There is a saying that what happens in the United States is ten years away from happening in Canada, and although not inscribed in the book of nature it appears safe to interpret from the far-right overtures that have already made their way up from the South that what is happening there now will soon happen here.
Where are you getting the comparison of Eichmann to Trump? The essay is about how concern for the law can be used to conceal moral considerations, which Arendt addresses repeatedly in Eichmann in Jerusalem and elsewhere. If you have an issue with the essay, I'm happy to respond, but I ask that you base your interpretation on what I write.
You introduce President Trump before Eichmann, then put the latter in the title. But your post is about the former, and you’re interest is not in Arendt. That I would obv welcome. Instead, you use her brilliant work to Trump-bash. Very weak sauce.
My interest is in attempting to elucidate a phenomenon: how people will focus on moral issues as if they were legal ones. I start with Trump because my sense was that the essay should begin with what is familiar or immediate before working outwards to what is less so. This is a convention of essay writing, and the purpose here is to locate the phenomenon in the kind of experience that can be found between myself and someone reading the essay.
Have you read Arendt? She does something similar, as does another author you mentioned earlier, Greenblatt, in his own way. Eichmann in Jerusalem, for example, begins by situating the trial in the courtroom where she is observing it, and Greenblatt will draw extraordinary connections between elements of culture usually considered widely removed, in part as proof that the cultural phenomenon under discussion isn't located in one institution, set of practices, etc. Eichmann in Jerusalem isn't about the design of the courtroom, however, and, say, "Invisible Bullets", to use probably Greenblatt's most influential essay, isn't about the accusation of atheism against Marlowe, Harriot, or Ralegh.
I'm not really sure how to respond to your two other comments because they both begin with apparently contradictory claims, the first that I "seamlessly shift" between uses of law, in one paragraph with Trump and the other with Eichmann, and the other that several of the paragraphs are "blatant when implicit comparison". You then go off on either case to do your own thing, which seems to involve holding me to a moral standard that I don't recognize.
Anyways, if you're willing to have a good faith discussion about the essay, then I'm willing to continue commenting, but not like this.
Ripping Eichmann in Jerusalem out of its historical context, Arendt traveling there to witness the trial, is to choose to not understand it: but this seems to be your approach: get rid of the historical context—a first edition is cool, but has nothing to teach us. Tradition is bad, revolution is good. Arendt was against the revolutions, including the feminist revolution, not to mention the National Socialist and Bolshevik revolutions. She worked for Zionist organizations but was not for a State of Israel. A complex figure.
Arendt is complex, so if you’re going to accuse me of misrepresenting her then you should provide textual evidence as part of an argument in support of these accusations. I don’t think it’s enough to complain that I’m ripping her out of history. If I’m going to take you seriously, then you have to show me why this is true, how it undermines her thinking, and why this is relevant to my essay. I’m not even sure that you hold a coherent notion of history, or one that would allow you to distinguish between me and Arendt’s own “ripping” from ancient thinkers.
Anyways, one of the problems of Eichmann in Jerusalem is how to determine Eichmann’s guilt. Under Nazi-era laws, Eichmann was innocent, so whatever injustice occurred cannot have lent itself to the straightforward claim that he broke the law. Arendt’s discovery of a conscience in Eichmann that justified the charges against him is, I think, important to understanding how people across history couch morality in legal terms.
I am reticent to respond because of the amount of straw man arguments you make against me here. Nowhere do I accuse you. I criticize. The only ancient thinker I mention is Augustine, about whom Arendt writes her Dissertation. I was clearly referring to Eichmann in Jerusalem, meaning she does not set out to write a book, but goes to Jerusalem to observe the trial. The book emerges out of this experience, which is just obvious. You argued that historical context is not important, that first editions don’t mean much to us. If this means I don’t have a “coherent notion of history” to you, then fine. I am not even sure what you mean with this comment. Read some of my long form posts. I do Literature not History but use the latter as a helping discipline. As to my take on History, read Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations and Walter Benjamin’s Life of Students and On the Concept of History (one of his first, and his last writing).
