Skip to main content.
Bard HAC
Bard HAC
  • About sub-menuAbout
    Hannah Arendt

    “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”

    Join HAC
    • About the HAC
      • About Hannah Arendt
      • Book Roger
      • Our Team
      • Our Location
  • Programs sub-menuPrograms
    Hannah Arendt
    • Our Programs
    • Courage to Be
    • Democracy Innovation Hub
    • Virtual Reading Group
    • Dialogue Groups
    • HA Personal Library
    • Affiliated Programs
    • Hannah Arendt Humanities Network
    • Meanings of October 27th
    • Lapham's Quarterly
  • Academics sub-menuAcademics
    Hannah Arendt

    “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

    • Academics at HAC
    • Undergraduate Courses
  • Fellowships sub-menuFellowships
    HAC Fellows

    “Action without a name, a 'who' attached to it, is meaningless.”

    • Fellowships
    • Senior Fellows
    • Associate Fellows
    • Student Fellowships
  • Conferences sub-menuConferences
    JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times Conference poster

    Fall Conference 2025
    “JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times”

    October 16 – 17

    Read More Here
    • Conferences
    • Past Conferences
    • Registration
    • Our Location
    • De Gruyter-Arendt Center Lecture in Political Thinking
  • Publications sub-menuPublications
    Hannah Arendt
    Subscribe to Amor Mundi

    “I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world ... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi.”

    • Publications
    • Amor Mundi
    • Quote of the Week
    • HA Yearbook
    • Podcast: Reading Hannah Arendt
    • Further Reading
    • Video Gallery
    • From Our Members
  • Events sub-menuEvents
    Hannah Arendt

    “It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.”

    —Hannah Arendt
    • HAC Events
    • Upcoming
    • Archive
    • JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times Conference
    • Bill Mullen Recitation Prize
  • Join sub-menu Join HAC
    Hannah Arendt

    “Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

    • Join HAC
    • Become a Member
    • Subscribe
    • Join HAC
               
  • Search

Amor Mundi

Amor Mundi Home

Good Radio Program On Eichmann In Jerusalem

08-17-2011

In the continuing coverage of the 50th Anniversary of the Adolf Eichmann Trial in Israel, in 1951, the Guardian's Big Ideas Series has a great radio podcast discussing the Eichmann trial and Arendt's coverage of it. The program is hosted by Benjamin Walker and features a thoughtful interview with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Arendt's biographer.

Importantly, the program also discusses the Stanley Milgram experiments, which began while the Eichmann Trial was still going on. The combination of Arendt's analysis of the Banality of Evil with the Milgram experiments is crucial to understanding the power of Arendt's analysis. As Milgram said,

Arendt's notion of the "Banality of Evil came closer to the truth than one dared imagine."

One conclusion the program offers is that Milgram and Arendt showed

"That ordinary people can get caught up in their role in a bureaucratic system and thoughtlessly and  carelessly commit evil."

What must also be recalled is that Arendt herself saw the controversy over her analysis was itself evidence that most people would act like Eichmann, something Arendt herself never said. Commenting on the controversy her analysis unleashed, Arendt wrote:

I had somehow taken it for granted that we all still believe with Socrates that it is better to suffer than to do wrong. This belief turned out to be a mistake. There was a widespread conviction  that it is impossible to withstand temptation of any kind, that none of us could be trusted or even be expected to be trustworthy when the chips are down, that to be tempted and to be forced are almost the same.

For Arendt, Eichmann was evil, albeit banal, because he could not resist the temptation to evil. She imagined that most good and decent people should act differently. The anger aimed at her analysis, she wrote, was a result of people feeling they themselves might act as Eichmann had.  And Milgram's experiments seemed to offer a sad confirmation of the fact that the banality Arendt found in Eichmann is much more widespread than otherwise thought.

The Guardian's program is worth listening to, which you can do here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/audio/2011/aug/17/big-ideas-podcast-banality-of-evil

rb

Footer Contact
Contact HAC
Bard College
PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
845-758-7878
[email protected]
Join the HAC
Become a Member
Subscribe to Amor Mundi
Join the Virtual Reading Group
Follow Us
Image for Twitter
Image for Facebook
Image for YouTube
Image for Instagram