ARGUMENTS
265
product of profound analysis," unlike her earlier concept of "radical
eviL" She agrees she has changed her mind since
The Origins of Totali–
tarianism:
"It is my opinion now that evil is never 'radical,' that it is
only extreme, and that
it
possesses neither depth nor any demonic
dimension. . . . Only the good has depth and can be radical." I see
nothing shocking here: the discrepancy between the personal mediocrity
of Stalin and Hitler, the banality of their ideas, and the vastness of the
evils they inflicted-is she really the first
to
notice this? "She claims
that Eichmann was commonplace and mediocre," writes Abel. "But by
the power of the totalitarian state, he was able to exterminate a whole
people." I don't understand that "but." I wonder
if
Abel thinks Lee
Oswald became less "commonplace and mediocre" after he had killed
President Kennedy-Oswald's mother has told reporters they'd better
take her and her son more seriously "because we're in the history books
now."
Dostoevsky would not have found "the banality of evil" a catchword.
When Satan visits Ivan Karamazov, he proves
to
be a shabby-genteel
"hanger-on of the better class." "You flunky!" cries Ivan, threatening
to kick
him.
"You are stupid and vulgar." This devil sounds very much
like Arendt's Eichmann: "My friend, above all things I want
to
be a
gentleman and recognized as such.... It's generally accepted in society
that I am a fallen angel. By God, I can't conceive how I could ever
have been an angel. ... I prize only my reputation as a well-bred gentle–
man." Like Eichmann, he has pretensions to big ideas. "Don't talk
philosophy, you ass!" Ivan exclaims. But the devil's final speech is a
shrewd thrwlt: "I repeat, moderate your expectations. . .. You are
really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow,
with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings, and for showing myself
in such a modest guise. You are wounded, in the first place, in your
aesthetic feelings, and secondly, in your pride." That five million Jews
could have been slaughtered by contemptible mediocrities like Eichmann
must be hard for the survivors to accept; it trivializes the horror, robs
it of meaning. It must be especially hard to take the fact that Eichmann
wasn't even a serious anti-Semite-in fact, wasn't a serious anything.
III
Miss McCarthy's claim that reviews by Gentiles were favorable and
those by Jews unfavorable was not convincing to me. Seven exceptions
were too many, especially when the four Jewish exceptions were such
weighty names as Alvarez, Bell, Lichtheim and Bettelheim-the last's
article in
The New Republic,
was the best treatment I've seen. However,
