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The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Episode 181: Hannah Arendt on the Banality of Evil (Part Two)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.62.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2018

⏱️ 80 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Continuing on Eichmann in Jerusalem, on how ordinary people can do--or acquiesce to--horrific things. How do people rationalize this? What can we apply from this to ourselves? Also, how was genocide a new type of crime, and what's the best rationale for punishing it? We talk justice, revenge, and ways that we too might be morally mass-confused.

Listen to part one first or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: "Hiding from the Face of God" from Judybats 2000; listen to me interview singer/songwriter Jeff Heiskell on Nakedly Examined Music eps. 5 and 63.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:02.9

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0:26.6

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0:30.2

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0:35.7

Please visit partialexaminalife.com slash support.

0:47.2

You're listening to Partial Exam of Life episode 181, part two on Hana Arens, Ikeman in Jerusalem.

0:54.6

We laid out the overall frame that she was reporting on the trial of Adolf Ikeman.

1:01.0

And the content of her report in terms of not so much the thing that was going on in the trial,

1:05.2

but reporting the circumstances of Ikeman's role in the various atrocities and...

1:13.3

Examining his psychology.

1:15.3

Yes.

1:16.1

So, a large part of this is devoted to the question of whether he has a conscience or why his conscience didn't speak up

1:23.3

when he was asked to do the things that he was asked to do.

1:26.1

Seth has just finished his speech on, they had to do great things, they're establishing a thousand-year rike.

1:32.3

That's one of the ways in which conscience has defeated.

1:34.7

She actually gives a lot of different examples of the way one might defeat conscience, the grandiosity.

1:43.0

Himmler's method is one of them.

...

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