Contra Arendt, I would ask: how much of all this is really new or modern? Certainly human individuals did not have to await the advent of bureaucracy to slaughter one another en masse or to act in viciously self-interested ways if and when they feel that so acting will make them (and their family, group, corporation) richer, more powerful or secure, more prominent. We are touching here on the vision of humanity outlined by Kant in the late eighteenth century and on the age-old concept of original sin which informed his thinking.

Categories: Review • Tags: Eichmann, ethics, Hannah Arendt, Heidegger, Holocaust, Kant, New Yorker, philosophy, thinking