4 ms·

I read Eichmann in Jerusalem a while back and it was a good read, but I was surprised to find the basic thesis disproven by ten minutes of research. Arendt want

I read Eichmann in Jerusalem a while back and it was a good read, but I was surprised to find the basic thesis disproven by ten minutes of research. Arendt wants to argue that Eichmann's evil is banal in origin, not malicious or ideological. But in interviews with Eichmann while he was in Argentina, he openly confesses to being a fanatical and long-standing anti-Semite, and to seeing the Holocaust as the eradication of an inferior people. More recently, I read what is supposed to be Arendt's magnus opus and one of the greatest works of political philosophy of the last century, The Human Condition. I was surprised to find, given the reputation, that it was a conceptual mess. Arendt builds much of the book around a distinction between 'work' and 'labour', but they are neither mutually exclusive nor clearly specified. Her attempt to argue otherwise just leads to compounding error. That aside, I do like Arendt's short book 'On Violence', which is simple but powerful.

helloworld11 5y ago
Eichmann was a poor example for Arendt's main idea of evil's banality in certain people and groups, but the idea is far from being invalidated. One book I strongly recommend that reinforces the idea in the modern age is "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher Browning. His thoroughly researched book describes the basic nature of most of the members of Nazi death squads in the eastern occupied territories, and yes, he strongly underscores just how ordinary and otherwise banal so many of them were or would have been had they not been guided into the German order police battalions (ordnung polizei)
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Also, being an anti-semite does not make one an unusual person, especially if we're talking about the central European culture of the mid 20th century, where this idea was extremely common even among many otherwise ordinary people. Eichmann may have been fanatically hateful towards jews, but this was for one thing far from uncommon and secondly, far from something that would have probably led him to participating in their systematic extermination had the Nazi regime not come into existence with all that it did.
- refurb 5y ago
  That book is disturbing as hell as it shows just how nonchalant many were to the mass killings. Most of the excerpts are taken from letters or diaries of perpetrators so you can read exactly how they described the events themselves. The stories of the dozens of children locked up (parents already killed) and starving and how the authorities had to tell the guards how this is upsetting the population and to not let it happen again - that is, let the population see the conditions the children are in. Or the mass shootings of groups of kids all the way down to toddlers.
  - helloworld11 5y ago
    Extremely disturbing, and as you mention, especially the nonchalance with which the "ordinary men" describe their revolting atrocities to their own families back home... Browning really did his research well and for anyone with children of their own, the descriptions of killing them are extremely hard to stomach.

helloworld11 5y ago

Eichmann was a poor example for Arendt's main idea of evil's banality in certain people and groups, but the idea is far from being invalidated. One book I strongly recommend that reinforces the idea in the modern age is "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland" by Christopher Browning. His thoroughly researched book describes the basic nature of most of the members of Nazi death squads in the eastern occupied territories, and yes, he strongly underscores just how ordinary and otherwise banal so many of them were or would have been had they not been guided into the German order police battalions (ordnung polizei)

helloworld11 5y ago
Also, being an anti-semite does not make one an unusual person, especially if we're talking about the central European culture of the mid 20th century, where this idea was extremely common even among many otherwise ordinary people. Eichmann may have been fanatically hateful towards jews, but this was for one thing far from uncommon and secondly, far from something that would have probably led him to participating in their systematic extermination had the Nazi regime not come into existence with all that it did.
refurb 5y ago
That book is disturbing as hell as it shows just how nonchalant many were to the mass killings. Most of the excerpts are taken from letters or diaries of perpetrators so you can read exactly how they described the events themselves. The stories of the dozens of children locked up (parents already killed) and starving and how the authorities had to tell the guards how this is upsetting the population and to not let it happen again - that is, let the population see the conditions the children are in. Or the mass shootings of groups of kids all the way down to toddlers.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Extremely disturbing, and as you mention, especially the nonchalance with which the "ordinary men" describe their revolting atrocities to their own families back home... Browning really did his research well and for anyone with children of their own, the descriptions of killing them are extremely hard to stomach.