DISCUSSION

THINKING AND MORAL CONSIDERATIONS: SOCRATES AND ARENDT'S EICHMANN*

JOSEPH BEATTY

Philosophers ancient and modern have argued for the connection between reason and morality. The arguments have so persisted as to suggest almost a self-glorifying inclination among philosophers who have claimed, some- times tacitly, sometimes openly, to be the paradigms of the life of reason and , thus, of the moral life as well! The persistence of such a claim, however, exposes the defensive position of philosophers in society. That is, the philos- ophic activity has often been considered so subversive and dangerous as to require a defense showing why any society should be hospitable to it. As Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom have in recent years reminded us, 1 the locus classicus for the defense of philosophy to the polis or society is Plato's Republic. There, and in many works of Plato, Socrates contends that if we would think we would live better, by which he means not only live happier but also live more morally. The structure of the Platonic-Socratic argument has parallels in Confucian, Neo-Confucian, and Buddhist philosophy where it is often claimed that inquiry has inevitably beneficial effects on one's moral conduct. Thus, the Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yang-Ming asserts that "the investigation of things is the effort to make the will sincere." 2 Frederick Streng's account of the second century Indian philosopher Nftgfirjuna points to a connection between wisdom (prajfig), the apprehen- sion of "emptiness" (~fmyat~), and compassion (karun. ~t). a There is indeed a certain plausibility to the claim that the activity of reasoning which de- mands fairness, objectivity and judiciousness carries over into the moral domain. In the light of this it seems more than coincidence that in The Republic the defense of justice finally turns into a defense of the intellectual life. 4 If we see clearly, then, i.e., if our apprehension of reality is not distorted by selfish desires or inclinations, we execute both cognitive and moral purifications. Two related arguments should be separated, however. The first

* I wish to thank Lloyd Epstein, Terry Perlin, and Laszlo Vers6nyi for clarifying discussions of some of the issues in this paper.

i Leo Strauss, "On Plato's Republic," in The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964); The Republic of Plato, translation, notes, and interpretive essay by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968).

2 Wang Yang-Ming, instructions For Practical Living And Other Neo-Confucian Writings, translated by Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 24.

3 Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness - A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967), esp. pp. 155-169.

4 See F. E. Sparshott's "Socrates and Thrasymachus" in Monist, 50 (1966), 441.

Discussion 267

is that thinking or reasoning will lead us to the conclusion that if we desire our own good or happiness we must be moral; the other is that the act of thinking itself is inherently moralizing.

Moderns, however, have usually abandoned these particular routes in relating reason and morality. Kant and contemporary philosophers such as R. M. Hare and R. S. Peters, for example, uneasy with the dependence of the moral on the prudential or expedient, have contended not that the logic of reasoning implied morality but rather that morality or moral discourse is inherently logical or rational. Many modern philosophers have attempted to show that morality had a rational basis not by arguing that it was productive of happiness but rather by disclosing the meaning and impli- cations of moral claims or moral discourse. Hence, the necessary condition of moral claims being intelligible is that they be universalizable, i.e., logical or rational.

What is fascinating about Hannah Arendt's recent paper, "Thinking and Moral Considerations" s and the echoes of its contention in her book on Eichmann is that she employs both Socratic and Kantian arguments in her attempt to show that if we would think or reason we would act morally or, at least, avoid evil. To be sure, she does not employ that aspect of Kantian moral argument which is customary among contemporary ethicists. Rather, she focuses on the philosophical or reasoning enterprise itself in Kant which appears to support the ancient or Socratic argument connecting reasoning and morality. At the same time she brings this "ancient" argument to bear on what she calls a peculiarly modern phenomenon, viz., evil deeds perpetrated on a massive scale by an agent under circumstances which, as she remarks in her study of Eichmann, "make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or feel that he is doing wrong." 6 Whereas Plato's spokesman, Socrates, had argued that the connection between reasoning, happiness and morality was so compelling that even the Gygean, Thrasymachean, or Calliclean tyrant ought to be persuaded, Arendt's contention is that if the type of the cool and shallow bureaucrat, Eichmann, the thoughtless "everyman," had thought or reasoned he would not have done evil.

Prima faeie, the claim is counter-intuitive. It would seem, as Max Black has suggested, that "a man can reason and reason and still be a villain." 7 Arendt raises the question whether thinking "'conditions' [man] against evildoing" (418) or "in such a way that he is incapable of evil," (438) and answers affirmatively. I believe that her defense of this contention is finally unconvincing and, moreover, that it raises very unsettling questions for her

s Hannah Arendt, "Thinking And Moral Considerations: A Lecture," Social Research, 38 (1971), 417-446. All page references in my paper refer to this essay unless otherwise indicated.

6 Eiehmann in Jerusalem, 2nd edition (New York: Viking Press, 1969), p. 276. 7 Max Black, "Reasonableness," in Education and the Development of Reason, edited

by R. F. Dearden, P. H. Hirst and R. S. Peters (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 205.

268 The Journal of Value Inquiry

judgment of Eichmann in Eichmann in Jerusalem. In this paper I shall scrutinize the adequacy of Arendt's argument that thinking is a prophylactic against evil and then consider her judgment of Eichmann in the light of this argument and its implications.

We begin, on Arendt's account, with Eichmann whose "monstrous deeds" are traceable to his "curious, quite authentic inability to think" (417). That is, he accepted rules and conventions without scrutinizing their justification; given a new role (war criminal) he "had not the slightest difficulty in accept- ing an entirely different set of rules" (417). In Socratic terms, he was full of opinions (doxai) he took to be true without question. This blind adherence to conventions or opinions had the consequence of "protecting [him] against reality" (418).

It would seem that if Eichmann or anyone is to come into contact with reality he must therefore possess knowledge of what is what. But Arendt introduces a (Kantian) distinction here between knowledge (Verstand) and thought (Vernunft). The former refers to the possession of certain, verifiable knowledge; the latter to the drive to understand, a drive for totality and, hence, for that which is never fully captured but always sought. It is the latter activity or "faculty" which is central to Arendt's argument. She character- izes it with three adjectives: uncertain, unverifiable, and self-destructive. Thus, the activity of thinking or reasoning as she conceives it resembles Socrates' and Jaspers' notion of philosophizing: the ongoing struggle for meaning, necessarily insecure, tentative and so, resistant to all results and axioms, even its own. As such, thinking or philosophizing is wonder hanker- ing for fulfillment, a desire necessarily unfulfillable, and so, aware of its limits. Jaspers calls such thinking not ontology, which absolutizes and seeks dogmatic closure on truth, but periechontology, which is aware of man's limitations before that which transcends him. s

It is not surprising that Arendt takes Socratic thinking as her model. Socratic dialogues are all aporetic; such thinking, according to Arendt, unfreezes "frozen thoughts," makes people literally stop and think in the midst of action, or functions as an "invisible wind" which blows away visible (apparent) certainties.

With this groundwork established Arendt offers three arguments to support her claim that thinking excludes evildoing. First, insofar as thinking calls into question one's adherence to conventions, codes, or ideologies it is likely that those like Eichmann would be roused from their dogmatic slumbers. For the cross-examination of customary codes and conventions liberates (Kantian) judgment which judges particulars "without subsuming them under those general rules which can be taught and learned until they

8 Karl Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung (Munich: R. Piper, 1962), pp. 306-307.

Discussion 269

grow into habits . . . " (446). Second, since the quest for meaning which thinking exhibits aims necessarily (like Platonic eros) at the good and the beautiful or, more properly, at that which really is, evil is "excluded by definition from the thinking concern" (437) for it is merely a privation or negation. " I f thinking dissolves normal, positive concepts into their original meaning," Arendt says, "then the same process dissolves these negative 'concepts' into their original meaninglessness, into nothing" (437).

