[lit-ideas] Re: *Eichmann in Jerusalem*
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <guimbarde9@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 16:13:09 -0230
Thanks to RP for his reply. It'll keep me until my book arrives. Unless anyone
has any disagreements with the views expressed of course. Good to see you back,
Robert.
Walter C. Okshevsky
Memorial U.
Quoting Robert Paul <guimbarde9@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
> Walter wrote: 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"?
>
> Pretty much what it sounds like. The phrase comes from her reportage of
> Eichmann's Jerusalem trial in which she characterizes Eichmann not as an
> unimaginable monster, beyond the reach of human understanding, but as an
> ordinary bureaucrat, a cog, a functionary, interested only in fulfilling his
> quotas and keeping his books straight.
>
> That Eichmann could be seen this wayâ??as opposed to someone with a
> pathological and inhuman hatred of the Jewsâ??aroused anger on the part of
> those who believed that someone at the heart of such great evil must be
> someone of great evil himself, and she was villified for it in many quarters.
> Now, the notion that 'ordinary people' can do the vilest things is perehaps
> no longer quite so surprising.
>
> 2. Are there any references in this book, implicit or explicit, to Kant's
> notions of "enlarged mentality" or "enlarged thought"? This figures in one
> of
> the three dialectical rules of thought in his Third Critique.
>
> None that I'm aware of. This was, first of all, reporting (for The New
> Yorker), not philosophy.
>
> 3. Does Hannah make any connections in this book between the nature of
> political
> 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?
>
> No.
>
> 4. More generally, any explanantions for the voluminous literature on Hannah
> that has been generated within the past decade?
>
> I'll bet there are, but I have none.
>
> Robert Paul
> Reed College
>
>
>
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