Moral Blindness in Business: A Social Theory of Evil in Organizations and Institutions [1st ed.] 9783030488567, 9783030488574

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Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

Moral Blindness in Business A Social Theory of Evil in Organizations and Institutions

Moral Blindness in Business “Also managers are human beings: this compelling book offers an ethical conception of management, which is highly relevant to our times, where the balance of power between corporations and the state is in flux. Against the sociological view that managers simply do whatever they have to do dictated by the pragmatic requirements of the market, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff develops a powerful, original and ethically challenging conception of managers as subjects of judgment and imagination. He discusses the works of Hannah Arendt and in particular her work on Eichmann as the basis for this ethics of judgment. The book is lucid as well as thought provoking.” —Reidar Due, University of Oxford

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

Moral Blindness in Business A Social Theory of Evil in Organizations and Institutions

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff Department of Social Sciences and Business Roskilde University Roskilde, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-030-48856-7 ISBN 978-3-030-48857-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book was finished in the difficult circumstances of the global corona-crisis in spring 2020. The virus epidemic came from China developed into a Pandemic, where the virus attacked first Asia, then Europe and USA and the whole world. Indeed, many people considered the virus as a new kind of evil without human intentions and motives. Here, this kind of evil has some resemblances with Hannah Arendt’s concept of a new kind of evil without origins or clear intentions, like a sand storm, a fungus or pure nothingness. During the terrible crisis, I stayed at home in quarantine with my family, my loved Victoria and my sons Erik and Arthur who gave me space and time to work on the book. In addition, we were in close contact with my other sons Joachim and Elias and my mother Kirsten who was isolated all alone in her house. Thus, with Arendt’s reminder of the possibility of hope and new beginnings in dark times I dedicate this book to Kirsten, Victoria, Joachim, Elias, Erik and Arthur.

Preface

This book is a result of more than 25 years research of the implications of Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy and social theory for concept and practices of administration, management, and leadership. This research began with my work as a post doc. researcher on bioethics and biolaw at the University of Copenhagen, where I studied moral blindness in the context of history of medical ethics and the atrocities of the Nazis with their deadly medical experiments during the Holocaust. This is an extreme indication of the need for the basic ethical principles of respect for human autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability in bioethics and biolaw. Thus, these principles were presented in the book that I published together with Peter Kemp Basic Ethical Principles in European Bioethics and Biolaw (Copenhagen: Centre for Ethics and Law, 2000). In this context, I rediscovered my earlier work on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt in 1994 that I applied to a theory of moral blindness in medicine and more broadly in organizations and social institutions in modernity. Another research for this interest in the banality of evil was need to understand the violence of the genocide in Rwanda and the violent killings in war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In the 1990s, I was research coordinator in the Nordic Summer University and during this time, we had several research seminars focusing on Hannah Arendt’s political theory applied to international relations, political systems, and modernity. A milestone of this research was published in Danish in the book Ondskabens Banalitet: Om Hannah Arendts “Eichmann i Jerusalem”

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[The Banality of Evil. About Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem”], that I have edited together with Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002. As I was employed at Roskilde University in 1999 as researcher and later professor in philosophy of management and ethics, I became more and more interested in the implications of Hannah Arendt’s political and social philosophy for concepts and practices of organization, management, and leadership. During my research and teaching on business ethics and corporate social responsibility at Roskilde University, I realized the importance of clarifying the concept of banality of evil and moral blindness for ethics and philosophy of management. The background for this understanding was my book Responsibility, Ethics and Legitimacy of Corporations (Copenhagen: CBS Press, 2009) which made me aware of the need to go deeper into the philosophical and social and psychological foundations for understanding incompetency, harm, and evil in organizations. Indeed, the problem of the banality of evil can also without being fully discussed be said to lie behind my later other works of business ethics and philosophy of management, including Cosmopolitan Business Ethics: Towards a Global Ethos of Management. (London: Routledge, 2017) and Philosophy of Management and Sustainability: Rethinking Business Ethics and Social Responsibility in Sustainable Development (Bingley: Emerald, 2019). In this presentation of philosophy of management I defined moral blindness as the dark side of the contemporary debate of sustainability and transformation to an ecological economy. During this research, I have increasingly realized that more research is needed to define the theoretical basis for the concepts of forms of violence, corruption, terror, and domination in organizations as they are determined by the concept of moral blindness. This contributed to the clarification of Arendt’s philosophy of the banality of evil of the obedient management, bureaucrats, and employees of organizations in contrast to people with moral sensibility and judgment. Thus, after several visits and presentations in the US from 2001 to 2009, I became visiting fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking, Bard College, New York State, USA in autumn 2011. The aim of this research stay was to use the insights of Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy to understand the dark sides of organizational action and to facilitate better decision-making among executives and managers. Here, I worked in the Arendt’ archives at Bard College and I had access to relevant material and was in dialogue with colleagues, in

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particular Center Director Roger Berkowitz and others who are specialists on Arendt’s philosophy. Moreover, I visited relevant centers and institutions for business ethics and administration, in particular Harry Truman School of Government, University of Missouri and Darden Business School, University of Virginia. I also presented my research on Arendt at the Academy of Management and Society of Business Ethics meetings in Saint Antonio, Texas and at of the 25th IVR World Congress, Law, science, and technology: Frankfurt am Main in 2011. These presentation were later published as J. D. Rendtorff 2012 “Hannah Arendt and the Law and Ethics of Administration: Bureaucratic Evil, Political Thinking and Reflective Judgment” in the Paper Series, no. 112 from the 25th IVR World Congress: Law, Science, and Technology; and as J. D. Rendtorff, 2015 “Evil in Organizations and Corporations: The Concept of Moral Blindness” in the polish journal Zeszyty Naukowe ´ askiej, vol 32, no. 4, pp. 95– “Organizacja In Zarz˛adzanie” Politechniki Sl˛ 110. In addition, I presented the research at the annual meeting of the working on Economic Ethics and Philosophy of the German Philosophical Society in München in 2011. This research was published as J. D. Rendtorff, 2014 “Risk Management, Banality of Evil and Moral Blindness in Organizations and Corporations” In C. Luetge & J. Jauernig (eds.), Business Ethics and Risk Management. Springer Science+Business Media B. V., Dordrecht, pp. 45–71. Ethical Economy, no. 43. Moreover, from 2005 I participated in the annual research symposium of the international research group Ecoethica, founded by Tomonobo Imamichi (1922–2012), Tokyo with Peter Kemp as president. In 2006, my work on Hannah Arendt was presented to this group and later published as J. D. Rendtorff, 2009 “Ethics, Responsibility and Reflective Judgment— How to Deal with the Problem of Evil in Modern Philosophy!” Acta Institutionis Philosophiae et Aestheticae, vol 24, pp. 233–247. In addition, I participated several times in the annual colloquium on Philosophy and Social Sciences at Villa Lana of the Academy of Sciences in Prague. There in 2009 I initially presented the research concept of moral blindness and then later in a roundtable on social pathology in 2019, organized by Mathias Kettner and with Hartmut Rosa as the third participant, I related this concept to pathologies in business and administration. Thus, I have worked on the philosophy of Hannah Arendt in many different contexts. During the years, this had led to many presentations and talks about the banality of evil in organization administration. Two presentations from visits to Bard College are available on youtube:

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Jacob Rendtorff, 2009: Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil. Reflections on Moral Blindness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY-d_I hrPLs&list=PLYW5qHLZjOWHWGUdn-AAFPIgTMO2HpJAh&ind ex=4 [Accessed April 15, 2020]. Lunchtime Talk with Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTj2c5NVTPA. [Accessed April 15, 2020]. Another key moment was the talk “Ethics, Responsibility and Reflective Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Problem of Evil” at the 24 World Conference of Philosophy, Beijing, China, 2018. Presentations were also held at Roskilde University, Aalborg University, Aarhus University, University of Southern Denmark, and the Danish Peoples University, the Danish Academy of Management, Danish Association of Political Sciences, and the Danish Philosophical Forum. Several of these talks were the basis for articles in Danish on Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of law and political theory, including J. D. Rendtorff 1994, “Hannah Arendt og Leo Strauss: To perspektiveringer af Immanuel Kants politiske filosofi” [Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: Two perspectives on Kant’s political thought]. In Harste (ed.), Dømmekraft og Kompleksitet, Immanuel Kant om politik, æstetik og natur. NSU Press, Aalborg, pp. 149–167; Laustsen, C. B. & Rendtorff, J. D., Arendt, Eichmann og det ondes banalitet [Arendt, Eichmann and the banality of evil] In C. B. Laustsen & J. D. Rendtorff (Eds.) Ondskabens banalitet. Om Hannah Arendts “Eichmann i Jerusalem”, Museum Tusculanums forlag, København 2002; Laustsen, C. B. & Rendtorff, J. D., 2002, “En human verden? En Introduktion til Hannah Arendts filosofi” [A human world. Introduction to Hannah Arendt’s political thought], In C. B. Laustsen & J. D. Rendtorff (Eds.), Ondskabens banalitet. Om Hannah Arendts “Eichmann i Jerusalem”, Museum Tusculanums forlag, København 2002; J. D. Rendtorff, 2003, “Dømmekraftens historiske ansvar: Hannah Arendt og vores opfattelse af Holocaust” [The historical responsibility of judgment. Hannah Arendt and our conception of the Holocaust] Slagmark, no. 37, pp. 107–125; J. D. Rendtorff 2003, “Nogle opfattelser af det onde i nyere kontinentalfilosofi” [Some conceptions of evil in contemporary continental philosophy] Psyke & Logos, vol 24, no. 1, pp. 107–125; J. D. Rendtorff, 2007, “Dømmekraftens tænker: Hannah Arendts politiske teori og retsfilosofi” [The thinker of judgment. Hannah Arendt’s political theory and philosophy of law] Retfærd. Nordisk Juridisk Tidsskrift, vol 30, no. 3/118, pp. 3–16, and J. D. Rendtorff 2019, “Indledning: Totalitarismen og Arendts politiske filosofi” [Introduction. Totalitarianism and Arendt’s political Philosophy” In Hannah Arendt:

