Responsibility and Judgment

by Hannah Arendt

Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, where she addresses fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. At the heart of the book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy,” in which Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing and examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We also see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed.

Responsibility and Judgment is an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, History, Theory, Essays, Classics

295 pages, Paperback

First published November 18, 2003

About the author

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).

Reviews

[David Gross · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most and greatest evil, Arendt believes, is not done by wicked or evil people, but “by people who never made up their mind to be either bad or good” — “by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in the middle of reading Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and thought I might like to see what Arendt wrote after her critique of Eichmann’s trial. About the same time I found myself wrestling with the ideas presented in Naomi Klein’s 2014 book subtitled Capitalism vs. The Climate, and entitled This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. I thought, as I read about Eichmann in Jerusalem, that some of the same “lack of the ability to think” applies to the world’s populace when it comes to lifestyle and our impact on climate.

There was a great uproar when The New Yorker magazine published Arendt’s piece on Eichmann’s trial in 1963, mostly because Arendt questioned Jewish leaders for their complicity in the destruction of their own people by a lack of resistance to the German aggression against Jews. As it happens, Arendt had further thoughts after the Eichmann trial about the phrase she coined then: “the banality of evil.”

In the 2003 edition of Responsibility and Judgment is an introduction by Jerome Kohn which begins by recalling that in 1966, a few short years after her Eichmann article, Arendt addressed a large audience that had gathered to attend a colloquium in New York. Attendees were particularly concerned at this time with the U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, and wished to hear what Arendt advised: that is, what they could do individually and collectively to change U.S. policy.

But Arendt

"did not believe that analogies derived retrospectively from what had or had not worked in the past would avert the pitfalls of the present situation. As she saw it, the spontaneity of political action is yoked to the contingency of its specific conditions, which renders such analogies unavailing…Arendt did not mean that the past as such was irrelevant…but that the past is not past…the past—past action--can be experienced in the present…It is we as a people who are responsible for them now." (Kohn, Introduction, pp. vii-ix)

It occurs to me that she might give the same response to climate activists who sought to apportion blame for the condition of the world and the direction of policy.

In one of the shorter essays in this volume, called “Collective Responsibility,” Arendt begins

"There is such a thing as responsibility for things one has not done; one can be held liable for them…Two conditions have to be present for collective responsibility: I must be held responsible for something I have not done, and the reason for my responsibility must be my membership in a group (a collective) which no voluntary act of mine can dissolve, that is, a membership which is utterly unlike a business partnership which I can dissolve at will…This kind of responsibility is always political…[There is] a dividing line between political (collective) responsibility, on one side, and moral and/or legal (personal) guilt, on the other…In the center of moral considerations of human conduct stands the self; in the center of political considerations of conduct stands the world."

Basically Arendt is making the point that no moral or personal attitude to things we have not done absolve us of responsibility for these things, and that we have a collective responsibility as human beings to deal with them…something we probably already knew in the case of climate change, except that now we all are both [politically] responsible for past errors and [morally] for errors made now. This essay was written in 1968.

Three years later, in 1971, Arendt published “Thinking and Moral Considerations” which helps me when considering the climate crisis as an example of a failure to think, Arendt’s definition of evil. “…[Eichmann] was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.”

It is difficult to summarize Arendt since the points she makes follow one another, but in this essay she concludes

"Thinking in its noncognitive, nonspecialized sense as a natural need of human life, the actualization of the difference given in consciousness, is not a prerogative of the few but an ever-present faculty of everybody; by the same token, inability to think is not the 'prerogative' of those many who lack brain power but the ever-present possibility for everybody—scientists, scholars, and other specialists in mental enterprises not excluded—to shun that intercourse with oneself whose possibility and importance Socrates first discovered (i.e., ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’). We were here not concerned with wickedness, with which religion and literature have tried to come to terms, but with evil; not with sin and the great villains who became the negative heroes in literature and usually acted out of envy and resentment, but with the nonwicked everybody who has no special motives and for this reason is capable of infinite evil…

For the thinking ego and its experience, conscience, which ‘fills a man full of obstacles,’ is a side effect. And it remains a marginal affair for society at large except in emergencies. For thinking as such does society little good, much less than the thirst for knowledge in which it is used as an instrument for other purposes. It does not create values, it will not find out, once and for all what ‘the good’ is, and it does not confirm but rather dissolves accepted rules of conduct. Its political and moral significance comes out only in those rare moments in history when ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” when 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.’

