Introducing Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) and others on the nature of Evil
Introduction to Hannah Arendt
As a Jew and intellectual who
maintained a relationship throughout her life with Martin Heidegger she was
well qualified academically in both philosophy and theology and lived through
the early period of anti –Semitism to ponder the holocaust for which she felt
responsible-but for what one might ask?
Her subsequent political philosophy
is written in the style of Jewish person responding to the evil inflicted on
one's people and not as a world citizen (as she puts it) and her ideas remain
controversial today. But her many publications sheds light on her view on the
nature of evil which can flourish under totalitarianism. She is at pains
to point out the challenge to one’s mental
capacity essential to rise above the terrible fate of one's own people to ascertain
what was pernicious for all humanity in
her conclusion.
A brief summary of her life’s work
After arrest in 1933 for affiliation
with a Zionist organisation she took the first opportunity to leave Germany.
After hostilities ceased in 1945 she turned her attention to the concentration
camps which remained her focus until 1953. After the death of Stalin she published The Human Condition in
1958. She then analysed American, French, and Russian Revolutions.
She revisited her earlier work after
the trial of Adolf Eichmann with the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the “Banality of Evil” followed in 1963.
Although she ceased writing about
totalitarian concentration camps in 1966 that preoccupation with the problem of
evil remained to the end of her life.
Key concepts
The “The Banality of evil” talks
about how easily a process can be executed, however evil, in a
non-thinking way by individuals under the power of totalitarian regimes.
Individuals may act in ordinary ways (to be observed as terrifyingly normal as
she puts it) in all other respects outside of the regime to strictly
follow those orders with horrendous consequences.
But that line of thinking doesn't
wash of course in a legal sense as was concluded in the Nuremberg trials.
Arendt disagrees with the concept introduced by the court under the heading of
crimes against humanity.
She points out Concentration camps
are not a unique invention of totalitarian regimes, but were first used both by
the Spanish in Cuba and in the Boer War (1899-1902). Similar concepts
were justified under an alleged 'wrath of the people'"--to rationalize and
justify their existence was invoked by British imperial rule in India as well
as South Africa and the subsequent world wars.
She does however acknowledge a new
phenomenon in the form of a complete dehumanising of its occupants in the
concentration camps and also under the Stalin purge.
Her final ideas on the nature of evil
are psychologically based.
Her position is that while one is
thinking i.e., experiencing the silent
dialogue of thought, the ego splits in two, disclosing an inner difference
within an apparent identity. At lightning speed these "two-in-one,"
as she calls them converse as long as the activity of thinking lasts.
She found that these thinking
"partners" have to be on good terms, essentially in agreement,
because they cannot go on or resume thinking if they contradict one another.
Arendt grounded, existentially, the logical law of non-contradiction in the
congeniality of the two-in-one.
By the same token it is in the
activity of thinking that the explicitly human relationship between a
plurality, though it be only of two, is first established. Again, it is not an
"idea" but the experience of sheer activity that makes the one not
only respect and relish but refuse to abrogate at any cost the right of
the other to freely exercise the right to think.
In this respect Socrates preferred
death rather than live apart from his thinking "partner" and in
Arendt's many references to him stands forth as the diametric opposite of
Eichmann. Eichmann's contradictions indicated not that he had lost this aspect
of consciousness to become bereft of inner plurality, no contact with himself,
and that therefore he could be relied upon to do anything, anything at all,
that his "conscience" assured him was his duty.
However Arendt did not live to
complete her theory on the mind.
The Banality of Evil: Reference
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Introducing the nature of evil as seen by author Jung Chang – Mao – The unknown Story.
I recall the conversations with Jung
Chang who discussed the 10 years of painstaking research underpinning his book
“Mao, The unknown Story" which she co-authored with her husband Jon
Halliday.
You may recall Jung Chang wrote 'The
Wild Swans': which sold over 10 million copies and as far as I know is still
banned in China.
During their research Jung and her
husband were able to interview 150 close confidants of Mao including the
immediate family, which allowed them to determine aspects not previously
understood and hence the title 'The unknown story':
In tandem with this research a
virtual treasure trove of additional material was also discovered in the
Russian archive demonstrating the importance of Russia to Mao.
What Jung was able to capture the
essence of the man, another terrible dictator with a lust for power
outrivalling Hitler or Stalin as the consummate ultimate psychopath?
Jung found through the interviews
with those close to him, a revelation of how Mao had described to them his
overwhelming intense ecstasy arising from inflicting violence and brutality
against the mass peasantry.
Violence shaped every facet of his
life as an attachment expressed in the form of a constant desire for brutal
vengeance and dehumanisation.
China was a net importer of grain, a
poor nation and Mao realised that food was the only saleable asset at his
disposal to achieve funding for the military might necessary to become a world
power. Mao turned to China's food production and diverted domestic requirements
for sale to Russia knowing such a policy would cause mass starvation. In fact
Mao had acknowledged that it may be necessary for up to half of the entire
population of China to starve to death as a sacrifice for China to become a
superpower. There were opponents who objected to this policy, but as a
brilliant strategist he managed to isolate them and finally had his revenge
against them and the party who did not fully support him with the introduction
of the 'Cultural Revolution'.
It has been estimated he was
responsible for possibly over 70 million deaths in China.
During the period of the 'Cultural
Revolution' all cultural activity was banned as Mao knew culture is what makes
us human and his attachment to power by dehumanisation remained with him all of
his life.
He also was a great strategist in
terms of enlisting intellectual support abroad, and diverted a massive 7 % of
gross national product to those splinter groups of intelligence who became
supporters of his purpose. Consider that today where foreign aid is much less
than 1% of GDP for even the wealthiest of countries.
