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LIONEL ABEL
mine. But the whole assumption of Western law is that the criminal has
an inner resemblance to his acts; this likeness must
be
shown. From
which Hegel derived an epistemological principle:
if
our judgment of
the inner man differs from our judgment of his acts, then both of our
judgments must be false; I come now to what Miss Arendt herself
regards as the main point of her book, and which she criticizes her
critics for having passed over too lightly. Eichmann, she writes, is
"the truth-revealer for generations to come." What she means by this
cryptic phrase, I take it, is that the very existence of an Eichmann
shows that our civilization has been breached, and how serious to it the
breach is. F.or
if
a criminal has appeared whom we cannot judge-–
Miss Arendt holds that for judging Eichmann our laws were inadequate
-then do we not have to look to the foundations of our values? Why
pretend they are secure? I believe Miss Arendt thinks that in trying
and passing sentence on Eichmann, the Israeli court covered up the
crisis to civilization revealed-and deepene&--by the advent of Hitler.
Those who have not read Miss Arendt's book may wonder at how
the existence of one unjudgable criminal can instance a breakdown in
civilization. To be sure, Miss Arendt has in mind the host of other ex–
Nazi officials, whom she thinks quite as unjudgable as Eichmann. But
this is not her real point, which is expressed, I
think
in her whole con–
tention about Eichmann, namely that he was an ordinary man, normal,
did monstrous things, and was not a case of "political indoctrination."
But
if
Eichmann was an ordinary man, then is not the ordinary man
an Eichmann, and capable of doing what Eichmann did? Is this true?
Those who would like to believe this true may point to the host of ad–
ministrators and technicians who nowadays, in obedience
to
a command
from above, stand ready to release forces of terrible destructiveness.
Evidently Miss McCarthy, like other defenders of Miss Arendt, identifies
Eichmann with persons of this s,ort. For Miss McCarthy notes that
ordinary men dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. But were these men, if
ordinary, at all like Eichmann? And are our host of administrators and
technicians like him? I think not. What is more, they are not like
Miss Arendt's portrait of Eichmann.
But then Eichmann himself was
not like her portrait of him.
For one thing, he was not without political
conviction. I see no reason to doubt his own statement, already cited:
"When I reached the conclusion that it was necessary to do to the
Jews what we did, I worked with the fanaticism of a true National
Socialist." Moreover, Miss Arendt has not produced one shred of evi–
dence to show Eichmann was not convinced by Nazism. Her contention
that he was not is only a guess, at best, an intellectual construction, as
is,
in fact, her whole characterization of him.
