Hannah Arendt (Oct.14, 1906 - Dec. 4, 1975) was a German born American philosopher. The subject of her works is the nature of power. They deal also with politics, authority, direct democracy, and totalitarianism.
Her best work Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) gives full retrospection of the phenomenon totalitarianism. She followed it to the anti-Semitism in the nineteenth century, imperialism, and the decomposition of the traditional nation-state.
Her flowing style of writing allows even the non-professional readers to apprehend her ideas and to ask themselves questions as how far can man go in losing the possibility to distinguish what is right and what is wrong under certain circumstances. Everyone may ask himself the question what will be his reaction if he lives under that circumstances and what resources have to be used to evaluate and distinguish the good/right and the bad/wrong.
Hannah Arendt demonstrates very original way of thinking and suggests nonconventional and interesting ideas about the personal responsibility under certain circumstances, e. g. totalitarianism, in her most controversial work Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). She develops further the ideas of implementing the crimes against humanity as a personal responsibility to everyone who participated in them. The question how could it be possible that so many people took part in the heinous crimes that certain regimes or movements performed and in what way should these people could be held responsible?
She witnessed the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1960. Arendt was surprised by his testimonial that actually he had nothing against the Jewish people and that all his actions were carried out in his authority as a head of the Vienna (Austrian) office for Jewish emigration. Being a member of the Austrian Nazi party, the deportation of Jewish emigrants in 1938 brought him a promotion and he took the lead of the Jewish section of Gestapo. Hannah Arendt tried to analyze and put emphasis on the role of such people who had not the evil intentions but just followed a set of rules even without thinking about it. She followed the actions, the motives and focused on the profile of the wrongdoer that did not have the evil intentions that could be expected from international criminals. Arendt considered this type of wrongdoers as the most hazardous. She examined closely the importance of the human ability of ‘thoughtlessness’ which confronted her at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. In her book about the trial, she showed the other side of the famous concept of ‘the banality of evil’. It was initially meant as a description of the nature of a particular type of evil caused by a thoughtless person but later she started to consider the concept on a more theoretical level and asking herself the question: “with what right did I possess and use the concept?” (Arendt 161)
She received a lot of critique on her work, particularly on her reflection of banality of evil. She writes in her book Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship: “I had pointed to a fact which I felt was shocking because it contradicts our theories concerning evil, hence to something true but not plausible.” (Arendt 18)
Hannah Arendt describes the elements of the totalitarian society in the following way: “First of all she states that totalitarian regimes, in order to exist, have to destroy the public realm of life. This makes all forms of politics, in the sense of citizens speaking, persuading, deciding and acting in the public realm, disappear.” (Arendt 474) She distinguishes the regimes like tyranny are built in the form of pyramids, with the leader situated at the top, from the structure of the totalitarian regime where the leader is situated at the center. The third element of the totalitarian regime is the ideology that explains the whole history, excuses the regime and legitimizes its policies.
In the totalitarian dictatorship the decision makers who can still be named government have reduced to the figure of one and all institutions which are supposed to initiate control over the executive decisions or to ratify them are destroyed. In the Third Reich there was only one man who could make decisions and he did them, therefore he was entirely politically responsible. This man was Hitler who correctly described himself as the only man in the whole Germany that could not be replaced according to the “cog-theory” where each cog that meant each person could be replaced without the system to be changed. (Arendt 29) Hannah Arendt wrote that the bureaucracy was a “government by nobody” (Arendt 31) that turned people into cogs of the administrative machine and in this way dehumanized them. (Arendt 289)
While explaining these characteristics, Arendt states that at the moment a totalitarian regime triumphantly comes into power, a new reality comes into subsistence where all moral standards are turned upside down. Because of this, Arendt gives the name “a total moral collapse” to the situation where a person who lives under a totalitarian regime is going through. Unexpectedly “normal people” commit crimes as the newly established political system is based on criminal principles. Considered from the perspective of totalitarian governments, people who commit crimes are “innocent.” (Arendt 33) The people realized that the moral categories that were observed before have become inadequate and inapplicable. The question which outlines now is how a person can be expected to distinguish right from wrong under the new circumstances, regardless of his legal knowledge because it turns out to be redundant.
Arendt began to apprehend what the answer to this question was while writing Eichmann in Jerusalem. She realized that the possibility to distinguish the right from wrong was more connected with the capability of thinking and not so much with the capability of judgment. While the system, especially the totalitarian system, is turning the men into cogs, and the trial turns the cogs into men or in other words the totalitarian system is on trial. Since this contradicts the court procedure, the question of personal responsibility remains unclear.
It was already explained that the totalitarian system had an ideology that covered all parts of public life and once a man had participated in the public life he had to fulfill all duties and challenges which appeared on his way. If the system was established on criminal basis as the Third Reich then all participants in the public life, nevertheless they were innocent in regard to the system they were integrated with its criminal behavior. A vivid example was Eichmann’s case where he started his transformation from cog into a man long before the trial and he was ready to endure the legal consequences of his prior actions. He had already found the right decision about his personal responsibility that he had not withdrawn from the political life as the ideas of Hitler were not his moral deeds.
Here arises the question how a person who falls into a situation, under similar circumstances, can distinguish the right from wrong and how far he can go obeying ideas and principles he does not agree with. Living in a democratic society that observes the virtual ideas and principles that are accepted by the most people in the world there is no discrepancy between the moral and legal personal responsibility. But when we speak about circumstances that deeply contradict our personal understanding of good/right and bad/wrong our personal responsibility conducts our withdrawal from public life and look for other ways of personal realization.
In other words, the only certainty is that we have to continue to live with ourselves, because our silent inside conversation of the ‘two-in-one’, will always carry on. Realizing this, we refuse to become a part of something wrong because we do not want to live together with a wrongdoer because that would no longer make our lives worthwhile.
In this way the Eichmann described by Arendt, the banal wrongdoer, does not fall in the conventional categories of criminals that according to the traditional criminal law are guilty. He had no criminal intentions and was not negligent. Nevertheless, Arendt states as a conclusion, some international crimes are of such importance that people who intentionally take part in them should be punished, although they were never aware of the evil of their actions and never had evil intentions.
Works sited
Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963New York: The Viking Press, Web
Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1976, New York: A Harvest Book 1976, Web
Arendt, Hannah, Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship, Web
Arendt, Hannah, Responsibility and Judgment, 2003, New York: Shocken Books, Web
