Humans can adapt to endure almost anything, but in doing so, they sometimes perpetuate incredible evil. The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.
Hannah Arendt - The Banality of Evil
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The passage is not in quotation marks, but appears to be attributed to Arendt. I’ll send a special gift to the first person who finds this in her writings. But for the record, I don’t encourage anyone to go looking.
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I’m also curious about the origins of that quotation. I wish I had included a quote like that on my Senior Project. But it seems that the quote is a fabrication inspired by her thought on evil and barbarism. It seems that this article is the source of it:
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Let us identify the largest faction of the non empathetic, the 7 out of 10 white men who are Republican. Do they lack empathy simply because they are men?
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Actually there was nothing banal about Eichmann until his trial, he was a ferocious and dedicated destroyer of Jews, that's why Hitler put him in charge, he showed his 'metal' in every way.
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However, personally:
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There are recorded interviews with Eichmann in Argentina that came to light after the trial wherein he regretted not killing more Jews and look forward to a future where the task would be completed.
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Arendt's poor assessment of Eichmann is excusable, her intimate relations with Heidegger far more controversial, especially because of the way his banal 'authenticity of self' trip infiltrated the academy and politics
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