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Antisemitismen: Totalitarismens Oprindelse 1 (Dansk revideret udgave udg., s. 7–35). Aarhus: Klim. During the years with this continuous work on Arendt’s philosophy and social theory, I realized that we here have a strong conceptual basis for understanding moral blindness, wrongdoing, harm and evil in organizations. This can be seen as a combination of my work on business ethics and political philosophy in order to deal with the dark side of governance of public and private organizations. On this foundation, this book addresses the topic of the dark and evil sides of organizational action in order to provide a better foundation for business ethics, leadership, and corporate social responsibility. In addition, I use Arendt’s philosophy to analyze recent examples and cases of harm and wrongdoing from the corporate and political world of organizational and corporate life. Hannah Arendt’s concept of moral blindness deals with the problem of how normal “ordinary people” in organizations and corporations might do harmful and wrong things that would never have been justified from the point of view of reflective ethical judgment. Thus in the following, we look closely on implications of Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy for concepts of administration, management, and leadership. Thus, I hope that this book about the possibilities and limits of applying Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy to understand the ethics of organizations will give the readers new and fruitful knowledge and ideas. Indeed, this book should ideally be of strong benefit both for better practice in organizations, corporations, and institutions and for further research and teaching in philosophy of management, business ethics, and corporate social responsibility. Roskilde, Denmark

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

Acknowledgments

Many people have in one way or another during the years contributed to the creation and improvement of this book. My research stays at The Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking, at Bard College, New York State in 2011 was made possible with the help from the director Roger Berkowitz and with economic support from the Carlsberg Foundation, Denmark. In the beginning, it was my colleagues of the Center for Ethics and Law in Copenhagen (1993–2008) with director Peter Kemp (1937–2018) who helped me to develop the foundations of ethical principles. Previous versions of several of the chapters have been presented at the study circles in the Nordic Summer University (NSU) from 1993 to 1999 and again from 2011 to 2016. Here, I would in particular like to thank Carsten Bagge Laustsen Aarhus with whom I have worked closely on different aspects of the chapters of the book, in particular on earlier version of Chapters 1, 2 and 3. However, the chapters in this book are my responsibility, based on my own original work. Moreover, the work of Øjvind Larsen, Copenhagen, on ethics of administration is an important source of inspiration. Other important colleagues from the Nordic summer University are Reidar Due, Oxford, Giorgio Baruchello, Akureyri, Christian Rostbøll, Copenhagen, Johan Söderberg, Göteborg, Asger Sørensen, Copenhagen, Arne-Johan Vetlesen, Oslo, Åke Nilsén, Halmstad, Peter Wolsing, Odense, Gorm Harste, Århus, Arto Laitinen, Helsinki, Maria Refer, Copenhagen, Anders Ramsey, Lund, Mikael Carleheden (Göteborg), Peter Aaagaard, Roskilde and John

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Storm Pedersen, Esbjerg. I would also like to thank participants in the annual Symposium on ecoethica who have contributed with discussions and criticisms of my work since 2005, including Tomonobo Imamichi (1922–2012), Tokyo, Peter Kemp, (1937–2018), Copenhagen, Peter McCormick, Paris, Noriko Hashimoto, Tokyo, Manuel B. Dy, Manilla, Sang Hwan Kim, Soeul, Nam In Lee, Soeul Pierre-Antoine Chardel, Paris, Robert Bernasconi Memphis, David Rasmussen, Boston, Bengt Kristensson Uggla, Stockholm, Bernard Reber, Paris, Patrice Canivez, Lille, Zeynip Direk, Istanbul, Jayne Svennungson, Lund, Karen Joisten, Mainz. My colleagues from the Scandinavian Chapter of the European Business Ethics Network EBEN have on the workshops, conferences and meetings of EBEN been very helpful with comments to my presentations on business ethics and moral blindness. Here I will mention Kristian Alm, Oslo, Siri Granum Carson, Trondheim, Magnus Frostenson, Stockholm, Kristian Høyer Toft, Copenhagen, and Camilla Sløk, Copenhagen. Indeed, my colleagues at Roskilde University in the programs of business studies and economics and business administration and social entrepreneurship and management have over the years be helpful with comments and suggestions to different aspects of my discussion of ethics and moral blindness in business and administration. Here, among many colleagues, I would in particular like to thank Luise-Li Langergaard, Oda Bagøien Hustad, Kirsten Mogensen, Inger Jensen, Poul Wolffsen, Søren Jagd, John Damm Scheuer, Kristian Sund, Margit Neisig, Sameer Ahmad Azizi, Anita Mac, Ada Scupola, Anne Vorre Hansen, Jørn Kjølseth Møller, Poul Bitsch Olsen, Johannes Kabderian Dreyer, and Lars Fuglsang. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Victoria, and my children Joachim, Erik, Elias, and Arthur for all their support and help with the different chapters for the manuscript.

Contents

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Introduction References

Part I

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Foundations and History of Theory of Moral Blindness

For the Love for the World. The Banality of Evil in the Light of Arendt’s Political and Social Theory 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Rebellion Against Totalitarianism as the Radical Evil 2.3 The Human Condition: The Love of the World 2.4 The Eichmann Controversy 2.5 Arendt’s Philosophy After Eichmann in Jerusalem 2.6 The Arendt Reception After Her Death in 1975 2.7 Conclusion: From Arendt’s Political Philosophy to Philosophy of Management References Judgment’s Historical Responsibility: Hannah Arendt and Our Conception of the Holocaust 3.1 Introduction

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3.2 3.3

The Holocaust as a Historical Event The Banality of Evil and the Phases in the Conception of the Holocaust 3.4 Overcoming the Banality of Evil: The Impossible Forgiveness 3.5 Conclusion: Insights for Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management References

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Adolf Eichmann as the Prototype of the Evil Manager and Administrator 4.1 Introduction 4.2 The Story and the Trail of Eichmann 4.3 Arendt and Eichmann’s Evil 4.4 Determining Dimensions of Moral Blindness in Management and Organization 4.5 Conclusion: Evil in Management in Modern and Postmodern Organizations References

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Part II Systematic Elements of the Concept of Moral Blindness in Social Theory 5

Interpretations of Evil in Modern Philosophy and Social Theory: What Significance for Ethics and Philosophy of Management? 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Revolt Against the Classical Theodicy 5.3 Hannah Arendt: The Banality of Evil 5.4 Jean-Paul Sartre: Critique of Absolute Evil 5.5 André Glucksmann and Jean Baudrillard: Evil as Nihilistic Play or Postmodern Revolt 5.6 Conclusion: Challenges for Philosophy of Management References

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Moral Blindness and Modernity: Interpretations and Developments of Arendt’s Concept of Banality of Evil 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Hannah Arendt’s Definition of Moral Blindness 6.3 Anti-Semitism as the Logic of Banality: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question 6.4 The Medical Science of the Holocaust: Benno Müller-Hill 6.5 Technique and Bureaucracy in the Holocaust: Zygmunt Bauman 6.6 Authority and Obedience in Hierarchical Systems: Stanley Milgram 6.7 Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil in Organizations: Philip Zimbardo 6.8 The Banality of Evil as the Human Condition. Günter Anders’ Reply to Hannah Arendt 6.9 Conclusion: Elements of Moral Blindness in Modern Society References Moral Blindness in Administration, Business, and Surveillance Society 7.1 Introduction 7.2 The Concept of Moral Blindness in Management 7.3 Interpretations of Moral Blindness After Arendt 7.4 Moral Blindness as Stupidity and Incompetence Compensation Competence 7.5 Moral Blindness, Moral Muteness, and Moral Deafness 7.6 Moral Blindness and Public Administration: Unmasking of Administrative Evil 7.7 Moral Blindness in Business Administration: Unbalanced Pursuit of Goals and Corporate Psychopaths 7.8 Moral Blindness and Surveillance Capitalism: From Punch Card Technology to Corporate Power in the Digital Age

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Conclusion: Perspectives for Research in Moral Blindness in Organization and Administration References

Part III

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Toward a Management Philosophy of Judgment and Ethical Formulation Competency

Totalitarianism, Practical Reason, and Judgment: Philosophical Foundations for Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Arendt’s Political Phenomenology 8.3 Political Anthropology: Humanity Between Thinking and Action 8.4 Vita Activa, Power, and Politics 8.5 Community and Judgment 8.6 Vita Activa in Modern Society 8.7 Judgment and Totalitarianism 8.8 Conclusion: Toward Ethical Judgment in Management References Perspectives for Responsibility, Moral Thinking, and Imagination in Management and Public Administration 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Responsibility of Managers and Leaders in Organizations 9.3 Moral Thinking and Ethical Reflection in Organizations 9.4 Moral Thinking as Imagination and Moral Decision-Making in Organizations 9.5 Conclusion: Moral Imagination as Ethical Formulation Competency References

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Political Philosophy of Responsibility for Democratic Societies. Judgment in Politics, Management, and Administration 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Arendt’s Concept of Judgment: Toward Critical Judgment in Politics and Organization 10.3 Judgment in the Political System: Politics, Law, and Democracy 10.4 Judgment, Administration, and Management in Modern Democracy 10.5 Conclusion: Judgment in Politics, Management, and Administration References

283 284

Conclusion: Toward Moral Thinking Unlimited References

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Hannah Arendt’s discussion of evil in politics and administration has had a great impact on political philosophy. It seems appropriate to apply this theoretical framework for understanding evil in philosophy of management in business and administration. Therefore, the aim of this book is to provide the presentation of this concept in a historical and theoretical perspective. The concept of moral blindness finds its basis in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of judgment and responsibility. Totalitarianism is radical evil. Bureaucracy is the instrument to realize radical evil. Nevertheless, the horrifying dimension of radical evil is that evildoers who often realize it, as persons are insignificant, ordinary, and banal. Arendt uses the figure of the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann to analyze this concept of banality of evil in totalitarianism’s radical evil. With her description of the dimensions of the actions of the bureaucratic administrator in the totalitarian system, Arendt characterizes Eichmann as a cliché of a human being who was incapable of thought and moral reflection. Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann provides us with a basis for a social theory of evil in organizations and institutions. In this book, we will highlight the essence of moral blindness in order to understand responsibility and judgment in business and administration. In addition, the aim of the book is to present interpretations of moral blindness, power, and domination in the perspective of the concept of systemic action in Arendt’s philosophy. Moreover, the book will look

