1. HANNAH ARENDT LIFE political philosopher
no systematic political philosophy
interest in several key issues
Hannover 1906
Jewish family
Heidegger, Husserl, Jaspers
Berlin and Marburg University
philosophy, literature, theology
Germany France (1933) USA (1941)
New York 1975

2. WORKS
1951: The Origins of Totalitarianism
1958: The Human Condition (Vita Activa)
1963: Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil

3. THE BANALITY OF EVIL Journalistic report - Trial – Otto Adolf Eichmann
Nazi leader
(Deportation of millions of Jews to concentration camps)
Journalistic analysis – mentality – Holocaust
The New Yorker - Jerusalem
Otto Adolf Eichmann
crimes against the Jewish people
crimes against humanity
crimes of war

4. 1950
Nazis and Nazis collaborators Punishment Law
DEATH PENALTY
24 May 1960 – Argentina – Israeli agents
United Nations – Trial in Jerusalem
15 April 1961
To each count Eichmann pleaded:
“NOT GUILTY IN THE SENSE OF THE INDICTMENT”

5. Arendt: “IN WHAT SENSE THEN DID HE THINK HE WAS GUILTY?”
NOBODY ASKED HIM THIS OBVIOUS QUESTION
Eichmann’s lawyer:
“HE FEELS GUILTY BEFORE GOD, NOT BEFORE THE LAW”
This answer remained without confirmation from the accused himself
What Eichmann was accused of WERE NOT CRIMES but “ACTS OF STATES” over which no other state has jurisdiction
Not responsible doing his job
He committed acts FOR WHICH YOU ARE DECORATED IF YOU WIN AND GO TO THE GALLOWS IF YOU LOSE

6. Eichmann: “With the killing of Jews I had nothing to do
Eichmann: “With the killing of Jews I had nothing to do. I never killed a jew, or a non-Jew (…) I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill either a Jew or a non-Jew (…). I could be accused only of aiding and abetting the annihilation of the Jews”
Eichmann DID HIS DUTY; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law as a LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN
He said he had lived his whole life according to Kant’s moral percepts and especially according to a kantian definition of duty
Kan’t moral philosophy is so closely bound up with man’s faculty of judgement that it rules out blind obedience

7. He went to the gallows with great dignity
EICHMANN’S DEATH
He went to the gallows with great dignity
He asked for a bottle of red wine and drank half of it
He refused the help of the Protestant minister who offered to read the Bible with him
He refused to wear the black hood
He was in complete command of himself
He was a Gottglaubiger but he was not Christian and did not believe in life after death

8. Eichmann = common, ordinary, average man
FOCUS ON THE TITLE
BANALITY
THOUGHTLESSNESS
Eichmann = common, ordinary, average man
Superficiality
Mediocrity
Ordinariness
Incapacity for independent critical thought
Authentic inability to think

9. EICHMANN’S LANGUAGE A MACABRE COMEDY
cliché-ridden
Stock phrases
Standardized code of expression
No internal dialogue with himself
No self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds
A MACABRE COMEDY
Some attitudes commonly ripudiated by a society find a locus of manifestation in the COMMON citizen