Nature of Evil Paper Number 2

7/29/2019 Nature of Evil Paper Number 2

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Brian Reager

October 15, 2012

Professor Michael Mulcahy

The Nature of Evil

Reflection on Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem

Finding Hannah Arendt’s stance on Eichmann in her text Eichmann in

Jerusalem is far from black and white. While the title itself gives the reader a clue—

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil —her tongue in cheek

remarks throughout the book may suggest a more spiteful connotation. Born into a

family of Secular Jews in Linden, Germany, she studied at the University of Marburg,

and in 1941 Arendt —along with her mother and husband—fled to the United States

in order to avoid being deported to the concentrations camps. Eichmann

undoubtedly felt the pinch of the Nazi regime throughout most of her life, yet in her

novel, she does not seem to chastise Eichmann as blatantly as one would expect .

Nonetheless, Hannah Arendt seems to attempts to destroy this idea of evil, while

concurrently sliding her own sentiments of Eichmann in the text.

Rather than condemning Eichmann of being evil, Arendt focuses on the very

humanoid qualities that Eichmann possessed. For instance, Arendt suggests that

Eichmann “personally” never had any sort of hatred towards Jews, contrary to his

friends who he claimed were mostly raging Anti-Semites. Arendt then rather

ironically follows up this notion: “Alas nobody believed him. The prosecutor did not



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believe him, because that was not his job...And the judges did not believe him,

because they were too good, and perhaps also too conscious of the very foundations

of their profession, to admit that an average, “normal” person, neither feeble-

minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right

from wrong (Ardent, 26).” Arendt seems to comment on the one-sided thinking of

those involved in the trial. After all, Mossad operatives in Argentina captured

Eichmann illegally, and he was brought to trial in the epicenter of the Jewish

religion. Arendt, despite being tongue-in-cheek, never seems to chastise the judges.

She says later that their current biased standing on Eichmann would never “resolve”

nor “escape”—an almost sympathetic view into how human tendencies affect our

judgment (Arendt, 27).

Eichmann’s alibi changed drastically throughout the course of the trial. At

first Eichmann claimed to have not killed any Jews himself: “I never gave an order to

kill either a Jew or a non-Jew; I just did not do it (Arendt, 22).” Following this

comment, he refers to the Holocaust as “on of the greatest crimes in the history of

Humanity (Arendt, 22)”. Arendt goes on to explain that his crime was only a crime

in retrospect and admits to finding it hard to find concrete evidence against him,

however she seems to be far less sympathetic towards Eichmann on page 25 when

she says “He remembered perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience

only if he had not done what he had been ordered to do—to ship millions of men,

women, and children to their death with great seal and the most meticulous care

(Arendt, 25)”. Here is where Arendt seems to become less forgiving to the human

aspects she had so graciously tried to preserve through most of the text.



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Nonetheless Arendt continues to paint the picture of a seemingly innocent

Eichmann, who was raised by a working-class family, struggled in school and had

difficulty finding a suitable job. Describing Eichmann’s initiation into the National

Socialist Party by lawyer, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Arendt describes the interaction as

such: “Kaltenbrunner had said to him: Why not join the S.S.? And he had replied,

Why not? That was how it had happened, and that was about all there was to it

(Arendt, 33).” Arendt also goes on to vocalize that one was entitled to be glad that

the court was unfair in its proceedings, if not to see how long it takes an average

person to overcome his or her repulsion toward crime (Arendt, 93). Once again, our

author puts expresses her attitude on the proceedings in a generally negative

connotation.

Arendt’s concern for the Banality of Evil seems to contradict itself with some

of her more opinionated views on the circumstances surrounding the trial.

Eichmann could easily be viewed as evil for his actions, however the evil that is

being commented on would be the acts of violence rooted in hatred and disdain for

a group of people. In order to adequately paint a picture of a man that would break

this notion of evil—as her title would suggest —it would seem unorthodox to

indirectly chastise him with ironic and sardonic side notes; a seemingly valid

precursor to the hate described above. Arendt could understandably be entitled to

condemning him; after all it was her family and race that he was helping to

annihilate. Arendt’s bitter documentation of the trial seems to mirror the trial itself:

in that in searching for truth, all that was uncovered was more acrimony towards



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each other. It would appear that Hannah Arendt ’s idea of the “banality” of evil

seems to be drowned out in the “banality” of her subtle biases.



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Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a Report on the Banality of Evil. New York;

Viking, 1963. Print.

Nature of Evil Paper Number 2

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