© The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_1

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at moral blindness in bureaucracies as efficient and instrumental goalrational organizational systems. We will go through different approaches to violence and dehumanization are a reality in modernity. This includes discussion of unconditional obedience as systemic rationality that characterize ordinary business people and administrators in organizations. There has been different experimental approaches to understand the phenomena of moral blindness in business and administration. An element of moral blindness comes from character transformations due to role-playing and acceptance of a structural role in an organizational system. Evil is in the structure of the system. Thus, the book aims are clarifying the systematic elements of the concept of moral blindness in social theory. Moral blindness is characterized by conformity and dependency on the business corporation, institution, or administrative system. This means that moral blindness implies that the administrator or manager has no capacity of moral thinking. They only follow orders and justify their actions by reference to the technical goal-rationality of the organizational system. They are very dependent on the ideology, principles, or instrumental values of the organization. This attachment includes an abstraction from concrete human needs and concerns in the legal or administrative system, where members of the system identify with their role and position in the organization or administrative system. An element of this moral indifference is the cooperative role of the victims in evil by organizations and administrative systems. This means that moral blindness includes collaboration of the victims of the harm. They are forced to follow the rationality of the system and they identify with their roles either motivated by pure obedience or motivated by an attempt to minimize a greater harm. This instrumentalization implies a dehumanization of the victims that are considered not as human beings but as elements, things or functions of the system. The structure of bureaucratic evil implies that bureaucrats in the system as cogs in a system are assigned specific tasks and role functions in organizational and administrative systems. The bureaucratic machine is structured in a way that each participant in the organization is accomplishing a specific work function with a specific task and he or she has no general overview of the organizational system. Moreover, both top managers and administrators may act irrationally beyond common human understandings of morality in order to serve the instrumental rationality of the organizational system. This can be accompanied by egoistic, opportunistic and cynical behavior of managers and administrators who

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in combination with the cog position in the system focus on personal survival and promotion in the system. In addition, the function of administrative obedience is to realize the organizational aim becomes the central interest of the administrators of the organization. Obedience, role identification, and task commitment based on reward-sanction mechanisms in the system remains the central and ultimate virtue of the commitment of members of the organization to the organizational system. Each member or administrator of the organizational system commits themselves to the values of the organizational goal of the system. Here, moral blindness includes other forms of isolation of moral considerations from the systemic rationality of the system. Moral blindness is combined with moral muteness and moral deafness. Moral deafness is the inability to hear moral problems in the organization. Moral muteness is defined as the inability of people to defend their ideas and ideals. Moral blindness is a sort of cover notion that includes the concepts of moral muteness and moral deafness. Moreover, moral indifference can be defined as a camera that zooms on a specific focus and leaves everything else outside the specific focus of the system. In the case of the business corporation, the doctrine of limited liability can be said to constitute this kind of moral blindness of the business organization where no one is able to see the moral responsibility of the corporation. In the case of public administration, evil in administration can imply concentration on particular goals and instrumental outputs without taking into account ethical and moral consequences of actions. In addition moral blindness can be extended to other spheres of society for example in relation to the movement of disciplinary to control and surveillance society which characterizes the contemporary digital economy. The aim of this analysis of moral blindness in business and administration is to give the foundation for a management philosophy of judgment and ethical formulation competency. Here, the book focuses on the relation between judgment and banality of evil: How can leaders who improve their practice of not doing letting evil happen? What is the practical advice with regard to judging this? In addition, how can the leader stand in this? What is the difference between the private and public sectors with regard to the question of the banality of evil? This is a very common question when it comes to organizations. Are they, e.g., equally “evil,” because all organizations are potential for committing banal evil? By asking these questions we will focus on moral awareness, ethics, and

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responsibility with regard to protection of the “the right to have rights,” respect for humanity and plurality in contrast to moral blindness. In this context, it is important to see this book as a further development of my earlier research on ethics basic ethical principles in bioethics (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). With basic ethical principles, this research moved toward ethics and values in management (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). This approach also included discussion of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the book can be seen as a development of my research in philosophy of management and philosophical reflection as well as use of philosophical methods in administration and institutions (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2010b, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017a, 2017c, 2017d, 2019d). Accordingly, the book is structured into this introduction, three main parts, and a conclusion. The three main sections are the following: (I) Foundations and history of theory of moral blindness (II) Systematic elements of the concept of moral blindness in social theory (III) Toward a management philosophy of moral thinking and judgment. The first part presents the outline of the basis for the theory of moral blindness, based on a presentation of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of the banality of evil. The chapters in this section deals with the following topics: (2) For the Love for the world. The banality of evil in the light of Arendt’s political and social theory (3) Judgment’s Historical Responsibility. Hannah Arendt and our conception of the Holocaust (4) Adolf Eichmann as the prototype of the evil manager and administrator. Chapter 2 presents Arendt’s political and social theory as the basis for ethics and philosophy in business and public administration. In order to understand moral blindness it is necessary to discuss the Arendt’s life and work. Arendt’s conception of radical evil and banality of evil must be considered on the basis of the development of her political and social thought. This implies a discussion of the development of Arendt’s philosophy from the critique of totalitarianism over political anthropology of the human condition to her work on the obedient bureaucratic administrator Adolf Eichmann. Finally, this is related to the learnings of Arendt’s political philosophy for philosophy of management and leadership.

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Chapter 3 analyzes the significance of Hannah Arendt’s social-political philosophy. This raises the problem of remembrance of the Holocaust where the Nazi’s committed the greatest crimes against humanity. Arendt’s discussion of the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann’s banal wickedness and ordinary personality poses the question of Nazi malice as historically unique, or only a particular expression of human mediocrity in a totalitarian system. An underlying question is also, whether we can learn anything from the Holocaust at all? Based on the discussion of the Holocaust in history and contemporary debates the chapter ends up by presenting the significance of the historical memory in order to clarify the institutional dimensions of banality of evil for research in philosophy of management. Chapter 4 presents a detailed analysis of the character of Adolf Eichmann in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. An Essay on the Banality of Evil in order to draw some conclusions for business ethics and the ethics of administration. With his thoughtlessness and ordinary appearance, Eichmann is viewed as the prototype of the evil manager and administrator. The chapter discusses the case, story, and trail of Eichmann in order to present Arendt’s discussion of Eichmann’s radical evil as the banality of evil. This is the foundation for developing an institutional approach to moral blindness in order to provide foundations for contemporary analysis of moral blindness in management and organization. The second part presents a systematic discussion of the concept of moral blindness in social theory. This section includes the following chapters (5) Interpretations of evil in modern philosophy and social theory (6) What significance for ethics and philosophy of management? (7) Moral blindness in administration, business, and surveillance society. Chapter 5 relates the different concepts of evil to the discussions of philosophy of management and corporations. The chapter discusses alternatives to the classic concept of the problem of the Theodicy about why there is evil in the world. After presenting the classical concept of evil the chapter presents three contemporary philosophical reflections on the problem of evil, including the banality of evil (Hannah Arendt), evil as a result of freedom’s choice (Jean-Paul Sartre), evil as nihilism or as unpredictable postmodern transparency (André Glucksmann and Jean Baudrillard). Finally, the chapter relates theses conceptions of the metaphysical foundations of evil to the problem of understanding evil in

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organizations in order to provide a basis for ethics and philosophy of management. Chapter 6 relates the concept of banality of evil to contemporary discussions of moral blindness in ethics, social theory, and philosophy of management. The chapter begins with a brief definition of moral blindness in the perspective of obedience in the totalitarian bureaucracy and administration. This leads to presentation of moral blindness in totalitarian ideology and of the institutional logic of the banality of evil in the social system of totalitarian society. From here, different concepts of moral blindness are presented including the ideology of discrimination, totalitarian medical eugenics, and technical rationality of the holocaust, authoritarian personality and obedience, and role-playing and production of evil. Finally, the concept of moral blindness is applied to contemporary social phenomena. Chapter 7 presents contemporary conceptions of moral blindness and banality of evil in ethics and philosophy of management. This implies an exploration of lack of ethical insight, sensibility, and ethical formulation competency in organizations, institutions, and administrations. After analyzing Arendt’s concept of moral blindness the chapter looks as moral blindness as stupidity and incompetence compensation competence. This includes focus on moral blindness, moral muteness, and moral deafness in private business and public administration. Administrative and organization evil can be considered as corporate psychopathy and unbalanced pursuit of goals. In addition, the chapter presents moral blindness in surveillance capitalism and corporate power in the digital age. The third part discusses the possibility of developing a philosophy of moral thinking and judgment in business management and administration on the basis of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. This section includes the following chapters: (8) Totalitarianism, practical reason, and judgment: Philosophical foundations for business ethics and philosophy of management (9) Perspectives for Responsibility, Moral Thinking, and Imagination in Management and Public Administration (10) Political philosophy of responsibility for democratic societies. Judgment in Politics, Management, and Administration. Chapter 8 places the concept of banality of evil and moral blindness in organizations and institutions in the broader context of Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy and social theory, which is developed in extension and concert with her analyzes of the totalitarian society. Her political and social thought is proposed as the normative foundation for her theory

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of moral blindness and thoughtlessness in business and public administration. Moreover, this approach is developed as the foundation of ethics and philosophy of management. Thus, important are the dimensions of Arendt’s political philosophy, which help to formulate an alternative to totalitarian bureaucracy and society, including political community, and political practice as well. Chapter 9 discusses Arendt’s emphasis of the political dimension of human action and it is a part of her republican political philosophy that human beings at all levels of their existence must be personally responsible and morally sensible according to critical judgment. This is necessary in order to protect humanity and human dignity in organizations, bureaucracies, and their environments. In this chapter, we will discuss the relation between responsibilities, judgment, moral thinking, and imagination in management and public administration. This chapter presents moral thinking and imagination as a necessary response to the failures of business administrators and public leaders and administrators in the context of decision-making in organizations and bureaucracies. Such problems and issues lead to a discussion of ethical formulation competency as judgment and moral thinking. Chapter 10 considers Arendt’s analysis of banality of evil and moral blindness must be considered in the perspective of political philosophy and social theory. In order to ensure the right and ethical decisions and protect human beings in organizations, administrations, and bureaucracies it is necessary to develop the capacity of moral thinking and professional judgment in business, democracy, and politics. Therefore, the chapter discusses Arendt’s view on responsible ethical and political judgment as professional judgment in corporations, administrations, and other bureaucracies. This approach to ethical and political judgment in relation to political and social systems is inspired by Immanuel Kant’s historical philosophy of judgment, which is developed as the basis for ensuring moral thinking and ethics in contemporary systems of law, politics, and economics. Finally, in the conclusion the book summarizes our conclusions regarding moral blindness and for moral thinking and judgment in organization in business and administration. Moreover, we discuss some perspectives of Arendt’s view on good evil and of social and political integration for economics, politics, and society. The most important articles and book chapters that constitute previous versions and preparatory works of the book in English language are J. D.

