- Information
- AI Chat
5 Arendt
Social and Political Issues (PHIL 1010)
University of Guelph
Students also viewed
Preview text
Zombies and The Banality of Evil
Hannah Arendt
- Introduction................................................................................................................................................. Table of Contents
- Stanford Prison Experiment.....................................................................................................................
- Big Questions:......................................................................................................................................
- Key Ideas from Stanford Experiment...................................................................................................
- Suggestions for Challenging Evil-Social-Shaping-Forces.......................................................................
- Milgram Experiment............................................................................................................................
- Hannah Arendt........................................................................................................................................
- Arendt on Evil..........................................................................................................................................
- The Banality of Evil..............................................................................................................................
- In Summary........................................................................................................................................
- Stanford Prison Experiment.....................................................................................................................
Introduction
Eichmann in Jerusalem is Arendt’s report and reflection on the trial of Nazi officer Adolf
Eichmann, who oversaw the deportation of Jewish victims to the extermination camps. Arendt’s
controversial argument, which continues to make people uncomfortable today, is that
Eichmann did not have to be a monster to do what he did, but was in fact quite normal. In
other words, the radical evil we see in the world today may be the result of “average” people,
not just odd-ball monsters we hear about in the media.
Are you responsible for evil?
Note: “zombies” is not a part of Arendt’s analysis. It is merely an analogy I use to help us
interpret the general thoughtlessness that produces radical evil (banality that encourages
radical evil).
The third approach that will help us frame the mechanism of thoughtlessness is through two
famous social experiments by Milgrim and Zimbardo. Each person designed experiments that
reveal people's willingness and ability to commit evil acts under the right circumstances.
Stanford Prison Experiment.....................................................................................................................
From Wiki:
Roles—we tend to follow our assigned social roles. What happens when we take on “assigned” roles in society? Responsibility—we quickly abdicate any sense of responsibility, i., “I was just following orders.” Baby Steps—becoming evil happens slowly. Consequentialism—we argue that “the ends justify the means” so anything is permitted in the name of some good (evil is okay if it yields a good). Exit costs—we follow orders and hurt others because we are afraid of the cost of leaving, saying no, being good (e., money, fame, shelter). The debates around whether we re born evil remain open-ended. Zimbardo is drawing attention to our social design. Social roles and authorities have a very large role to play in creating people—good and bad. Is our society creating good people? Or are we being trained to follow orders without thinking? Suggestions for Challenging Evil-Social-Shaping-Forces Admit your mistakes. Don’t go on autopilot (think!) Take responsibility Assert your identity Respect “just” authority and rebel against “unjust” authority Value your independence Have courage Don’t give up rights for security Milgram Experiment Zimbardo became famous for this (terrible) experiment. We might be tempted to think that this experiment was an anomaly and that the average person would not really act like guards/prisoners. In 1963 Milgram performed another experiment that re-enforced the basic insights of the Stanford Experiment—people are easily controlled and too willing to do evil to others.
Modern Re-Enactment
Milgram Experiment (Graphic content) (10 minutes)
Start at 1:21 minutes youtu/y6GxIuljT3w What is interesting about the above video is that it re-enacts a study that has been widely regarded as unethical. For instance, in Canada, you simply could not do this experiment because it is considered abusive to both participants and actors. Would you shock others (to the point of pain or even death) based on the authority of another? Would you follow orders? We want to think each of us would act differently—that we would “not” hurt others—but experiment after experiment demonstrates our willingness to be evil.
Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union represent two modern totalitarian states that are evil. Arendt argues that totalitarian states require the totality of all within its borders. Everything, even human identity, belong to the powers of the state. Humans themselves become dispensable to the desires of the state. Individuals (me, you—our individualities) are fundamentally opposed to the totalitarian state. People are reduced to cogs in a machine. Cogs in machines have no freedom. To be human, genuinely human, requires freedom. Some societies demand our freedom from us (though we might not recognize this as such). Has your freedom been taken from you? Examples ... Political pressure makes people less than real people. “What totalitarian ideologies therefore aim at is not the transformation of the outside world.. the transformation of human nature itself.” Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Totalitarian evil is called radical evil because it refers to something fundamental and pervasive. For Arendt, radical evil is radical because of its destructive nature. The human soul (the psyche) can be destroyed before the body. Radical evil is evident in totalitarian states in which people are turned into robots willing to kill and be killed in the interests of totalitarian states. “I was just following orders!” “I am patriotic!” “I love my country” (so die by my gun for no other reason than that I’ve been told to kill you) The Banality of Evil Her most controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, came about after she reported on Eichmann’s court trail in Israel.
