It is always tricky to answer what evil is. Evil is a word created by human beings and thus is also a standard stipulated by human beings. The standard may change, in different periods, from different perspectives. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt and On the Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche, we can see how these two writers strain their efforts to explore the topics about what is evil.
In Arendt’s work, as the subtitle describes, she tries to find out the root of some banal evil. Arendt believes that this kind of evil is destructive that it may convert a normal or even good person to a demon, and people should avoid this kind of evil and be alert to totalitarianism, which increases the possibility of people being evil banaly.
Her work can be regarded as a combination of record and reflection to the trial held in Jerusalem court to Eichmann. From Arendt perspective, Eichmann is a mediocre and even harmless bureaucrat and he committed his crimes only under the order of Hitler, who was the great ‘Führer’. He cannot think independently, all he did was following the order, he is nothing else but a small gear in the huge machine called “Nazi”,
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He believes that ‘good’ is created by ‘the good’: people who do good deeds to praise themselves. In other words, as Nietzsche moves forward, ‘the good’ means “the noble, the mighty, the high-placed and the high-minded who saw and judged themselves and their actions as good”(Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, P.11). To the contrast, Nietzsche draws forth ‘bad’, which is related to people with lower status, like slaves. Here, ‘bad’ is not necessarily related to ‘evil’. Certainly it can show morally bad, or evil, yet Nietzsche actually use bad to describe those people’s environment and
There are two kinds of evil, moral and natural. Moral evil is things like murder, rape, stealing, terrorism, etc. Natural evil is things like suffering and unpleasantness typically as a result of moral evil. Evil is that which has no power of its own. Evil is darkness, a negation of light. Its power is in us, in our fear of it, in that we consider it a "something" worth responding to.
Although Arendt observed murder as a crime legally, she believed that the Eichmann's case posed a moral question, and the answer to it may not have been legally relevant. Arendt tried to comprehend Eichmann's claim that he was only doing his job, and although she may not fully agree, she is the only one trying to understand. "Those who told Eichmann that he could have acted differently simply did not know, or had forgotten, how things had been." She questioned, "how can one load train after train of Jews to send them to extermination camps, with a clear conscience?" Arendt did not try to justify his actions, but she was the only one who tried to understand his perspective.
The first morality Nietzsche writes about is the master morality. Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. The people that fall under the category of master morality typically think of themselves as "the good,"which is defined as
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin, 2006.
First, I will look at Arendt’s criticism of violence. She believes that violence is not an idle concept. It needs to be justified by ethics and philosophy and often cannot be referred to without regard to
Has evil always been around, or did man create it? One could trace evil all the way back to Adam and Eve; however, evil came to them, but it was not in them. When did evil become part of a person? No one knows, but evil has been around for a long time and unfortunately is discovered by everyone. In many great classics in literature evil is at the heart or the theme of the novel, including Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This classic book demonstrates the growing up of two children in the South and illustrates the theme of evil by showing how they discover, how they deal, and how they reconcile themselves to the evils they experience.
Arendt, Hannah. On Violence. San Diego, New York and London: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1970
Evil is to be morally wrong, bad, wicked, and a whole bunch of other synonyms that all boil into one pot. There is so much to this word that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint someone as truly evil. To be evil for no other reason than to be evil would be the worst possible evil. Adolf Hitler and Osoma bin Laden believe the evil they committed was justified by God, or some higher power. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, from the play by Shakespeare, were not evil because they wanted to be, they did it for a greater good.
Behrens and Rosen asked, “What sort of people were responsible for the Holocaust, and for the long list of other atrocities that seem to blight the human record in every generation? Is it a lunatic fringe, a few sick but powerful people who are responsible for atrocities?” and the responded with “If so, then we decent folk needn’t ever look inside ourselves to understand evil since ever lurks out there.” Behrens and Rosen use this to construe that evil does not lurk only in lunatics but the ordinary person as well. Everyone is capable any act possible, the circumstances and the environment play an important role on what a person is capable of doing.
One of the many questions Augustine raised is ‘what is evil’? Committing an act of evil is doing something malicious; the act is done with the intent to cause harm. However, there is a problem with this definition
Good and evil can be summed up as a difference between rational and irrational thoughts, with the former being related to “good” and the ladder to “evil”. This is a view shared by Immanuel Kant and his Categorical Imperative. In the movie Schindler’s List, we are presented with two individuals, Oskar Schindler, who by the end of the movie displays characteristics of a man following rational thoughts, doing acts that he would want to become universal maxims. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Amon Goeth. Goeth follows his irrational thoughts, using the Jewish people as a means for his own ends.
Using Adolf Eichmann as a subject and poster-boy of a new threat to society, author Hannah Arendt is able to penetrate the limitations of the trial itself and create her thesis, which revolves around the idea of the banality of evil. This phrase accents the limitations of the term evil, along with the ideology surrounding it. This ideology becomes more complex in a world in which theories of evil are ever-changing. "Arendt's thesis points to an understanding of evil as particular, evolving, and nonessentialist" (Geddes).
In conclusion, Amery’s book is a testimony of him accepting what has befallen to him. He brings light to what torture was and is now in a world that can be distrustful. That losing one’s faith in the world and humankind is not an easy understanding. He wants the world to know that torture is not just physical; it is also mental and verbal. It is the “first blow” whether that is a word in meanness or punch to the face, torture is the evil that comes from someone who knows nothing good. Torture for the Jews is a way of life now, because it will never leave their memory, it has become a part of them in every way.
When a person finds joy in something, they call it good. On the other hand, if it brings them agony, they call it evil. Good and evil can mean whatever people want you to think they mean. What is good to one person can be evil to another person. For instance, a soldier that goes to war for his country will be viewed as a hero. But the wives and children of the men that the soldier killed will view him as an evil person. No one really knows the true meaning of good and evil. All everyone really knows are just the world’s opinion on what good and evil really are.
Hannah Arendt was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. After witnessing the atrocities of both World Wars and the worldwide tension during the Cold War, no concepts or theoretical understandings of the crimes and events that occurred were developed, inciting Arendt to comment on political violence. She considers these events to be a failure of politics and tradition. However, On Revolution seeks to provoke revolutionary thought, ideally with society reverting to the opulence of public life and politics as seen in Ancient Greece. Modern warfare echoes that of Roman antiquity, as we begin to see justifications of these conflicts, with rationalisation of violence accepted by society, seeing the amalgamation of violence and politics, as Marx highlights. Therefore, this structural violence must overcome with an overhaul of the political realm, with emphasis on speech, conversation and debate, creating radical upheaval and reform. Arendt emphasises this separation of politics and violence with great conviction, as politics in the modern world has greatly failed humanity as evidenced through the atrocities of the 20th century. This goes against the theories of Marx, who argues that the ruling class’ violence struct...