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Rendtorff, 2009, “Ethics, responsibility and reflective judgment—How to deal with the problem of evil in modern philosophy!” Acta Institutionis Philosophiae et Aestheticae, Vol. 24, pp. 233–247; J. D. Rendtorff, 2012, “Hannah Arendt and the law and ethics of administration: Bureaucratic evil, political thinking and reflective judgment” In Paper Series, 25th IVR world congress, law, science and technology. Frankfurt am Main: Goethe Universität, Vol. 112/2012 Series B; J. D. Rendtorff, 2014, “Risk management, banality of evil and moral blindness in organizations and corporations” In C. Luetge & J. Jauernig (Eds.), Business ethics and risk management. Springer Science + Business Media B. V., Dordrecht, pp. 45–71. Ethical economy, no. 43; J. D. Rendtorff, 2015, “Evil in organizations and corporations: The concept of moral blindness” in the polish journal Zeszyty Naukowe “Organizacja In Zarzadzanie” ˛ ´ askiej, Politechniki Sl ˛ vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 95–110; J. D. Rendtorff, 2019, “The dark side of sustainability: evil in organizations and corporations” In Philosophy of management and sustainability: Rethinking business ethics and social responsibility in sustainable development. Bingley: Emerald, pp. 143–159. In this context, we can also mention the two presentations from visits to Bard College are available on youtube: Jacob Rendtorff, 2009, Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil . Reflections on Moral Blindness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY-d_IhrPLs&list=PLYW5q HLZjOWHWGUdn-AAFPIgTMO2HpJAh&index=4 [Accessed April 15, 2020]; Lunchtime Talk with Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, 2011, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTj2c5NVTPA [Accessed April 15, 2020]. The most important articles and book chapters that constitute previous versions and preparatory works of the book in Danish language are J. D. Rendtorff, 1994, Hannah Arendt og Leo Strauss: To perspektiveringer af Immanuel Kants politiske filosofi [Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: Two perspectives on Kant’s political thought] In Harste (Ed.), Dømmekraft og Kompleksitet, Immanuel Kant om politik, æstetik og natur. Aalborg: NSU Press, pp. 149–167; C. B. Laustsen & Rendtorff J. D. (2002), Arendt, Eichmann og det ondes banalitet [Arendt, Eichman and the banality of evil] In C. B. Laustsen & J. D. Rendtorff (Eds.), Ondskabens banalitet. Om Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann i Jerusalem, København: Museum Tusculanums forlag; C. B. Laustsen & Rendtorff J. D. (2002), En human verden? En introduktion til Hannah Arendts filosofi [A human world. An Introduction to Hannah Arendt’s philosophy] In C. B. Laustsen & J. D. Rendtorff (Eds.), Ondskabens banalitet. Om Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, København:

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Museum Tusculanums forlag; J. D. Rendtorff, 2003, ‘Dømmekraftens historiske ansvar: Hannah Arendt og vores opfattelse af Holocaust’ [The historical responsibility of judgment. Hannah Arendt and our conception of the Holocaust] Slagmark, no. 37, pp. 107–125; J. D. Rendtorff, 2003, ‘Nogle opfattelser af det onde i nyere kontinentalfilosofi’ [Some conceptions of evil in contemporary continental philosophy] Psyke & Logos, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 107–125; J. D. Rendtorff, 2007, ‘Dømmekraftens tænker: Hannah Arendts politiske teori og retsfilosofi’ [The thinker of judgment. Hannah Arendt’s political theory and philosophy of law] Retfærd: Nordisk Juridisk Tidsskrift, vol. 30, no. 3/118, pp. 3–16; J. D. Rendtorff 2019, Indledning: Totalitarismen og Arendts politiske filosofi [“Introduction. Totalitarianism and Arendt’s political Philosophy” In Hannah Arendt Antisemitismen: Totalitarismens Oprindelse 1 (Dansk revideret udgave udg., pp. 7–35). Aarhus: Klim]. I would like to finish this introduction by mentioning the important movie Hannah Arendt from 2013, directed by Margarethe von Trotta with Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt. The film gives an important dramatic presentation of the debate around Arendt’s coverage of the Eichmann trail and the book about the banality of evil. The movie is an important introduction to the Hannah Arendt’s philosophy and I would recommend the reader to watch the film to understand the context of Arendt’s political and social theory. In the film, it becomes clear how Eichmann was incapable to think and consider things from the point of view of the other human being. Moreover, Eichmann identified with his role as a typical bureaucrat in a system and he refused to be a human being with personal responsibility. In her portrait of Eichmann, Arendt was ironical and arrogant. She laughed at Eichmann and considered him as a clown, an impression that was only intensified by the absurdity of the trail against him, where it was impossible to regard him as a satanic evil demon since he was so ordinary and ridiculous. Nevertheless, the film also illustrates the controversy around Arendt’s concept of banality, where in particular Jewish intellectual were critical toward the idea of banality of evil and of the idea that the totalitarian society links victims and perpetrators in a diabolic power system where victims are forced to comply to avoid greater evil. Thus, the book will on this basis discuss the implications of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy for an ethical philosophy of responsibility for democratic societies. Arendt emphasizes the political dimension of human action and it is a part of her republican political philosophy that human

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beings at all levels of their existence must be personally responsible and morally sensible according to critical judgment. This is necessary in order to protect humanity and human dignity in organizations, bureaucracies, and their environments. It is here important to develop judgment and moral thinking and moral imagination in relation to business, political action, and administration. The concepts of judgment, ethical principles, and moral imagination are elements of ethics of administration that could overcome moral blindness as humanistic management in business and public administration.

References Jørgensen, K., & Rendtorff, J. D. (2018). Patient participation in mental health care—Perspectives of healthcare professionals: An integrative review. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(2), 490–501. https://doi.org/10. 1111/scs.12531. Jørgensen, K., Rendtorff, J. D., & Holen, M. (2018). How patient participation is constructed in mental health care: A grounded theory study. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(4), 1359–1370. Mattsson, J., & Rendtorff, J. D. (2006). E-marketing ethics: A theory of value priorities. International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 3(1), 35–47. Pedersen, J. S., & Rendtorff, J. D. (2004). Value-based management in local public organizations: A Danish Experience. Cross Cultural Management, 11(2). Rendtorff, J. D. (1998). The Second international conference about bioethics and biolaw: European principles in bioethics and biolaw. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 1–4, 271–274. Rendtorff, J. D. (2002). Basic ethical principles in European bioethics and biolaw: Autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability—Towards a foundation of bioethics and biolaw. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 5, 235–244. Rendtorff, J. D. (2003). Bioethics in Denmark. In J. F. Peppin, & M. J. Cherry (Eds.), The annals of bioethics: Regional perspectives in bioethics (pp. 209–224). The Netherlands, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Rendtorff, J. D. (2008). The limitations and accomplishments of autonomy as a basic principle in bioethics and biolaw. In D. N. Weisstub, & G. D. P. Pintos (Eds.), Autonomy and human rights in health care: An international perspective (Vol. 36, pp. 75–87). International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine. The Netherlands: Springer.

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Rendtorff, J. D. (2009). Basic ethical principles applied to service industries. Service Industries Journal, 29(1), 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/026 42060802116404. Rendtorff, J. D. (2010a). Philosophy of management: Concepts of management from the perspectives of systems theory, phenomenological hermeneutics, corporate religion and existentialism. In P. Koslowski (Ed.), Elements of a philosophy of management and organization (pp. 19–47). Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Heidelberg: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2010b). Power and principle in the market place: On ethics and economics. London: Ashgate. Rendtorff, J. D. (2011a). Business ethics, strategy and organizational integrity: The importance of integrity as a basic principle of business ethics that contributes to better economic performance. In C. Wankel & A. StachowiczStanusch (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching ethics in business and management education (pp. 274–288). New York: IGI global. https://doi. org/10.4018/978-1-61350-510-6.ch016. Rendtorff, J. D. (2011b). Institutionalization of corporate ethics and social responsibility programs in firms. In K. Buhmann, L. Roseberry & M. Morsing (Eds.), Corporate social and human rights responsibilities: Global, legal and management perspectives (pp. 244–266). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rendtorff, J. D. (2011c). Corporate Citizenship as Organizational Integrity. In I. Pies & P. Koslowski (Eds.), Corporate citizenship and new governance: The political role of corporations (pp. 59–91). Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, and New York: Springer. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Rendtorff, J. D. (2012). Business ethics. In R. Chadwick (Ed.), Encyclopedia of applied ethics (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 365–372). San Diego: Academic Press. Rendtorff, J. D. (2013a). Basic concepts of philosophy of management and corporations. In C. Luetge (Ed.), Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics (pp. 1361–1386). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, and London: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2013b). Philosophical theories of management and corporations. In C. Luetge (Ed.), Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics (pp. 1409–1432). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, and London: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2013c). Recent debates in philosophy of management. In C. Luetge (Ed.), Handbook of the philosophical foundations of business ethics (pp. 1433–1457). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, and London: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2013d). The history of the philosophy of management and corporations. In C. Luetge (Ed.), Handbook of the philosophical foundations

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of business ethics (pp. 1387–1408). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, and London: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2014a). European Perspectives. In H. A. M. J. ten Have & B. Gordijn (Eds.), Handbook of global bioethics (pp. 293–310). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, and London: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2014b). French philosophy and social theory: A perspective for ethics and philosophy of management. Ethical Economy, No. 49. Springer Netherlands: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2014c). Risk management, banality of evil and moral blindness in organizations and corporations. In C. Luetge & J. Jauernig (Eds.), Business ethics and risk management (pp. 45–71). Ethical Economy, No. 43. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2015a). Case studies, ethics, philosophy and liberal learning for the management profession. Journal of Management Education, 39(1), 36–55. Rendtorff, J. D. (2015b). The need for a theoretical reexamination of sustainability in economics and business. In G. Aras (Ed.), Sustainable markets for sustainable business: A global perspective for business and financial markets (pp. 41–58). Finance, governance and sustainability: Challenges to theory and practice. Farnham: Gower Publishing. Rendtorff, J. D. (2015c). Integrity, Concept of. In H. ten Have (Ed.), Encyclopedia of global bioethics (pp. 1–7). Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2. Rendtorff, J. D. (2016). Review of Le tournant de la théorie critique, Collection Solidarité et société, Éditions Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2015. Journal of Classical Sociology, 16(3), 305–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X1 6646468. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017a). Cosmopolitan business ethics: Towards a global ethos of management. Finance, Governance and Sustainability: Challenges to Theory and Practice Series. London: Routledge. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017b). Creating shared value as institutionalization of ethical responsibilities of the business corporation as a good corporate citizen in society. In J. Wieland (Ed.), Creating shared value: Concepts, experience, criticism (pp. 119–139). Ethical Economy, No. 52. s.l.: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017c). Perspectives on philosophy of management and business ethics: Including a special section on business and human rights. Ethical Economy, No. 51. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017d). The Danish Model of Corporate Citizenship: The Novo Group. In E. O’Higgins & L. Zsolnai (Ed.), Progressive business models: Creating sustainable and pro-social enterprise (pp. 221–240). Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business in Association with Future Earth. London

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and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31958804-9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58804-9_10. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019a). Sustainable development goals and progressive business models for economic transformation. Local Economy, 34(6), 510–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269094219882270. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019b). The concept of business legitimacy: Corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate governance as essential elements of ethical business legitimacy. In D. Crowther, S. Seifi & T. Wond (Eds.), Responsibility and governance: The twin pillars of sustainability (pp. 45–60). Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Switzerland: Springer VS. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019c). The honest businessperson: Cosmopolitan theory and cultural praxis (The Example of Denmark and Scandinavia). In C. Lütge & C. Strosetzki (Eds.), The honorable merchant —Between modesty and risk-taking: Intercultural and literary aspects (pp. 41–53). Ethical Economy, No. 56. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019d). Philosophy of management and sustainability: Rethinking business ethics and social responsibility in sustainable development. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Rendtorff, J. D., & Kemp, P. (2009). The barcelona declaration: Towards an integrated approach to basic ethical principles. Synthesis Philosophica, 23(2), 239–251. Rendtorff, J. D., & Mattsson, J. (2012). Ethics in the bank internet encounter: An explorative study. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 10(1), 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211210649.

