About evil

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About the evil is a book by Hannah Arendt . It contains a four-part lecture that she gave at the New School for Social Research in New York City in 1965 . The original title is Some Questions of Moral Philosophy and first appeared in the volume Responsibility and Judgment , which Jerome Kohn , her former research assistant and director of the Hannah Arendt Center New York, edited in 2003 from the Arendt estate that he administers. The German translation Über dem Böse, provided by Ursula Ludz . A lecture on questions of ethics was published in 2006 with an afterword by Arendt researcher Ludz and one by journalist Franziska Augstein with the title Taten und Täter . The text by Hannah Arendt is a raw text, which means that Arendt would have edited it before publication.

Concept of evil in totalitarianism

Ursula Ludz notes that the violent reactions to Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem "deeply shook and unsettled her". “The lecture also served for self-understanding.” (Page 175) Arendt explains, among other things, her change of opinion from the term “radically evil” from her book Elements and Origins of Total Domination to the term “banality of evil” in the Eichmann book. In 1963 she wrote to Scholem in the famous letter: “You are absolutely right, I changed my mind and no longer speak of radical evil. ... Today I am of the opinion that evil is always extreme, but never radical, it has no depth, nor does it have demons. ... only the good is deep and radical. "

In the book of totalitarianism Arendt also writes: “But in its endeavor to prove that everything is possible, total rulership has discovered, without actually wanting to, that there really is a radical evil and that it consists in what people can neither punish nor forgive. ”But she also says there“ that we cannot get an idea of ​​the radical evil. ”(ibid.)

Speechless horror

In the first part of the lecture, "radical evil " is the topic. The author takes the term from Immanuel Kant . She writes: “Since inclinations and temptation are rooted in human nature, but not in human reason , Kant called the fact that man, following his inclinations, is tempted to do evil,“ radically evil ”. "(Page 28) Arendt agrees with Kant when he denies" that a person can want evil for himself. "At the end of the first lecture, she describes evil as follows:" But what is really evil is what causes speechless horror when we can say nothing more than: This should never have happened. ”(p. 45) And the“ greatest evil that has been committed is that which was done by no one, that is, by human beings who refuse to be people ”(page 101)

Can and Can

In the lecture Hannah Arendt left out all “specifically religious moral rules and beliefs, not because I [Arendt] consider them unimportant (exactly the opposite is the case), but because at the moment when morality collapsed, there were hardly any Played a role. ”(Page 29) Very few resisted during the Nazi regime and those who did not participate did not invoke religious commandments,“ but simply declared, like others, that they could not take responsibility for such acts. ”( page 30) In such exceptional conditions, people are the most reliable, say of itself: "This can not I do" and not those who rely on a provision and say, "This must I do not." (see page. 52) In the other parts of the lecture she examines this difference historically.

For those people who “just” say, “I can't do this,” the standard is the self - they are not heroes or saints. But politically it is irresponsible because its standard is not the community or the world and they therefore do not want to change or even improve it.

Moral norm and idea

Arendt claims that Plato gave up his allegiance to Socrates in the theory of ideas . Socrates had said the following moral sentence: “It is better to suffer injustice than to do injustice” (p. 50) This “fundamental assumption of all moral philosophy” has not withstood the “storm of time” (p. 48). With Socrates there is no norms or regulations like "you should ...", "you must not ...". “Plato's doctrine of ideas introduced such norms and standards into philosophy, and thus the problem of distinguishing right from wrong was reduced to the question of whether I am in possession of the norm or the 'idea' that I am in to apply to every special case, or not. "(page 65f)

Kant's categorical imperative : “Always act in such a way that the maxim of your will can at any time also apply as a principle of general legislation”, like the Socratic sentence: “It is better to suffer injustice than to do injustice”, always the “ self and so that man's dialogue with himself becomes the standard. ”(page 48) If man violates these moral statements, then the conscience threatens with Kant“ self-contempt ”and with Socrates“ self-contradiction ”(cf. 51).

Reason and desire

The desire is for Arendt the "arbiter between reason and desire." (Page 104) The ancient Greeks, Socrates and Plato, knew this asset is not. According to Arendt, Paul was the first to recognize this ability. According to Arendt, the will is the first split in me and is fundamentally different from thinking . The will does not lead a dialogue, no dialogue within me, but it is a "merciless fight" between myself and myself. It can lead to the dilemma I-want-and-cannot-not.