At these moments, thinking ceases to be a marginal affair in political matters. When everybody is swept away unthinkingly by what everybody else does and believes, those who think are drawn out of hiding because their refusal to join is conspicuous and thereby becomes a kind of action.”

Please forgive my extended quotes which, out of context, may not make much sense. However, I am trying to carry you along with my thinking about the looming climate crisis, of which the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico seems the most egregious folly. One simply has to finally take a stand, and this is mine. It seems the scientific “logic” that goes along with approvals of this sort is what got us here in the first place. Perhaps a more wholistic view is in order at this time.

To get back to this collection of Arendt’s essays, she wrote several at the time of massive upheaval in America, and though she did not address the pressing issue of resource depletion at that time, she did address issues of race, and the integration of schools. It is enlightening (exciting, even) and not really all that obscure to follow her arguments that school children were being forced into the front line positions of fighting racial discrimination, and that this was an(other) example of the failure of government to provide reasonable leadership and protection for the people they “served.”

What I come away with is Arendt disclaiming any particular sorcery when it comes to “thinking.” This is the right, indeed the obligation, of any human. We have not been doing ourselves, our community, our world any good by ignoring what was given. Thinking requires that we stop and think. We cannot think and do things at the same time. The point Arendt makes again and again is that we must think in order to avoid doing evil.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last night, after taking time to read the Mueller Report over the weekend, my memory recalled the last essay Hannah Arendt ever wrote. As we consider how this nation responds to the abomination in the White House, how the world no longer looks to the U.S. for support, Arendt's final words resonate more than ever.

Original Review

Home to Roost, the final essay of this collection, reflecting on the decades preceding the U.S. bicentennial and written shortly before her death, is among the best of her works. It provides relevant lessons for today. For example, she regrets that “Madison Avenue tactics under the name of public relations have been permitted to invade our political life.” And as an example, she notes that “the terrible truth” revealed by the Pentagon Papers that rather than “particular tangible interests” the Vietnam War’s “only permanent goal had become image [as a superpower] itself…” From there she considers the Watergate era and the cumulative effects on the collective American psyche of various political disasters. In considering President Ford’s amnesty of Nixon, she compares them to the Adenauer administration’s whitewashing of the crimes of Nazi officials and Khrushchev’s replacement of Stalin. Her sarcastic conclusion: “not amnesty but amnesia will heal all our wounds.” One cannot help but wonder how harshly she might have judged President Obama’s similar approaches in both the Iraq War and the financial crisis of 2008. She concludes memorably: “When the facts come home to roost, let us try at least to make them welcome. Let us try not to escape into some utopias—images, theories, or sheer follies. It was the greatness of this Republic to give due account for the sake of freedom to the best in men and to the worst.”

The eight essays, which are divided under the themes of responsibility and judgment were written late in Arendt’s life. The strength of the essays get progressively better as the book goes along. If I were to reread it, I would start with the last essay and work my way back. I would give 5 stars to the final essay, 4 to the others in the final section, and 2 to the first two-thirds of the book.

The last third of the book, the judgment essays, are much more readable. Arendt considers issues as varied as school integration in Little Rock, Rolf Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) about the silence of Pope Pius XII about the Holocaust, the German Auschwitz trials of the 1960s and the aforementioned one anticipating the U.S. bicentennial.

The responsibility essays, which take up the first two-thirds of the book, are heavy on philosophy and generally focused in Arendt’s much misunderstood theme of “the banality of evil” that came out of her writings on the Eichmann trial. Arendt fiercely objected to being classified as a philosopher; she considered herself a political theorist. This comes through in the muddled theses of these writings as they meander a bit with repetitive themes.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection contains eight essays and speeches by Arendt, mainly from her later period. Most of them are very accessible, although it also contains some hard (philosophical) nuts to crack. The themes are hyper-relevant: ethics, responsibility, judgments. Arendt digs inexorably deep, especially when she broaches the holocaust and the notion of personal or collective responsibility. She has a lot of issues with that last concept and that is striking. I know it's an open door, but: what an impressive personality!

