wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote:
I read the book some time ago and can't really comment on all of your questions but here're some thoughts, such as they are:Has anybody out there read Hannah Arendt's *Eichmann in Jerusalem*? I can't get a copy of that book for weeks and I can't bear the suspense. I'm particularly interested in the following:
1. What does Hannah mean by "the banality of evil"?
2. Are there any references in this book, implicit or explicit, to Kant'sThere are no explicit references but I'm afraid I am no great student of Kant and would be a poor judge of what might be implicit. I do know that Eichmann claimed to follow a Kantian notion of duty, but this was another absurd self-contradiction given other elements of his case.
notions of "enlarged mentality" or "enlarged thought"? This figures in one of
the three dialectical rules of thought in his Third Critique.
3. Does Hannah make any connections in this book between the nature of politicalThis is an interesting question for general thought and I am nearly tempted to read some of Arendt's books again to try to answer it. Unfortunately my best recollections are too blunt to take a stab at it for now.
judgement that she is trying to work out and attempts to determine particular
instances of right and wrong independently of general rules, principles or
concepts?
4. More generally, any explanantions for the voluminous literature on HannahI can't speak for the literature but I "discovered" Arendt eight or ten years ago ("Between Past and Future") and found her explications of 20th century contradictions extremely revealing and a little addictive--I immediately bought and read several of her books but (like an addict) I was probably not very systematic in my reading and ought to revisit her a little more reflectively (Reinhold Niebuhr had much the same effect on me at a slightly earlier date).
that has been generated within the past decade?
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----------------- Edward W. Farrell ewf@xxxxxxxxxxx
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