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Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: The Public, the Private and Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Shiraz Dossa
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Extract

Since its publication, Eichmann in Jerusalem has provoked a storm of controversy. With a few exceptions, critics reacted to the substance of Arendt's thesis with considerable bitterness and hostility. This article argues that her detractors badly misunderstood Arendt because they were insufficiently conversant with, or unaware of, her political theory. Fundamental to this theory, articulated at length in her The Human Condition, is the crucial distinction between the public and the private. None of her critics, including those who sympathized with Arendt, have understood that her critical analysis of Eichmann's conduct and of the response of the Jewish leadership to the tragic fate that befell their people makes sense on the peculiar terrain of her political theory and particularly in terms of the public-private distinction which lies at the core of this theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 163 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

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References

NOTES

1 Syrian, Marie, “Hannah Arendt: The Clothes of the Empress,” Dissent, 10, (1963), 344–52;Google ScholarAbel, Lionel, “The Aesthetics of Evil,” Partisan Review, 30, (1963), 211–30;Google ScholarEzorsky, Gertrude, “Hannah Arendt Against the Facts,” New Politics, 2, (1963), 53–73;Google ScholarPodhoretz, Norman, “Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: A Study in the Perversity of Brilliance” in Doings and Undoings (New York, 1964), pp. 335–53;Google Scholar Gershom Scholem in his letter to Arendt reprinted in The Jew as Pariah, ed. Feldman, Ron H. (New York, 1978), pp. 240–45.Google Scholar This is also the view of Whitfield, Stephen J. in his recent book, Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism (Philadelphia, 1980), chaps. 6–7.Google Scholar

2 Arendt, , Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York, 1965), pp. 118–25.Google Scholar

3 Each of the writers, cited in footnote 1 above, committed some of these errors.

4 Arendt, , The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1958), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

5 Mary McCarthy also thought this was the main reason. She likened Arendt to “somebody who criticizes at a funeral,” in her fine essay on the controversy “The Hue and Cry,” in The Writing on the Wall (New York, 1970), pp. 58, 68.Google Scholar

6 “Arendt's Eichmann and Jewish Identity” in For a New America, ed. Weinstein, James and Eakins, David W. (New York, 1970), pp. 424–25.Google Scholar

7 12 April 1963.

8 Arendt, , Jew as Pariah, pp. 241, 245;Google Scholar for Arendt's view see her “Zionism Reconsidered” in this collection, pp. 131–63.

9 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1965).

10 See Walter Laqueur's favorable review in Arendt, , Jew as Pariah, pp. 252–59.Google Scholar For all his admiration for Robinson's book, he felt compelled to say that Robinson never confronts the real substantive issues.

11 (Chicago, 1961).

12 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 282.Google Scholar

13 Podhoretz, , “Hannah Arendt,” Doings and Undoings, p. 337.Google Scholar This is one of the more intelligent and rational responses to Eichmann in Jerusalem. In his recent memoir, Breaking Ranks (New York, 1979),Google Scholar Podhoretz has shed more light on his reasons for writing his essay (pp. 161–63).

14 Arendt, , The Human Condition (New York, 1959), especially part 2.Google Scholar

15 For instance, see Arendt, , Crises of the Republic (New York, 1972), p. 64;Google ScholarArendt, , Human Condition, p. 63;Google ScholarArendt, , Origins, p. 336.Google Scholar

16 Her essay “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,” Social Research, Autumn 1971, pp. 417–46,Google Scholar is a cautious, learned and aporetic exploration of this issue.

17 Arendt, , “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” p. 438.Google Scholar

18 Arendt, , Human Condition, p. 217;Google ScholarArendt, , Eichmann, p. 279.Google Scholar

19 Arendt, , Between Past and Future (New York, 1968), p. 45.Google Scholar

20 Arendt, , Eichmann, pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

21 Ibid.

22 Melville, Herman, Billy Budd (New York, 1961), p. 37.Google Scholar

23 Arendt, , Eichmann, pp. 26 and 30.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., p. 54.

25 This in essence is the view shared, among others, by Marie Syrkin, Gershom Scholem, Lionel Abel and Gertrude Ezorsky. See Footnote 1 above.