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was ich an Arendt in den letzten Monaten zu schätzen gelernt habe, ist ihre klare, präzise Sprache, die ihre Texte um Längen zugänglicher macht als die vieler anderer PhilosophInnen. Überhaupt muss man so gut wie kein Vorwissen mitbringen, was sie auch für Einsteiger/erst neugierig Gewordene sehr angenehm macht. Die Vorlesungen hier sind stark verdichtet und erweisen sich nicht zuletzt wegen ihrer zeitlichen Positionierung in Arendts Œuvre als immens fruchtbar, indem sich Kernkonzepte, die sie in vorangegangen Werken umrissen hat, hier wiederfinden – man erhält also zugleich einen Gesamtüberblick, kann aber auch gut an Vorwissen anknüpfen, wenn man mehr von Arendt kennt.
Arendt hat sich viel mit den NS-Verbrechen auseinandergesetzt, insbesondere mit der Frage: Wie konnte das geschehen? Es ist eine Frage, die nicht an Relevanz verloren hat – wie so ziemlich alles von Arendt.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read about half of this book and decided not to finish it. I originally was interested in reading more of Hannah Arendt's work after reading her famous book about Eichmann's trial. That one was very well written, had conclusions that followed from logical arguments, and gave insight about events during the holocaust country by country and the thinking of nazis and jewish community members. But that last part was just touched upon, the psychology and motivations of all of these people. This book, Responsibility and Judgment, I thought would take that topic further.

And it kind of does, kind of. She does talk about Eichmann, about the psychology of normal germans and why they would end up supporting the nazis. But the vast majority of the discussion goes into antiquity and the philosophy of Socrates and Plato. I actually like philosophy and the Greeks, but to what conclusion would philosophical theories of responsibility and judgment come to regarding the people involved in the holocaust? I don't see how Greek philosophy could be relevant in this case...maybe something to disprove based on actual horrific events and behavior. But it seemed more like she was trying to prove their relevance.

I guess I was more interested in why people don't have judgment and act irresponsibly, not why philosophers think we should use judgment and be responsible.

Also, unlike Eichmann in Jerusalem, this book didn't build on premises to reach a conclusion, it just jumped from topic to topic, meandering without a clear point. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you're more interested in the relevance of ancient philosophy to current events.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every bit as relevant today as it was when these essays were first published. My favorites have to be "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy", "Thinking and Moral Considerations", and "Home to Roost". The one on Little Rock was pretty profound also. It's immediately clear, also, why Agamben was such a big fan of hers. She makes enormous distinctions between the activity of thinking and simple thinking, as well as differentiating thinking and knowledge. For her the only moral assurance we have is when we think, and we validate for ourselves what is rightly just in this world. As one of the most influential continental post-Holocaust writers of philosophy, Arendt certainly knows the true pain of what happens when the seemingly-moral world breaks down.

"If thinking, the two-in-one of the soundless dialogue, actualizes the difference within our identity as given in consciousness and thereby results in conscience as its byproduct, then judging, the by-product of the liberating effect of thinking, realizes thinking, makes it manifest in the world of appearances, where I am never alone and always much too busy to be able to think. The manifestation of the wind of thought is no knowledge; it is the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And this indeed may prevent catastrophe, at least for myself, in the rare moments when the chips are down."

[Abdulaziz · Rating 4 out of 5]

في فترة كان يعيش فيها المجتمع الألماني واحدة من أفضع الفترات في التاريخ ، حين كنت اقرأ عن النازية والنازيين ، اسألُ نفسي أهم بشرٌ مثلنا؟ من المسؤول عن كل هذا ، أين هي ضمائرهم؟ معقول أن جميعهم وحوش بشرية لا ترحم ولا تشعر؟
الحقيقة أنهم بشرٌ مثلنا في هذا الكتاب قدمت لي ارنت تفاسير منطقية وأجوبة ، نظريات مثل نظرية الدولاب والشر التافه أو تفاهة الشر ، نجح الحزب في اخضاع الشعب وحاول البعض اخفاء حقيقة أن غالبية الشعب الألماني كان متعاطفاً مع هتلر وحزبه ، هل يؤثمون؟ هل هم متواطئون مع القتلة؟ ، لم يُخضع الحزب الشعب وحسب وانما جعل من "القتلة التافهين" عملهم كالمكائن أو الآلات التي لا تشعر بشيء ، تنفذ وتصمت تقوم بمهامها فقط ، ايخمان كان مثالاً للشرير التافه الذي لا يقتل من اجل قضية أو أيدلوجيا معينة ، كان يريد الحفاظ على منصبه ووظيفته لذا ابدا أهمية ذلك على أرواح الملايين من البشر ، رغم أنه ليس مسؤول مباشراً عن ما جرى وهُنا يكمن معنى تفاهة الشر ، من تحليل فلسفي ارنت تجيب على الأسئلة الأخلاقية المتعلقة بهذه الأحداث وأهما هل الصمتُ ذنباً؟ صمتُ بابا الفاتيكان والشعب الألماني والكنيسة.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good introduction to "Life of the Mind". The "Judgments" she makes in the second half seem pretty lousy, but the "Responsibility" section is just a joy to read.