PART I

Foundations and History of Theory of Moral Blindness

CHAPTER 2

For the Love for the World. The Banality of Evil in the Light of Arendt’s Political and Social Theory

2.1

Introduction

Hannah Arendt is undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers in political philosophy, and she had the best conditions to provide an in-depth analysis of the problem of totalitarianism and evil. This is not least due to her own experiences, which meant that she most seriously had to deal with the issue of a totalitarian political and social order. Arendt was born in Hanover in 1906 by Jewish parents and grew up later in Königsberg. Her Jewish background meant that she came to feel totalitarianism on her own body. After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, she had to live for over 18 years as a stateless person in exile until she became a US citizen. Arendt’s analyzes of the evil of Nazi bureaucracy and Eichmann are thus characterized by personal experience of being Jew and refugee. At the same time, she is Eichmann’s diametrically opposed. While Eichmann is the prototype of the mindless clichéd petty bourgeois, an obedient and authoritarian Nazi, Arendt is the independent, critically reflected Jewish intellectual. Despite living much of her growing life in direct confrontation with evil and meaningless terror and in her theoretical work dealing with the origins of totalitarianism and evil, Arendt never gives up the love of the world and the belief in the humanity and dignity of human beings. Therefore, it is not wrong to refer to Hannah Arendt’s political and social philosophy as classical “republican,” since she considers the political community as a unit of free and autonomous citizens who strive on a democratic basis to create the common political community (res publica). © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_2

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Arendt’s republicanism focuses on political rights, and she criticizes the societies that are based on the sharp divide between rulers and citizens. This regime does not live up to her demands for freedom, equality, and respect for individuality. Such a democratic-republican political community is in sharp contrast to the totalitarian state machine, where citizens are no longer free, but are disappearing in bureaucracy and hierarchy. At the same time, Arendt’s philosophy can be described as classical European, with Jewish elements, despite the Eichmann book being sharply criticized by Jewish circles. Her approach to political philosophy contains an aristocratic element (Villa, 1999, p. 155), which is justified by her Nietzsche-inspired scorn for the mob and skepticism about the inability of the masses to act politically and their weakness to be seduced by demagogic dictators in the propaganda of totalitarianism. As “Political Thought,” Arendt’s political philosophy in its method can be separated from both empirical political science and sociology, and at the same time, it is critical of the philosophical tradition from Plato to Hegel and Marx (Canovan, 1974, p. 110). Arendt believes that this tradition of defining the human being as a rational being or vice versa with Marx as a working animal has not captured the essence of being. In contrast, political thinking is based on human freedom and dignity and humanity’s capacity to create a human world. Contrary to totalitarianism, Arendt thus defends the European humanist tradition. She incorporates aspects of Greek and Roman culture and humanistic thinking to justify her philosophy. Arendt was fascinated by the American Revolution, where freedom thinkers such as Thomas Paine, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson as “The Founding Fathers” founded a democratic society based on freedom and common sense. This chapter presents my research on Arendt’s philosophy based on my original chapter on Arendt’s political philosophy in a book on the banality of evil edited together with Carsten Bagge Laustsen (Laustsen & Rendtorff, 2002, pp. 27–61). In this chapter, giving an overview of Arendt’s philosophy as the basis for understanding ethics in business and public administration, I will initially propose a thematic basis for understanding the banality of evil in Arendt’s social and political philosophy as a development of my research on business ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d), values and ethics (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012) and philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). This is

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the basis for considering Arendt’s concepts as a framework for understanding evil in organizations. I think that it is wrong to regard Eichmann in Jerusalem, as a detached work without significance for the totality of Arendt’s philosophy. This must now be shown by discussing Arendt’s life and work in close connection with her conception of totalitarianism and the banality of evil. We will in this chapter show how the criticism of Nazism and of Eichmann’s banality should be read in the light of the book Origins of Totalitarianism, and that this criticism was possible only from her Republican political theory and humanistic view of humanity, which is most clearly formulated in her masterwork The Human Condition. This was the reason why Arendt could overcome absolute evil by seeing it as a “banality” alien to the human condition. In addition, I will discuss the influence that Eichmann in Jerusalem had on Arendt’s later writing. Moreover, I will discuss the critical reception of Arendt’s theses in contemporary times and discuss the scientific Arendt reception following her death in 1975. In conclusion, I will present the learnings of Arendt’s political philosophy for philosophy of management and leadership.

2.2 Rebellion Against Totalitarianism as the Radical Evil It is Arendt’s merit in Eichmann in Jerusalem to focus on the interaction between victims and executioners in a general atmosphere of thoughtless obedience as the structural element of the Holocaust. Arendt believed that, on the basis of a totalitarian power system, it was a coincidence of a series of events and interactions between agents in a series of causal structures that was the real background to the genocide. However, Arendt does not completely reject the ideological factor and regard the Holocaust as the result of uncontrolled events, since she attributes Eichmann’s personality, i.e., the banality, cynicism, and moral thoughtlessness of the Nazis as essential for the execution of the genocides. The originality of her analysis is to attach central importance to the personalities of the people involved to understand the character of totalitarianism. Arendt is fundamentally inspired here by Raul Hilberg’s famous work The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), which problematizes Holocaust research, which claimed that Die Endlösung was the result of a deliberate ideological policy and a direct, written order from Hitler’s side (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 71). Arendt’s thinking, however, does not directly contradict Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Goldhagen, 1996), who believed that the Germans carried a great hatred of the Jews, as she emphasized the importance of nationalism and ideology

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to totalitarianism. Arendt claimed that the Jews should have been actively fighting the Nazi isolation and evacuation policy much earlier, so sending six million Jews to the concentration camps would have been far more difficult. In describing the case against Eichman and the banality of evil, Arendt shows how the implementation of the Holocaust presupposed a well-functioning bureaucratic apparatus with obedient soldiers and officials like Eichmann, who executed their orders without questioning them. This view is characterized by Arendt’s personal destiny and actions. Her Jewish origins were not without influence on her work, but at the same time, she occupies a special position vis-à-vis the Jewish people, as she was one of the sharpest critics of Zionist politics, doomed prophecy, and Jewish leaders in general. However, Arendt’s fate could not help but relate to the Jewish question, which already in her youth influenced her and became central to her political thinking. At the same time, Arendt’s position was characterized by a critical rebellion against all kinds of political rulers who would push their power over people. She understood herself as a kind of critical “pariah,” both to the established community, but also to the Jews. It is not without reason, therefore, that Hannah Arendt has been compared to the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, who was one of her heroes. It is important to read Arendt’s philosophy in light of her Jewish background. She herself has repeatedly emphasized that the question of Judaism was a fundamental aspect of her thinking (Bernstein, 1996a, p. xii). However, as “pariah” Arendt’s philosophy cannot be reduced to Jewish philosophy at all. Just as it is also difficult to classify her within the traditional contradiction between liberal or conservative political thinkers. Understanding Arendt as “Jewish pariah” expresses her disagreement both with “les parvenus,” i.e., the Jews who would assimilate themselves with the national citizenship of the countries where they were in exile, and with the Zionists who would create an independent Jewish state. Arendt believed that it was wrong not to be aware of her responsibility as an outsider in order to thereby critically judge people’s social and political life. Arendt started in 1924 at the University of Berlin, but later went to Marburg, Heidelberg, and Freiburg. During her studies, she was also influenced by neo-Kantianism that characterized the German university environment of the time. She soon began to follow the lectures of Martin Heidegger, who presented his main work Sein und Zeit (1927). Arendt

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was inspired by his philosophy of time, but distanced herself from his historicism. Still, she had a love affair with Heidegger, however badly seen by Heidegger’s wife Elfriede, and when Heidegger later became a Nazi, the breach was necessary and inevitable. His thinking, however, remained essential to her philosophy. She did not believe that his Nazism encompassed his entire philosophy, but rather that Heidegger was the “mindless philosopher,” marked by a “strange moral blindness of theory” and she compares him to the Greek philosopher Thales who fell into a well because he was walking around speculating, making a young practical girl (Arendt!) to laugh out loud. Arendt early criticized Heidegger’s philosophy for being a loveless selfish thinking that had a cold relationship with the world. At the same time, she accompanied her friend, philosopher Hans Jonas, to lectures with theologian Rudolf Bultmann. In 1929, she defended her doctoral dissertation on the concept of love at Augustin, highlighting human life affirmation and love for the world. In this work, Arendt distinguishes between Augustine’s perception of love for God and love between human beings. She emphasizes the importance of love for existence and already makes love for the world central to understanding human conditions. Arendt can here be said to be inspired by the philosopher of existence Karl Jaspers, who at that time taught in Heidelberg, and later made the concept of “loving struggle” central in his system of philosophy. Love contrasts with the worldly violence and therefore becomes a central basis for Arendt’s confrontation with totalitarianism. The friendship with Jaspers lasted a lifetime and led to a philosophically instructive and exciting correspondence that, among other things also addresses the problem of the banality of evil (Arendt & Jaspers, 1992). Later, Arendt traveled to Berlin with her first husband Günther Stern, who later changed the name to Günther Anders and who also was a philosopher and worked on similar themes as Hannah Arendt. In Berlin, Arendt became increasingly interested in political themes. At the same time, she was working on a book about Rahel Verhagen, a Jewish woman (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 92). This work was about a Jewish woman’s awareness of her own identity. Arendt was skeptical of the idea of a Jewish race or of a special Jewish identity, but she believed that when attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew (Bernstein, 1996a, p. 28). Even if you are a pariah, you cannot escape the Jewish status granted by existing society. Already at that time problems of Jewish identity, culture, and Zionism were present. Arendt believed that the Jews should not be

