[lit-ideas] Re: *Eichmann in Jerusalem*
- From: Robert Paul <guimbarde9@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:36:41 -0700 (PDT)
Walter wrote: â?¦I'm hoping [that someone] will take a stab at making some
sense of
Hannah's (sic) idea that judgements of right and wrong regarding particular
historical events or individual subjects can be made without appeal to general
principles, rules or concepts, as per Kant's "reflective judgement" â?¦
I'm not sure where Arendt claims that individual judgments of right and wrong
can be made without appealing to 'general principles, rules or concepts'
(surely these are not the same?) or whether if she does she does it in
Eichmann; but perhaps somewhere she does. This clearly puzzles Walter, goes
against some intuitions he has about the nature of moral judgments. I wonder
why it should? Isn't it true that a moral theory ('Kantianism,' Utilitarianism,
Consequentialism, e.g.) is judged in light of clear cases, whose rightness or
'wrongness' must by their nature (for they are extra-theoretical touchstones)
lie outside that theory. If, in light of T it would be permissible to torture
innocent people for pleasure, T can be neither a guide to right action nor a
moral theory (either explanatory or prescriptive) worth considering. (Witness
the lengths people will go to to preserve Utilitarianism from the objection
that it allows no room for justice.)
So, where do these clear cases come from? A moral sense, Hume thought,
something with which human beings are endowed just as they are endowed with a
sense of sight or hearing. Some will get it right, some will see as through a
glass darkly, and others may be morally blind; but for one equipped with a
sound moral sense there is no need to argue to the rightness or wrongness of an
act from fist principles, any more than there is in the case of seeing green.
Walter continues:
This seems impossible to me (and should have so seemed to Kant as
well); I don't know why Hannah ever saw the question as a sensible one.
I think I've missed the question here? Is it, how do people reach particular
moral judgments without arguing from (even tacitly) prior rules, laws,
principles? Easily, I say; but I doubt that will satisfy Walter. Perhaps
reading William Gass' 'The Case of the Obliging Stranger,' will help make the
point I here make clumsily.
By the way, in Eichmann, Arendt does discuss Kant, and Eichmann's own
perversion of the notion of acting from duty. I don't know if Eichmann actually
quotes Kant or simply tries to argue on 'Kantian' lines. My copy of the book is
too dusty for me to read comfortably right now, or I'd look it up.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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