The banality of evil: Supporting Arendt’s understanding of evil (Essay Sample)

The Banality of Evil: supporting Arendt’s understanding of Evil
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The banality of evil: Supporting Arendt’s understanding of evil
Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil narrates the post-war trial of Adolf Eichmann who worked for Nazi Germany as an upper-level logistics man. Eichmann had a number of responsibilities in perpetrating the genocide, most notably foreseeing the transporting of Jews from different parts of the occupied land to the concentration camps. The debate surrounding the notion of the banality of evil is based on two key points. First, Arendt proposes that many of the political upheavals witnessed in the twentieth century, including the Holocaust, indicated a complete collapse in the moral tenets of Western civilization. As opposed to the consequence of the actions of diabolic individuals who deliberately placed themselves above the moral law, it was the institution of morality itself that had been shattered. Second, her use of the idea of the banality of evil was condemned for trivializing the scale of what Eichmann and his cronies had done, which had been, after all, the systematic massacre of six million Jews. This paper will argue that the banality of evil is indeed a fact based on evidence adduced by the author in the book.
Hannah Arendt was adamant that the concept of the banality of evil was a hard fact and not just an act of hypothetical speculation. According to her, Eichmann’s trial had established this phenomenon as a fact that no further demonstration or proof was needed.