Wolin on Arendt's Banality of Evil

Richard Wolin in his Heidegger’s Children, Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse, 2001, in addition to being a critic of Heidegger is a critic of Arendt. He doesn’t believe that Arendt had the right focus in her Banality of Evil. On page 31 he writes, “The problem was not just Hitler of “Hitlerism,” but the fact that a vast majority of Germans had consciously and willingly met their infamous Fuhrer halfway. Hitler’s seizure of power was not some kind of unforeseeable ‘industrial accident’ or Betriebsunfall, as postwar Germans were fond of claiming, that befell the nation from outside and that left German traditions unscathed. Instead, the genocidal imperialism that the Nazis unleashed upon Europe represented the consummation of certain long-term trends of German history itself.”

Beginning on page 58 he quotes Arendt to say “The mob man, the end-result of the ‘bourgeois,’ is an international phenomenon; and we would do well not to submit him to too many temptations in the blind faith that only the German mob-man is capable of such frightful deeds.”

Wolin draws conclusions for her: “Therefore, to punish the Germans collectively as a people, as some were inclined to do, would be misguided and senseless. Rather than being a specifically German crime, Nazi misdeeds were symptomatic of the ills of political modernity in general. They were of universal significance and, as such, could have happened anywhere. In fact, one of their distinguishing features was that they had been perpetrated neither by fanatics nor by sadists, but by normal ‘bourgeois.’. . The malefactors, she argued, were typical representatives of mass society. They were neither Bohemians, nor adventurers, nor heroes. Instead, they were family men in search of job security and career advancement.”

Wolin then goes on to offer his objections to Arendt’s thesis: “. . . the functionalist thesis, as articulated by Arendt and others, tells only part of the story. What it fails to explain is the specificity of this particular genocide. Why was it that the Nazis explicitly targeted European Jews for extermination?’ . . . It was not only the result of a brutal and impersonal ‘machinery of destruction’; it was also the product of the proverbial ‘peculiarities of German history.’

“The main weakness of the functionalist approach is that it tends to underplay one of the most salient features of the Nazi rule: ideology – specifically, the ideology of anti-Semitism. . . By emphasizing the ‘universal’ constituents of the Final Solution at the expense of their specifically German qualities, she also managed to avoid implicating her country of origin . . . Margaret Canovan puts her finger on the problem when she observes: ‘By understanding Nazism in terms not of its specifically German context but of modern developments likened to Stalinism as well, Arendt was putting herself in the ranks of many intellectuals of German culture who sought to connect Nazism with Western modernity, thereby deflecting blame from specifically German traditions.’”

COMMENT:

In an earlier note I argued that it was more alarming to realize that what happened in Germany could happen in any nation than to see Germany, or parts of Germany, as being demonic. For if they are demonic then they are “outside” of “us.” We could never, or hardly ever (I take Wolin to be asserting), do what the German’s did. I also take Wolin to be placing the Nazi evil above the Stalinist evil because it was “racist.”

If Wolin were capable of removing his “politically-correct” blinders he might be able to see the similarities between Nazism and Stalinism. The danger is not in the demonic nature of the Germans but in the political form of government Arendt calls Totalitarianism.

Heidegger thought that a great “spiritual” leader could lead the Germans the correct technology-controlling path. Meanwhile, over in Moscow, the Russians thought that a great leader could lead them on the right path toward Communism. In both cases excesses, mass-murders, were engaged in for the “good of the cause.”

Wolin is wrong to want to demonize the Germans. He should instead criticize the idea that any leader is smart enough and knowledgeable enough to lead any nation in a “good” direction as a dictator. If he is an average dictator he will concentrate on preserving his power and the heck with the people. But if he is an idealistic dictator, subscribing to an ideology like National Socialism or Communism, then he may decide to “purify” the cause by putting “enemies” to death.

To imply that putting “this enemy” to death is more serious than putting “that enemy” to death misses one of Arendt’s point. And to imply that “racism” is intrinsically worthier of condemnation than “totalitarianism” misses another.