[Myles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty crucial reading amid Trumpageddon.

[Jack Chambers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never read a book that made me need to read more books to know what's going on before. 5/5

[Renata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tapa na cara da sociedade.

[Alberony Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Responsabilidad y Juicio" de Hannah Arendt no solo nos ofrece una perspectiva profunda de su concepción de la moral, sino que también se aventura audazmente en la investigación de temas apremiantes de la contemporaneidad. Con "Algunas cuestiones de filosofía moral" como su eje central, la obra desafía las verdades morales tradicionales, destacando su insuficiencia como normas para juzgar nuestras capacidades humanas. Arendt reevalúa nuestra habilidad para discernir entre el bien y el mal desde una perspectiva innovadora. Este trabajo se sumerge no solo en cuestiones éticas fundamentales sino que también se convierte en una herramienta vital para comprender una de sus piezas más conocidas, "Eichmann en Jerusalén", donde introduce el impactante concepto de la "banalidad del mal".

No obstante, abordar "Responsabilidad y Juicio" presenta desafíos para el lector. La complejidad conceptual y filosófica de Arendt puede resultar abrumadora, especialmente para aquellos no familiarizados con sus obras anteriores o los debates filosóficos de su época. Aunque la obra busca desentrañar el trasfondo de "Eichmann en Jerusalén", la narrativa puede volverse densa y, en algunos momentos, carecer de ejemplos concretos para ilustrar las ideas, dificultando su accesibilidad para una audiencia más amplia. A pesar de su profundidad, la obra podría beneficiarse de una estructura más accesible para guiar al lector a través de sus complejidades.

En resumen, "Responsabilidad y Juicio" de Hannah Arendt se erige como una pieza fundamental para entender su perspectiva moral y abordar preocupaciones contemporáneas. Sus aciertos y desafíos residen en la profundidad conceptual y la falta de claridad en algunos puntos, invitando a los lectores a sumergirse en una obra que continúa generando reflexiones e interpretaciones.

[Nick]

The only Hannah Arendt I've ever read, and sure to be the first of many. These essays have a lot to say for the current political moment - my favorite among them being an examination of how evil comes about and how people may 'suddenly become' evil under certain circumstances.

I was very surprised (but maybe I shouldn't have been) by Arendt's pragmatism. She does not offer a specific moral code to follow, and in fact warns that the people who hold tightest to a set of rules are the most likely to see these rules replaced, because it is not the morals they hold, but the feeling of following a set of rules. She instead points out that every situation must be examined according to its own specific circumstances, which leads to several interesting discussions throughout the book: what is the role of a black mother in the South during school integration? The role of a 'good' Nazi doctor in Auschwitz? Adherence to strict codes would prevent us from seeing the complexity of these situations and our potential responses.

[Moritz Riehn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hannah Arendt ist faszinierend. Wie sie hier beschreibt, wie das Böse zu verstehen ist, ist faszinierend. Auch wenn man keine Sekunde unaufmerksam lesen darf, weil so viel Inhalt auf so wenige Seiten geschrieben wurde.

[Sophia · Rating 1 out of 5]

viu wörter, weni ussage

[Inna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kernideen aus „Über das Böse“:

1. Das Böse ist oft banal.
2. Denken schützt vor bösen Taten.
3. Jeder Mensch trägt Verantwortung.
4. Das Böse ist die Abwesenheit von Gutem.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hannah Arendt was a genius of a human being, a scholar and a writer. This compilation of essays and talks blew me away. The final piece, "Home to Roost," is remarkable for its insights and application to the US of 2020.

