Good works, because they must be forgotten instantly, can never become part of the world; they come and go,leaving no trace. They truly are not of this world.
hannah Arendtquotes
1906 - 1975
Having witnessed the horrors of the Nazi regime first hand, German-born American philosopher, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), is known not only for her great contributions to political theory, but also her undaunted and daring spirit.
After earning her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg, Arendt uncovered antisemitism propaganda within the Nazi Party and spoke against it. A Jew herself, Arendt was arrested and jailed by the Gestapo. Incredibly, she escaped and fled to Paris in 1933, only to be later taken to a Nazi concentration camp. She escaped again and made her way to New York.
She became a naturalized U.S. citizen a decade later, and published her famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Tracing the rise of antisemitism, racism and imperialism in the West, this book firmly established Arendt as a philosopher. Previously, she worked as a journalist and editor, but with the succession of more publications she found her way as a lecturer and professor at numerous universities.
The Human Condition, a critique of the modern world using Classical ideologies, is considered her philosophical masterwork, while The Life of the Mind is a provocative analysis of the relationship between will and freedom.
Her distinguished writing won her both acclaim and criticism. Most controversial was her book on the trial of Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann (Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil), where she claimed he was more “thoughtless” than evil. Despite this, her original and provocative views remain the basis for many modern political theories.
For, obviously, things were not as simple as the framers of laws had imagined them to be, and if it was of small legal relevance, it was of great political interest to know how long it takes an average person to overcome his innate repugnance toward crime, and what exactly happens to him once he had reached that point. To this question, the case of Adolf Eichmann supplied an answer that could not have been clearer and more precise.
What has come to light is neither nihilism nor cynicism, as one might have expected, but a quite extraordinary confusion over elementary questions of morality — as if an instinct in such matters were truly the last thing to be taken for granted in our time.
And if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer.
And if he did not always like what he had to do…he never forgot what the alternative would have been. Not only in Argentina, leading the unhappy existence of a refugee, but also in the courtroom in Jerusalem, with his life as good as forfeited, he might have still preferred—if anybody had asked him—to be hanged as Obersturmbannführer a.D. (in retirement) rather than living out his life quietly and normally as a traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company.
In his mind, there was no contradiction between “I will jump into my grave laughing,” appropriate for the end of the war, and “I shall gladly hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth,” which now, under vastly different circumstances, fulfilled exactly the same function of giving him a lift.
What are we going to say if tomorrow it occurs to some African state to send its agents into Mississippi and to kidnap one of the leaders of the segregationist movement there? And what are we going to reply if a court in Ghana or the Congo quotes the Eichmann case as precedent?
But this was a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant.
For the oath taken by the members of the S.S. differed from the military oath sworn by the soldiers in that it bound them only to Hitler, not to Germany.
The crime of the Nuremberg Laws was a national crime; it violated national, constitutional rights and liberties, but it was of no concern to the comity of nations.
