This paper explores the major historical interpretations of Hannah Arendt and analyzes her philosophy of history. Chapter One includes an introduction and a brief survey of the life of Hannah Arendt. Chapters Two and Three examine The Origins of Totalitarianism. The discussion concludes that Arendt's loose use of terms and some of her evidence can be called into question. Nevertheless, her work contains original insights about modern European political history. Chapter Four, a discussion of Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, emphasizes her portrait of Adolph Eichmann as a shallow, Nazi bureaucrat. Although the work is flawed with inaccuracies, her portrait of Eichmann as a prototypical bureaucratic killer is thought provoking. Chapter Five, an analysis of Arendt's philosophy of history, concludes that Arendt understood the pitfalls of theories of historical causality.

No se posee.

Zugl.: Giessen, Univ., veränd. Diss., 2007

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[pt] Esta dissertação apresenta uma breve introdução à obra de Hannah Arendt a partir do problema do mal. Seu objetivo é determinar, com base em alguns dos principais conceitos enunciados pela autora, uma solução para a controvérsia, presente na literatura filosófica, sobre a compatibilidade entre as noções de radicalidade do mal, de matriz kantiana, e de banalidade do mal, desenvolvida por Arendt. Para isso, são estudados o evento totalitário e a abordagem realizada por Arendt do problema do mal. Nesse contexto, o ponto de partida é uma análise das visões sobre a questão do mal na tradição filosófica com base em Agostinho de Hipona, Leibniz, Kant e Nietzsche. A seguir, com base no fenômeno totalitário, é analisada a radicalidade do mal, com o objetivo de compreender os horrores praticados pelos regimes nazista e stalinista durante os tempos sombrios do século XX. Posteriormente, estuda-se o julgamento de Adolf Eichmann e seu significado para a obra da autora. Naquele julgamento, apareceram três questões fundamentais: a dificuldade dos juízes de julgar um caso sem precedentes; a consciência de Eichmann; e o fenômeno da banalidade do mal. A seguir, a pesquisa apresenta uma possibilidade de compatibilizar o conceito de mal radical com o de mal banal, presentes no cânone arendtiano, a partir de uma análise da correspondência de Arendt com Gershom Scholem. Por fim, com base nas noções arendtianas de ação e liberdade, destacaremos a maneira pela qual será possível ao ser humano o retorno a si mesmo, na forma de animal político que é. / [en] This dissertation presents a brief introduction to the work of Hannah Arendt based on the problem of evil. The objective is to determine, based on some of the main concepts presented by the author, a solution to the controversy, present in the philosophical literature, about the compatibility between the notions of the radicality of evil, with Kantian matrix, and the banality of evil, as developed by Arendt. To this end, the totalitarian event and Arendt s approach to the problem of evil are studied. In this context, the starting point is an analysis of the views on the question of evil in the philosophical tradition based on Augustine of Hippo, Leibniz, Kant and Nietzsche. Then, based on the totalitarian phenomenon, the radicality of evil is analyzed in order to understand the horrors practiced by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes during dark periods of the 20th century. Subsequently, Adolf Eichmann s judgment and its meaning for the author s work are studied. In that trial, three fundamental questions emerged: the judges difficulty in judging a case without precedents; Eichmann s conscience; and the phenomenon of the banality of evil. Next, the research presents a possibility of reconciling the concept of radical evil with that of banal evil, present in the Arendtian canon, based on an analysis of Arendt s correspondence with Gershom Scholem. Finally, based on the Arendtian notions of action and freedom, we will highlight the way in which it will be possible for the human being to return to himself/herself, in the form of the political animal that he/she is.

The present thesis deals with the concept of the banality of evil philosopher Hannah Arendt Along with other interpretations of the notion of evil. This work aims to introduce the concept of the banality of evil take Adolf Eichmann Nazi criminals Which Mel trial in Jerusalem, on the basis of Arendt created already mentioned the term banality of evil. Further more, the work tasked to introduce more starting positions on the question of evil. The work also focuses Another controversial idea of Jewish elites Collaboration with the Nazis. At work I have stated several perspectives on this issue and presented the views of opponents Arendt. The works appear as philosophical Thus sociological and psychological perspectives on the question of evil. To support the thesis of the banality of evil, I introduced the psychological experiments that partially confirmed the concept of Hannah Arendt.