Btw Nazi era laws were not lawful, the party took over by intrigue, force and intimidation and was not legitimate, they did not win a mandate. They bragged openly about the coup they pulled off and hated democracy. They were criminals not law makers. Arendt calls them a Verbrecherstaat
‘Criminal State’. In Eichmann’s mind their laws were laws, but not in the reality of truth and justice.
Arendts book was greatly misunderstood when published, and caused outrage among ppl who did not understand it. Ppl still do not understand it. She did not mean Eichmann was not evil, but that evil is not what we think it is. Its actually nothing, a lack of something.
Reread your paragraphs 2,3 and 4, Nick. Its a blatant when implicit comparison, which has been made by idiots in media and politics starting with Robert Kagan’s op ed published the day after POTUS’s unexpected win Nov 2016. He was a think tank war monger of the Project for a New American Century which planned the Iraq and Syrian wars btw, and President Trump has caused peace to break out. But please continue with your irrational comparisons, which you don’t even admit you make.
You seamlessly shift in paragraph 2 “US President and the law” to Eichmann’s approach to “law” in paragraph 3, then back to President Trump’s in the next. Its the entire point of your post. Imo its political activism, not Literature or Philosophy, confirming my take on what the vast majority of what anglophone liberal arts education has become. In Germany, political ideology and activism are strictly forbidden for professors to engage in by (just) law. GG Articles 5.33, §61-62 BBesG. I never saw this there once, in High school, undergrad or graduate level, just professors doing their subject matter. The American propensity for Unis to engage in ideology shocks my conscience tbh. These laws are because of the ideological capture of the German Universities starting 1931 (2 years before the lawless takeover by the dictatorship, done first by radicalized students). Yes, I am making the apt comparison to the antisemitic, anti capitalist and anti American radical students on US campuses today.
Yes, of course, I have even read her Dissertation on St Augustine. Her essay on Lessing never mind all her significant works—Origins of Totalitarianism many times.
Where are you getting the comparison of Eichmann to Trump? The essay is about how concern for the law can be used to conceal moral considerations, which Arendt addresses repeatedly in Eichmann in Jerusalem and elsewhere. If you have an issue with the essay, I'm happy to respond, but I ask that you base your interpretation on what I write.
You introduce President Trump before Eichmann, then put the latter in the title. But your post is about the former, and you’re interest is not in Arendt. That I would obv welcome. Instead, you use her brilliant work to Trump-bash. Very weak sauce.
My interest is in attempting to elucidate a phenomenon: how people will focus on moral issues as if they were legal ones. I start with Trump because my sense was that the essay should begin with what is familiar or immediate before working outwards to what is less so. This is a convention of essay writing, and the purpose here is to locate the phenomenon in the kind of experience that can be found between myself and someone reading the essay.
Have you read Arendt? She does something similar, as does another author you mentioned earlier, Greenblatt, in his own way. Eichmann in Jerusalem, for example, begins by situating the trial in the courtroom where she is observing it, and Greenblatt will draw extraordinary connections between elements of culture usually considered widely removed, in part as proof that the cultural phenomenon under discussion isn't located in one institution, set of practices, etc. Eichmann in Jerusalem isn't about the design of the courtroom, however, and, say, "Invisible Bullets", to use probably Greenblatt's most influential essay, isn't about the accusation of atheism against Marlowe, Harriot, or Ralegh.
I'm not really sure how to respond to your two other comments because they both begin with apparently contradictory claims, the first that I "seamlessly shift" between uses of law, in one paragraph with Trump and the other with Eichmann, and the other that several of the paragraphs are "blatant when implicit comparison". You then go off on either case to do your own thing, which seems to involve holding me to a moral standard that I don't recognize.
Anyways, if you're willing to have a good faith discussion about the essay, then I'm willing to continue commenting, but not like this.
