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Social Construction

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Yet should human nature be in the question regarding system constructed. For many man is too fickle and prone to violence and that states should be above nature or based on principles rather than universal values. Social Darwinism frequently over history has been used justify many social injustices or the most awful of tragedies. The nature of man is called into question frequently by Hannah Arendt who states that Himmler constructed terror “on the assumption that most people are … first and foremost jobholders, and good family men. … [who] for the sake of his pension, his life insurance, the security of his wife and children, … was ready to sacrifice his beliefs, his honour, and his human dignity.” (Arendt, 1963). This brings into question …show more content…

The fact that Eichmann states “Where would we end up if everyone would have his own thoughts?” (ardent 1963) is telling in the way in which states are constructed. For Ardent most of the population is not the ‘extraordinary individual” that Schmitt describes leading a population to glory. The question is therefore how a formerly law-abiding member of the middle class deemed psychologically “normal” not driven by any personal vengeance or ideology could be persuaded to run concentration camps and help the mass administrative murder purely by ‘middle class ambition’ this for Arendt is because man doesn’t have the ability to think beyond cliché. Undermining the entire concept of individualism and self determination. Ardent takes issue with Aristotle’s conception of society by stating who was ‘the first to claim that interest … that which is useful for a person or for a group or for a people, does and should rule supreme in political matters. Claiming that this was natural for man. What also is not natural for man is some of the results that inappropriate use of social Darwinism produces furthers the case why human nature should not be used to deduce political

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Hannah Arendt’s work Eichmann in Jerusalem details the infamous trial of the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann. Her work explores a number of different issues that pervaded Western Europe in the 20th century, but the notion of complicity is particularly elucidated. The complicity of Adolf Eichmann, or any German civil worker during the Nazi regime, is certainly a nebulous question. After a lengthy and frustrating trial, Eichmann is convicted of all fifteen counts of the indictment and sentenced to the gallows. The court’s verdict, which was based on facts and thorough examination, indicates that Eichmann was an active agent in the slaughtering of millions of Jews in Europe.

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Who was Johanna “Hannah” Arendt? She was a Jew that escaped Europe during the Holocaust and became a German-born political theorist. Most of what she dealt with involved power and politics. After reading, “The Banality of Evil”, “Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)”, and watching the documentary, “Civilian at war” we gain a better understanding on Hannah Arendt's theories. Through viewing these pieces of information we can learn what Banality means, why Arendt chooses banality to describe mens actions like Eichmann, and how/why her understanding of this complicate our understanding of the Holocaust and the atrocities of WWII after watching “Civilian at war”.

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Let this essay be a reminder to the world that totalitarian ideologies will bring forth catastrophe just as National Socialism did in Nazi Germany. The memoirs of Rudolf Hoss, Death Dealer, is one of the most detailed accounts of a man who was the Commandant of Auschwitz, and is known as one of the greatest mass murderers in history. In the forward Primo Levi wrote to Death Dealer, he stated that even though this autobiography is filled with evil and has no literary quality, it’s one of the most instructive books ever published because it describes a human life exemplary in its way (Hoss, 3). In this essay, I will argue that Primo Levi thought Death Dealer is one of the most instructive books because it seeks to explain how ordinary men

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In the book, Arendt describes how the Nazi establishment manipulated individuals like Eichmann, using propaganda tactics and the suppression of free thought to force them to follow the regime's orders. Arendt argues that Eichmann was trapped in a bureaucratic system in which he followed orders without question, convinced that he was doing the right thing. Furthermore, Arendt also emphasizes the role of conformism in Eichmann's involvement in the Holocaust. Instead of making decisions and thinking critically, Eichmann simply followed orders to fit into the system.

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A German Jew, Arendt understood anti-Semitism, experienced the denationalization of Jews in Germany, and witnessed how the world and even the Jewish Community largely ignored the plight of European Jews.” (59) Obviously many of her real life experiences led her to believe that human rights were non-existent in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. Her experiences with anti-Semitism and denationalization of Jews in Germany must have been important experiences that helped to shape her opinion. Anti-Semitism was one of the main foundations of Nazi Germany and the abomination of human rights for Jews. The Germans were generally being taught that they were a superior race while the Jews were an inferior race (or untermensch).