It is a collection of articles originally written for the New York Times following the trial. Eichmann (1906-1962) was largely responsible for “the final solution” (the eradication of the Jews). After the Second World War, Eichmann escaped Germany, eventually arriving in Argentina where he was kidnapped by Israeli agents and taken to Israel to stand trial. Charged with organizing the deportation of Jewish prisoners to extermination camps, Eichmann pleaded not guilty to 15 charges including crimes against humanity and the Jewish people. Who is Eichmann? Eichmann, the oldest of five children, lived a “humdrum life without significance and consequence” as Arendt puts it. A failure in his own eyes and those around him, Eichmann struggled to find a successful career until the Nazis recruited him.
We cannot think as people. A new type of person is needed, one able to follow orders instead of morality—even common empathy. To obey authority, not to question, is the virtue of an unthinking society. Remember that while Eichmann held a privileged office, he was just one of millions to follow similar orders, many of whom did use guns and pulled levers. At trial, sitting in a protected glass booth, Eichmann showed no remorse. He seemed to be truly “humdrum” in almost every way. Numerous mental healthcare professionals (at least six) examined him and found no signs of sickness or perversions—no history of psychopathy, murderous rage, or hidden vendettas. Everything about the man seemed normal. He was a career junkie for whom little else seemed to matter but the Nazi corporate ladder. Eichmann said that while he did not like the Jews he did not believe their complete extermination was necessary. No remorse, no guilt, no hatred, or so it seemed, Eichmann’s conscience revealed little about his actions. Why, if he truly did not hate the Jews nor received some sick satisfaction from their murder would he do what he did? So what should we make of this? Calling Eichmann and Nazis radically evil somehow misses the nature of truly immoral people, for Arendt. He was no monster with extra-human abilities, powers, or intelligence bent on destruction, even though the radically destructive consequences of his actions might be called monstrous. He lacked in power, including the power to think, and as a dogmatic follower, produced unimaginable miseries and injustices. Focusing on individuals such as Eichmann risks missing how a whole society went insane; how a people turned right and wrong upside down in a relatively short time. Germany was one of the most industrialized, educated, and Christian nations in the world. Understanding what went wrong there may very much help us understand ourselves here. Arendt sees in Eichmann an archetype for a certain kind of human being. Eichmann had the appearance of moral deliberation but, in fact, had none. He had the appearance of reason but was, in fact, very sick for he could no longer think. Her now famous term “banality of evil” describes one’s modes of existence as emerging from a lack of thinking. Eichmann, who readily embraced the propaganda of the Nazis, according to Arendt, was simply unable to judge right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And in surrendering that part of himself that is most precious, he ceased being a person.
What does it mean that he was unable to think? This is a difficult thing to articulate. For Hannah, there are at least two major indicators. First, Eichmann lived with a distorted morality, and at some point he could no longer question goodness and justice from his place in the world. Eichmann surrendered to dogmatism. Second, Eichmann was unwilling to imagine the perspective of another. This requires a high degree of thoughtfulness, including imagination and compassion needed to step inside another’s shoes. The inability to question and recognize the existence of others, in its extreme form, results in a lack of responsibility and care more generally. Eichmann was possible because of a community that sustains and supports thoughtlessness—a shallowness. Moreover, the idea that those who cooperated with the Nazis were somehow different than ordinary people today must be rejected, according to Arendt. The normal-dogmatism (banality) that so infected Eichmann is a pervasive force throughout all cultures and times. The belief that we are immune is further evidence of our own apathy (perhaps cowardice and laziness) toward the question of whether or not we are ourselves thought defying. Many conversations about Eichmann have centred on whether or not he “really knew” what he was doing. On the one hand, if he was so vapid a thinker, so out of touch with anything other than he immediate religion—bureaucratic efficiency and the authority of his beneficent guardians—then he cannot be held accountable for “following orders.” On the other hand, would a normal person, for surely the title “normal” applied to some if not most of those who turned against humanity during the war, ever be absolved from such an obvious set of questions about right and wrong? Orchestrating the transportation of human beings to their deaths and being responsible for so many terrible deaths during transport, is the sort of activity that is “beyond the pale” (beyond the boundaries of basic human morality) so to say. There is no way to ever really know what was going on inside Eichmann’s head. In the very least we may agree that the failure to question, to think, has profound consequences for the world. From a humdrum life without significance and consequence the wind had blown him into History, as he understood it, namely, into a Movement that always kept moving and in which somebody like him—already a failure in the eyes of his social class, of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well—could start from scratch and still make a career. -Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 33
The temptation of evil was not longer to do bad, for the very idea of bad had been reversed. The temptation was to do good, which was the new evil.
5 Arendt
Course: Social and Political Issues (PHIL 1010)
University: University of Guelph
- Discover more from:
