Evil and Judgement

Abstract

This chapter concerns Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and Isaiah Berlin's commentary on it. It seeks to review the specifically moral aspect of the Arendt–Berlin conflict by way of considering the Eichmann controversy. As their dispute is tied to their disagreement over central moral and political concepts, such as responsibility, judgement, power and agency, the chapter reveals the relevant work on these concepts. It argues that Berlin's direct role in the controversy was to assist the publication of the English translation of the Arendt–Scholem exchange in Encounter magazine. Beyond this, however, he made critical remarks on Eichmann in Jerusalem in letters, conversations and interviews. The chapter focuses on Berlin's ‘value pluralism’, one of the most influential ideas in moral philosophy to emerge in the twentieth century. It then demonstrates how Berlin fully relied on this idea to mount an attack on Arendtian ethics.