Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism and the Nature of Evil

Shore’s own judgments and connections

For Arendt the decisive break came in 1943, with the news of Auschwitz, not in 1933: having enemies is natural, but this was something politics could never make amends for.

Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism starts from an intuition: Nazism and Stalinism, locked in a war to the death, were opposites yet in important respects deeply alike, and historically unprecedented.

For Arendt, interwar statelessness showed the rights of man to be a fiction: a right no government enforces does not exist in practice, so in effect only citizens have rights.

Arendt ties the emergence of radical evil to a system under which "all men have become equally superfluous."

Put simply Arendt links the rise of "radical evil", a new evil beyond ordinary motives, to a system in which "all men have become equally superfluous": everyone has become expendable.

Where to read it Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, end of ch. 12.

Eichmann's crime, in Arendt's eyes, was failing to think. Far from excusing him, that makes him not a lesser criminal but the worst, because thinking is never optional.

In the text In the Postscript to Eichmann in Jerusalem (1965 edition), Arendt writes that "sheer thoughtlessness" predisposed Eichmann "to become one of the greatest criminals of that period."

Shore links the herd that Arendt, Adorno and Horkheimer all invoke to Heidegger's conformist das Man, and sees Arendt pulling that single herd apart into two categories, mob and masses.

Put simply Shore: Arendt, Adorno and Horkheimer all speak of "the herd," which Shore links to Heidegger's conforming "they" ("das Man"). Arendt splits that one herd into two groups: the mob and the masses.

For Arendt the decisive break came in 1943, with the news of Auschwitz, not in 1933: having enemies is natural, but this was something politics could never make amends for.

Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism starts from an intuition: Nazism and Stalinism, locked in a war to the death, were opposites yet in important respects deeply alike, and historically unprecedented.

In Shore's reading, Origins shares, in some ways, the course's recurring starting point: alienation as modernity's central problem, breeding a vulnerability that is necessary though not sufficient for totalitarianism.

Put simply Shore: in some ways Arendt's book starts where the course keeps starting, with alienation, the sense of not being at home in the modern world. That breeds a weakness totalitarianism needs, though it is not enough on its own.

What the Dreyfus affair means for Arendt is neither the framed officer nor the birth of Zionism, but crowds in Paris streets demanding Jewish deaths: mob and masses entering history.

Put simply Arendt: what matters about the Dreyfus affair is not the officer who was framed, nor the start of Zionism, but crowds in Paris shouting for Jewish deaths. That is when the "mob" and the "masses" enter history.

Arendt's mob is the bourgeoisie's shadow: gangsters who resent a society that shuts them out, want to force their way back into it, and share its values minus the hypocrisy.

Put simply Arendt's "mob" is the dark twin of the middle class: gangsters who resent the respectable society that shuts them out, want to force their way back in, and share its values without the hypocrisy.

Arendt describes Nazism as the bourgeoisie allied with the mob, an alliance that managed to draw in the masses, recruiting from the politically indifferent rather than from any elite.

Put simply Arendt: Nazism was an alliance of the middle class and the mob that managed to pull in the masses. It recruited from people who had never cared about politics, not from any elite.

In the text In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part Three, ch. 10, section II, Arendt writes of "the temporary alliance between the mob and the elite."

By the masses Arendt means the hitherto unengaged majority: people too numerous, too indifferent, or both, for any party, union or other interest-based body ever to have organized them.

Under capitalism, Arendt argues, accumulation throws off surplus money and surplus people, and that surplus must go somewhere: the result is a permanent drive toward imperial expansion.

Put simply Arendt: under capitalism, piling up wealth leaves extra money and extra people with nowhere to go. That surplus has to go somewhere, so there is a constant push to expand into empires abroad.

Where Lenin saw in imperialism capitalism's final phase, Arendt sees the bourgeoisie's political rule just beginning.

Put simply Arendt, against Lenin: he saw empire-building as capitalism's last stage. She sees it as the moment the middle class only begins to rule politically.

Where to read it Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, ch. 5, opening.

Human beings become superfluous, Arendt says, along two paths: losing the protection of a state, and being atomized into conformity.

Put simply Arendt: people are made "superfluous", that is, expendable, in two ways: by losing the protection of any state, and by being cut off from one another and pressed into conformity.

For Arendt, interwar statelessness showed the rights of man to be a fiction: a right no government enforces does not exist in practice, so in effect only citizens have rights.

In Arendt's analysis, victims are not the only ones made superfluous: the perpetrators, recruited from an atomized, lonely mass, trade isolation for collective organization and lose their selves.

Put simply Arendt: the victims are not the only ones made "superfluous", unneeded. The perpetrators come from lonely, isolated people who trade their isolation for belonging to a movement, and lose their selves in it.

Arendt ties the emergence of radical evil to a system under which "all men have become equally superfluous."

Put simply Arendt links the rise of "radical evil", a new evil beyond ordinary motives, to a system in which "all men have become equally superfluous": everyone has become expendable.

Where to read it Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, end of ch. 12.

For Arendt, ideology persuades by smoothing reality out: it swaps the actual world, arbitrary and contingent, for a fictitious one where a single narrative, however false, explains everything consistently.