According to Arendt, Augustine goes beyond Paul. Augustine says, “that the trap in which the will is caught does not result from the two-part nature of man, who is fleshly as well as spiritual. Will itself is a mental faculty and has absolute power over the body ”(p. 113). But the will has no absolute power over the mind.

According to Arendt, the first three parts of the lecture are mainly about what prevents us from doing injustice, i.e. avoiding evil. This is based on reason. The Christian ethic but encourages doing good.

In the fourth part of the lecture, Arendt goes back to Socrates. What prevents people here from doing wrong is the consistency in myself. With Jesus of Nazareth , it is no longer the self that prevents us from doing evil, but rather "the perpetrator is someone who violates the world order as such." (Page 121) It would be better for the perpetrator not to be born. Arendt quotes the following biblical passage: “It would be better for him“ that a millstone should be hung on his neck and he would be drowned in the sea ”.” ( Mt 18.6  EU ) (page 121) This idea that “he should not have been born - is really an idea that all philosophers detest. ”(p. 123)

Paradox of will

In the following, Arendt comes back to the will because up to now she has made a “half-true statement”. The paradox of the will is that the will is based on human freedom , but that people “cannot be free even if they are not compelled by natural forces, nor by fate or by their fellow human beings.” (P. 125). This paradox can be not dissolve according to Arendt. "And the best we can say about it is what Nietzsche claims: There are two hypotheses , the scientific hypothesis that there is no will, and that of common sense that the will is free." (P. 126)

There is something else behind the will as an arbitrator, because the will does not judge arbitrarily. This is people's pursuit of "bliss." "If we go back to our old Socratic criterion, where happiness meant being at peace with oneself, it could be said that wicked people have lost the ability to even ask and answer the question [about happiness], insofar as they, who are at odds with themselves, have lost the ability to become two-in-one in the dialogue of thought. "(pp. 127f.)

According to Arendt, the will in its arbitration function is the same as judging. Arendt himself calls judgment one of “the most mysterious faculties of the human mind.” (Page 129) The will, which is actually free, makes me a slave.

According to Arendt, the will has two functions: a commanding function and an arbiter function, "whereby it is assumed that it can distinguish right from wrong." (Page 135) Arendt analyzes this referee function further. According to Kant's critique of judgment , taste decides whether it is beautiful, ugly, etc. But how do I know or how do I judge whether a tulip is beautiful or ugly?

Those whose judgment is inadequate have - according to Kant - no common sense . The common sense shows itself in us when we can apply something general - tulips are beautiful - to something special. Arendt now transfers this to the field of morality.

Common sense as imagination

Kant tries to explain the concept of common sense with the imagination: the imagination describes my ability to imagine something that is not there. I can imagine a special bridge. I always have two imaginations in my head. First the special bridge and second a schematic picture with which I can identify all bridges as bridges. “The common sense, because of its imagination, can have all those present in it who are really absent”. (Page 141) My judgment does not acquire universal validity, but “a certain general one.” When I think like this as a citizen of the world , it is Kant's “extended way of thinking”. "The crucial point is that my judgment in a particular case depends not only on my perception, but on the fact that I represent something to myself that I do not perceive." (Pp. 141f)

The representative thinking of Arendt is based on the common sense and the imagination of Kant. When thinking, I represent the viewpoints of many people in myself and my judgment will be all the more representative, "the more viewpoints of other people I visualize in my thinking and can therefore be taken into account in my judgment." (Page 143) So we think in examples, take us as an example.

Cicero and Meister Eckhart

In the lecture Arendt gave two examples. The first example is Cicero . Cicero says that he “would rather go astray with Plato than represent true views with these people [Pythagoreans].” Meister Eckhart is said to have said the following: “I would rather be in hell with God than without him in heaven.” ( Page 100) Both have made a subjective decision for themselves who they want to be with. "I [Arendt] have tried to show that our decisions about right and wrong will depend on the choice of our society, on the choice of those with whom we wish to spend our lives." (P. 149) We choose these examples himself off.

