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The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Episode 111, The Banality of Evil (Part IV - Further Analysis and Discussion)

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Courses

4.8 • 612 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Introduction

On April 11, 1961, a Monster was put on trial in the state of Israel and broadcasted to the world. The Monster, who was housed in a glass box, was accused of crimes against humanity and the Jewish people – of knowingly sending hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths. When the trial commenced, and the Monster was asked how he pleaded, he answered, 'Not guilty, in the sense of the indictment.'

As the trial proceeded, the Monster portrayed himself as a cog in a machine. He was a cog who was helpless to stop the inevitable – a cog that was merely performing its duty. To some who observed the trial, the 'Monster' who sat before them appeared all too human. Behind the glass, there was no demonic essence of evil. The Monster was, in fact, an average person: a normal person who was capable of committing terrifyingly evil acts.

One observer went as far as to say that the manner in which the accused spoke, and the way he framed his story, was evidence that he simply lacked the ability to think. To this observer, it was no radical evildoer who sat in the glass box. In fact, his professed motives, and his inability to avoid cliches, were evidence of his banality.

Music produced by Ovidiu Balaban – all rights reserved.

Contents

Part I. The Life of Hannah Arendt

Part II. Eichmann in Jerusalem

Part III. The Essence of Evil

Part IV. Further Analysis and Discussion

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Part four, further analyses and discussion. Just a quick warning, once again, we referenced some sensitive material in this

0:22.5

installment of the show, but we hope you'll stick around and try and enjoy it anyway.

0:27.4

When we're doing Arendt's biography, she had a community of people, an intellectual community

0:33.4

in New York, as well as part of a Jewish community. And she had the respect of her peers. The origins

0:41.1

of totalitarianism was a huge book. Brought her acclaim not only in the academy, but also in the

0:46.7

wider public. Hannah Wrent, sent by the New Yorker to write this piece. And I don't think at any point

0:52.3

anyone would have suspected that what she was going to write

0:55.6

was going to be hugely controversial. I could only imagine that people trusted that she would

1:01.2

give a very detailed and accurate account of what took place in Jerusalem. We cut to the,

1:07.3

to the publication then, and this gets a huge backlash from that very community that I've just referenced there.

1:15.8

And Irving Howe and Lionel Abel summoned a meeting of the New York's Literary Society in which it was described as a trial that was like a stoning of an outcast member of the family.

1:27.4

Abel furiously pounded the

1:28.4

table arguing that Arendt had claimed the Holocaust was banal, that she found the Nazis sympathetic

1:33.4

more so than their victims, and that she was blaming the Jewish people for their own suffering.

1:38.4

And a lot of this came down to the fact, just the way that she was writing about it. Of course,

1:42.8

that we've done a very deep dive in that choice of word banal. But there were also other criticisms that came to the floor about how she described Eichmann, how she described some of the Jewish council leaders and just how she generally approached the trial as well. People were quite appalled by her use of irony and humor

2:02.8

about how she was describing him. And I think for her, maybe that was just appropriate, given that

2:09.6

she wanted to create some distance between herself and what she was writing about. But for other

2:14.5

people, they really thought that was a very poor choice of words

2:18.3

and of tone.

2:19.2

I think that's a really good introduction to one of the main controversies of this text.

2:24.4

She's accused of being flippant, of being malicious.

...

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