4 ms·
> It is a well established idea. If by "established" you mean that it's well known, then yes, you're right. If instead you mean that it's agreed-upon or widely
by maybelsyrup 5y ago
> It is a well established idea.
If by "established" you mean that it's well known, then yes, you're right. If instead you mean that it's agreed-upon or widely accepted, you'd be wrong. There's a lot of great debate / critique, both about how well the phrase actually applied to Adolf Eichmann himself (Arendt was famously only at the trial for like 5 days), and whether evil in general is ever, in fact, all that banal. Sadly the conversation around "the banality of evil" hasn't received a fraction of the attention that the phrase itself has.
- bogomipz 5y ago>"Arendt was famously only at the trial for like 5 days..." Besides David Cesarani's "Becoming Eichmann" book from the mid 2000s where he stated Arendt had "only saw Eichmann in action for four days", are there any other references that support this? I've not been able to find any. Also the "in action" in that context specifically refers to Eichmann's testimony not that amount of time Arendt spent in the court room. I'm not sure how "famous" this is. Elsewhere her correspondance with her former teacher Karl Japsers indicates she was there for 10 weeks. That would be about a third of the 8 month trial.