The latter argument is apriori: since the object of thought must be positive and evil is by definition negative, therefore "thought" and "evil" are necessarily disjunctive. The conclusion is that thinking cannot have evil as such as its object. Certainly, Socratic-Platonic theory would aNrm this since it would be irrational to deliberately pursue what one knows or believes to be evil. Yet such a recognition does not sustain the conclusion Arendt desires, viz., that anyone who thinks is thereby kept from the evil path. We shall return to this consideration since it exposes important hidden premises in Arendt's argument.

The third argument is central. Arendt generates it from two Socratic pro- positions in the Gorgias:

1 "It is better to be wronged than to do wrong (Gorgias, 474)." 2 ~ would be better for me that my lyre or a chorus I directed should be out of tune

and loud with discord, and that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict me (Gorgias, 482)."

The second proposition attempts to explain the (paradoxical) first one by suggesting that evildoing results in psychic dissonance of a kind which any thinking individual would dread. Focusing on the account of thinking in the Theaetetus and the Sophist as the dialogue of the soul with itself, Arendt argues that evildoing places the psychic "interlocutors" at adds with one another. But thinking requires that the interlocutors "be in good shape, that the partners be friends" (442). There is in the soul, then, a "difference in identity" (how else to explain the notion of thinking as talking to oneself?) and this "two in one," as Arendt calls it, is essentially self-consciousness. This "othering" in the self is awakened by thinking and has as its by-product, conscience.

It is better to suffer than to do wrong then in order to remain on good, friendly terms with oneself. The imperative is: "Beware of doing something you will not be able to live with." 9 Wrongdoing, accordingly, would be rejected by one who thinks because he dreads the pitiless internal witness, someone Sir Thomas Browne lo and Freud respectively nominate "the man within" and the (punishing) super-ego.

9 Hannah Axendt, "Civil Disobedience," in Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1972), p. 64.

lo Sir Thomas Browne, "Religio Medici" in The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, I, edited by Geoffrey Keynes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 80.

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Arendt is not saying here that those who think will avoid evil because (as Aristotelians and Confucians have maintained) habits of immorality becloud and distort our apprehension of things as they are. 11 Nor is she contending, like Democritus (whom she quotes to this effect), that because thinking is joy- ful of itself abstinence (from immorality) is easy. Rather, her claim is that thinking and wrongdoing are disjunctive because evil menaces one's psychic harmony or integrity. Arendt acknowledges, however, in her essay on "Civil Disobedience" that the Socratic propositions are "self-evident truths for man insofar as he is a thinking being; to those who don't think, who don't have intercourse with themselves, they are not self-evident, nor can they be proved." 12

II

Let us call Arendt's first argument "the negativity argument." Her claim is that it is reason's essential destructiveness, its restless quest for the un- verifiable and non-objectifiable which "conditions" us against evil. Because thinking keeps the inquiry open, even, as Kierkegaard might say, "objectively uncertain," there is less danger that one will fall victim to dogmas or con- ventions from which one should withhold consent. The assumption here seems to be that scepticism is on the whole less morally expensive than idealism, sins of omission always less mortal than those of commission. Maybe so. There is, however, a further assumption. It is that thinking will inevitably undermine evil codes, dogmas, values. This "negativity argu- ment" is founded on what I will call the "privation argument," Arendt's second argument according to which thinking dissolves evil (a privative concept) into its original meaninglessness.

Before taking up this second argument, however, let us look more care- fully at the implications of the "negativity argument." Arendt's claim is that thinking is entirely negative; it undermines established customs and codes of conduct without replacing them with a positive doctrine. Arendt notes that it was for this reason that Socrates was considered dangerous to the polis. Men like Critias, Charmides, and Alcibiades might have concluded that if they could not define virtues such as justice and show their connection with happiness then perhaps they were being bamboozeled by city fathers who could not show the superiority of, e.g., justice, either but who never- theless thrived on popular adherence to a conventional just code. Arendt goes very far - too far I think- towards emptying Socrates of any positive doctrines. But let us suppose, as Arendt does, that an examination of justice and its

11 But elsewhere she does argue for morality as a necessary condition of the possibility of thought. Thus: "since thought is the silent dialogue carried on between me and myself, I must be careful to keep the integrity of this partner intect; for otherwise I shall surely lose the capacity for thought altogether." See "Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, 2nd edition (New York: Viking Press, 1969), p. 245.

