well if you think she's an idiot defending eichman ahem there's not much else to say. The Libray of Congress does disagree with you:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/arendthome.html but what's a fact or two when you're being insulting? Btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt and from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/arendt.html: Her portrayal of a bureaucrat who did his duty and followed orders, rather than a raving ideologue animated by demonic anti-Semitism, was strikingly original. Far from embodying "radical evil," Eichmann exemplified "the banality of evil," Arendt argued-and thus the danger could not be confined to the political peculiarities of the Third Reich. While accepting the validity of Israeli jurisdiction and considering the Israeli court's verdict imposing the death sentence on Eichmann just, Arendt also offered her own justifications for capital punishment. Eichmann had not wanted to share the earth with the Jews; therefore, the Jewish state had no reason to share the earth with him. Almost in passing, she also claimed that fewer than six million Jews would have died if the Jewish councils had not collaborated to various degrees with Nazis like Eichmann. Even anarchy and noncooperation would have been better, she stated, than the effort to act as though the occupiers were traditional anti-Semites who might somehow be bribed or appeased. Her attribution of some responsibility for the catastrophe to the councils (Judenräte) not only met sharp criticism, but also provoked a considerable historical literature that investigated the behavior of Jewish communities under Nazi occupation. The subsequent debate has often reinforced the picture of venality, delusion, fear, and selfishness that Arendt briefly presented. The storm over the book's apparent elevation of Eichmann's character and denial of Jewish innocence frayed whatever bonds still tied Arendt to the organized Jewish community. Some segments mounted a propaganda campaign against the arguments that she advanced. Although Eichmann in Jerusalem is hardly free of factual error or bias, Arendt's critics tended to miss her subtlety and to ignore the relation between her book and the grandeur of her philosophy. She held the victims of the Final Solution accountable for inadequate and ill-conceived political action, and offered the perpetrators a measure of empathy and an effort to understand-lest the horrors be repeated under different historical conditions. But Arendt also wrote as though the modernization associated with the rise of mass society made problematic the classical injunction to think clearly and to act according to conscience. Partisanship and nationalism (even sometimes on behalf of Jews) had obscured the ideals of rational speech and meaningful deeds that she especially celebrated in The Human Condition. But nearly all of her books suggest a struggle to reclaim the possibilities of freedom grounded in the sense of a shared world. According to Arendt, then, Eichmann had done evil not because he had a sadistic will to do so, nor because he had been deeply infected by the bacillus of anti-Semitism, but because he failed to think through what he was doing (his thoughtlessness). This theory led Arendt to conceptualize the neo-Kantian meditations on judgment in her posthumously published lecture collection The Life of the Mind (1978). That hardly sounds like a defense to me. He wasn't evil, he was stupid. But he still deserved to die for that stupidity is the gist of it. Dana On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 15:48:56 -0800, Sam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dana wrote: > > a) you're taking this way too personally. You seem to assume that I am > > consumed with the need to torment you and believe me you're just that > > important in my life. > > Go on and admit that I am. > > > b) look up Hannah Arendt's "Eichman in Jerusalem." You have apparently > > not read it. It is not a defense of Eichmann by any means. Her point > > is that average people do horrible things. > > I did read it, Duh! > That's why I said "You found one idiot that defends Eichmann so now > he's a poor victim?" > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how to get a fax number that sends and receives faxes using your current email address http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=64 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:145834 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
