Friday, August 18, 2006

Judgment call ...

... read `The Gentlemen Enjoyed Their Evil' at Anecdotal Evidence. My heart is with Scholem on this - "I don’t picture Eichmann, as he marched around in his SS uniform and relished how everyone shivered in fear before him, as the banal gentleman you now want to persuade us he was ..." - and yet ... there is a germ of truth to Arendt's notion of banality. The strutting, the uniforms, the cheap formality, are all vulgar in the worst sense. This is worth recallling as an antidote to the tendency one often encounters to glamorize evil - think of all the Milton criticism that sees Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost. Evil's dimension of banality does not excuse it or make it any less evil. In fact, it helps illustrate its utter lack - in itself - of redeeming qualities.

7 comments:

  1. Have you read Arendt?

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  2. Not in years. And, as I tried to say, I only suggest that there is something to her notion of evil's being banal.

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  3. Definitely, though I'm not sure she means it in quite the way you do. Nevertheless when I read Arendt I'm often reminded of the medieval European witch trials, which have been convincingly argued to have been motivated as much, if not more, by sheer pettiness and bloodymindedness - 'that woman was making eyes at my husband' - as by any religious fervour. But I think I may post on my blog later today about Grass; I'm very much of two minds about the whole matter.

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  4. Arthur, the last Cesarani quote actually conforms quite well to my understanding of Arendt, but I haven't read the Cesarani book.

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  5. That final Cesarani quote also conforms to my understanding of Arendt. And it would seem to me to support the notion of evil's banality. Eichmann was no Mephistophelian character, and Arendt's point, I think, is that evil is done by ordinary people in a routine manner. I don't think this excuses anything. Eichmann's behavior might have been more excusable had he been a madman. As it is, he got what he deserved - which was a lot better than what he meted out. After all, we are all agreed that what we are talking about here is genuine evil. As I said earlier, there is a tendency to romanticize evil. To remind of its banality serves to counter that at least somewhat.

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  6. I'm not sure I understand. Is he saying that evil is not banal? Because that is obviously not true. Evil may not always be banal, but certainly can be. Or is he saying that Arendt's particular concept of banality is false - and, if so, does he explain? If he does not believe in evil, then he obviously cannot believe in its banality. You can't believe anything about something you don't think is real in the first place.

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  7. Ah, but the Duchy of Grand Fenwick does exist - as a fiction. However, when we speak of evil, we do not think of it as a fiction, but as something that really occurs in the real world. If you do not believe in the reality of evil, it is not because you believe evil is a fiction. It is because you think there is no such thing as evil. And if there is no such thing, no qualities may reasonably be predicated of it. Zero times anything remains zero.
    One could also say that gluttony and smarminess are themselves banal. But I think the point that is being missed is what I suggested at the start, that the notion that evil can be banal (though may not always be) serves to some extent as an antidote to the notion that evil is somehow glamorous - a notion widely held, especially among romantics. I've seen a bit of genuine evil up close a couple of times and the ordinariness of the perpetrators was perhaps their most distinguishing characteristic.

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