12 Crises o f the Republic, p. 64.

Discussion 271

connection with happiness yield no positive result. Suppose, moreover, that Socrates fails to provide the tyrant or the ordinary man with a decisive ar- gument against injustice. But then someone who as a result of his thinking concludes that injustice benefits him more than justice would a) be warranted on Socratic principles and b) demonstrate the danger of Socratic thinking. For such a person could decide to be unjust while constantly cross-examining the principles and empirical basis for one's choice. In the meantime, however, the community is threatened.

Suppose, finally, that Eichmann had thought, i.e., had subjected his con- victions and opinions to a thorough cross-examination. Is it so certain that he would have acted otherwise? For, in accord with Arendt's portrait of him, he might have viewed obedience to orders as the most expedient means to his utmost fulfillment (Eichmann was obsessed with success 13) in his unfortunate situation. Arendt points out that others (Jews as well as German officers) were forced to make agonizing choices to secure their benefit, and sometimes survival, in the situation. The real issue here is: why should Socrates' practical faith (for on Arendt's account it can only be that) that morality makes a man happier than immorality, i.e., that it is "better for his soul," be decisive if reason yields no compelling conclusions either way? If, afortiori, as Kant argued, it turns out that there is no decisive way to show that morality and happiness must be realized together then it would appear that someone would be warranted in evilgoing provided he has good reasons for supposing that such a course of action yields more benefit.

Hence, Arendt's 'negativity arguement' founders because it doesn't necessarily rule out evildoing. If thinking yields absolutely no positive results then there can be no necessary connection between thinking and (moral) respect for persons. But she would doubtless rejoin that the concepts of 'thinking' and 'evil' are necessarily disjunctive for the object of reason is and is of value whereas 'evil' lacks being and value. This is what I shall call her 'argument from privation.'

Now, it can be acknowledged with Plato and Arendt that no one in his right mind pursues evil knowing it to be evil. Rather, the alleged evil is taken to be good or a means to something good. What is needed is a criterion for evil or a rule in terms of which instances of evil could be discerned. Arendt asserts that we recognize evil to be a privation or absence of good. Plato agrees: that which is not conducive to one's own good or welfare is said to be harmful (to oneself) or evil. Arendt herself contends that evil would be rejected because of the harmful consequences for one's psychic "two in one" relation. But then it must be shown that an alleged evil really is threatening to one's welfare since some things conventionally thought to be harmful to one's psychic harmony are not really harmful. An apriori argument asserting that acts conventionally thought to be evil (murder, injustice, etc.) really are

~3 See Eiehmann in Jerusalem, p. 126, where Eichmann says of Hitler, "His success alone proved to me that I should subordinate myself to this man."

x4 Ibid. pp. 106, 126, 135, 146, 276.

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evil will not do. To be sure, it could be granted to Arendt that thinking, conceived as the drive to secure one's utmost benefit, and evil, conceived as the non-beneficial, exclude one another. But she would like to call Eichmann's acts "evil" and argue that thinking would have precluded such acts. However, in Eichmann in Jerusalem she suggests that Eichmann viewed such evil acts as means to his own self-advancement. Furthermore, her suggestion is that had he refused to participate in such acts he would have felt he was violating his own conscience. 14 What still must be shown is that - in Socratic-Platonic terms - acts conventionally thought to be evil are really evil.

