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Hannah Arendt and the Law and Ethics of Administration 25th IVR World Congress LAW SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Frankfurt am Main 15–20 August 2011 Paper Series No. 112 / 2012 Series B Human Rights, Democracy; Internet / intellectual property, Globalization Jacob Dahl Rendtorff Hannah Arendt and the Law and Ethics of Administration. Bureaucratic Evil, Political Thinking and Reflective Judgment URN: urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-249706 This paper series has been produced using texts submitted by authors until April 2012. No responsibility is assumed for the content of abstracts. Conference Organizers: Edited by: Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Ulfrid Neumann, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main Department of Law Professor Dr. Klaus Günther, Goethe Grüneburgplatz 1 University, Frankfurt/Main; Speaker of 60629 Frankfurt am Main the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation Tel.: [+49] (0)69 - 798 34341 of Normative Orders” Fax: [+49] (0)69 - 798 34523 Professor Dr. Lorenz Schulz M.A., Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, Roskilde / Denmark Hannah Arendt and the Law and Ethics of Administration Bureaucratic evil, political thinking and reflective judgment Abstract: After the absurd terrorism and violence of the totalitarianism and bureaucratic administrative and legal systems of the 20th century it does not give any meaning to rationalize harm as meaningful evil that even though it is evil may have some importance for the development of the world towards the good. Rather, evil is incomprehensible and as radical and banal evil it challenges human rationality. This is indeed the case when we are faced with instrumental and rationalized administrative and political evil. Therefore, we must analyse the banality of evil in politics and in administration in order to understand the concept of evil. Moreover, as proposed by Hannah Arendt, we need to fight this evil with political thinking and social philosophy. The only way to deal with harm and wrongdoing is to return a concept of responsibility that is closely linked to reflective thinking. In this paper, we will on the basis of a discussion of the banality of evil explore this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the administration of evil, as expressed by the personality of Adolf Eichmann. Finally, we will place this concept of administrative evil in Hannah Arendt’s general political philosophy. Introduction How do we explain the horrors of modernity, Auschwitz and the death camps, the Gulag or more recently the terror of September 11 and in Iraq and Afghanistan and all over the world? On the one hand we ascribe this evil to willed demonic human actions. On the other hand our concepts of evil become insufficient and we are confronted with the radical incomprehensibility of evil actions.1 In this paper I will address Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of responsibility and reflective judgment as way to deal with political and administrative evil as one of the many faces of evil in contemporary society. I will begin with a discussion of the banality of evil. Then I will explore this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the administration of evil as an example of political evil in administrative and legal systems, as expressed by the personality of Adolf Eichmann. Finally, we will place this concept of administrative evil in Hannah Arendt’s general political philosophy. Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies, Roskilde University, Denmark. 1 Susan Neiman: Evil in Modern Thought, An Alternative History of Philosophy, 2002, xii-xiii. 1 I. Hannah Arendt: The banality of evil The German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt, who had to flee from the Nazis to the United States, published in 1951 one of the most important works on the terrors of systems in the 20th century, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt (1951), 1964) which was later developed in her work in Eichmann in Jerusalem. An Essay on the Banality of Evil from 1964. I think that Arendt’s concept represents a new way to approach the problem of evil that goes beyond classical concepts of. Arendt’s philosophy contains in this connection a critical evaluation of the concept of evil as a result of a demonic and devilish evil spiritual force.2 Looking closely on Arendt’s conception of evil in relation to political philosophy we may argue that it represents a revolt against the implicit theodicy in the political ideology that was dominating during the Iraq war. After the terror action against World Trade Center in New York President Bush has several times emphasized that the War on Terror and the fight against Osama bin Laden was a fight between good and evil. Although they finally emerged as miserable and somewhat insignificant men Saddam Hussein and Kaddafi were also portrayed as the incarnation of evil and the war against Iraq had similarities with a crusade against evil powers in the world. With terrorism we come as close as possible to “intentionally willed evil”. The actions of the terrorists in Spain as in Russia and the evil of Bin Laden, Hussein and Kaddafi have been compared to the crimes of Hitler, Stalin and other totalitarian regimes in the 20. Century as an expression of “absolute evil”. Arendt asks the question, how Holocaust, that is the killings of six million Jews in concentration camps was possible. She does not think that such evil was beyond every human understanding.3 But none the less, evil requires that we try to understand it and thereby creates a defence against it. Arendt stated that evil in Nazism should be understood as a historically conditioned modern political phenomenon, which is essentially different from earlier forms of tyranny and despotism. According to Arendt, totalitarianism is characterized by the fact that technically rationality and calculation of utility is used to realize an irrational ideology that often is based on anti-Semitism or racism. Totalitarianism as a political system reaches the character of nightmares, when it uses technology to make change radically human beings and society by the use of systematic murder or ideologically organized madness. Terror creates constant insecurity and unsafe feelings among individuals in society. In totalitarianism elites are sanctioning their power by the use of secret police. Concentration camps and death camps are essential to establish total power to military leaders. The function of the camps is, with the sharp insights of Arendt, to make human 2 Richard J. Bernstein: The Abuse of Evil. The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11, 2005. 3 Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1964. 2 beings superfluous and meaningless.4 Arendt argues that radical evil in the totalitarian regime consisted in its attempt to become master over human nature and accordingly in its attempt to form human nature according to its own will. Arendt continued in the 1950s and 1960s as one of the most important American political philosophers to be captured by the problem of evil in totalitarianism. It was in this context that she in 1963 accepted by the week newspaper The New Yorker to report from the court case in Jerusalem against the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was considered one of the major responsible bureaucrats for the transport of Jews to concentration camps.5 Arendt argued ironically and satirically against the predominant view, that Eichmann who had been presented as a symbol of intentionally willed evil, rather as the incarnation of the devil, was nothing special. Contrary to world public Arendt reduced Eichmann to be a banal and petit bourgeois bureaucrat.6 He had not deepness or moral imagination and his evil cape from his lack of ability to himself in the place of the other. Contrary to the fascination of Eichmann’s devil personality, Arendt argued that his evil consisted in his incapacity to distinguish between good and evil. In this sense the banality of evil is the frightening consequence of radical evil that made every human being superfluous and meaningless. The personality of the terrorists, the Nazi soldiers or Stalin’s butchers may be said to be characterized by the same mediocrity and ideological blindness. There is no reason in evil. It is meaningless and incomprehensible. This radical evil as the banality of evil is at the limits of our imagination and it is this radicalism which may make it difficult for us to understand that evil is banal that is the result of actions of people who are not able to have moral reflection. This kind of radical evil emerges in different ways. While Eichmann was a bureaucrat who killed at distance and never himself meat with his victims it was different with the soldiers in Serbia or the rebels in Rwanda. They did not stop with killing at a distance, but they were confronted directly with the sufferings of the victims and in some cases they were raping their victims from civil population. In some case they may even feel that they are victims and have sadistic enjoyment of their acts and therefore have a feeling of enjoying evil as a good. The “willed evil” of different forms of terrorists is often presented a consequence of a consequence of a rationally justified religious or nationalistic hate to their oppressors. And still one is marked by the meaningless and lack of goal in their actions. The essence of the concept of banality of evil is that regardless of whether it is close or at distance evil is nothing else than stupid people’s 4 Arendt, note 3, 441. 5 Hannah Arendt (1964): Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1992 6 See Arendt, (note 5). 3 violent ideology and lack of capacity of moral reflection. The reflections of Arendt join Kant’s problems of understanding how it could be possible with thoughtful action to challenge the universal language of morality.
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