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Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem asks whether a man who was "terrifyingly normal" can still be guilty of mass murder. We argue over her claim that Eichmann's defect was thoughtlessness, her attack on the Jerusalem show trial, and her startling verdict that he must hang anyway.
On Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).
Are we still morally culpable if our entire society is corrupt? Arendt definitely thinks so, but has a number of criticisms of the handling of the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The Israelis were committed to the view that Eichmann was a monster, when the reality, says Arendt, is more frightening. Featuring Mark Linsenmayer, Seth Paskin, Wes Alwan, and Dylan Casey. Get more podcasts at partiallyexaminedlife.com.
Chapters:
0:00 Blame inside a corrupt system: why we read this
1:44 Wes on the neo-Nazi profile and "normalizing"
3:16 Seth on the book's controversy and the canon
10:54 Arendt against the show trial: justice is about the doer
15:21 Eichmann's Kant: duty, Himmler's halt, and the Fuhrer's will
24:32 He could have transferred: careerism, class, conformity
29:30 The rule of nobody: bureaucracy and language rules
34:35 Judgment, going visiting, and the lure of abstraction
41:17 Himmler's trick: pity turned toward the self
45:55 Conscience as the voice of respectable society
1:12:29 Crimes against humanity and international law
1:26:02 "The only reason you must hang": moral luck and vengeance
1:38:52 Could we be the ones not seeing it? Hierarchy and status
1:57:16 What "banality of evil" actually means
#Philosophy #HannahArendt #BanalityOfEvil
