Attuned to Reality

01-10-2006 - Traces, n.9

NewWorld

Attuned
to Reality

by Colin Cherico

Fr. Carrón often quotes Hannah Arendt for her analysis and description of ideology, summed up by the quote, “Ideology is not the naïve acceptance of the visible [of the real], but the intelligent cancellation of it.” Arendt is known as a political philosopher; born in Germany into a secular Jewish family, she fled Nazi Germany and settled in the U.S., where she lived until her death in 1975. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt recounts the famous trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was tried in Jerusalem 15 years after World War II ended. Following his dramatic kidnapping in Argentina, the trial was an international phenomenon. To nobody’s surprise, the trial ended with the expected guilty verdict and death sentence. Arendt uses the historical event of Eichmann’s trial to deal with larger questions of the origin and presence of evil.
Eichmann himself was a middle-ranking Nazi official whose crime against humanity was arranging for the deportation of millions of Jews throughout Europe. Many of these deportees were eventually killed–murdered would be a more accurate word–in death camps outside the Reich. Eichmann, the man who arranged these deportations, claimed to have no ill-will toward the Jewish people. In fact, his first experience with Jewish people was with a relative of his stepmother, who helped him to obtain employment during the 1920s. Eichmann remembered these relatives fondly throughout his life and used this anecdote about his positive relations with them to separate himself from Nazis like Julius Streicher–whom he thought of as intolerant, extremist “Jew-Haters.” Although he claimed to believe in God, he described himself as one who had rejected Christianity. Apparently so, because in Jerusalem he declared that “repentance is for children.”
The subtitle of the book, A Report on the Banality of Evil, arises from Arendt’s observations that the evil reflected in Eichmann’s crimes, the atrocities against humanity he committed, was the product neither of a madman nor a wicked man nor a monster, but of an ordinary, normal human who had acted without thought. To Arendt, Eichmann was terrifying because he was “thoughtless.” The real trouble, she said, was that so many were like him, normal people who did awful things, making evil banal. By “thoughtless” Arendt means “without engaging in critical thinking.” She discusses the banality of evil because, far from being something superhuman, it can quickly be “learned” once people stop thinking and judging reality. Arendt has no doubt there is evil around; her vision easily testifies to the Christian idea of original sin.
Arendt comments on how Eichmann and other Germans had difficulty with the truth of any situation. As an example, she recounts how death squad members would talk about how much they had to suffer in performing their murders for the good of the country, rather than thinking of the suffering they inflicted on the victims. Eichmann himself rarely said a sentence that did not include some cliché, because saying them made him feel “elated.”
Arendt demonstrates that the decisive factor in Eichmann’s evil was ideology; not just the creepy, absurd fanaticism of Nazi racial purity and anti-Semitism, but rather, the failure to look at reality itself and judge things accordingly. This ideological disconnect allows Eichmann to convince himself that he is a friend to the Jewish people when arranging for their deportation and execution.
Eichmann spoke at his trial of having very positive experiences with his Jewish relatives. He is not unique in this–other Nazis apparently had similar childhood or adult experiences–but this reality did not stop their participation in war crimes. They substituted the reality of their experience for an ideological allegiance to the state, party, or their superiors, and became less human in doing so.
If they had been thinking critically, then their humanity, expressed through their consciences, would have awakened them to the enormity of the crimes in which they participated. As Arendt points out, it is impossible that, at some point, Eichmann and millions of others were not tempted to stop and question what they were doing. But, regretfully, that was a temptation that they were able to resist!
In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt recognizes the importance of true education, which allows one to critically assess the situations one faces. She insists that we must educate each other to stay attuned to reality, and not let ideology separate us from the true facts and circumstances. A lesson to be taken from this book is, as Msgr. Giussani taught us, to stay attuned to the totality of reality, and the signs that Christ gives to us.