Monica,

I, too, have always had serious misgivings about Arendt's banality thesis (especially since it is all too often thrown around by historians). I think that maybe, in a way, these pictures are most important because they re-define the banality thesis away from the dangers that you point towards above. Perhaps these pictures show us that the banality idea can be inverted -- that instead of the evil reflecting our own capabilities, that it just shows us how easily true evil can be masked. Further, of how truly evil those deeds are when one would be able to do such without conflicted ethics.  And maybe, in some small way, that is an effective means to understand the existance of true, genocidal evil.

"The "it could have been anybody" argument is dangerous because it lessens the degree to which we are all responsible for our actions."

I think you've got it backwards, Monica. Acknowledging that "it could have been anybody" underscores the notion that we're all responsible for our actions, in the sense that it does away with the alluring fiction that some of us have something special which inoculates us against performing evil.

Remember, the argument is not that the everyday sadist is to be held less culpable because "it could have been anybody". In fact (and I hate to sound like an unreconstructed Freudian here), I suspect the urge to reject Arendt's notion reflects the psychological discomfort which accepting it leads to.

Anonymous --

 No, I don't think I have it backwards, though I think you may be right that my "urge to reject Arendt's notion reflects psychological discomfort which accepting it leads to"--except for the fact that I don't reject it at all. I said that I am not a big fan of it (not that I reject it), and that I find it to be potentially dangerous, and all too easy to misconstrue as a justification for minimizing the enormity of an individual's actions/behaviors.

I'm not the first one to have a problem with this argument -- there's nothing really unique about my position, to be completely honest; I wasn't trying to suggest that at all. You say that the "argument is not that the everyday sadist is to be held less culpable because 'it could have been anybody'" -- well, of course not! The problem is that the "banality of evil" argument can be and has been used exactly in that way. There's a difference between rejecting an argument and simply expressing reservations or remarking on its potential dangers when followed to its logical ends.

However, while I agree that we are all capable of evil, perhaps far more than we can comfortably admit or even conceive, I don't agree that any one of us could become a Hitler. The problem with Arendt's argument is its implication: we're all capable of doing what Nazis did, we're all capable of Hitlerian evil.

And, I don't know that I agree with you, that the it-could-have-been-anybody argument "underscores the notion that we're all responsible for our actions"--I think it raises the notion of responsibility, and the extent to which we are each uniquely responsible for our choices, as a question to be explored. I don't think anything is underscored.

I do, though, agree with you that it "does away with the alluring fiction that some of us have something special which innoculates us against performing evil" -- and for that it's a useful and productive argument.

Anyway, I think it's a complicated argument, one that is not without both its benefits and consequences. Hope this makes sense . . . 

Monica -thanks for the post. I generally agree with you. I also think that the 'learn history to avoid repeating it' is a bit of a canard (which was why the commentary by the curator was slightly annoying for me). One detail, though, on the use of the terms "soldiers", "officers" and particularly "doctor" as applied by the NYT piece -I don't think those qualifiers apply to the SS (again, esp. not the 'doctor' one, as has been amply demonstrated).
*flurry of insults from anonymous commenter to ensue, with possible reference to Abu Ghraib*

This is a really good point, Francois, and I'm almost ashamed that I missed it (and that I used the term "soldiers" in my title for this piece). Thanks for pointing that out.

I think the point about the banality of evil is not to lessen the blame of each individual, but to remember that it doesn't take a special kind of person do commit these crimes.

Exactly Tristam

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