The article analyzes the ethical studies of Hannah Arendt on the origin of totalitarianism. The author considers the conditions for the formation of a “total state” and the role in these processes of both society as a whole and an individual. Based on the works of Hannah Arendt, the author analyzes the features of the totalitarian transformations of the individual and society, as well as their interaction with the regime at different stages of the functioning of the “total state”. According (...) to Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is a system of mass terror, which is a phenomenon of the twentieth century. Totalitarianism is realized in the conditions of the destruction of political space and human interaction. It is the result of the alienation of a person from political life, that is, the “atomization” of society against the background of a deformation of basic ethical standards and established ideas about morality in general. Considering the problem of the emergence of totalitarianism, Arendt turns to the anthropological plane, where she explores the way in which violence enters the public sphere, and politics turns into an instrument for achieving certain goals and serving private interests. Hannah Arendt also analyzes the phenomenon of the “banality of evil,” which lies at the base of the so-called “respectable society”. Such a society easily becomes a weapon of totalitarianism along with “grassroots executors of orders”, as the example of Adolf Eichmann demonstrates. Hannah Arendt believes that the actions of such “executors of orders” should always be assessed as the actions of a person, and not just a “social tool”, from which responsibility for crimes is thus removed. Hannah Arendt identifies various areas of ethical, where there is a division into personal and political responsibility, and also studies the problems of preventing a possible repetition of totalitarianism. The “means” for such prevention, according to Hannah Arendt, are on an ethical plane. This is, firstly, the possibility of independent judgment and critical thinking, which create personal principles. And secondly, the presence of a public sphere, which provides the possibility of free action in a common social space. This is what actualizes moral issues and ensures the formation of moral principles. (shrink)

RESUMEN En este trabajo esperamos mostrar la relevancia del análisis arendtiano de la cuestión judía, y en particular de las políticas de asimilación y del proceso de secularización, para abordar el problema de la carencia de mundo en la época moderna. De este modo, la cuestión judía nos permite delinear una incisiva crítica a la configuración del mundo moderno, a la vez que esbozar una concepción ampliada del mundo a través de la reconstrucción de la tradición oculta de los judíos (...) parias. Así, tomando distancia de las interpretaciones que conciben el mundo en Arendt como un espacio de interacción ideal o formal, este recorrido por la problemática judía posibilita el despliegue de los aspectos materiales, culturales e históricos concretos que sustentan el mundo común. ABSTRACT In this paper I try to show the relevance of the Arendtian analysis of the Jewish issue, and especially of the assimilation policies and the process of secularization, in relation with the problem of worldlessness in modern age. Through the Jewish issue, it is possible to delineate a criticism to the modern world’s configuration, while at the same time, following the reconstruction of the hidden tradition of pariah Jews, an expanded conception of world could be illuminated. Taking distance from the interpretations that conceive the world in Arendt´s perspective as an ideal or formal interaction space, the study of the Jewish problematics, makes possible to highlight the material, cultural and historical concrete aspects of the common world. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the politico-theological critique of Judaism from the position of Christianity. It shows the affinity of Marx’s early critique of liberal state and of Hannah Arendt’s criticism of formal legalistic thinking in the contemporary judicial treatment of Nazism (and of similar international political crimes). Marx’s critique of nation-state finds its unlikely continuation in Arendt’s critique of international law. The politico-theological argument is explicit in Marx and implicit in Arendt, but both develop the Hegelian criticism of liberal (...) state which shows its reliance on the abstract law, on the one hand, and on the egotistic abstract individual, on the other. The theological undercurrent of the argument is both sign of its limitations, and of the subsisting relevance of the politico-theological framework, even in the similarly novel circumstances of the twentieth century. It is only within and through the theological critique and critique of theology that these issues would stand a chance of resolution. (shrink)

Few books within the field of Jewish studies have caused so much anger and intense debate as Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. The author was considered to be a self-hating Jew because she accused the Jewish leaders during the Holocaust for having complied with Nazi orders and thus having facilitated the mass murder. Her view of the personality of Eichmann was considered to be wrong, and her way of writing was seen as inappropriate (...) in its lack of humility in dealing with an issue like the Holocaust. Although much of the critique was unfair, Arendt’s non-diplomatic style of writing contributed to the negative reactions. (shrink)

This article deals with our constructed notions of evil and how an historical appraisal takes shape after specific stories and narratives become important objects of public deliberation, historical criticism, and disclosive views of what constitutes the moral harms of human cruelty. I analyze the historical representations of the meaning of evil in specific historical times through narratives that have made important contributions to our historical understanding of them. I also propose that our learning from them is the result of public (...) debates, of memory wars, and of important interventions from public intellectuals, writers, historians and witnesses. Therefore, deliberating about human cruelty is always a reconstructive effort to understand and judge what has happened and why it could have been prevented. The term evil is a moral filter that allows us to situate the kind of moral harm that needs a specific lens of moral understanding and a reconfiguration of actions that tie perpetrators to sufferers. Moral harms are better ways to describe the kind of actions that we call evil. The article highlights the relevance of language, disclosive views, criticism, public debate and the ways in which societies cope with their past in order to envision a different future. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, some of the most distinctive features of the modern age derived from the adoption of a process-imaginary in science, history, and administration. This article examines Arendt’s work, identifying what it calls the ‘process-frame’ in her criticism of imperialism, economy, and the biologization of politics. It discusses an interpretation in which ‘natality’ presents a completely alternative mode of temporality, a resistance to the process-frame. This interpretation, it is argued, needs to be specified by taking into account that political (...) action both interrupts and starts processes of its own. To confine and overcome the negative effects of process-framing, it is important to emphasize action as a world-building activity – something capable of establishing a relatively stable area of the common world by initiating processes of its own. Second, it is also important to cultivate ways of thinking and perceiving particular acts as meaningfully independent of all-embracing processes. (shrink)