The danger that lies in this is on the one hand that people do not care who they want to live with, who their examples are. “This indifference, morally and politically speaking, represents the greatest danger, even if it is widespread.” (Page 150) On the other hand, there is the danger “of refusing to judge at all. From the unwillingness or the inability to choose one's examples and how to deal with them, and the unwillingness or the inability to enter into a relationship with others through judgment, the real "scandala" arise, the real stumbling blocks that human power cannot remove because they were not caused by human or humanly understandable motives. Therein lies the horror of evil and at the same time its banality. ”(Page 150)

criticism

Hannah Arendt's lecture is not stringent and has gaps. Arendt has these problems in Vom Leben des Geistes. Volume 1: Thinking; Volume 2: The Will; Volume 3: Judging tries to fix. Nonetheless, this book is important to understand Arendt's thinking.

Due to the fact that Hannah Arendt did not have the Sassen protocols , Augstein notes that she might have “perhaps described the nature of National Socialism differently” (page 185) if she had known the protocols. Augstein further criticizes in her epilogue that Arendt escaped the fact that "Eichmann and other Nazi perpetrators had by no means given up moral self-examination and merely stylized themselves consistently in court as obedient recipients of orders in order to get away with milder judgment." (Page 186) Arendt also remarked: "It was of course predictable that the defense would argue in the sense that Eichmann was just a small cog - that the defendant thought so was likely, and to a certain extent he did that too ...".

literature

Works by Hannah Arendt

  • Hannah Arendt: About evil. A lecture on questions of ethics . Piper, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-492-04694-0 (English: Responsibility and Judgment . Translated by Ursula Ludz, TB: ibid. 2007, ISBN 3492250637 ).
  • Hannah Arendt: About evil. Full text reading of the lecture " Some Questions about Moral Philosophy " on four audio CDs. Read by Axel Grube. onomato Verlag, Düsseldorf. ISBN 978-3-939511-51-9
  • Hannah Arendt: After Auschwitz. Essays and comments . Bittermann, 1989, ISBN 3-923118-81-3 .
  • Hannah Arendt: Elements and origins of total domination . 9th edition. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-492-21032-5 (English: The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York 1951) . German: Frankfurt 1955).
  • Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem : A report on the banality of evil (1964) . 14th edition. Piper, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-492-20308-6 (English: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York 1963) .).

Secondary literature

  • Ingeborg Nordmann: “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy” / About evil. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): Arendt manual. Life, work, effect. JB Metzler, Stuttgart Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02255-4 , pp. 99-102
  • Susan Neiman : Thinking Evil: Another History of Philosophy . 2004, ISBN 3-518-45753-5 (English: Evil in modern thought. An Alternative History of Philosophy (2002) .).
  • Murders for the fatherland . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 2008 ( online ).

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ In her thinking diary in June 1950, Arendt noted: “ Radical evil is that which should not have happened, i. H. that which one cannot reconcile with, that which one cannot accept as a destiny under any circumstances, and that which one must not pass by in silence. It is that for which one cannot take responsibility because its inferences are incalculable, and because among those inferences there is no punishment that would be adequate. This does not mean that all evil must be punished; but it must, should one reconcile or to turn away from him, his bestrafbar "Denktagebuch, page 7 In January 1952 Arendt writes in. Denktagebuch : When" Immanuel Kant that radical evil 'mentioned that he had not his, philosophers coat beschlabbert ', but he also did not see that he came across something that is not at home in moral doctrine and not in morality and which does not arise from practical reason. This could not be seen because he did not know that 'the moral law' by no means sits 'in us', but that there is a 'feeling' (?) For good and bad. Why then never speaks of the 'radical good'? Because then would have infallibly seen that it is not only 'radical evil' that opposes moral laws - does it always? - but also the 'radical good'. ” Thinking diary , page 181 Compare also: Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger : Briefe 1925–1975 , pp. 93f and p. 288 as well as Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers : Briefwechsel, 1926–1969 , p. 202f
  2. ^ After Auschwitz , p. 78
  3. ↑ Elements and origins of total domination. , P. 941  
  4. ↑ see Gorgias (Plato) - especially from the 25th chapter
  5. ^ After Auschwitz , p. 82f