Article Philosophy and Social Criticism 2014, Vol. 40(2) 127–144 ª The Author(s) 2014 Thoughtlessness and Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav resentment: Determinism DOI: 10.1177/0191453713518323 and moral responsibility psc.sagepub.com in the case of Adolf Eichmann Benjamin A. Schupmann Columbia University, New York USA Abstract Is a devoted Nazi or a zombie bureaucrat a greater moral and political problem? Because the dangers of immoral fanaticism are so clear, the dangers of mindless bureaucracy are easy to overlook. Yet zombie bureaucrats have contributed substantially to the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century, doing so seemingly oblivious to the monstrous qualities of their actions. Hannah Arendt’s work on thoughtlessness raises a dilemma: if Eichmann, the architect of the Nazi Final Solution, truly was a thoughtless ‘cog’, lacking in intentionality, can one really hold him morally accountable for the evil qualities of his acts? This article relates Arendt’s ‘thought’ and Strawson’s and Bilgrami’s discussion of ‘reactive attitudes’ and Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’. To find a basis for moral accountable in seemingly thoughtless cases like Eichmann’s. Although Arendt’s Eichmann is an extreme example, finding a basis to hold him accountable is valuable because ‘little Eichmanns’ will persist as long as impersonal forces structure and depress reactive attitudes. Keywords Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichmann, reactive attitudes, Jean-Paul Sartre, P. F. Strawson, thoughtlessness No necessity compels a man to walk, who voluntarily moves steps forward; yet when he steps forward, he must of necessity walk. So everything that is present to the eye of Provi- dence must assuredly be, although there be nothing in its own nature to constitute this neces- sity. (Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, book V) Corresponding author: Benjamin A. Schupmann, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, USA. Email: [email protected] 128 Philosophy and Social Criticism 40(2) Introduction Is a devoted Nazi or a zombie bureaucrat a greater moral and political problem? The answer may seem too obvious at first: the devoted Nazi. Yet zombie bureaucrats, which is to say ‘thoughtless’ or ‘sleepwalking’ people, represent a far more substantial and ubi- quitous problem than they may appear to at first. They too have contributed to the great- est catastrophes of the 20th century; however, they have done so apparently oblivious to the monstrous qualities of their actions. They seem to lack any immoral intentions, even any intentionality at all. This thoughtlessness makes responding to the zombie bureau- crat, and addressing the moral and political threats he poses, substantially more difficult than responding to the devoted Nazi. Thus, thoughtlessness presents a serious and unique philosophical problem. This article builds on Hannah Arendt’s account of Eichmann, taking seriously her characterization of him as an exemplar of the phenomenon of thoughtlessness, and seeks to find a space for agency and moral accountability in a world where external, imperso- nal forces increasingly constrain and even dominate our decisions and actions. Arendt depicts Eichmann as one of the greatest criminals of the 20th century not because he was committed to the values of Nazism and anti-Semitism, but precisely because he was just a bureaucratic ‘cog’. This article aims to move beyond Arendt, however, by answering a dilemma her account raises: if Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Final Solution, truly was a thoughtless ‘cog’, lacking in intentionality, can we really hold him morally accountable for the evil qualities of his acts? To answer this dilemma and find a basis to hold him accountable, this article looks to relate Arendt’s ‘thought’ to discussions in analytic philosophy, in particular, P. F. Strawson’s discussion of ‘reactive attitudes’, the normatively charged reactions others adopt to one’s acts, and Akeel Bilgrami’s rela- tion of agency, normativity, intentionality and self-knowledge to one another through the lens of reactive attitudes. Their work unpacks and deepens our understanding of thought. Having unpacked thought, this article then finds a basis to hold Eichmann accountable in Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’. Although Arendt’s Eichmann is undoubtedly an extreme case of thoughtlessness, finding a basis to hold him accountable is valuable precisely because ‘little Eichmanns’1 exist and will continue to exist as long as impersonal forces structure and depress reactive attitudes. This article is organized into five sections. The first describes Arendt’s typology of ‘thought’ and its antithesis ‘knowledge’. The second unpacks ‘thought’, clarifying