Abstract
In this article I build upon Hanna Arendt’s reflections on the “banality of evil” to elaborate on the dangers of unreflectively embracing abstract norms and bureaucratic reasoning as guidelines and justifications for behavior. By offering validation for our actions (or the lack thereof) regardless of their likely effects, abstract norms and rules harbor the danger of appeasing consciences and relieving us from our responsibility towards other human beings. I exemplify the effects of bureaucratic reasoning through the United Nations’ failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica. In Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt warned against the banal evil hidden in the uncritical following of accepted norms and rules of behavior. I conclude that in order to avoid the danger of becoming Eichmanns of some sort we need to carefully and prudently assess the potential effects of our actions and embrace responsibility for the consequences they may produce in the concrete circumstances we engage with.
Highlights
In Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil Hannah Arendt drew on reports she first prepared for The New Yorker of her direct observation of Adolf Eichmann’s trial to describe “the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil” in modern bureaucratic societies.iThe Nazi criminal tried and executed in Israel in 1962, Arendt argued, was not an eager activist for the extermination of Jews
Hannah Arendt: Fifty Years After Eichmann in Jerusalem he was sacrificing an easy morality for a higher good.”iv Instead, I argue that bureaucratic reasoning is central for understanding the “banality of evil” and for a critical scrutiny of the relationships among ethics, abstract and universal normativity, and rule following
Having worked for many years at the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and taken part in international interventions justified by appeal to “universal norms” and operationalized through bureaucratic procedures, I see such reflection as extremely important
Summary
In Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil Hannah Arendt drew on reports she first prepared for The New Yorker of her direct observation of Adolf Eichmann’s trial to describe “the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil” in modern bureaucratic societies.iThe Nazi criminal tried and executed in Israel in 1962, Arendt argued, was not an eager activist for the extermination of Jews. By offering validation for our actions (or the lack thereof) regardless of their likely effects, abstract norms and rules harbor the danger of appeasing consciences and relieving us from our responsibility towards other human beings.
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