The third and most fundamental argument - I shall call this the "argument from conscience" - is designed to repair the defects in the first two by arguing that psychic disharmony follows upon evildoing. Why does Arendt maintain that, for those who think, evil must necessarily occasion conscience and psychic punishment? She contends that if thinking calls established codes into question and i f"evi l" and "thinking" are clearly disjunctive, then think- ing will apprehend evil as a threat to the "two in one" relation. The question Arendt ignores is: by what criterion will "evil" be recognized? The Socratic- Platonic criterion is that something is harmful or evil when reason, ruling, judges that it is not productive of the individual's total fulfillment, is The Gorgias makes clear that the good man is one who does his work well, i.e., in such a way that he orders his own soul, and order in the soul is health or, psychologically speaking, happiness ( r ~6 What must be shown in the Gorgias, the Republic, and in Arendt's paper as well is that one's own utmost happiness indeed necessitates abstention from evil, where "evil" means not harm to oneself but harm to others. For it is conceivable, even, in certain circumstances plausible, that one could achieve one's own utmost psychic harmony by harming others. In Kantian terms, what Arendt must show is that the prudential depends on the moral. But she does not ade- quately show this. It is puzzling that although her argument is advanced with Kantian ethical theory constantly in mind she, nevertheless, fails to reckon with Kant's own severe and explicit critique of the structure of her argument which makes moral conduct conditional upon one's own desire to be on good terms with one's ego.

Why precisely does she maintain that if one thinks then he will necessarily upset his "relationship with himself" if he does evil? She holds this because she regards the soul's dialogue with itself as an interiorization of the in- dividual's dialogue with others. Thus, when she speaks of taking "this otherness (alteritas) . . . into account" (441) she seems to be suggesting, al- though this is not stated explicitly here, that we take others into account. ~7

is See esp. Republic 441e, 442c. 16 See Gorgias 504-507. 17 This is stated more explicitly in Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2rid edition

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1973), p. 476: "All thinking, strictly speaking, is done in solitude and is a dialogue between me and myself; but this dialogue of the two-

Discussion 273

What is puzzling about this assumption in Arendt is that at the outset o f the argument the dialogue with oneself is set over against the dialogue with other men or " the mult i tude." For the "second propos i t ion" f rom the Gorgias states that it would be better " tha t multitudes o f men should dis- agree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out o f ha rmony with myself and contradict me."

The issue here is whether, while the self somehow appropriates the view- points of others cognitively, it also takes the others themselves into (moral) a c c o u n t ? s This is clearest in her account o f " a flaw" of Eichmann 's char- acter in Eichmann in Jerusalem, viz., "his almost total inability ever to look at anything f rom the other fellow's point o f view. ' '19 But a paragraph later this (moral) character flaw and his inability to speak in anything but clich6s is linked to his inability to think:

The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and presence of others, and hence against reality as such. 2~

Yet surely one can take otherness or another ' s point o f view into considera- t ion (cognitively) wi thout giving mora l consideration to the other and with- out according the other or his view decisive mora l status in conflict situations. I f so, then, on Arendt ' s account, one can think and, without psychic dis- turbance, still ha rm others.

Such passages as" the above make clear that Arendt is building "mora l reasoning" into " reasoning" such that if someone doesn ' t have the requisite mora l concern for others, i.e., if he doesn ' t make an appropriate (moral) response to others he isn ' t really thinking. Now, Arendt may wish to argue that a necessary condit ion o f thinking (or dialogue) conceived as taking the other 's view into account is moral concern or respect for the other. Al though this does not seem to be her argument, if we nevertheless grant her this reply 2a then, still, someone who is thinking could 1) consider the other 's

in-one does not lose contact with the world of my fellowmen because they are represented in the self with whom I lead the dialogue of thought."

18 The tacit slide in Arendt's argument resembles Dewey's slide from "thinking," viewed as a consideration of other men's viewpoints to "thinking" as consideration for them or considerateness. Pointing out the intimacy of intelligence and action Dewey says, "Mind means carrying out instructions in action - as a child minds his mother - and taking care of something - as a nurse minds the baby. To be thoughtful, considerate, means to heed the ctaims of others." Democracy and Education (New York: The Macmillan Com- pany, 1961), p. 185. As Dewey moves from intelligence to ability in action to moral concern so Arendt moves from thinking to an interiorization of others' views to moral considerateness.

19 Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 47-8. 20 1bid., p. 49, 21 She says as much in her essay "Truth and Politics," in Between Past and Future,

p. 245.