The thesis follows up the subject of Jews and Shoah in Czechoslovakia and Austria and their representation at the beginning of the 60s. By this time, the Eichmann-trial took place in Jerusalem. Finding out, how and how much did the trial influence the presentation of Jews and Jewish victims in cultural memories or rather policy of past of both societies in comparison is aim of the thesis. On this basis, it is possible to reveal both differences and similarities between the two societies. Even if they seem to be completely different because of being sepparated by the Iron Curtain. The thesis devides into two parts. First part deals with the situation in post-war Czechoslovakia and Austria till the beginning of the 60s. It shows, how were the societies "set" when the Eichmann-trial came - what were the "prejudices", what was the policy of past dealing with. Second part includes the analysis of press-articles taken from different Austrian and Czechoslovakian newspaper and magazines (daily, weekly and monthly). From general to concrete is the way of the analysis which enables to show as the wider frame of the reaction as answers to the concrete questions. Outcomes are evaluated as continuously, as in the final conclusion.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 2001, Home Box Office aired Conspiracy, a dramatization of the infamous Wannsee Conference organized by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The Conference took place in Berlin on 20 January 1942 and was intended to coordinate the Final Solution by asserting the dominance of Heydrich and the SS over other governmental departments. The surviving Wannsee Protocol stands as one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the Third Reich’s genocidal intent and emblematic of its shift from mass shootings in the occupied East to industrial-scale murder. Conspiracy, written by Loring Mandel and directed by Frank Pierson, is an unusual historical film because it reenacts the Wannsee Conference in real time, devoid of the usual clichés prevalent throughout Holocaust films. It also engages with historiographical arguments and makes a few of its own. This thesis argues that dramatic film has been relatively ignored by the public history field and uses Conspiracy as a case study for how dramatic film and television can be used to further the goals of public history, especially that of making complex and difficult histories accessible to wide audiences. Grounded in a thorough reading of script drafts, production notes, HBO meeting minutes, and correspondence, this thesis examines Conspiracy from the vantage point of scholarship in public history, film studies, and Holocaust studies. It details the film’s production history, the sources used for the film, the claims it makes, and advocates for dramatic film as a powerful public history outlet. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Conspiracy is exactly the type of historical film that historians should be making themselves.

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This thesis is a critical discussion of political thinker Hannah Arendt’s moral thought, as developed in her works from EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM onwards. Arendt, I argue, sought to respond to the moral challenge she saw posed by the phenomenon of banal evildoing, as revealed in Nazi Germany. Banal evildoers are agents who, under circumstances in which their ordinary moral triggers and guides (conscience, moral habits and norms, the behavior of their peers, etc.) are subverted, commit evil despite having no evil intent. Such subversion of ordinary moral voices would appear to absolve these agents from moral responsibility for their acts, which led most commentators to reject claims to such subversion by Nazi collaborators. Arendt, who sees the phenomenon of banal evildoing as factually substantiated, set out to show that such agents possessed other mental capacities (namely, critical and speculative thinking, reflective judging, and free willing), more appropriate for moral decision-making, on which they could have relied even under Nazi conditions. It is for their disregard of such capacities that banal evildoers can be held morally responsible. In this thesis I critically engage with this Arendtian argument. I show how the Nazi subversion of German agents’ ordinary moral voices was achieved. I then exegetically explicate Arendt’s (unfinished) analysis of the above mental capacities and of their moral role. I then argue for the addition of the capacities of empathetic perception and practical wisdom to this understanding of moral performance. In the course of this analysis I show that in responding to this challenge, Arendt develops a powerful argument regarding the moral dangers of overreliance on mental shortcuts in decision-making, a strong argument regarding the interconnectedness between morality and humanness, and implicitly, a novel conception of selfhood that sees otherness as interrelated and interconnected with selfhood, such that concern for others is part of what constitutes, and therefore is inscribed into, care for the self. I end by critically assessing the applicability of Arendt’s moral analysis to more ordinary decisional circumstances than those of Nazi Germany, and the insight this analysis points to regarding the relationship between moral and political decision-making.