The point of departure for this article is a comparative study of Adorno and Arendt on the question of evil and modernity. To be precise, I observe how Adorno and Arendt present us with very different ways of understanding radical evil as an expression of the modern project of acceleration. This divergence presents us with a problematic which does not fit easily into the framework of the contemporary post-metaphysical engagement with evil. The latter projects a relational, non-substantive concept of evil (...) addressed under the order of collective memory and against the background of a normatively neutralized order of history. Yet I show, by tracing the continuities and discontinuities which exist between Arendt and Adorno’s conceptualizing of radical evil, on the one hand, and the different elements of this contemporary engagement, on the other, how the initial problematic is symptomatic of a continuing investment in history and can only be addressed in terms of such an investment. This investment is the product of a dynamic between history and memory, informing the work of both thinkers, which partially intersects with the Hegelian strategy of theodicy. I thus conclude with a consideration of whether certain aspects of the latter should be rehabilitated. (shrink)

Disputes about how to understand intersectional relations often pivot around the tension between separateness and inseparability, where some scholars emphasize the need to separate between different intersectional categories while others claim they are inseparable. In this article the author takes issue with the either/or thinking that underpins an unnecessary and unproductive polarization in the debate over the in/separability of intersectional categories. Drawing on Roy Bhaskar’s dialectical critical realist philosophy, the author argues that we can think of intersectional categories as well (...) as different ontological levels as both distinct and unified and elaborates on the issue of how significance of the dialectical notion of unity-in-difference for intersectional studies. As part of the argument the author addresses the issue of what it actually means for something to be distinct or separate as opposed to inseparable or unified with something else, demonstrating that lack of clarity about this is at the heart of polarized arguments about separateness versus inseparability in intersectionality theory. (shrink)

If the legitimacy of international humanitarian and human rights law lies, in part at least, in its capacity to confront dehumanising actions in the modern world, we may speak of the limits of this achievement. It is well known that people who commit genocide or crimes against humanity typically dehumanise those against whom their crimes are committed and that the humanitarian and human rights dimensions of international law were developed in response to the radicalisation of this phenomenon. The expanded scope (...) of international criminal justice caught a cosmopolitan imagination because it seemed to restore an idea of humanity in the face of organised attempts to eradicate the very idea of universal humanity. It also caught a cosmopolitan imagination because it seemed to restore the humanity of the perpetrators as well. They were no longer to be treated as beasts liable to the 'punishment' of the victors but to be brought to trial, held accountable for their deeds and converted back into responsible human beings. Today, however, I suggest that we face a double temptation: in confronting those who commit crimes against humanity to represent them as inhuman monsters rather than responsible human beings; in our compassion for victims of crimes against humanity, it is to represent them merely as victims and not as moral and political subjects. In either case, there can arise a reversal of the problem we are trying to address. I do not suggest this tendency is inevitable but where it is present it indicates an insufficiently reflective relation to international law. I address the problem of reversal through a discussion of three authors (Rawls, Habermas and Arendt) and three issues ('pariah peoples', 'criminal states' and 'monstrous perpetrators'). (shrink)

In The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt explores the relationship between thinking, willing and judging. She poses the question of whether these may be among those conditions that prevent a person from doing evil. While many consider her account of thinking and willing insufficient for treating this question, I argue that in order fully to understand Arendt's notion of the will, particularly as it relates to our ability to avoid doing evil, one must consider the way in which she (...) attempts to overcome the Augustinian dilemma of how one can love both God and one's neighbor at the same time. Drawing on her Love and Saint Augustine, I seek to show that her 'Augustinian' notion of the will is extremely fruitful for helping us understand what she meant by the two movements of withdrawal from, and activity within, the world. Key Words: Arendt • Augustine • ethics • evil • love • will. (shrink)

If there is one lesson that Hannah Arendt drew from her encounter with Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem it was that the moral and political dangers of thoughtlessness had been grossly underestimated. But while thoughtlessness clearly “has its perils”, (LMT 177) as the example of Eichmann illustrates, thoughtfulness has its own problems, as the example of Heidegger illustrates. In the course of her 1964 interview with Günter Gaus, Arendt recalls her distaste for “intellectual business” that arose from witnessing the widespread and (...) “relatively voluntary” Gleichshaltung (co-ordination) of German “intellectuals” with the Nazis in 1933 (EU: 10). This was the year that Heidegger, Arendt’s former teacher and friend, “entered the Nazi Party in a very sensational way” (EU: 187). But Heidegger is for Arendt also a paragon of thoughtfulness who exposes the “incomprehensible triviality” (or banality) of “the they” and their “mere talk” (MDT: ix). This raises the following question: how can thoughtfulness, in the guise of Heidegger, and thoughtlessness, in the guise of Eichmann, both (though to a very different extent) lead to ‘co-ordination’ with the Nazis? What does this tell us about the relation between thinking and evil? (shrink)