The Evil of Banality

[Robert Mahnke]

In Rosenbaum's defense, he didn't just a read a book (or the two
prompting this article), he also wrote one:

http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Hitler-Search-Origins-Evil/dp/006095339X



On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 1:21 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> i'm sure many experts in philosophy read Slate to help them with their
> scholarly investigations and conclusions
>
> hey, I've [rosenbaum] read a book on the subject and now I'm bursting
> with ill-deserved indignation
>
> whatever you think about these two, you best read their work, and not
> some pseudo-intellectual to make your judgements for you
>
> and can u condemn a scholar's work solely because of his/her own
> actions which can be seen as brutish, petty, etc.
>
> I recently re-read The Banality of Evil and found it as powerful as
> ever though Arendt, to give one example, was insanely viscious to Raul
> Hilberg's work.
>
> just saying...
>
> rich
>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:38 PM, Dave Monroe
> <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The Evil of BanalityTroubling new revelations about Arendt and Heidegger.
>> By Ron Rosenbaum
>> Posted Friday, Oct. 30, 2009, at 12:37 PM ET
>>
>>
>> Will we ever be able to think of Hannah Arendt in the same way again?
>> Two new and damning critiques, one of Arendt and one of her longtime
>> Nazi-sycophant lover, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, were published
>> within 10 days of each other last month. The pieces cast further doubt
>> on the overinflated, underexamined reputations of both figures and
>> shed new light on their intellectually toxic relationship.
>>
>> My hope is that these revelations will encourage a further
>> discrediting of the most overused, misused, abused pseudo-intellectual
>> phrase in our language: the banality of evil. The banality of the
>> banality of evil, the fatuousness of it, has long been fathomless, but
>> perhaps now it will be consigned to the realm of the deceitful and
>> disingenuous as well.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> http://www.slate.com/id/2234010/
>>
>