In 1961, Israel tried Adolf Eichmann, a former high-ranking Nazi German official and known as the "executioner". Hannah Arendt, a famous Jewish female philosopher who has lived in the United States for many years, was invited by The New Yorker to write about the trial. Her manuscript caused an uproar. As early as 1949, Arendt criticized the Nazi genocide in "The Origin of Totalitarianism"; "the one who executes the order is innocent" is a defense that the Nazis have always used; how the act of war can be traced back to individual culpability , from the time of the Nuremberg trial was the focus, and eventually formed one of the Nuremberg Principles: A person acting on the orders of the government or its superiors cannot be exempted from responsibility in international law if he can make a moral choice. None of this is a new topic (the Nuremberg trials were based on international law so still a challenge for Israeli courts). This time, through observation and recording from a philosophical perspective, Arendt put forward the concept of "banality of evil", and made Achmann, who was originally a mediocre and no-name person, had no motive for evil, but mechanically executed orders and committed crimes. The heinous crime is called "the banal evil". The most direct reason why Arendt was attacked was because she not only wrote about the perpetrators, but also the responsibility of the victims. She wrote that some "Jewish leaders" had cooperated with the Nazis consciously or unintentionally, and had a negative impact on the fate of the Jews. had a negative effect. As a result, she was considered anti-Semitic and sympathetic to the Nazis, causing indignation. The public does not seem to consider Arendt himself a Jewish persecuted by the Nazis, a Jewish activist after exile in the United States, and known for his criticism of totalitarianism. She observes, records and thinks without emotion, but she is accused of being indifferent and overly rational. The Jewish leadership issue is a dispute that has been raised in court, she just recorded it, and that's only a small part of her entire article. Ironically, the vast majority of the public who abused her had not read her articles, and only listened to and scolded based on the few words they heard. Arendt pointed out that the reason for the "banal evil" is that these people have handed over the most basic thing as a human being - the ability to think, entrusting themselves to the system, and replacing individual thinking with the system, so that they cannot carry out morality. Judgment makes the most mediocre people commit the most sensational evils.
The people who perpetrated public opinion violence had never thought about it at all, and just followed the nonsense without reading or not understanding it. The behavior and degree are different from those of the Eichmanns, and they are essentially the same. And how familiar this scene looks today. Arendt has gone through the storm and lost some friends. Fortunately, she was not banned from teaching and research, and this public opinion storm did not affect her status in the ideological world. She spent her whole life thinking and researching "evil". At the end of the film she says, "...but no one pointed out my real mistake. Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet". PS. Germans have been thinking about personal crimes in the war, and there are many works on this subject, such as "Not Guilty Murder: The Coligny Case". For "the victim's fault", see the heavy little book "Submerged and Saved" by Italian scholar and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, who died by suicide I've seen how to look at the "gray areas" - those who, for good or ill, collude with the authorities of the concentration camps to enjoy their privileges, and of course he writes about the situation in the small environment of the concentration camps. In the film, Arendt's speech at the Academy (does it happen in real life?) is concise, clear, and powerful, and is recorded as follows: "When the New Yorker sent me to report on Adolphus. Eichmann's trial, I thought the court had only one duty, and that was to satisfy the demands of justice. This is not an easy job, because there is no reference to the crimes that the court will try, not in any law book. And before the Nuremberg trials, there had never been such a criminal. But the court still had to see Eichmann as someone tried for his actions. Not to judge a system, not to judge history or Nazism, just to judge a person. The problem with war criminals like Eichmann is that he insists on denying all personal will, as if there is no one who can be punished or forgiven. He has repeatedly argued, contrary to the prosecution's argument that he did nothing of his own accord. For better or worse, he had no such desire. He just obeyed orders. This is a typical Nazi defense. Make it clear that the greatest evil in this world is the evil committed by little people, by people who have no motives. There is no criminal idea, no evil heart, no devil's will. Implementers are people who are not satisfied with being human. It is this phenomenon that I call the evil of banality. I never blame the Jews. Resistance is impossible, but perhaps, there is a way that can be between resistance and cooperation. It is only based on this feeling that I say that perhaps some Jewish leaders could do it differently. It is extremely important to ask these questions. Because of the role of these Jewish leaders, they provide one of the most striking perspectives on the moral collapse of European upper classes as a whole caused by the Nazis. Not only in Germany, but almost all countries. Not only among the persecutors, but also among the victims. I was attacked, they said I hated my race, defended the Nazis, and despised my own nation. This isn't an opinion debate at all, it's a slur of character. I have never written a single word of defense for Eichmann. But I did try to reconcile this utterly banal man with his sensational villainy. Trying to understand does not equal forgiveness. I see it as my duty to understand, and it is the duty of all who have written on this subject, starting with Socrates and Plato. We usually refer to thinking as I begin a silent dialogue with myself. In refusing to be a human being, Eichmann completely surrendered that characteristic of being a human being, that is, the ability to think. He is therefore no longer capable of making moral judgments. This inability to think creates a possibility for ordinary people to commit crimes on a large scale. The world has never seen anything like this before. It's true, I've thought about these questions philosophically. What the wind of thinking shows is not knowledge, but the ability to distinguish right from wrong, the ability to judge beauty and ugliness. I hope that thinking can empower people. In these In a few moments, at the moment of crisis, prevent the catastrophe from happening. "
2022.1.13 Film Archive
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