[Amanda Shiraishi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's deep! Could not be different: Hannah Arendt was like a catchment basin

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incisive, revealing, informative are some of the impressions one has while reading this collection of essays.

[aldo zirsov]

got another book of Hannah Arendt. me so happy..:)

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book, but for me it did not reach what the others two I read from her did (The Human Condition and On Revolution).It is a collection of four essays which discuss the problem of morality and especially "the bad".

Starting from the Holocaust and the Eichmann trial, she tries to find a reason for why that happened. In her quest, she stumbles on Sokrates (It is better to suffer evil, than to do evil), on Kant (categorical imperative), on Augustinus, Paulus and Nietzsche (talking about the will).

The banality of evil, is that evil that happens without reason. She argues that, as long as a person thinks, he/she is not able to do evil. Thinking leads to remembrance, and remembrance of evil makes one incapable in living with oneself. That's it. The one who does evil is the one who does not think.

The book advances very slowly and it is very meandrous. It was supposed to be about evil, however it is such a mind twister that in the end one is not really able to follow her thoughts. More than a half of the book is dedicated to the "will", I still don't know what she really wanted to tell us. I was a bit disappointed, knowing her other books. Also frustrated, because I was hoping to find some answers on the question - how does such genocides happen? How come so many people are wrapped in this and how come they let such things happen. If plurality means power (as she correctly argues in "The Human Condition"), how come nobody tried to stop such monstrosity.

OK, absence of thinking, robotization are two points of view. But I was kind of annoyed by the fact that she did not even mention the language. I think that the language in the form of propaganda played a humongous role in influencing the population. Combined with lack of thinking about stuff...you get what they got.

I also impute her the elitism. For sure, she is one of the great thinkers of the last century. But I think she has to argue on human themes, and not some elite stuff provided by some ancient influencers like Augustinus or Sokrates (nobody heard what he said anyways). She has to discuss the problem starting at the level of men's unconscious. I mean she meanders over 20 pages on subjects on christianity, stuff that Nietzsche resolves in one page (and more convincingly). Nobody will think what Paulus said (what is stated in the Roman Letters). As Nietzsche states, these stuff is so rooted in people's unconscious, it doesn't make sense (for me at least) to keep talking about that. For the sake of lectures though...

[John David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hannah Arendt is probably recognized today as the greatest thinker (I hesitate to use the word “philosopher” because she didn’t care for that word applied to herself) who tried to reckon with the moral and political repercussions of the rise of totalitarianism and fascism in Europe. She’s probably best known for “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951) and her later “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (1963), which made the term “the banality of evil” a household phrase. “Responsibility and Judgment” is a collection of shorter, occasional pieces – speeches, extended lectures, articles, and essays – that orbit around those two dimensions of moral practice.

For those new to Arendt’s sometime’s vertigo-inducing forays into etymological origins in attempting to mine the meaning of words (she was, after all, the most famous student of Heidegger working in the United States), these pieces offer a welcome entrée into her body of thought. They are typically full of her moral seriousness, while their mostly abbreviated length make the contours of her moral thought much more accessible to those who are unfamiliar with her longer work.

In this collection, she touches again upon some of her previous themes with the occasional variation with the occasional flight into “pure philosophy,” but the focus is very much about the mind operating under the dire constraints of totalitarianism and fascism. Her modestly titled essay “Questions on Moral Philosophy” – by far the longest in the book at almost 100 pages – is a detailed archaeology of the thought of thinkers as disparate as Saint Augustine, Kant, and Nietzsche. At the heart of her writing, though, Arendt is obsessed with the same question that drew the attention of her most illustrious teacher: “Was ist denken?” Her answer is that thinking – at least moral thinking - is that unique state in which we are both alone and not alone – left alone to the devices of our own mind, but simultaneously able to consider both sides of an argument, to think against one’s self, to play advocatus diaboli. It is either the harmony or cacophony that arises between these two voices that lays the ground for moral thought. The moral thinker always has that miniaturized version of herself sitting on her shoulder, ready to speak out against injustice.

As far as I can tell, the only moral misfire in the entire collection is her essay titled “Reflections on Little Rock,” in which she essentially argues that it wasn’t the place of the federal government to see that the schools in Arkansas (and the rest of the south) were racially integrated. She thinks this constitutes having “unfairly shifted the burden of responsibility from the shoulders of adults to those of children.” While clearly not in favor of de jure segregation, Arendt thinks that school belongs properly in the social sphere where we should be allowed to freely associate with whomever we choose (even though she oddly misses the point that enforced segregation takes exactly that right away and that state-imposed integration would restore it).

