Arendt's description, from the Eichmann trial, of monstrous deeds committed by an ordinary, clichéd, thoughtless functionary rather than a monstrous character.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
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."
Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
ArendtArendt 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. L15 · 43:49
ShoreShore judges that Arendt, between Origins and the Eichmann book, apparently reversed herself on Nazi evil: once radical, it is now banal. L15 · 44:19
Shore reads the Eichmann account as a possible revision of the earlier radical-evil framing.
Terms that appear in the same claims.