Continuing on Eichmann in Jerusalem, on how ordinary people can do—or acquiesce to—horrific things. How do people rationalize this? What can we apply from this to ourselves? Also, how was genocide a new type of crime, and what’s the best rationale for punishing it? We talk justice, revenge, and ways that we too might be morally mass-confused.

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End song: “Hiding from the Face of God”; hear Mark talk to singer/songwriter Jeff Heiskell on Nakedly Examined Music eps. 5 and 63.

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On Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).

Are we still morally culpable if our entire society is corrupt? Arendt definitely thinks so, but has a number of criticisms of the handling of the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The Israelis were committed to the view that Eichmann was a monster, when the reality, says Arendt, is more frightening.

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