To read Arendt carefully is to constantly be reminded of the seriousness of her task, and her unquestioned ability to look abstract moral questions directly in the eye without even the slightest sense of evasion. She’s used to working within the confines of human weakness and the myopic scope of historical memory, while at the same time stressing that our minds and that memory are all we have to work with. She’s clearly a thinker with blind spots, but Arendt has no need to entertain her readers with shibboleths about the vast, unlimited human power to solve moral problems. She’s accustomed to the fumbling about in the postlapsarian darkness that is the human condition (the title of still another book that deserves revisiting), but still manages to unearth truths that are both uncanny and endlessly relevant.

[Saleh Al-Adawi · Rating 4 out of 5]

لا تكاد تجد ذكر للفيلسوفة حنة أرنت عزيزي القارئ، إلا وتجد ما يشير إلى محاولتها الانفكاك عن نعتها بالفيلسوفة، ولكن ما أن تبدأ في قراءة أفكارها حتى تكتشف أنها كذلك بامتياز، وهذا الكتاب يؤكد هذا الزعم بلا شك.

ينبغي أن نعترف أولا بأن هذا النوع من الكتب الذي يبنى على جمع مقالات ومحاضرات ومطارحات فكرية يجمعها الموضوع ويفرقها الإطار الزماني والمكاني الذي ظهرت من خلاله، يشكل تحديا للقارئ، خاصة إذا ما تعلق الأمر بموضوعات ذات مفاهيم فلسفية شديدة العمق والاشتباك مع النظريات السياسية والاجتماعية والقضايا الفكرية المختلفة، مع عدم إغفال واقع المؤلف الذي يسبغ على كتاباته كثير من الخصوصية، ومن هنا تأتي أهمية المقدمات والاستهلالات التي تسبق تلك المقالات رغم طولها أحيانا.

يناقش الكتاب مفهومي المسؤولية والحكم، أما مفهوم المسؤولية فقد استغرق ثلاثة أرباع الكتاب، حيث جمعت المقالات نظرية أرنت حول مفهوم المسؤولية ابتداء من سقراط وصولا إلى نيتشه، ولربما المثال الأهم الذي تطرقت إليه هو محاكمة أيخمان في القدس (مقالة سبقت صدور الكتاب الشهير)، ما مدى مسؤولية الفرد؟ وهل هناك مسؤولية جماعية (مشتركة) حقا؟ وكيف نفرق بين المسؤولية الشخصية والمسؤولية السياسية؟ وما هو دور الإرادة في تحمل المسؤولية؟

أما الجزء الأخير المتعلق بالحكم والذي يناقش إمكانية إصدار الأحكام سواء قضائيا أو سياسيا اجتماعيا أيضا، فتبني أرنت مفاهيمها من خلال التعمق في تفاصيل محاكمة أوسفيتش التي تمت في فرانكفورت حينها، إضافة إلى مسرحية هشهوت التي انتقدمت موقف البابا من عمليات الإبادة الجماعية التي ارتكبها النازيون إبان الحرب العالمية الثانية.

كتاب لا يخلو من الصعوبة، وهو ما يؤدي إلى تيه القارئ في أحيان كثيرة؛ ولك لعدم القدرة على تتبع أفكار الكاتب نظرا لاختلاف المقالات وتاريخ ومناسبات طرحها.

