Language:
English
Year of publication:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2000) 65-85
Keywords:
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Eichmann, Adolf,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
;
War crime trials
Abstract:
After the publication of "Eichmann in Jerusalem" in 1963, many critics accused Arendt of callousness to the Jewish tragedy, Jewish self-hatred, and historical and ethical misjudgments. Argues that scrutiny of Arendt's views throughout her life shows that some of the criticism has been unjust. She never regarded the Holocaust as "banal" but as a "radical evil". As a young person, she supported the Zionist movement, and her criticism of the Zionist and Israeli establishment is close to that of Zionist revisionists. Her interest in Jewish and non-Jewish collaboration with the Nazis was long and permanent. At the same time, Arendt attempted to judge Eichmann from a position outside of that of the State of Israel or the community of former Holocaust victims. Arendt's main contribution to moral and legal thought is not the category of "banality of evil" but "crimes against humanity", and the principal moral flaw she saw in Eichmann was "thoughtlessness", the inability to think and judge. Characterizes Arendt's position as "anthropological universalism", which regards human beings as members of the same natural species, among which all forms of cultural, social, and historical differentiations are irrelevant when measured up against the "fundamentals" of their condition.
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