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view 2) have moral consideration for the person enunciating the view and 3) not make such moral concern overriding in conflicts with what he takes to be his own good. Indeed, Kant is his Groundwork also attempted to claim that thinking or reasoning which was immoral (i.e., in violation of the first or second formulations of the Categorical Imperative) was not really reason- ing, but since he himself provided a careful sketch of prudential reasoning the claim was vacuous. Nor does he or could he, given the critical principles he lays down in the Groundwork, argue philosophically for the superiority of moral over prudential reasoning. And while his belief was that moral reasoning was more faithful to our proper (noumenal) self 22 his critical prin- ciples left him no valid way to make this conviction into a philosophical defense of the primacy of moral reasoning.

There is a second but related difficulty with this "argument from con- science." It is that "the otherness" or other view interiorized may be an otherness which supports and reinforces evildoing rather than opposing it. This, in fact, seems to be Eichmann's case. For someone like Eichmann, given his milieu and its "positive reinforcement" of evil, "would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what he had been ordered to do - to ship millions of men, women, and children to their death with great zeal and the most meticulous care. ''23 According to Arendt, Eichmann's conscience "spoke with a 'respectable voice,' with the voice of respectable society around him. ''24 In the light of this, either Arendt must hold that (moral) thinking is occasioned when a certain kind or range of otherness or societal super-ego is interiorized or that we have a conscience which reveals right and wrong independently of thinking conceived as the soundless dialogue with self. On this latter account conscience is intuitive and innate, not necessarily mediated or awakened by the dialogue with self, as Arendt claims. In the former case, we still need to know why acquaintance with certain societal prohibitions will necessarily be decisive and overriding. For, to be sure, societal prohibitions or codes are not, as Arendt and Socrates both main- tain, self-certifying; they must be subjected to critical scrutiny and could be rejected. In the latter case, thinking does not lead to moral considerations but our "moral sense" arises from elsewhere.

Thus, it would seem that Arendt's argument connecting thinking and moral considerations is unsatisfactory. It would seem, moreover, that an Eichmann could think and think and still participate in what Arendt would nominate evildoing.

III

Arendt might rejoin that I have shown only that a different Eichmann (with enlightened self-interest) might see his utmost advantage in the situa-

22 See Groundwork 461. 23 Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 25. 24 Ibid., p. 126.

D&cussion 275

tion best served by obedience to orders necessitating awesome crimes against humanity. This would be to make him over into a sinful or a wicked man, she might claim, but ignore "the non-wicked everybody who has no special motives and for this reason is capable of infinite evil" (445). Yet, she herself portrays Eichmann as an ambitious man constantly desirous of success and recognition. 2s Presumably, it was at least partially his concern for his own advancement and preoccupation with self which was responsible for his lack of moral sympathy and, hence, his view of evil as banal.

Many would argue that if there is such an inhuman and cold-blooded specimen of rationality then, even though we have no Socratic-Platonic ar- gument powerful enough to defeat him, nevertheless the human community must protect itself against him. Yet those who seem incapable of appropriate moral responses to others are often nominated psychopathic or sociopathic and, if they are threatening enough, removed from social circulation. Eich- mann, however, was executed and while Arendt argued for trial by inter- national court for someone who committed crimes against humanity, she affirmed the justice of his execution. Customarily, however, as Arendt herself points out, 26 those lacking motivation and ignorant of the criminal or im- moral nature of their crimes have not been so treated. Segregation from society, forcible institutionalization, psychiatric treatment - these have been thought to be just modes of reckoning with the ignorant and psychopathic. While Arendt maintains that Eichmann is the paradigm of a new criminal she acknowledges that this new criminal "commits his crimes under circum- stances that make it well-nigh impossible to know or feel that he is doing wrong."27 Arendt says that Eichmann "never realized what he was doing." ~ s At the same time she maintains that the concern of law is with what he did 29 since "guilt and innocence before the law are of an objective nature. ''3~ While she allows that we have become accustomed to invoking determinisms of various sorts to excuse individuals from responsibility, she argues that justice and judicial procedure would not be possible if we were determined.31 Her argument here again takes a peculiarly Kantian turn: if determinism were a true theory then it would be invalid to judge and punish but we do think it important to render legal judgment and so we thereby assume that determinism as a theory of action is invalid.