26 “On Misunderstanding Eichmann,” Encounter, November 1961, pp. 32–37;Google ScholarTragedy and Philosophy (New York, 1969), p. 383;Google ScholarNew York Review of Books, 13 May 1976, p. 6, respectively.Google Scholar

27 Act and the Actor (New York, 1970), pp. 170–97.Google Scholar

28 Bruno Bettelheim was also struck by this incongruity and he agreed with the substance of her thesis. See his essay in Surviving (New York, 1980), pp. 258–73.Google Scholar

29 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 276.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., pp. 31–33.

31 Ibid., p. 287.

32 See Arendt's concentrated and arresting analysis of the real nature of Hobbes's political theory in Origins, pp. 139–47.

33 Locke, , Two Treatises (New York, 1963),Google Scholar Second—sections 131, 133, 134, passim.

34 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 287.Google Scholar

35 Arendt, , Origins, p. 338.Google Scholar

36 Arendt, , Crises, p. 71 (fn. 35);Google ScholarArendt, , Eichmann, p. 105.Google Scholar

37 Cropsey, Joseph, “The United States as Regime” in Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago, 1977), p. 5.Google Scholar

38 Arendt, , “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility” in Guilt, Man and Society, ed. Smith, Roger W. (New York, 1971), pp. 255–67.Google Scholar

39 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 25.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 26.

41 Ibid., p. 96.

42 Ibid., p. 137; cf. also pp. 134–36.

43 All that is required of the citizen, and this is true also of liberal-democratic politics, is that he obey the rule of law and the rule of superior orders in a legally constituted state. Liberalism of both the Hobbesian and Lockean variety steadfastly insists on the separation of politics and morality in its definition of citizenship.

44 Arendt, , Human Condition, section 33;Google ScholarArendt, , Crises, pp. 60, 64, 84, 92.Google Scholar

45 This point is related to Arendt's primary thesis that Eichmann's besetting fault was “sheer thoughtlessness.”

46 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 116.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., pp. 103 and 108.

48 Ibid., pp. 103–104.

49 This view is implicit in her thought. For example, see Origins, pp. 316, 350–53, 437–52; Human Condition, chaps. 24, 26, passim.

50 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 279.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 125, passim.

52 Ibid., pp. 11–12, and p. 283; see also Arendt, , Jew as Pariah, pp. 260–61.Google ScholarShklar, Judith N. has seen fit to repeat this false charge in her article “Hannah Arendt as Pariah,” Partisan Review, 50 (1983), 75.Google Scholar

53 Arendt, , Jew as Pariah, pp. 248–49.Google Scholar

54 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 125.Google Scholar

55 “The Hue and Cry,” Writing on the Wall, p. 59.Google Scholar

56 The intense controversy surrounding this claim is beyond the scope of this essay: it can be studied in the essays, cited earlier, by Syrkin, Abel, Ezorsky, in Scholem's letter and in Robinson's book. Fruchter's essay, also cited earlier, is an excellent piece of analysis in support of Arendt's conclusion. See footnotes 1 and 6 above.

57 (New York, 1978), p. 70.

58 Bettelheim, Bruno, “The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank,” in Surviving, p. 254;Google Scholar cf. Arendt, , Jew as Pariah, pp. 56, 61–62.Google Scholar

59 This theme runs right through Eichmann; see also Jew as Pariah, pp. 232–34 and Origins, p. 338.

60 Arendt, , Eichmann, chap. 7, especially pp. 117–25.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., p. 279.

62 Ibid., p. 49.

63 This view is also to be found in Arendt, , On Revolution (New York, 1965), pp. 27, 256–57.Google ScholarBakan, M. takes a different view: see her essay “Hannah Arendt's Concepts of Labor and Work” in Hannah Arendt, ed. Hill, M. (New York, 1979), p. 61.Google Scholar

64 Arendt, , Eichmann, p. 279.Google Scholar

65 For example, Bell, Daniel, “The Alphabet of Justice,” Partisan Review, 30 (1963), 428–29;Google ScholarMacdonald, Dwight in his letter, Partisan Review, 31 (1964), 267.Google Scholar

66 For a critical discussion see my essay “Human Status and Politics: Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust,” Canadian Journal of Political Science (06 1980), pp. 309–323.Google Scholar

67 Arendt, , Human Condition, pp. 33, 35, 38, 53–55, passim.Google Scholar