Jung wrote this account with no
mention of Mao being evil as the facts speak for themselves. It was written out
of an intense curiosity, not out of vengeance in any way, even though both her
parents suffered terribly. Her father died prematurely in a mental asylum and
both were heavily beaten and publicly humiliated.
Hence, my inclination is to also see
evil as an alluring sense of power (lust if you will) underpinned by the
intense feelings that consumes its perpetrators. The darker side of humanity
manifests in power as in an evil spirit if you will.
All of what we consider as evil acts
that we in the 21st Century inclusive of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide,
the Mass murders by the Khmer Rouge, the communist mass killings following the
policies of Stalin and Mao, the slaughter in Rwanda are underpinned I believe
by both the lust for power and the intense ecstasy arising from inflicting
violence and brutality.
That is evident as the heart of
evilness which is to deny that part of us humans that allows us to transcend
nature and not to succumb to the allure of power and is inevitably accompanying
brutality and dehumanising objectives.
An antidote to evil? - Professor
Raymond Tallis (‘Philosophy Now’) as a humanist puts succinctly his view as
follows:
We need to preserve the vast, rich cultural legacy owing to,
or inspired by, religious belief. We cannot forget or actively reject this
without losing something irreplaceably precious in ourselves. The legacy is not
simply out there in the public realm as a collective heritage of art,
literature, architecture, and music. It is in the very fibre of our individual
and social being. The atheist, existentialist, Marxist, Maoist, Jean-Paul
Sartre highlighted this in L’Idiot de la Famille, cited and translated by
Robert Cumming in Starting Point (1979, p.225):
“We are all Christians, even
today; the most radical disbelief is still Christian atheism. In other words,
it retains, in spite of its destructive power, schemata which are controlling –
very slightly for our thinking, more for our imagination, above all for our
sensibility. And the origins of these schemata are to be sought in centuries of
Christianity of which we are the heirs whether we like it or not.”
At the very least, humanist
philosophers should spend less time brooding on the wickedness seemingly inspired
by religious belief, and more on what religion tells us about our nature. Most
importantly, we should consider what we can learn from the history of
religions, how a sense of the transcendent – what theologian Hans Kung
characterised as “a particular social realisation of a relationship to an
absolute ground of meaning”, answering an existential hunger experienced by all
humans – can play into our lives for good or ill. In particular, how we can
avoid the path that leads from beatific visions to thuggery – a question that
is as much a challenge for secular humanism as it is for religious believers.
Q & A: But what is it about the actions that make them evil?
They all involve the complete
dehumanising of those involved in executing and organising such atrocities, to
negate any form of freedom and independence in thinking. Therein we can
reliably observe an absence of any guiding ethical considerations pertaining to
governance. Instead what is apparent is the regime's involvement as one
consumed in a nationalistic fervour intent upon revenge against a
perceived evil enemy or group.
This was abundantly clear in the
Concentration Camps, in the Stalinist purges and in the “ecstasy in violence”
and mass societal sacrifice of people starved under Mao’s leadership in order
to make China a world power. Similarly in the slaughter in Rwanda we see
the same “dehumanisation” in the form of a perceived evil enemy (Satan) as
justification for unparalleled levels of violence and genocide.
Q Are they not just part of
human nature, with a foundation in our DNA and evolutionary history? Or is
there something else going on?
Arendt’s final conclusions
offer food for thought and a glimmer of hope they are not integral to
human nature but rather it is our darker side that can only flourish when we
relinquish our inner consciousness. The plurality of two egos as she puts it
allows us to consider the two sides to any argument in the Socratic tradition
keeping in mind ethical considerations.
Professor Raymond Tallis puts forward
a similar idea given his idea that we can “transcend nature” and the
instinctive reaction that leads to extreme violence and mindless
brutality.
We need to preserve the vast, rich
cultural legacy owing to, or inspired by, religious belief. We cannot forget or
actively reject this without losing something irreplaceably precious in
ourselves. The legacy is not simply out there in the public realm as a collective
heritage of art, literature, architecture, and music. It is in the very fibre
of our individual and social being. The atheist, existentialist, Marxist,
Maoist, Jean-Paul Sartre highlighted this in L’Idiot de la Famille, cited and
translated by Robert Cumming in Starting Point (1979, p.225):
“We are all Christians, even today;
the most radical disbelief is still Christian atheism. In other words, it
retains, in spite of its destructive power, schemata which are controlling –
very slightly for our thinking, more for our imagination, above all for our
sensibility. And the origins of these schemata are to be sought in centuries of
Christianity of which we are the heirs whether we like it or not.”
At the very least, humanist
philosophers should spend less time brooding on the wickedness seemingly
inspired by religious belief, and more on what religion tells us about our
nature. Most importantly, we should consider what we can learn from the history
of religions, how a sense of the transcendent – what theologian Hans Kung
characterised as “a particular social realisation of a relationship to an
absolute ground of meaning”, answering an existential hunger experienced by all
humans – can play into our lives for good or ill. In particular, how we can
avoid the path that leads from beatific visions to thuggery – a question that
is as much a challenge for secular humanism as it is for religious believers.
My inclination is to also see evil as
an alluring sense of power (lust if you will) underpinned by the intense feelings
that consumes its perpetrators. The darker side of humanity manifests in power
as in an evil spirit if you will.
Are evil acts an aberration whose
cause is some individual or systemic failure? Are some people just prone to
evil and given power and opportunity, act out their evil intent?
The inclination may be to see these
events as an aberration but it appears to me that the darker side to our nature
is also a constant that can reappear with devastating consequences given the
right conditions.
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