ARGUMENTS
273
I, for one, do not believe that even Eichmann could have devoted
himself to the murder of millions, with the persistence, skill, and
ze~
he showed, over a period of years,
if
he had not had some justifying
political idea. Miss Arendt does believe this, and that is why she can
also believe administrators and technicians, many of them thor,oughly
ordinary men, are capable of acting as Eichmann did, and without be–
ing committed to any political idea. But
if
one reads Miss Arendt
rightly-attention, Miss McCarthy!- it becomes apparent that she her–
self considers Eichmann a monster, and precisely because she con–
siders him ordinary! Eichmlann, as Miss Arendt sees
him,
is not, of
course, the kind of monster we know from the past. He is a monster,
nonetheless, but of a new-fangled sort, a sheer creation of modern
times; and the kind of monster that Miss Arendt thinks
is
nowadays
found everywhere. His is none other than the average man, without
pathological drives or exceptional traits, yet who is nowadays capable
of mass murder;
and this without any need for political ideas to align
his inner being with his outward acts.
Eichmann, alone
in
the dock
in
Jerusalem, was to Miss Arendt unjudgable. But he represents to her
millions and millions of men who, in her view, are potentially criminal
and essentially unjudgable: the ordinary men we see today, as modern
times have fashioned them. Thus the message of ,our time
is
the
"banality of evil."
But if our civilization is turning out millions of "ordinary"
monsters-and at a greater rate even than our plants turn out cars–
if
it has even abolished the difference between the "ordinary" and
the "monstrous"-then it
is
no longer a civilization; it has already
fallen into barbarism. Is this what Miss Arendt thinks finally?
If
not,
would she have permitted herself to write of Eichmann that he is "the
truth-revealer for generations to come"?
Is civilization damaged irreparably?
1£
so, I
think
no one could
says this clearly; in trying to we would be reduced to absurdities; some of
our contemporary playwrights want to be. Far the worst in human af–
fairs has not yet occurred, says the poet,
if
we can still talk about the
worst. And even
if
our state be worse than I take it to be, what help
can come from false ideas? There are many people, though, who, as I
noted before, are ready to accept Miss Arendt's portrait of Eich–
mann, and become angry when told what a poor likeness it is. I suggest
this
reason for their attitude: Miss Arendt's view of Eichmann supports
the belief, held with a pleasure I, for one, find peculiar, that the West
has been stricken, maybe mortally. But however it be with the West,
should not we ourselves make an effort to be civilized? What Eich–
mann was, what the Jewish leaders were, can only be determined from