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The attempt for sociologist to advocate for the removal of racial categories in society would be grueling, there would be many subjects to consider. To remove racial lines is to hold every person to an equal standard. Destroying social construction which was built hundreds of years ago would in fact erase what the country was constructed on. There would be different views on taking away racial lines, being both positive and negative. How would these social changes come about in society?

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What Arendt did do was open a massive divide between two versions of a painful past: a monstrosity or a normality. Arendt’s critics wanted Eichmann to be the clearest verdict of evil that history has put on record. Arendt disputed not that he was evil, but rather the nature and consequence of such evil. Arendt casts Eichmann into a theory of evil and a narrative of history which, to many of her counterparts, is not only outrageous but perhaps terrifying.

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. Adolf Eichmann had no shame and would not admit to his wrongs. Arendt had describe that her resentment for Eichmann was not because she had choose to but because she felt she would have lost a piece of humanity

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In essence, in her work Arendt, specifically referring to the case of one of the main Holocaust organizers Otto Adolf Eichmann, writes that people who are directly involved in carrying out terrible crimes are not necessarily fanatics, but could be mere average people who bureaucratize even the most unspeakable atrocities under the premise that it is their duties to obey the orders of the state or any other likewise authority. Those people may actually not feel any specific negative emotions towards people who affected by their actions at all. The main drivers of their motivation to work is belief in their duties, job etc. The implications of the work however cruel it may be are thus disregarded. Arendt uses the term “banality of evil” to describe her this

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Paper Four “To be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all” – (pp 475) Arendt views large, superfluous masses of people as a necessary precursor for the transition from a totalitarian movement to a totalitarian rule. These masses, formed from the atomization of the class system in a society, serve several purposes which allow for successful totalitarian rule: they help to act as the popular lever by which a totalitarian movement may secure power, they carry out the rote functions of the totalitarian rule, and most critically, they are killed or imprisoned in droves as a means of demonstrating and employing the power of the totalitarian system. This final purpose, the continual destruction of random portions of the atomized masses,

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In the light of the aforementioned characteristics of totalitarianism defined, Hannah Arendt claims that totalitarianism is incomprehensible since it is not possible to judge or predict its actions through any traditional, legal, moral or common sense (Arendt, 1953 : 303). Therefore, Arendt evaluates the regimes under Hitler and Stalin rule “not only wicked but also senseless, of a kind that could not be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives” (Canovan, 1999 : 25). Arendt aims to offer an intellectual constraints for the analysis of Hitler’s

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Hannah Arendt's challenge to Adolf Eichmann | Judith Butler. Retrieved February 04, 2018, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/hannah-arendt-adolf-eichmann-banality-of-evil Hartouni, V. (2012). Visualizing atrocity Arendt, evil, and the optics of thoughtlessness. New York: New York University

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Hannah Arendt born in Germany, worked as a U.S. political writer and philosopher. Her works were mostly related to political philosophy. In one of her work, “The Human Condition” Arendt suggests a three-way partition between the human activities as labor, work, and action. The activities have been arranged in hierarchal importance. Labor corresponds to that activity which are undertaken for fulfillment of biological necessities of human existence.

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Upon evaluating Aristotle’s ideals of citizenship, one finds a world wherein citizenship and freedom are one in the same – active participation in debate and deliberation in the political community through the exclusively human use of reason and speech capacities. Given this ideal of citizenship, it becomes the case that the ideas for human flourishing and thus the good life follow suit. For Aristotle, human flourishing comes from the cultivation of virtue that is a result of continued participation in the political community, or, continued intentional citizenship. For the good life, it is important to note that it is the continued practice of virtuous activity, rather than the obtaining, that is required. For, “…possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call happy…”

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