Thursday, August 25, 2022

Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)


I've been searching for a book that might speak to some of the anxieties attending our current moment. I am speaking of the movements of -- and towards -- social justice in all spheres of life and the platforms upon which these movements rest and wrestle. So far the book that comes closest is Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil, a book I knew of but had never looked at until recently.

Among the revelations: a proposition that has the need for justice greater than the laws that are said to deliver it. The staging ground is the Western court, and the lead character (Adolph Eichmann) has been positioned in such a way that "his" trial is not simply about the determination of his guilt but the attempt by the new-born state of Israel (led by David Ben-Gurion) to extinguish the anti-semiticism that helped to bring that state into being.

A crude reduction, but that also seems to be what Arendt is taking aim at: not the means by which things happen, but the ends. 

No comments:

Post a Comment