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suppressed by the anti-Semites but that they should actively revolt. She confirmed this view by actively handing out flyers in 1933 to fight the Nazis. She was even caught by the police, but successfully escaped from prison. This made her realize that she had to flee from Nazi Germany. In 1933–1941, therefore, Arendt went into exile in Paris, where she worked for a rich Jewish family, the Roschild-family, and was friends with many exile intellectuals, including Walter Benjamin. Here she met her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, who was also a philosopher and, as an ironic Socratic, critically discussed his wife’s works with her. He obviously had a great influence on Arendt’s philosophy and her political thinking, although he did not write much himself. It was during his stay in Paris that Arendt’s radical political thinking was shaped. However, she distanced herself from French Hegelianism of Kojève, and among the existentialists it was only Albert Camus’ philosophy of rebellion that really influenced her (Berstein, 1996a, p. 7). Arendt followed developments in Nazi Germany from Paris. She now insisted even more strongly that the Jews had to resist and continued to criticize the Jewish leaders. She wrote an article in which it was emphasized that now it was necessary to realize that Hitler had declared war on all the Jews and therefore had to respond again with the same means (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 146). Arendt was also against the ghetto politics of the Nazis, which some Jews voluntarily agreed to. At the same time, she continued to research on the Jewish issue, among others by reading about the French Dreyfus Affair. When France was occupied, Arendt particularly experienced totalitarianism on her own body and this made her even more convinced of the necessity of rebellion and revolution. As a Jewish woman, she was sent to the French labor camp Gurs, which had been set up by Eichmann’s SS soldiers in collaboration with the Vichy regime, and whose prisoners were later sent to Auschwitz (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 155). However, she managed to escape miraculously and almost by chance, and she joined her husband in a southern French city. They traveled by ship to New York, where they later came to teach at the New School of Social Research in New York. As she gained experience of what it means to be stateless, Arendt’s meeting with the concentration camp prompted her to emphasize that the Jewish issue could only be solved by giving the Jews equal rights as everyone else. Her perceived Jewish’ struggle for freedom was a part of a more comprehensive, universal human struggle for the rights of all citizens to live a free life and to be respected as free people.

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In the United States, Arendt was intrigued by the Republican freedom and equality-based democracy that was quite different from what she knew from Germany. She went on to argue for the formation of a Jewish army to take up the fight against the Germans, but her efforts were without result. Arendt became friends with many of the Jewish intellectuals, but even though she had contact with Jewish militias, her criticism of the idea of a Jewish state that, in her opinion, would simply lead to “reverse racism” meant that she was outside the orthodox Zionist environments. She felt that states should not be based on races but instead consist of free and equal citizens united in a mutual respect for freedom and community. Arendt was also skeptical of the theories of the Jews as an isolated scapegoat that was needed to keep society together. At the same time, she rejected the racial explanations of the Jewish question, which she believed could only be understood as a political problem. The Jews’ responsibility for rebelling was not just grounded in their own sacrificial position, but it was a political and moral responsibility to actively fight the discrimination that all other minority groups could also face (Bernstein, 1996a, p. 58). In the United States, Arendt and her husband followed the development and ending of the war. They heard about the Nuremberg processes and were given information about the concentration camps, which were so radically evil that they did not even think they could exist. This motivated Arendt’s interest in writing a book on the radical or absolutely evil phenomena such as anti-Semitism, racism, and imperialism. In 1945, Arendt wrote that the problem of evil would become one of the biggest problems in postwar Europe (Bernstein, 1996b, p. 12). The first major work The Origins of Totalitarianism of 1951 can be seen as a contribution to this issue, as it is a major attempt to understand the emergence of modern totalitarian systems, based on the question of how “it could happen,” as everybody perceived it to be totally unreal. In addition, Arendt continuously repeated that “it should never have happened” since it was something that absolutely not could be morally justified. The answer is that totalitarianism must be understood as a modern political phenomenon that is essentially different from earlier types of tyranny and despotism, since “everything,” that is, any terror, “is possible.” Arendt strives first and foremost to explain Nazism, but since she develops a general theory of totalitarian systems, the book also includes Stalinism. According to Arendt, totalitarianism is first and foremost characterized by its rational bureaucratic structure, where technical rationality and

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calculation are used to realize an irrational ideology, often based on antiSemitism or racism, which stands on the brink of our common sense (Arendt, 1964 [1951], p. 3). According to Arendt, Nazism and Stalism were based on a mechanical interaction between executioners and victims who felt that they obeyed greater powers than their own will. The total domination is to dissolve the freedom of humankind in diversity in a governmental entity, as if the entire society were merely a large individual (Canovan, 1974, p. 24). Totalitarianism considers events as determined by fundamental laws in history and nature justified by ideology. Instead of real enemies, a number of fictional enemies are created, such as the Jews, which form the basis of those ideologies. Totalitarianism has nightmarish character when it uses the technical rationality to manipulate people and society according to pre-established doctrines with the instruments of systematic murder and ideologically organized madness as means to realize a fixed concept of dictatorship. This is fully accomplished through the creation of a constant uncertainty. The terror creates a fundamental uncertainty and insecurity between individuals in totalitarianism, where the elites sanction their power by the use of the secret police. In the totalitarian movement, the criminal leaders have succeeded in organizing ordinary people who, by virtue of the dissolution of civil society, have become atomized anonymous individuals organized in a mob of manipulation. The population is seduced by the intellectuals of totalitarianism, and it is disciplined as an amorphous mass of atomized individuals. There is an alliance between the mob and the elites (Arendt, 1964 [1951], p. 326). The individual human beings are in the lonely crowd of totalitarianism massively squeezed together, destroying the intersubjective space of deliberation between them. Their gaze is rigidly directed at the leader, and they are only something to each other by virtue of this identification. The leaders manipulate the masses by means of ideological lies and fictional propaganda based on the fact that each human being in the mass has lost their sense of reality. In the lonely mass the human being no longer lives in a common real world with the opportunity to act together in a community based on mutual freedom, judgment and common sense. Concentration camps and death camps are essential to establishing total power for totalitarian leaders. They are the most characteristic feature of the radical evil of totalitarianism (Arendt, 1964 [1951], p. 441). The function of the camps is, in Arendt’s pretentious words, to render people

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superfluous and meaningless. They are about depriving the outcasts of all humanity and dignity. In Origins of Totalitarianism, totalitarianism is described as “the radically evil.” In the concentration camps, radical evil is an unprecedented phenomenon, and as a phenomenon beyond human reason and imagination. Arendt argues that the radical evil of the totalitarian regime consisted in its attempt to assert itself over the human nature, and consequently in its attempt to shape the human being following the nihilistic will to power of dictatorship. It is an evil that could not be explained within the framework of Western European philosophy, which has hitherto understood evil as the individual’s subjective urge to do evil for its own gain. Where it is possible to make some sense to the fact that some SA officers may be sadistically evil as they feel perverse enjoyment of the pain, the SS officers, such as Eichmann’s conscientious and rational selfunderstanding, appear incomprehensible to us. Arendt uses the term “the banality of evil” to characterize Eichmann’s personality, but there is not necessarily a critique of this position articulated in the work on totalitarianism. It was Eichmann’s banal wickedness—his thoughtlessness that made the radical evil—the Holocaust and the Nazis’ attempt to assert themselves over human nature—possible. We thus find in the Origins of totalitarianism a precursor to the description of Eichmann. Totalitarianism is exactly poor in thinking. The radical evil of totalitarianism implies the extreme evil of the banality of evil. The collapse of the class system and the rise of modern mass man constitute both the possibility, cause, and effect of totalitarianism. Origins of Totalitarianism is, as I said, not only an empirical description of the totalitarian societies in Germany and Russia, but it is also Arendt’s attempt to understand the origin of all forms of totalitarianism. She argues that totalitarianism was made possible on the basis of a number of complex historical events. Arendt mentions the dissolution of the relatively judicial and economically stable European national-state entities of the nineteenth century, with the development of imperial colonial rule as a result. This meant that it became more difficult for individuals to understand themselves as citizens or members of a class with the unfortunate consequence that an ideologically imbued fiction such as the race affiliation could become more important as a unit of identification. Arendt demonstrates how the Nazis’ hatred can be understood from these events. In the nineteenth century, Jews were part of the nation states (Arendt, 1964 [1951], p. 11). They often played a central role in state

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machinery, such as bankers, bureaucrats, or business people. Therefore, they also became a symbol of society’s corruption and the threat to the state in, e.g., Germany and France. At the same time, imperialism was breeding ground for rising racism. It was built on power expansion with no meaning other than to gain greater dominance over other “inferior” population groups on earth, which opened to a tribal mentality identifying with its ethnic population. Arendt believes that the cruel imperialist violence in Africa that considered Africans redundant and inferior was a precursor to Nazi total domination. Here, the fear of the unknown and the reaction to the wild and uncivilized was breeding ground for the unimaginable violence. Arendt highlights the English author Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness as an illustration of this (Arendt, 1964 [1951], p. 189). Here, an expedition travels up the Congo River into the depths of the jungle to look for a military man who has been captured and created a reign of terror among the wild. In it, they encounter the absolute and radical evil, personified by Colonel Kurtz, who lives only to make the impossible real in his terrorist regime. Imperialism and racism enabled the Nazis’ alliance between the elite and the mob to create the fiction of “the German people,” the Aryans, a select race with a historical mission. This totalitarianism must necessarily be based on an ideological anti-Semitism that legitimized total expansion of power. Using a rational bureaucracy and military machine was to create “Lebensraum” for the German people; which happened by depriving the Jews of their rights, dignity, and humanity. However, Arendt is aware of the difference between the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. She distinguishes between the arbitrariness of Stalinism and the rule of Nazism by law. A law that was good enough to be manipulated, but it still gave the system some kind of transparency. Terrorism in Nazism aimed at specific groups and not as in Stalinism against anyone and everyone. In Nazism, it got its most extreme expression in concentration camps, where the inmates had to live in an eternal fear for their lives. Along with starvation and hard physical labor, terror intended to rob the Jews of all humanity. They were reduced to animals, guided only by one instinct: survival. In other words, Arendt portrays totalitarianism as the total destruction of human freedom and spontaneity, of human ability to act and to build a world together. Totalitarianism deprives the excluded groups of their state affiliation and the right to “have rights.” This deprives the right of

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human beings to have a place in the world and makes the individual an abstract superfluous thing. Arendt’s analyzes in Origins of Totalitarianism were almost hermetically sealed, and it was difficult to see the contours of an opportunity to overcome a dreadful situation or glimpse a critical potential. Arendt, therefore, is slowly moving away from these analyzes of the totally repressed individual, and emphasizes that, with the exception of the concentration camps, there is always a space for human action and reflection. Arendt highlights here two aspects that remained pervasive in her philosophy: partly the emphasis on the common world and especially on a living political life, and partly inspired by Kant and by human mental faculties. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, two of these consciousness-raising skills are central, namely, the ability to think and convict.

