The eichmann trial new york times

Even in Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt says: " Let us take another penetrating aspect related to the banality of evil: the absence of roots.

I would like to discuss two implications concerning the meaning of "no-roots" in the banality of evil. Firstly, for Arendt, such evil has no-roots in the sense that it has not-roots in any kind of manifestation of evil presented by our tradition as a whole. In a draft written for a debate about Eichmann in Jerusalem in Hofstra College in , Arendt accentuated that banality means: " 'No roots', not rooted in 'evil motives' or 'urges' or strength of 'temptation' human nature or 'Evil be thou my good: Richard III' etc.

Root-less, no demonic forces. Evil be thou my good! No Radical Evil. I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to trace the incontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. Secondly, The notion that the banality of evil has "no-roots" is inherently connected with Arendt's understanding that only the faculty of thinking can reach the profundity, and consequently reach the roots.

In one of the clearest moments about this Arendt says: "I mean that evil is not radical, going to the roots radix , that is has no depth, and that for this very reason it is so terribly difficult to think about it, since thinking, by definition, wants to reach the roots.

Evil is a surface phenomenon , and instead of being radical, it is merely extreme. We resist evil by not being swept away by the surface of things, by stopping ourselves and beginning to think , that is, by reaching another dimension than the horizon of everyday life.

In other words, the more superficial someone is, the more likely will he be to yield to evil. Looking for some profundity in Eichmann that could explain the roots of evil, Arendt found an absence of evil motives, as if the evil was a superficial phenomenon in opposition to the faculty of thinking, in which we necessarily reach profundity. Since " Eichmann, by the fact that he was not able to exercise the faculty of thinking, could not find any profundity with regard to his deeds.

Such aspects are mentioned by Arendt in one of the most controversial statements in her correspondence with Gershom Scholem. Arendt emphasizes that evil could spread "like a fungus on the surface" mainly because there is no depth, and that solely stopping ,and starting to think, can reach the depth.

Arendt emphasizes: "It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never 'radical', that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension.

It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is 'thought-defying', as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing.

That is its 'banality'. Only the good has depth and can be radical. Let us raise the question that comes naturally from sthe two former topic: How, then, does the faculty of thinking work in order to avoid evil? First of all, according to Arendt, the moral and ethic standards based on habits and customs have shown that they can just be changed by a new set of rules of behavior dictated by the current society.

In Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship, Arendt emphasizes: "It was as though morality, at the very moment of its collapse within an old, highly civilized nation, stood revealed in its original meaning, as a set of mores, of customs and manners, which could be exchanged for another set with no more trouble than it would take to change the table manners of a whole people.

In this same article quoted above she asks how is was possible that few persons resisted the moral collapse and had not adhered to the regime, despite any coercion. Arendt herself answers: "The answer to the The nonparticipants, called irresponsible by the majority, were the only ones who dared judge by themselves , and they were capable of doing so not because they disposed of a better system of values or because the old standards of right and wrong were still firmly planted in their mind and conscience but, Arendt clearly attributes to the faculty of thinking the presupposition for this kind of judging extremely necessary in times of moral collapse, that is to say, "when the chips are down.

Arendt enumerates three basic propositions that involve the faculty of thinking and the problem of evil. First, one must presuppose that the faculty of thinking is accessible to everyone, rather than the privilege of "professional thinkers.

And finally, if the faculty of thinking concerns the invisible, it consequently takes no place directly in the world of appearances. Her answer would be indicative of the trajectory of such a faculty, that is, only through the functioning of the faculty of thinking, what for Arendt means: looking for the experiences of thought.

She says: "Inability to think is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and wickedness is hardly its cause, if only because thoughtlessness as well as stupidity are much more frequent phenomena, is necessary to cause great evil Hence, in Kantian terms, one would need philosophy, the exercise of reason as the faculty of thought, to prevent evil.

Rather, since this experience, we have been confined to live in the company of ourselves, meaning by that that we are condemned to the continuos examination of the events through our activity of thinking. Describing the faculty of thinking, Arendt takes the Kantian distinction between reason, Vernunft , and intellect, Verstand. In a broad sense, the former, as a faculty of thinking, aims at the conception of meaning, and understanding; whereas, the latter, as a faculty of cognition, aims at the apprehension through perceptions that are given by senses, objectifying a verifiable knowledge.

Thus, Arendt argues that the faculty of thinking is related to the search for meaning pertaining to reason. The faculty of thinking concerns meaning, and the necessity of understanding, rather than, the search for truth, whose evidence is given by the senses, and thereby pertains to the intellect. One of Arendt's main concerns about the faculty of thinking was the fact that a whole society can succumb to a total changing of its moral standards without its citizens emitting any judgment about what has happened.

Arendt chooses Socrates as her model of thinker, "a citizen among citizens," insofar Socrates thought " The defense team [was] comprised of Dr.

Robert Servatius and his assistant, Dieter Wechtenbruch. The defense did not contest the facts included in the indictment, opting instead to play down the responsibility of the accused for the crimes of the Nazi regime against the Jews. As in the Nuremberg trials, almost all of the available documents were controlled by the prosecutors.

With only two men on his defense team, Eichmann worked very hard throughout his trial and became the chief assistant to his defense counsel. The Israeli Mossad also spied on Dr. Servatius, and all of his consultations with Eichmann were closely monitored. This made it virtually impossible for the defense to spring any surprises during the trial.

Eichmann underwent months of interrogation before securing defense counsel. Eichmann seemed to think at first that he would be kept alive in Israeli captivity only so long as he talked to his interrogator, Avner Less.

We gathered millions of pages of documentation and read a great deal of background sources. The German government was very cooperative and sent us a great deal of material.

Servatius contested the legal basis of the trial and asked that the case against Eichmann be dismissed. The three Israeli judges predictably ruled against Servatius and ordered the trial to continue.

Gideon Hausner called numerous witnesses who had no connection with Adolf Eichmann. While much of this testimony was based on hearsay, the Jewish eyewitnesses transformed the trial from an important war-crimes trial to one that would have enduring significance. Servatius knew under the trial conditions in Israel he could not contest the official Holocaust story.

Servatius, who was supposed to be defending Eichmann, was also fully aware that he could not garner sympathy for his client by aggressively challenging the Jewish eyewitnesses. Servatius thus decided to conduct almost no cross-examinations of the prosecution witnesses.

Hannah Arendt confirmed that that the prosecution witnesses were seldom cross-examined. Arendt wrote:. When Dr. On cross-examination of the witness through whom the diary was put into evidence, Servatius asked only one question: Was the name of Adolf Eichmann mentioned in any of these 29 volumes?

Since the answer was no, Servatius was satisfied. This meant that if they set foot in Israel they could be arrested under the same law under which Eichmann was being tried, and any testimony they gave in court was likely to be self-incriminating. Not if one understands and uses German as she did, and not if one understands the philosophical contexts within which she meant precisely what she said.

Eichmann was not demanding a common human law, which could also apply to him, because he, too, was human. He was actually demanding recognition for a National Socialist dogma, according to which each people Volk has a right to defend itself by any means necessary, the German people most of all.

He was banal precisely because he was a fanatical anti-Semite, not despite it. Seyla Benhabib is a professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University. See next articles.