Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The Banality of Evil - Coggle Diagram
The Banality of Evil
Adolf Eichmann
Responsible for deportation of over 1.5 million people to killing centers
Part of Nazi Germany, high ranking beuracrat
After WWII, he fled to Argentina
In 1960 he is found and taken to Israel to face trial
Augustine would consider Eichmann to be an example of an extremely overwhelmingly corrupted will
His definition of evil
Arendt would consider him to be an ordinary normal person
How was Eichmann able to commit such an evil crime?
The normalcy of evil
Eichmann is complicated to understand because he is normal
He is concerned with logistics, not murder
He did not seem to act out of base motive, revenge, or cruelty
He was just pushing paper
It’s hard to see the banality and ordinariness of evil because it is so deeply instilled into the foundations of our society
Lack of critical thinking
"Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of specific content and quite independent of results, could this activity be of such a nature that it 'conditions' men against evil-doing?" (p.15)
You resist through critical thinking
Mindlessness is evil because you follow orders without questions.
People aren’t choosing to do something evil, we are subconsciously participating in things that are unjust without thinking about it
Only abnormally moral people realize that being part of the Nazi regime is immoral and cruel
Obedience
He claims he was being a responsible and law abiding citizen
If he did not do his job he would actually feel guilty
Humans are willing to do what they are told up to a frightening degree
In Milgram’s experiments, 65% of people gave the maximum voltage and 100% of people went up to 300 volts
Once people become part of a hierarchy, they become an agent who is no longer autonomous
Obedience and compliance is the evil of the human condition which in turn is what makes evil banal
Ongoing participation in systems and collectives that are unjust
What does it mean to be evil?
Augustine
a degeneration; disorder; a lack that is ultimately not real
God created the world with perfect order, but humans were able to stray from this path which is how they created disorder in the universe
Evil is a corruption in the human will
Humans choose a power/agency in themselves to perform an action. He believes evil is a choice.
Evil is not real, it is the effect of humans trying to live out of order and subsequently causing disorder
Arendt
Evil is not extraordinary
Most people are banal (boring)
Most people do not want to resist monarchs who are armed and more powerful than they are
Holocaust happened because an abundance of normalcy not evil
Eichmann is terrifyingly normal