2.3 The Human Condition: The Love of the World The Origins of totalitarianism made Arendt known throughout America and later in Europe. Then she published a stream of political–philosophical works. In 1958, The Human Condition came out, offering a yes to human life, as the title indicates the subject is the human condition and the message is that humanity after all is fit for life in society and history. Faced with the radical evil of totalitarianism, useless, bizarre utilitarianism, and the destruction of every humanity, this work aims to explore the possibilities of creating a nontotalitarian universe. One could say that Arendt turns to the classical tradition of political theory, to go beyond the hell of totalitarianism and return to humanity. Arendt finds in the public political space of discussion and dignity a counter-image to the loneliness of totalitarianism, technical murders, and the reduction of people to work machines and abstract figures. Language and culture express the common human conditions that show up in historical traditions of past cultures. The Human Condition can at the same time be regarded as a description of the human experience and as a tribute to the human dignity, which totalitarian society would eliminate. Arendt is critical of the theories of human nature in the Western philosophical tradition, which has focused far too much on the philosophical ideal of theoretical contemplation and in defining man as a sensible animal, has underestimated many of the features that Arendt believes are central for the human condition and which she wants to draw attention to. Arendt is aware that an objective and essentialist concept

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of human nature cannot be given, since all human beings are unique individuals while participating in humanity as a species. Arendt emphasizes the collective character of the human life horizon as characterized by language, action, and politics. She points out that the historically sustained human experience is characterized by three basic activities that define the human condition: labor, work, and action Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 22). These basic activities are seen in the light of the human capacity to form a lasting and stable political community. Arendt emphasizes the ancient ideal of “vita activa,” as an expression of the common human living conditions that form the basis of historical action. According to Arendt, the vita activa was the term for the active, public life of the free citizen in the city-state of “agora” (the marketplace), before the philosophical tradition of Socrates and Plato looked down on human action and practice and celebrated a life of eternal contemplation of ideas of truth, beauty, and justice. Vita activa expressed the free space of discussion and action that separated the Greeks from barbarians and tyrannical communities (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 12). At the same time, the vita activa took place in a public space, a realm of freedom that was in principle separate from the economic necessity of work and home, which slaves and women stood for. The Human Condition is characterized by a nostalgic yearning for the Greek city-state, where free and equal, aristocratic citizens who did not have to worry about the common necessities of democratic community had to make the political decisions. Arendt believes that humanity and human dignity are created in such a vita activa that expresses an authentic human experience of community. However, Arendt does not view all human activities as equally important. She is critical of Marxism, which, in rejecting the philosophical ideal of contemplation, has highlighted labor as the basic feature of a philosophical anthropology. For Arendt this is an unacceptable reductionist attitude, since labor expresses only the biological necessity. It is about man’s vital need to survive. It is an activity that human beings have in common with the animals. Human reproduction in the work life is maintained and developed in endless reproduction. Economically, labor refers to the production of objects that can help man to survive in the fight against nature. Nevertheless, these consumer goods do not necessarily bring human beings beyond the necessity of nature, but bind them to consumption and to their biological needs.

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Here, the work immediately expresses a more human activity. The work contrasts with labor, utility, and consumption (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 136). The work testifies to the processing and transformation of nature that elevates man above biological necessity. The work has also been highlighted as a defining feature of human beings, as it actively creates nature into culture. Arendt highlights the craft as an example of a work that transcends biological necessity. Nevertheless, she is also critical of industrial production, where the rational engineer called “Homo Faber” no longer creates cultural works, but falls back into labor and consumption that are not very different from biological metabolism. According to Arendt, the true work should express lasting human conditions that extend beyond necessity into the realm of art and freedom, thus creating conditions culture and civilization. In this sense, the craftwork expresses the most noble in man and becomes the essence of vita activa. However, it is above all human action activities that characterize the human condition. The Human Condition maps out the enduring structures of human practice. It is about how people who can think of eternity but are not immortal can help to make themselves and the human world eternal (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 175). In her phenomenological analysis, Arendt highlights the dynamics of human action, which are characterized by initiative, creating something and beginning agian, expressed in the concept of revolution. The innovative action expresses the ability of humanity to begin something new. It testifies to the unexpected and the changeable. Another essential feature of action is diversity (plurality). Plurality implies a respect for the individual as inviolable and unique. Arendt emphasizes that every human being is capable of acting in relation to others in an individual and unique way. Action takes place in a complex interaction between people who, in line with conversation and communication, is unpredictable and cannot be conceptually predetermined. Humanly active life can be expressed as an interplay between innovation, newness, action and events, freedom, individuality, plurality, and diversity. The unpredictability and freedom of the action are at once the terms and conditions of politics. The initiative institutes a process that helps making events that create a human history and a free society. Arendt sees vita activa as the space for human self-realization. In the political space, the self-acting human being is realized in open democratic discussion (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 188). Democracy is fragile and very strong at the same time, since it is not based on a totalitarian power, but on

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the agreement of free citizens on practice. The totalitarian state is not a human society, but a society of necessity, based on utility, violence and the animal bestiality of the totalitarian and violent executioner. All citizens participate freely in the political debate and contribute to the creation of joint works of culture and eternity. The good state cannot be constructed or fabricated, as a sensible ideal state, as Plato and other totalitarian thinkers have tried. The only legitimacy of sovereignty is a free decision-making on joint action. No reference to metaphysical systems or natural law can provide an absolute justification for politics. Vita activa, as such, is precisely the negation of the totalitarian state. However, Vita activa is an extremely fragile political institution that can be destroyed at any time. The only guarantor of this institution is successful political action. It is Arendt’s merit to emphasize that the preconditions for the successful political space of deliberation and action are that a diversity of opinions can be united in a common power. Only through real plurality, can one safeguard against the dissolution of democracy and avoid turning authority and communication into tyranny, mediocrity, and demagoguery. Arendt thus highlights the importance of language for political practice. There is a close connection between action, thinking, and language. While totalitarian society is characterized by speechlessness, democracy is built around the fruitful dialogue of creating and strengthening the eternal common world. The political debate in a space of disagreement and diversity is essential to reach a common goal and act jointly (action in concert). Arendt points out that one acts when one uses the language to convince others to coordinate actions in order to create a common world in stable institutions that reinforce humanity’s earthly subsistance, i.e., an honor that comes from glorious deeds of the good state in a historical process. Arendt emphasizes that personal identity is formed by the individual acting jointly with other people (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 181). The semantics of action mean that one never acts alone, but practice is the result of human interaction. History must be understood as an adaptation of events in a temporal context that is different from the biological and physical processes. Arendt points out that history is created as a narrative coordination of events in a meaningful context that constitutes an organized memory of the common institutions. The just society is thus created by the common actions of men in the historical process.

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However, this description of an authentic political community should not be seen as a utopian idealization. By introducing a distinction between power and violence, Arendt manages in The Human Condition to make sense of political power without ending in a totalitarian concept of the state. Vita activa is described as a discursive conflict universe of mutual discussion as essential for democratic politics. For Arendt, real power exists only as a result of the joint action where one gains power because a number of people, after a good debate, convince each other and decide to act jointly to make a political decision. Violence, on the other hand, does not recognize such power, but uses physical means that go beyond the power of persuasion (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 133). In contrast, violence is based on a speechless, raw physical force, coercion, and an instrumental terror that completely disregards the self-will of man. In this context, Arendt distinguishes between authority and domination (Herrschaft) in the definition of the relationship between power and violence. Domination is the wrong interpretation of power that excludes vita activa. Totalitarian domination expresses an anonymous mastery in which decisions are enforced without common discussion, as it was the case, for example, at the Wannsee Conference, which was a meeting of Nazi officials preparing the final solution of killing the Jews, where the rational bureaucracy was to carry out an already predetermined order that no one had language to question. In contrast to this speechlessness and moral thoughtlessness, democratic political debate is precisely characterized by an acceptance of plurality and conflict as a constitutive and legitimizing feature of the political community. In The Human Condition, Arendt points out how modern society opens up the possibility of the emergence of totalitarianism by flattening the conditions of political and consequently humanity’s ability to live a human life. In modernity, vita activa collapses with the industrialization and emergence of mass society. The consumer society has led to a cultural crisis in which active life has disappeared and man has become anonymous and lonely. In modern society, public life has collapsed, and humanity is realized primarily in the private intimate sphere. For Arendt this means that humanity has been degraded to animal necessity and thus lives outside the world. Instead of thinking about the common good and striving to create eternal works, a human being lives in a subjective and private world, where he or she works to survive and consume. In the industrial community, the relationship between labor, work, and action is reversed. Today,

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labor is glorified, while in ancient times it was considered so degrading to work that one let the slaves over it. Modern man has made himself an “animal laborans” who live only to work (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 84). Nevertheless, in doing so, humanity has become captivated by nature, and it has become a production and consumption machine that can only make sense of the values of necessity. Only work is important, and leisure and labor-free vita activa become incomprehensible. This threat to a stable human world thus opens to the totalitarian community. In modernity, we are left with a society where people no longer live in a common world, but they are either totally separated in a mob or squeezed into a mass. The worldless mass society is precisely the type of society that is automatically created between people who still have a physical labor and necessity relationship with each other, but who have lost the common world. The mass society therefore opens the breed to the totalitarian phenomena such as anti-Semitism, imperialism, as well as Nazism and Stalinism. Arendt is also skeptical of the social engineers of modern society, the experts, who believe that a technical solution is provided for everything (Arendt, 1989 [1958], p. 294). She believes that the combination of technical utility, rationality, hedonistic consumerist and working society, and mechanical mastery of nature almost as much as totalitarianism threatens the vita activa in a common world. Thus, it dissolves human dignity, and perhaps in the last capacity it means that we, as it was sadly the case of Eichmann, loses our common sense and ability to think morally as well as to understand the beauty and cherish of a common human world.