We are not concerned here, however, with the widescale conviction that we are determined but rather with Eichmann, who didn't realize what he was doing, and, consequently, didn't feel guilty. Why precisely does Arendt assert then that justice was done to Eichmann in Jerusalem, that he was qua individual morally and legally responsible?

2 5 ibid., pp. 33, 126, 287. See also her accounts o f his bragging on pp. 29, 46-7. 26 Ibid., p. 276. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 287. 29 Ibid., p. 218.

ao Ibid., p. 278.

al Ibid., p. 290; pp. 295-296.

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At first it appears she is arguing for retributive justice. For in the Epilogue to Eiehmann in Jerusalem she puts in the judges' mouths an hypothetical address to Eichmann which elucidates what she takes to be defensible grounds for execution:

And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other n a t i o n s . . , we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang. 3~

But this statement of lex talionis seems inapplicable if, as Arendt argues, throughout Eiehmann in Jerusalem, Eichmann didn't realize what he was doing and circumstances were such as to reinforce such ignorance. 3a To be sure, if a sleepwalker murdered masses of people on his nightly rounds we would not invoke lex talionis and execute him. Accordingly, motiveless and unimaginative Eichmann nodding into dogmatic slumber after dogmatic slumber seems a related case. Because of this lex talionis seems an unaccept- able justification for his execution.

Unsurprisingly, then, we find a second separable defense of execution in Eiehmann in Jerusalem. Repeating her belief that the trial "had to take place in the interests of justice and nothing else ' '3. she refers in the Postscript to the judges' quote from Grotius:

. . . punishment is necessary " to defend the honor or the authority of him who was hurt by the offense so that the failure to punish may not cause his degradation." 3s

This looks like a fundamentally utilitarian defense. Since the crime was committed not only against the Jews but mankind, the (utilitarian) rationale for punishment is that the community of man which was violated by the crime needs to reaffirm the value of the human lest it be devalued. Reparation against the criminal is justified on this account because "the general public o r d e r . . , has been thrown out of gear and must be restored. ''36 To be sure, the execution of Eichmann may have a beneficial effect on the community as a whole but does it render Eichmann justice? The long-standing objection, for instance, to utilitarian ethics is that it countenances the death or violation of the rights of the innocent for the sake of the greater good of those who survive. 37 While this can be called by some an expedient strategy, can it be

32 Ibid., p. 279. 33 Ibid., p. 276. 34 Ibid., p. 286. 3s Ibid., p. 287. 36 Ibid., p. 261. 37 See John Rawls, A Theory o f Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971),

pp. 26-28; P. T. Geach, "Good and Evil," in Theories o f Ethics, edited by Philippa Foot (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 72-73; Alan Donagan, "Is There A Credible Form of Utilitarianism?" in Contemporary Utilitarianism edited by M. D. Bayles (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1968), pp. 196-97. The view that the deliberate killing of the innocent (or murder) is justified by its advantage to the many is called "Caiaphas ' rule" by Donagan.

D&cussion 277

called just? Now, indeed, the difficulty here is that while, on Arendt's ac- count, Eichmann is not quite innocent (he participated in a policy of mass murder) he is not quite guilty either, for he was ignorant and guiltless. It would seem, moreover, that the community's utilitarian ends, at least in Eichmann's case, would be served by nominating such behavior psycho- pathic or sociopathic and segregating him from society. For if it is thought- less and, hence, ignorant individuals who, according to Arendt, commit monstrous acts it would seem less than just to systematically execute them. The irony of Arendt's utilitarian defense (that the community's continued good demands that crimes against humanity be punished by execution) is that it approximates the mad and utilitarian Nazi policy of exterminating the innocent�9 For Arendt's description of the Nazi "fight to 'liberate' mankind from the 'rule of subhumans,' especially from the domination of the Elders of Zion, ''3s is a description of a clearly utilitarian (though deranged) defense of genocide.