[Filiz I. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arendt, goruslerini ve bu gorusleri ifade ederken kurdugu nedenselligi sevdigim ve bu nedenle kitaplarini okumaktan cok keyif aldigim bir siyasal bilimci dusunur. Bu kitabini da ayni keyifle okudum, hatta dusunsel yuku nedeniyle ozellikle aceleye getirmeden okudum. Arendt bu kitabini iki ana baslik altinda toplamis: sorumluluk ve yargi. Kitabin ilk bolumunde sorumluluk, ikinci bolumunde ise yargi basligi altinda konular kendi icinde ayriliyor. Hitler doneminde gerceklesen Yahudi soykirimini, islenen suclar ve failler uzerinden genis kapsamli bir analiz ile ele aliyor. Diktatorluk kosullarinda kisisel sorumluluklar, kolektif sorumluluk, dusunme etkinligi ve ahlaki degerlendirmeler gibi konular ilk bolumun konusunu olusturuyor. Ilk yarinin en uzun bolumunu olusturan (yaklasik 90 sayfa) ahlak felsefesinin bazi sorunlari baslikli kisimda, Arendt ahlak felsefesinin meselelerini Gorgias'ta Socrates'in savunduklari uzerinden degerlendirerek okuyucuda bambaska ufuklar aciyor. Ikinci yarida ise Little Rock olayi uzerinden Amerika'daki siyahi irkciligi, yine Amerika'nin Vietnam'da yuruttugu savas ve Auschwitz uzerinde duruyor. Bu kitap kesinlikle bir kere okunup rafa kaldirilacak bir kitap degil, mutlaka bir sure sonra yeniden okumayi dusunuyorum. Bu arada cevirmenin olaganustu bir is cikardigini soylemeden edemeyecegim.

[Boudewijn Hogeboom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Regelmatig herlezen is voor mij de enige manier om haar gedachten te doorgronden. En iedere keer valt iets anders op dat resoneert met de actualiteit van vandaag. Zoals bv het onderscheid tussen de persoonlijke sfeer, de sociale en de publieke of statelijke. We zijn burgers voor de wet in de publieke sfeer. Daar is iedereen gelijk. In je sociale sfeer mag je je persoonlijke voorkeuren hebben, omgaan met wie je wilt en anderen vermijden, ook op basis van vooroordelen. Maar dat mag je niet tot de publieke sfeer tot regel maken. Voor de wet,voor overheden en publieke organisaties is iedereen gelijk. Je moet er als overheid bv voor zorgen dat alle scholen iedereen even goed onderwijs biedt. Je moet niet willen segregatie tegen te gaan of te bevorderen.

[Pioska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Partie sur les procès d'Auschwitz intéressante qui dénonce l'impunité des grands responsables avec une complicité de l'administration Adenauer et le chaos et l'absurdité des crimes perpétrés et la difficulté de juger. Et puis, de bons retours sur Little Rock et l'application de l'expérience du passé intolerable au contexte américain des années 70 pour finalement dénoncer avec raison la nouvelle société d'image et le poid de l'opinion public qui perdure aujourd'hui dans laquelle les puissants (qui perpétuent l'ideologie économique dominante) noient les peuples et légalisent leurs crimes, pour un besoin de pouvoir qui se concrétise en étant au dessus de la loi.

[Adrian Fanaca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first read book from famous Hannah Arendt, who is praised by the Jewish socialist thnkers. As I read it long time ago, I do not remember much from this book, except from perhps a more general idea that each one of us has a responsibility to think, to judge, as the title says, if the direction of our government is good or not, the contrary of what Eichmann has done in his times, the famous case study that Arendt has brought to light to the public as the "banality of evil". In order to save us from future totalitarian states like the Nazi state, we each have a responsibility to use our reason in deciding if we support the government or protest against it.

[Melanie Randle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reflexiones sobre Little Rock, las consecuenvias fe la abolición de la ley de segregación en el sur de EEUU,
"La segregación es discriminación impuesta por la ley, y la no segregación no puede hacer mas que abolir las leyes que imponen la discriminación; no puede abolir la discriminación e imponer la igualdad a la sociedad, pero puede y de hecho debe imponer la igualdad en el cuerpo político; su validez queda claramente restringida al ámbito político." p.195

"La sociedad de masas-que difumina las líneas de discriminaciòn y nivela las diferencias de grupo- es un peligro para la sociedad como tal, más que para la integridad de la persona, pues la identidad personal tiene su frente más alla del ambito social." p.197

"En la medida en que los padres y los maestros le fallen como autoridades, el niño se adaptará con más fuerza a su propio grupo y, en determinadas circunstancias, el grupo de sus comoañeros se convertirá en su autoridad suprema." p.202

[Sebastian Wallkötter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A continuation of Hannah Arendt's thoughts on 'the banality of evil', and a clear account of why morals are moldable in large groups (with the Third Reich being the example). Also, an account of the difference between collective guilt, and collective responsibility - of which the latter doesn't exist in her view. Finally, an account of what it means to think, and how this very thinking creates morality.

Given that this is Philosophy, I was positively surprised how easy it is to read. The language is very modern.