Hannah Arendt & The Banality of Evil

This short video is from an extensive interview with Susan Neiman that adapts her book Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, into a narrative film. We are building an interactive digital resource to showcase this film in its entirety and to foster collaboration and engagement with related resources and materials, as well as new interpretations. To follow our research and development of this site, visit:

www.digitalhumanitiesmedia.blogspot.com

& follow @monicawilliams_ on Twitter for updates on release.

Monica Williams is the Digital Media Maker behind this project and is in collaboration with 21st Century Digital Learning Environments.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Hannah Arendt
• Susan Neiman
• Philosophy
• The Problem of Evil
• The Banality of Evil
• The Holocaust
• Moral Clarity

[PlatoJaspers]

Yes, she did.

[PlatoJaspers]

Merely stating evil is not comprehensible, does not make this statement true. If people offer you possible explanations, you can't discard them just by saying 'it's not true', which is the same as calling it 'pollyanna philosophy'. I havent' seen any serious reason from you why evil would be that incomprehensible.

[sofiayearwood]

Excellent

[Igotangry]

in book the place she accused eichmann as being a banal man is in reality only a few lines in the book. the whole book she underlines her suspects about jewish leaders were in contact with nazi officials to carry jews to palestine. she questions why other jews did not do anything about so-called evil things, why jewish leaders lead them to germans as could seen in schindlers list movie.

[Igotangry]

the aim was to approve their pirate states to other people in west by making lunatic judgements, law courts. I bet if hannah arendt was alive today she would have write a book about idiot armenian jewish lunatics/sharlatans under the title "banality of evil: indifference of jewish/armenians life in real world/hollywood-some faggots live their entire life like they are in a hollywood movie-they are good at fabricating stories/lying"

[Igotangry]

nor the death of Talat Pasha killed by an armenian terrorist called sogomon tehlerian and nor the eichmann had been judged about so-called crimes with evidences. and without evidences, law courts had been joke courts a material for armenian and jewish terrorists black propoganda place for their lunatic pirate states. when armenian terrorist was taken to law court and when eichmann had been taken to law court when he was kidnapped by israeli jewish terrorists, the aim was not to judge them.

[Igotangry]

I read hannah arendt. nor todays dumb jews nor todays dumb armenians do not understand hannah arendt and even in examples like "lawrence of arabia armenians are impossible" rewiev they go much to ignorance and stupidity to think they are glorifying them in their speeches, books. hannah arednt in banality of evil told- like armenian terrorist tehlerian israelis&jews used eichmann trail as a propoganda of the land they steal and state they founded like pirates.

[PlatoJaspers]

Hi Chad, Hannah Arendt seems to make evil comprehensible in certain aspects and so does the Milgram-experiment. So I don't understand how one could state evil is totally incomprehensible.

[ChadCMulligan1]

@PlatoJaspers PJ, I don't understand your comment or your questions. You ask whether evil is really totally incomprehensible to me...when I emphatically stated that in my initial post...so I'm not sure that you're reading the posts carefully enough.

Neiman is clearly disturbed that there might be no explanation for evil, leaving a "black hole," a "fatal flaw," in the universe. I understand her disquiet, but don't find any evidence or support for inventing an explanation that doesn't exist.

[PlatoJaspers]

PS: Maybe the Milgram experiment could tell us something about the urge to perpetrate evil?