There remains a third explicit attempt at justifying Eichmann's execution. For even though Arendt at several points denies the validity of versions of the "Natural Law" defense, she, in fact, invokes a form of it and, I submit, needs it to support her affirmation of the death sentence for Eichmann. How- ever, appeal to a kind of natural law within us or to an intuitive conscience by which we distinguish right from wrong undermines her connection be- tween thinking and the avoidance of evil.

Although Arendt rejects some forms of "natural law," e.g., a natural moral order violated by evil,39 as justifications for Eichmann's death penalty, nevertheless, her affirmation of that penalty is founded on the conviction that

� 9 human beings be capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own judgment, which, moreover, happens to be completely at odds with what they must regard as the unanimous opinion of all those around them. 4o

However, she appears to commend the few whom, she says, "were still able to tell right from wrong" and who judged "freely" without appealing to precedents or rules since no rules existed under which to subsume these cases. 41 But if there were only a few able to tell right from wrong then it is incorrect to assert that human beings all be held accountable for such dis- cernment. Moreover, it poses for Arendt's account of Eichmann's guilt viz-a- viz her account of the interdependence of thinking and conscience a dilemma. Either a) all men possess the ability to judge rightly (intuitive and autonom- ous conscience) or b) only the few who have been liberated by thought can judge rightly where no rule or precedents exist. If a), however, then Eich- mann's execution would be vindicated since we have a right to demand of

38 Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 277. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., p. 294-95. 41 Ibid., p. 295.

278 The Journal of Value Inquiry

him an elementary sense of justice transcending orders and the socio-political milieu. However, since he suffered from the "inability to think" it would appear that Arendt's argument connecting thought and a moral sense is fatally undermined. But if b) is correct then the relation between thinking and a moral sense is affirmed but non-thinker Eichmann cannot be con- sidered morally or legally responsible since he was unable to think and, hence, his moral judgment was blinded.

My contention has been that Arendt's argument connecting thought and moral sense is unsatisfactory. Even more unsatisfactory, I think, is an asser- tion to the effect that all men, whatever the circumstances, possess an ability to tell right from wrong. Even if our jurisprudence made such an assumption (it doesn't), it would surely be a working assumption or rule which judgment in many particular cases ought to overturn. If it be claimed that such a judgment could in principle mean that even someone like Hitler, other prominent Nazis and their many bureaucratic subordinates might make successful "insanity defenses," then the reply ought to be - the interests of justice have been best served. It is significant in this regard that Plato followed through on the Socratic proposition, "no one errs willingly" by suggesting a program of education or re-education for those with values, ideals, and sensibilities destructive of human fulfillment and community. Something like this seems to honor better the claim that thinking and moral- ity are connected and to honor better the interests of justice, in the case of those whose pathology is like that of Eichmann as Arendt describes him.

IV

Does Plato's argument connecting thinking, morality, and happiness stand or fall with Arendt's? I think not. From Plato's perspective the shortcoming in the Gorgias' argument as well as in Arendt's is that both are a-political. It is noteworthy that the Gorgias is followed by the Republic. For, in that latter work Plato attempts to provide the political conditions under which in- dividuals can gain their own fulfillment compatible with the fulfillment of others. Thus, the Republic attempts to provide an atmosphere in which the moral and prudential are reconciled. Without this rapprochement, politically and psychically speaking, one is doomed to constant robbery of Peter to pay Paul or secure one's own benefit. Thus, it seems to me that to the extent that Plato's and Arendt's arguments are meant to apply to all existing poleis or societies they are mistaken. For, in unjust societies the commission of in- justice is often the only means to one's fulfillment; the political conditions for "psychological harmony" or happiness are lacking. Without these con- ditions one lives at best, as Marx pointed out in a somewhat different con- nection, a "double existence. ''4z

Williams College

42 Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," in Karl Marx, Early Writings, translated and edited by T. B. Bottomore (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), p. 13.