good and
evil
(if not bad) in terms of 'knowledge'.
Now, Arendt is more specific as to the root of evil in BANALITY, by which she
does not seem to imply plain ignorance (cfr. Geary, "Blake on Songs of
Innocence as _nicer_ than Songs of Experience"), but 'blind' following of a
rule.
A rule, in Kantian terms, is a hypothetical imperative. A blind following of
a rule is one that relies on the rule's _legality_ rather than its
_morality_.
Interestingly, the report in Wikipedia for the justification of the death
penality rests on this 'kontra-geben', I think it's called "tit for tat" -- as
Arendt rather irreverently puts it, referring to some German game.
For Kant, punishment sentences should spring from some factor of
universalizability -- but then, Kant's deontology is, as every public-school
knows,
usually _opposed_ as contradicting the very idea of a morality based on
teleology.
When Wikipedia says that Arendt "coined the phrase, 'the banality of evil'",
I'm slightly irritated. I thought only _words_ could be coined, as Socrates's
'philosophia', not _phrases_. Why, I must just as well coin the phrase, "The
Elephanthood of the Orange". I suppose in German 'evil-banality' comes out
as one long word worth thought the coinage (mintage).
The problem, as Geary posed it to me on one of them Attic Nights -- I'm
reading Aullus Gellius and it all comes as a fresh breeze of summer -- is,
"Granted that the evil springs from the banality
of things, how will you prove that the good
does not spring from its own kind of banality".
At the time, I told Geary that "I had a train to catch", which I did, since
he loved meeting on the outskirts of the Academus Grove and it's a long way
from there to Epidaurus, where I was then residing.
More later, perhaps
JL
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