Entering

Chapter 1: Living in Dark Times

1.
Living a fierce life
2.
Rachel, Life as a Conscious Pariah
3.
Jewish or anti-Semitic
4.
The Structure of Eichmann in Jerusalem

Chapter 2 The Jewish Question: Expulsion, Internment, and the Final Solution

1.
The accidental condition of being Jewish
2.
The beginning of the policy of extermination of the Jews
3.
Distortion of the categorical imperative and manipulated language

Chapter 3: Guilty before God, Innocent before the Law

1.
Silent Memories, Wandering Time
2.
Longing for freedom
3.
Face to Face with Adolf Eichmann
4.
Guilty before God, innocent before the law

Chapter 4: A Report on the Banality of Evil

1.
Another aspect of conscience
2.
Moral or judicial responsibility for unfamiliar moral concepts
3.
The banality of evil

Chapter 5: Understanding Eichmann

1.
After the trial
2.
Think straight
3.
Talking
4.
Understanding Eichmann

Hannah Arendt's Chronology
References

A chilling insight into human 'evil': Eichmann in Jerusalem
This is not just a simple trial observation.

"Eichmann in Jerusalem" is a report documenting the Eichmann trial held in Jerusalem in 1961.
Because it is a trial observation report, when reading the original text, it is long, contains many ordinary records, and above all, it is difficult to understand the background that led Arendt to such a conclusion.
This book not only condenses the entire content of Eichmann in Jerusalem, but also presents the life and ideological background of Hannah Arendt and the activities of Adolf Eichmann, thereby helping to understand the original text of Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem's 'House of Justice'
Lose the justification for justice

On April 11, 1961, a war criminal's trial opens at the House of Justice in Jerusalem, Israel.
A slim build, large glasses, a neat suit, and a confident posture.
This man, who maintained a calm demeanor throughout, was the defendant, Adolf Eichmann.
He, the man who carried out the policy of extermination that led to the deaths of thousands of Jews, sat so meekly and proudly in the dock.
The Jews in the gallery, and even the judge presiding over the trial, would have wanted his vicious behavior to be revealed in detail and reported to the world.


But contrary to the Jewish winds full of anger, Eichmann begins to speak in a remarkably calm tone.
“I simply faithfully carried out the tasks assigned to me by my superiors.
In Germany under the Nazi regime, Hitler's word was law.
“Abiding by the law is a virtue that public officials must naturally uphold.” From this point on, people’s thoughts began to become more and more twisted.
In the House of Justice, the people lost the just cause to condemn Eichmann in an instant.
But in the midst of the chaotic audience, one guest reporter named Hannah Arendt began to look at Eichmann with interest.

Distorted categorical imperatives and manipulated language
Forget the standards of right and wrong

“Guilty before God, but innocent before the law.” This is the logic Eichmann used to justify his actions.
During his trial, Eichmann gave a detailed account of the extermination of Jews he had carried out.
From the court's perspective, it was questionable that the defendant submitted to such inhumane violence without even the slightest resistance.
After hearing Eichmann's statement, Arendt points out two points regarding the causes of the atrocities.
One was the personal problem of Eichmann, who distorted Kant's categorical imperative to accept obedience to Hitler as an ethical act, and the other was the linguistic problem of obscuring the inhumane nature of the genocide of the Jews through the use of carefully manipulated language.


During police interrogation, Eichmann revealed that he had lived by Kant's definition of duty, referring to the categorical imperative: "I must ensure that the principle of my will can always become a principle of general law."
Eichmann was a thorough member of the German Nazi Party, and he used Hitler's orders as the standard for distinguishing right from wrong in all his actions.

The problem of manipulated language also helped to justify inhumane acts.
Even if we leave the standard of judgment to Hitler, explicit words like ‘elimination,’ ‘extermination,’ and ‘genocide’ of Jews evoked an unconscious sense of rejection.
So, Nazi reports used everyday language to replace provocative words like “final solution” and “special treatment.”
Eichmann, too, became increasingly insensitive to the inhumane acts of genocide by using substituted everyday language, and treated the policy of exterminating Jews as a simple task rather than a serious crime.

Inability to think and speak
Reading the Root of Evil

When Arendt returned to New York from Jerusalem and published her report on the Eichmann trial, a heated debate erupted.
“I admit that Eichmann committed crimes, but those evil acts of his came from an inability to think and speak that anyone can experience in everyday life.” This is because not only did they portray Eichmann, who should have been more monstrous than anyone else, as an ordinary person, but they also gave the general public the opportunity to believe that he could be a monster.


However, it was not that everyone in the courtroom at the time did not feel Eichmann's normal state and ordinary appearance, but rather tried to ignore it.
Arendt simply presented the world as it was.
As Arendt revealed to the world, the inability to think and speak, which anyone can easily commit, was the cause of Eichmann's war crimes.
Eichmann left all his thoughts to Hitler, and did not think at all about the repercussions of his actions or the position of others based on his actions.
He deliberately used idioms and clichés to replace terms used to refer to horrific war crimes.
As the word became part of everyday language, the horrific crimes against Jews also took on a more everyday feel.
Even in his 1961 court statement, he habitually replaced criminal terms with ceremonial words.
If he had maintained his existing language, even personally, he would not have been so corrupted as to lose his sense of ethics and responsibility and lose his sense of reality.

Ultimately, the source of evil that Arendt saw was ordinariness itself.
The banality of evil.
The inability to think and speak, which anyone can commit.
Arendt's new insight into 'evil' provided an opportunity to rediscover the human choice at the crossroads of good and evil.
The author speculates on what Arendt was trying to say in her report, Eichmann in Jerusalem.

“Everyone has an Eichmann in their heart.
But if anyone can be Eichmann, then not everyone can be Eichmann.”