Zimbardo's Argument Analysis

Was Eichmann guilty? Zimbardo argument could place Eichmann as a victim rather than a criminal. A person, victim of the situational forces and the social dynamics in which he was immersed. The same forces that took his agency away, operated in most of the society members who did or did not. But, not everybody was put on trial, only those who were assumed to be the more responsible were judged. From the beginning, the agency that Zimbardo talks about was taken for granted. All accuses expressed they were just following orders, doing their job, acting on behalf of a greater good.

Complementing Zimbardo’s argument we must understand and trace back the ideology, and mechanisms are put in place in the macrostructures which shape institutions and set up the situations that could take our agency away. For example, Aly (2014) in his book, traced the prehistory of the Holocaust from the 1800s to 1933 when the Nazis assumed the power. He presented that the German anti-Semitism was driven in large part by material concerns, not racist ideology or religious animosity. He exposed that the roots of the Holocaust were deeply intertwined with the German efforts to create greater social equality. Redistributing wealth from the well-off to the less fortunate has been in many respects an

In all examples given in Zimbardo’s piece, the situations are set up with the purpose to make participants commit atrocities against each other. But, in our daily lives, are all situations set up purposely to behave good or bad? Or like people, a situation could turn evil. Perhaps, the fair thing to do might not always be the right thing to do too. Finally, Shindler case raises the most interesting questions, the same forces that took people agency away, gave Shindler’s agency and capacity to change for good. why some few overcome the same forces to behave differently from the norm? how evil people turn