Thank you once again, Jodi, for a powerful post on Hannah Arendt and her insights on the banality of evil. Once upon a time I had a hard time understanding how a failure to think could lead to such whosesale evil. No longer. I've been stunned by the willingness to not know.
Thanks so much, Margaret, and I hear you: the experience of these past few years is what drove me back to Arendt. Learned a lot, once again, including from her "cancelling" in '64.
Is the problem not thinking, not judging for oneself? Or not knowing what to think and how to judge for oneself? Or in short, not knowing the truth? And whatever one thinks/judges the problem to be, is the problem one with a solution -- if so, what do you suppose it is? -- or just part of the unavoidable existential situation of human beings?
Are Arendt's insights insightful or banal? Isn't it a rather banal observation that evil is banal? Didn't everyone recognize that at one point? Isn't it mere naivete, blindness, deception to think that evil must be lurid and sensational and viscerally horrifying -- IOW, easily recognizable? (I really don't know about Arendt. I've long been curious about her without having found the opportunity to actually read much of her work -- thanks to your piquing my interest, her Eichmann book is on the way!)
Excellent questions, glad you raised them! My main response would be one thing at a time. First a person needs to see why it's important before questions of how and what can arise. There's only so much one can take on in circa 1500 words, after all ;)
The next post (on Eric Voegelin's Hitler and the Germans) gets more into provenance and orientation of our ability to think/judge. Arendt is fastidious in focusing on the activity.
On the banality of her observation: Iike everything in political theory, I'd say judge it by its fruits. New insight or not, it was needed at the time--likely in the wake of war propaganda with its obvious villains. She also was making a point about the character of those who are involved in bureaucratic organization of murder that I didn't get much into. She is definitely worth reading, though, glad you got the full book!
Thank you once again, Jodi, for a powerful post on Hannah Arendt and her insights on the banality of evil. Once upon a time I had a hard time understanding how a failure to think could lead to such whosesale evil. No longer. I've been stunned by the willingness to not know.
Thanks so much, Margaret, and I hear you: the experience of these past few years is what drove me back to Arendt. Learned a lot, once again, including from her "cancelling" in '64.
Is the problem not thinking, not judging for oneself? Or not knowing what to think and how to judge for oneself? Or in short, not knowing the truth? And whatever one thinks/judges the problem to be, is the problem one with a solution -- if so, what do you suppose it is? -- or just part of the unavoidable existential situation of human beings?
Are Arendt's insights insightful or banal? Isn't it a rather banal observation that evil is banal? Didn't everyone recognize that at one point? Isn't it mere naivete, blindness, deception to think that evil must be lurid and sensational and viscerally horrifying -- IOW, easily recognizable? (I really don't know about Arendt. I've long been curious about her without having found the opportunity to actually read much of her work -- thanks to your piquing my interest, her Eichmann book is on the way!)
Excellent questions, glad you raised them! My main response would be one thing at a time. First a person needs to see why it's important before questions of how and what can arise. There's only so much one can take on in circa 1500 words, after all ;)
The next post (on Eric Voegelin's Hitler and the Germans) gets more into provenance and orientation of our ability to think/judge. Arendt is fastidious in focusing on the activity.
On the banality of her observation: Iike everything in political theory, I'd say judge it by its fruits. New insight or not, it was needed at the time--likely in the wake of war propaganda with its obvious villains. She also was making a point about the character of those who are involved in bureaucratic organization of murder that I didn't get much into. She is definitely worth reading, though, glad you got the full book!