Ripping Eichmann in Jerusalem out of its historical context, Arendt traveling there to witness the trial, is to choose to not understand it: but this seems to be your approach: get rid of the historical context—a first edition is cool, but has nothing to teach us. Tradition is bad, revolution is good. Arendt was against the revolutions, including the feminist revolution, not to mention the National Socialist and Bolshevik revolutions. She worked for Zionist organizations but was not for a State of Israel. A complex figure.
Arendt is complex, so if you’re going to accuse me of misrepresenting her then you should provide textual evidence as part of an argument in support of these accusations. I don’t think it’s enough to complain that I’m ripping her out of history. If I’m going to take you seriously, then you have to show me why this is true, how it undermines her thinking, and why this is relevant to my essay. I’m not even sure that you hold a coherent notion of history, or one that would allow you to distinguish between me and Arendt’s own “ripping” from ancient thinkers.
Anyways, one of the problems of Eichmann in Jerusalem is how to determine Eichmann’s guilt. Under Nazi-era laws, Eichmann was innocent, so whatever injustice occurred cannot have lent itself to the straightforward claim that he broke the law. Arendt’s discovery of a conscience in Eichmann that justified the charges against him is, I think, important to understanding how people across history couch morality in legal terms.
I am reticent to respond because of the amount of straw man arguments you make against me here. Nowhere do I accuse you. I criticize. The only ancient thinker I mention is Augustine, about whom Arendt writes her Dissertation. I was clearly referring to Eichmann in Jerusalem, meaning she does not set out to write a book, but goes to Jerusalem to observe the trial. The book emerges out of this experience, which is just obvious. You argued that historical context is not important, that first editions don’t mean much to us. If this means I don’t have a “coherent notion of history” to you, then fine. I am not even sure what you mean with this comment. Read some of my long form posts. I do Literature not History but use the latter as a helping discipline. As to my take on History, read Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations and Walter Benjamin’s Life of Students and On the Concept of History (one of his first, and his last writing).
Btw Nazi era laws were not lawful, the party took over by intrigue, force and intimidation and was not legitimate, they did not win a mandate. They bragged openly about the coup they pulled off and hated democracy. They were criminals not law makers. Arendt calls them a Verbrecherstaat
‘Criminal State’. In Eichmann’s mind their laws were laws, but not in the reality of truth and justice.
Arendts book was greatly misunderstood when published, and caused outrage among ppl who did not understand it. Ppl still do not understand it. She did not mean Eichmann was not evil, but that evil is not what we think it is. Its actually nothing, a lack of something.
Reread your paragraphs 2,3 and 4, Nick. Its a blatant when implicit comparison, which has been made by idiots in media and politics starting with Robert Kagan’s op ed published the day after POTUS’s unexpected win Nov 2016. He was a think tank war monger of the Project for a New American Century which planned the Iraq and Syrian wars btw, and President Trump has caused peace to break out. But please continue with your irrational comparisons, which you don’t even admit you make.
You seamlessly shift in paragraph 2 “US President and the law” to Eichmann’s approach to “law” in paragraph 3, then back to President Trump’s in the next. Its the entire point of your post. Imo its political activism, not Literature or Philosophy, confirming my take on what the vast majority of what anglophone liberal arts education has become. In Germany, political ideology and activism are strictly forbidden for professors to engage in by (just) law. GG Articles 5.33, §61-62 BBesG. I never saw this there once, in High school, undergrad or graduate level, just professors doing their subject matter. The American propensity for Unis to engage in ideology shocks my conscience tbh. These laws are because of the ideological capture of the German Universities starting 1931 (2 years before the lawless takeover by the dictatorship, done first by radicalized students). Yes, I am making the apt comparison to the antisemitic, anti capitalist and anti American radical students on US campuses today.
Yes, of course, I have even read her Dissertation on St Augustine. Her essay on Lessing never mind all her significant works—Origins of Totalitarianism many times.
Didn’t I say I was a big fan?