Banality Trivialized - Bernard J. Bergen: The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt and “The Final Solution”. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998. Pp. xvii, 169. $58.00. $22.95, Paper.)

2000 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-373
Author(s):  
Shiraz Dossa
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
Banality Of Evil

The real banality of evil

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Regine Lamboy
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
The Real ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Adolf Eichmann ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] When Hannah Arendt encountered Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem she was struck by the fact that his most outstanding characteristic was his utter thoughtlessness. This raised the questins of whether there might be a connection between thinking and abstaining from evil doing, which she explored in her last book The Life of the Mind. If there is indeed such a connection, there may be a class of people who might be led to abstain from evil doing if they can be persuaded to engage in thinking. This dissertation examines Arendt's success in establishing such a connection. Overall, her project does not really succeed. Her overly formal analysis of thinking wavers between a highly abstract and obscure conceptualization of thinking and a more down to earth definition. Ultimately she winds up stripping thinking of all possible content. .

scholarly journals On the Exception of Hannah Arendt

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 684-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayça Çubukçu
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
The Relationship

This article offers a close reading of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It argues that in this text, Arendt consistently, even obsessively, evaluates the legal and moral challenges posed by Eichmann’s trial through the relationship between exception and rule. The article contends that the analytical lens of the exception allows us to appreciate the perplexities that Eichmann in Jerusalem presents – some fifty years after the book’s publication – from a still uncommon perspective, and enables us to attend in new ways to Arendt’s own suppositions, propositions, and contradictions in this text.

scholarly journals The Legacy of Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Sabah Carrim
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Adolf Eichmann

Contemporary thinkers such as Philip Zimbardo, Alexander Hinton and Elizabeth Minnich recently coined the terms Banality of Heroism, Banality of Everyday Thought, and Banality of Goodness respectively (without these concepts being the linchpins of their theses). These terms can be retraced to one thinker in particular who is constantly referred to by them: Hannah Arendt. Arendt’s Banality of Evil, a key concept in her work, was devised to discuss the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This paper seeks to critically analyze these “banalities,” and ascertain whether they have contributed meaningfully to the existing literature on the problem of evil.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
Biographical Sketch ◽  
Organizational Behaviour ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Level Manager ◽  
Middle Level Manager

Hannah Arendt was profoundly influenced by Martin Heidegger both intellectually and personally. Arendt’s process philosophy of organizational ethics and politics remains relevant today. In 1963, she published a book entitled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. She is known for her analysis of authoritarian organizations and the emergent archetype of a middle-level manager based on Adolf Eichmann. This chapter provides a biographical sketch of Arendt and Eichmann and discusses the emergent archetype organizational and Eichmann dimensions considered by Arendt, including administrative harm, organizational requirements to obey orders, and ‘banality’ of organizational evil or at least unethical organizational behaviour. It also looks at the views of Heidegger, Eichmann, and Arendt regarding organizational becoming.

A Tale of Two Feminists?

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-131
Author(s):  
Yosefa Loshitzky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Red Army Faction ◽  
German Woman ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Red Army ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Political Thinker ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

One of the most engaging, yet controversial, public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt continues to be attacked with the same venom and ferocity that followed the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963) more than fifty years ago. This article discusses why Arendt remains such a divisive figure and why her intellectual legacy is still so unsettling, particularly for Zionists. The essay examines how these issues are represented, negotiated, and problematized in Margarethe von Trotta’s film Hannah Arendt (Germany/ Luxembourg/France, 2012). It explores how one of the most prominent contemporary feminist filmmakers, whose work celebrates the life and activism of revolutionary women from Rosa Luxemburg to Gudrun Ensslin from the Red Army Faction, transforms the “historical Arendt” into a “cinematic Arendt.” Although not a revolutionary in the tradition of Luxemburg, the German-Jewish political thinker Arendt is an interesting choice for a left-leaning, post-Holocaust German woman director. Yet Arendt presents a paradox for feminists due to the contradictions embedded in her works and public pronouncements. The article examines these contradictions and how Arendt emerges from this film, which attempts to portray a politically engaged intellectual woman, a figure that is almost entirely absent from the film screen.

scholarly journals Spór o istotę zła. Hannah Arendt w pismach Gustawa Herlinga-Grudzińskiego

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Paweł Panas
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Cognitive Limitations ◽  
First Time

The article attempts to trace Hannah Arendt’s presence in Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s writing. The first time she appears in his texts is as the author of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil – a bookthat the writer considered an exceptionally important voice in reflections about the nature of totalitarian systems and in the dispute over the nature of evil both in individual and metaphysical sense. Arendt’s analyses of basic dehumanisation mechanisms were close to him; he is fascinated by the soundness of Arendt’s key thesis on the ‘banality of evil.’ At the same time, Herling-Grudziński disputes with Arendt, indicating certain shortcomings in her thinking, mostly related to cognitive limitations resulting from herproposed take on the key problematics and partial disconsonance between theoretical disquisitions and existential experience. This criticism is limited and eventually Herling-Grudziński himself disputes with Arendt’s main critics. These issues are discussed in the final section of the article.

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