Put simply Arendt: ideology persuades by tidying up reality. It swaps the real world, full of chance and accident, for an invented one where a single story, even a false one, neatly explains everything.

Under totalitarianism the line between public and private disappears. Nowhere is left to keep out of politics or simply be let alone; under Stalinism even pillow talk concerned the regime.

Put simply Arendt: under totalitarian rule there is no private life left, nowhere to stay out of politics or be left alone. Under Stalin the regime cared even about what lovers said in bed.

Totalitarian rule shapes its subjects to serve equally well as executioners or victims, so the line dividing persecutor from persecuted never holds still: under Stalin, any denouncer could be denounced.

Put simply Arendt: totalitarian rule makes people equally fit to be executioners or victims, so the roles never stay fixed. Under Stalin, anyone who denounced a neighbor could be denounced in turn.

Totalitarianism, Arendt writes, found a way of "dominating and terrorizing human beings from within"; once everyone polices everyone else, no distance separates rulers from ruled.

Put simply Arendt: totalitarianism found a way to "dominate and terrorize human beings from within". When everyone watches and reports on everyone else, no gap is left between rulers and ruled.

By making death anonymous, the camps emptied it of meaning as the end of a fulfilled life; the victim's death only sealed the fact that he "had never really existed."

Put simply Arendt: in the camps, death was made anonymous, so it could no longer mark the end of a full life. The victim's death only confirmed that he "had never really existed."

Arendt on anonymous death in the camps reads, to Shore, as something of a polemic with Heidegger, for whom one's own death was the single thing absolutely one's own.

Put simply Shore: Arendt's point about anonymous death in the camps reads partly as an argument with Heidegger, for whom your own death was the one thing absolutely your own.

Totalitarian cynicism takes Ivan Karamazov literally: if God is dead, "everything is permitted." That rests on a deeper conviction that "everything is possible," and the camps are laboratories verifying it.

Put simply Arendt: totalitarian cynics take Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov literally: if God is dead, "everything is permitted." Behind it lies a deeper belief that "everything is possible," and the camps were laboratories for proving it.

Arendt ends Origins on absolute evil: once the impossible became possible, a crime appeared that no ordinary wicked motive, greed, resentment, cowardice, could explain, beyond both punishment and forgiveness.

Put simply Arendt ends her book on totalitarianism with "absolute evil": once the impossible became possible, a crime appeared that no ordinary bad motive, like greed or cowardice, could explain. It could be neither punished nor forgiven.

Shore judges that Arendt, between Origins and the Eichmann book, apparently reversed herself on Nazi evil: once radical, it is now banal.

Put simply Shore: between her two books, Arendt apparently changed her mind about Nazi evil. First she called it "radical", beyond any ordinary motive; later, in her book on Eichmann, "banal", the work of a thoughtless, ordinary man.

Arendt, hearing Eichmann testify in German, was chilled by the gap between monstrous deed and mediocre man: an opportunistic bureaucrat who seemed less monster than clown.

Put simply Arendt: listening in German to Adolf Eichmann, who organized the murder of Europe's Jews, she was chilled by the gap between the monstrous deed and the mediocre man: an opportunistic bureaucrat, more clown than monster.

Other readings Bettina Stangneth (Eichmann Before Jerusalem, 2014) reads Eichmann as a committed antisemitic ideologue who played the part of a minor functionary in court.

Eichmann spoke entirely in clichés, and for Arendt that was telling: his failure of speech was bound up with a failure to think, for himself or from anyone else's standpoint.

Eichmann's crime, in Arendt's eyes, was failing to think. Far from excusing him, that makes him not a lesser criminal but the worst, because thinking is never optional.

In the text In the Postscript to Eichmann in Jerusalem (1965 edition), Arendt writes that "sheer thoughtlessness" predisposed Eichmann "to become one of the greatest criminals of that period."

When Scholem charged her with not loving the Jewish people, Arendt answered that no collective, no people at all, had ever had her love: "I indeed love only my friends."

Arendt refuses to explain the Holocaust by national character: nothing about Germans as such made them murderers, and nothing about Jews as such made them victims.

Arendt holds that the capacity totalitarianism exploited in alienated modern masses belongs to everyone, always; nothing essential to any race or nation decides who has it.

Put simply Arendt: the potential that totalitarianism exploited in uprooted, alienated modern masses is in all of us, always. Nothing about any race or nation decides who has it.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus is court-martialed for treason and sent to Devil's Island; Herzl covers the affair.

Arendt goes to Marburg to study with Heidegger.

Arendt is arrested, released, and leaves Germany illegally for Paris via Prague and Geneva.

Arendt emigrates to New York.

We Refugees

News of Auschwitz reaches Arendt in exile in the United States.

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism published, written in emigration 1945-1950.

Adolf Eichmann is tried in Jerusalem; Arendt covers it for The New Yorker.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Scholem accuses Arendt of lacking love for the Jewish people after Eichmann in Jerusalem; she replies that she loves only persons.

Arendt gives her televised interview to Günter Gaus in Germany.