Product Description

Hannah Arendt’s authoritative report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann includes further factual material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7145 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-22
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

About the Author
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) came to the U.S. as a refugee from the Nazis in 1940. The Portable Hannah Arendt (Penguin Classics) collects substantial excerpts from her political writings.

Amos Elon, a frequent essayist, lecturer, and critic, is well known for his articles in the New Yorker and New York Review of Books.

Jerome Kohn is the director of the Hannah Arendt Center at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.

Jonathan Schell is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute.

Customer Reviews

Incredible investigation of Adolf Eichmann
Arendt's analysis of the "banality of evil" characterized by Adolf Eichmann is a chilling look into how evil can be systematized, how it can be seemingly bureaucratic, and how normal people can be turned into monsters through law.

This is a great book for anyone interested in World War 2, the Holocaust, political philosophy, or getting really really depressed.

excellent!
this book arrived from amazon in excellent condition and very quickly, especially relative to other books purchased at the same time through independent sellers.

Emphasis on Banality
A previous reviewer claims that Arendt's book shows the ambivalence of human nature, proving that in effect anybody could have done what Eichmann did. In fact, this is exactly the cynical point of view that Arendt opposes in this, and her other writings. Her argument here is a revision of her earlier position on 'radical evil' advanced in The Origins of Totalitarianism, a position which Heidegger claimed to find 'incomprehensible.' She argues here that banality and "sheer thoughtlessness" (akin to Heidegger's reflections on boredom) are in fact the root of Evil. To put it better, evil continues precisely because of its inherent rootlessness, its constitutive disregard of the world. Thus, the detachment of claims such as "Anybody could have done what Eichmann did" distort her intention. Evil, she insists, is not an inevitable aspect of human nature, but instead arises from an unwillingness to understand.