some blurred boundaries in Arendt’s account using concepts from Strawson and Bil- grami. The third section outlines three modern structures of domination and the unique challenges they present to thought, describing how they condition ‘thoughtlessness’. The fourth analyses Eichmann, arguing thoughtlessness is a far deeper problem than Arendt realized: Eichmann was not just unintentionally evil but had lost the possibility to behave intentionally. Finally, the fifth section shows that, by analysing him through Sartre’s concept of bad faith, Eichmann can nevertheless be held morally accountable. It argues that, although Eichmann was a victim of domination, his decision to objecti- vize himself and allow himself to become a victim of this structure – to stop adopting self-reactive attitudes – was his and his alone. Through appeal to bad faith, this article finds a basis to hold even the most extreme cases of thoughtlessness accountable, Schupmann 129 providing a mechanism to reconcile such cases of apparent determinism and moral responsbility. I What is thought? For Hannah Arendt, one of the great problems of modernity was the disappearance of thought from life. This disappearance, the phenomenon of thoughtlessness, was respon- sible for some of the worst catastrophes the world has known.2 She thought it stemmed from confusion about the nature of thought and knowledge, and the modern tendency to reduce thought to knowledge. Against this reductive tendency, she argued that, in fact, one could know very much yet still be completely thoughtless.3 ‘Thought’ has nothing to do with what one does, say, when presented with a math problem or trying to recall what someone said yesterday – she considered these to be examples of ‘knowing’ not ‘think- ing’. Arendt sought to conceptually distinguish thought and knowledge, thinking and knowing, to make clear thought’s importance in order to then restore its place in human life. Arendt credits Kantwith first distinguishing thought and knowledge through his concepts Vernunft and Verstand.4 Although they are often translated as reason and rationality, respec- tively, Arendt translated Vernunft as thought and Verstand as knowledge.5 She conceived of Verstand as representing the rationalism of the Enlightenment, an immediate and complete view of truth. It implies deductive or syllogistic knowledge, something verifiable.6 Doubt about its truth can be overcome by appealing back to the original deductive process and demonstrating it again. Because of its deductive, truth-oriented nature, Arendt believes that knowledge concludes in the ‘irresistible force of necessity’: once one knows such a truth, one cannot help but abide by it.7 In addition, because of its deductive and verifiable nature, knowledge has affinities with instrumental rationality (Weber’s Zweckrationalita¨t).8 Thus, in Arendt’s typology, knowing also implies means-ends reasoning, the reasoning one adopts to realize a goal. Yet there are questions that the object-oriented reasoning of knowledge cannot solve. For example, Kant’s antinomies of reason or presuppositions of practical reason cannot be determined through the reasoning of Verstand. Arendt sees Vernunft, thought, as its necessary complement. She identifies thought with Socrates’ dialectical reasoning; dia- lectic drives one beyond the limits of what can be known, examining and challenging the premises and assumptions underlying one’s beliefs in an attempt to expose contradic- tions and inconsistencies.9 Thought is reflexive, it adjusts and changes itself through this reflexivity. Thought is not means-ends reasoning but ‘of itself’: it is the subject thinking and rethinking its thoughts as a subject. Arendt argues that thought lacks the object- orientation knowledge has and engages in an evolving, rather than static, process. Thus, the product of thought is not irresistible or complete truth, but something different. She thinks thought is value-oriented. In her typology, thought seems to relate to value- rationality (Weber’s Wertrationalita¨t) and it is the mode of reasoning one adopts in order to analyse and evaluate one’s relationship, and the relationships of others, to the world as agents.10 As knowledge implies necessity, thought implies freedom for Arendt.11 Arendt believed Socrates exemplified the nature of thought. She has in mind the Socrates who wandered the agora, debating everyone he met and driving them into 130 Philosophy and Social Criticism 40(2) aporetic frustration. To illustrate what thought was, she looks at the three similes Socrates uses to describe himself: gadfly, midwife and ray. As a gadfly, Socrates arouses Athenians, who would otherwise sleep on undisturbed, from their quotidian lives. Similarly, the ray implies that Socrates interrupts a normalized, mechanical rou- tine of life. But the ray