2.4

The Eichmann Controversy

Already when Arendt wrote her articles on Eichmann in The New Yorker, it became clear that here came an interpretation of the evil of the Holocaust that was beyond the ordinary and would create great international debate. Arendt emphasized that Eichmann claimed that he was only following orders and that he was not personally involved in his work as Nazi officer. Eichmann was proud of putting aside his personal conscience and saw himself as somebody who did his work. Eichmann believed in the final solution and he followed the Nazi ideology, but he never thought about his actions. Thus, the banality of Eichmann was that he was somebody who planned the final solution without personal responsibility.

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Arendt’s discussion of Eichmann and the Holocaust went completely against the flow. The mood in Jerusalem was that someone responsible for the Holocaust had finally been found. In 1961, the Jewish World Congress published a pamphlet stating that Eichmann was the responsible brain behind the final solution (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 343). BenGurion, the Israeli prime minister believed that he could use the trial to strengthen Israel’s position in the world in the intensified conflict with the Arab countries that led to the six-day war in 1967. It was therefore considered completely wrong by the Israeli public and the Jewish organizations around the world that Arendt reduced Eichmann to be a man without an evil will, an ordinary man, a desk bureaucrat, who above all did his duty and, because of his thoughtlessness and normality, was unable to distinguish between good and evil. It is this harsh judgment on the Jews’ complicity in their own execution that made Arendt thoroughly unpopular at the time of publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem. She was met with an often polemical criticism in books and articles that rejected her claims about the victim’s way of reacting to oppression, in particular their lack of real resistance was fatal for whether they survived or were destructed (Cesarani, 1996 [1994], p. 15). Others, however, tried to show that Jewish resistance had been more complex. It was alleged that Arendt and Raul Hilberg had misunderstood and looked through fingers with the ghetto leadership and the Jewish organizations’ subtle struggle against the Nazi oppressors. The opposition should include show up in a rich cultural underground life among the Jews. This is argued, for example, by Israel Gutman (Cesarini, 1996 [1994], p. 16). However, this objection did not affect Arendt. She emphasizes that it would not be possible for Eichmann to send the Jews to concentration camps so effectively without close cooperation with the local authorities. Therefore, he was in close contact with the governments of the occupied countries, especially in Austria and the Balkans, but also in the rest of Europe (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 181). Furthermore, Arendt points out that the Jewish organizations did not dare to reject the deportations and therefore tried to negotiate for the least evil. They felt it was rational for them to cooperate. Nevertheless, they did not know that the Nazis were not rational at all. They had only one goal: the total extermination of the Jews and others who, according to Nazi ideology, were considered inhuman. This was combined in the camps with a horrifying contingency of evil when SS soldiers could give a girl flowers, only to later rape and

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poison her, or save one their old teacher, of sudden nostalgia for their childhood. Arendt highlights how the transport of the Jews was a result of the actions of a modern bureaucratic apparatus. At the Wannsee conference, Nazi leader Heydrich had invited representatives from all the important ministers. These were high-ranking officials and legal experts, some of whom had even started their careers before the Nazis, but had been allowed to stay because such officials are indispensable in a political administration. Arendt goes on and again, inspired by Raul Hilberg, provocatively questions the general false legitimacy that the Germans have managed to create around the annihilation of the Jews (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 117). The ministries had begun to make the Jews stateless in a legal sense so that their property could be confiscated and avoid interference from other governments. The Jewish Councils were informed and throughout Europe, they helped fill the trains and make lists of Jews that should be selected for concentration camps. Jewish police forces throughout Europe captured those who did not want to go to Auschwitz, and there were even people who volunteered for the transport to Auschwitz and laughed at those who claimed that Auschwitz was a death camp and that they much likely would die if they accepted to go there. In the courtroom in Jerusalem, Eichmann said that he had met very few people who directly opposed the deportations and that he had generally met if not their enthusiasm so at least their willingness to cooperate (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 117). The leaders and the well-functioning Jewish organizations had been given great power by the Nazis, which they used to cooperate instead of trying to combat the enemy with armed resistance. Jewish stars were handed out, and on the whole it was a minority that resisted. Arendt also highlights the importance of the internal social hierarchy between the victims exploited by the Nazis. Eichmann respected the distinction between prominent and ordinary Jews, and this influenced his organization of deportations. Arendt emphasizes that the Jewish leaders in the camps helped to decide who should be selected for the concentration camps. Eichmann understood the exploitation dilemma of the Jews and therefore had a very good relationship with the Jewish leaders, which helped to make the transport of the Jews to Auschwitz more efficient. Arendt also believed that the Nazis did not even respect the Jews as political enemies. Had this been the case, they could have made them prisoners of war. By reducing them to sub-humans and depriving them of

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their citizenship, the murders in the concentration camps could be legitimized by the Nazi movement as “pity killings.” In the camps, the Jews were either gassed, shot, starved to death, or killed. The Nazi ideology created a universe of destruction which reduced the Jews to elements in a medical procedure. The Nazis transformed language in a cliché language to be used in a Nazi code for the killings. This included code cliché language like “final solution” for the whole opereation, “mercy death” for mass murders, “evacuation” for camp deportation, “special treatment” for killing in gas chambers. Thus, the Nazi project of killing was conceived as a medical hygienic project of racial cleaning. Eichmann knew what was happening in Auschwitz, but he did not mind, and he stayed away. He said he was too weak and would never be able to kill anybody. After all, the horrors of the concentration camps could not be completely hidden, but it was possible for as few as possible to have direct contact with what was going on. Commander in Auschwitz captain Rudolf Höss, who was much more brutal, saved Eichmann to see most of it. He had learned from Himmler that the soldiers should be confronted as little as possible with the murdered, since it would have psychological consequences. Besides, Eichmann was just a henchman who sent the victims to the executioner. Others did the dirty work—largely the Jews themselves. There was general skepticism in the contemporary discussions that Arendt emphasized that Eichmann’s deed was a crime against humanity, rather than a crime directed against the Jewish people (Zelizer, 1998). Far more unforgivable, however, was that Arendt accused the Jewish leaders of contributing to the destruction of their own people. The few pages in the book about Eichmann in Jerusalem, which discuss the victims’ cooperation, were received with a outcry. Arendt was accused of being against the Jews and Israel, and this was the beginning of the so-called Eichmann controversy that lasted for over three years (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 338). Already at that time, a lot of books and articles were published for and against Arendt’s thesis, and today the debate on the relationship between executioners and victims is still considered one of the most central discussions in Holocaust research. Arendt’s provocative thesis evil dynamics of totalitarianism implied that the executioners were ordinary men without real evil intentions and the victims were accomplices since they cooperated to avoid greater evil was crucial in making her “pariah” among the Jews (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 347). Arendt deprived the Jews of their status as innocent virtuous martyrs who had been persecuted for decades and executed because

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of their convictions. At the same time, she touched on the image of the Nazis as intentionally evil crazy psychopaths by emphasizing that Eichmann was a quite ordinary human being. A well-used objection was that Arendt’s empirical material was too narrow, and that she had not researched thoroughly enough in Jewish resistance and events in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Arendt’s thesis was not undocumented. Several researchers had shown that the Jewish organizations had helped to compile lists of people going to Auschwitz. Arendt believed that there was a strong connection between the leading people of Israel and the groups that had the power of the Jewish organizations during the war (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 351). Nevertheless, many Jews and Jewish organizations decided to go into clinch with Arendt’s view, just as they had done with other representations of the Holocaust, which they found unacceptable from the victims’ point of view. Arendt’s book was interpreted as an absurd portrayal of the Jews themselves being complicit in the Holocaust. Representatives from the Jewish Councils even tried to get Arendt to withdraw the publication of the book, but she refused. Instead, the conflict escalated and several excited meetings were held with over one hundred participants in New York, where the mood was so hysterical that it could almost be termed “collective psychoanalysis” (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 348). One of the prosecutors in the trial against Eichmann in Jerusalem even traveled to New York to argue against Arendt’s claim that the Jews had been “cowards” in the concentration camps (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 349). In a sense, the strong reaction can be understood as a resistance to accepting repressed events and therefore as a negative affirmation of Arendt’s theses. The Eichmann controversy also had huge personal costs for Arendt. Many of her best Jewish friends would not know about her because they found her views unforgivable. Her old friend, the philosopher Hans Jonas did not talk to her for a whole year until his wife made sure they were reconciled, but they never discussed the book. Another friend scolded Arendt for hours without answering, as she would not sacrifice their friendship (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 353) However, Arendt also met support among other friends. Her teacher and friend for life Karl Jaspers reminded her that she had hit the spot in one of the most sensitive issues of the Holocaust, and the famous politician, the father of the realistic school of international politics, Hans Morgenthau, who was her colleague at the University of Chicago at this time supported her (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 354). He even made peace with Arendt after her husband’s death

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in 1971, he proposed marriage, but she said nicely “No thanks,” though she appreciated Morgenthau’s friendship. Of the many more or less polemical objections of the time to Arendt’s interpretation of Eichmann and the Holocaust, it is worth mentioning that Arendt was much more critical toward Eichmann than toward his victims. Arendt was accused of being overly harsh and directly abusive to Holocaust victims, who had already been dehumanized once in the camps. It was alleged that her book was full of errors and undocumented claims that could only be detrimental to Israel and the Jewish people. The criticism of the thesis of the banality of evil was that, in addition to being bland, it trivialized Eichmann’s terrible actions. Some of the books were very critical, in particular Jacob Robinson’s polemical writing The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: The Eichmann Trial, the Jewish Catastrophe and Hannah Arendt’s Narrative (1965). This was written directly against Eichmann in Jerusalem, and it said that Eichmann absolutely not could be banalized, but had to be considered as the radical evil and the incarnation of anti-Semitic evil (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 355). A prominent theme in the discussion was Arendt’s portrayal of the Jewish leader, formerly the top rabbi in Berlin, the role of Leo Baeck. Arendt claims in Eichmann in Jerusalem that this man, who worked in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, knew that Auschwitz was a death camp, but to avoid a greater evil did not tell anyone. Hence, the absurd consequence that people volunteered to come to Auschwitz (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 119). Furthermore, it was Baeck who believed that Jewish police officers would be more “gentle and helpful” than Nazis (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 119), which in effect meant that the Jews helped to administer the Holocaust. At a meeting with Baeck after the New York controverse, Arendt confirmed his critical stance. He still stood for the ideal of the “persecuted Jewish people,” about the people of Israel as chosen by God and believed that the Nazis because of their talent and superiority had chased the Jews. Arendt believed that Baeck, in the reverse sense, came to reproduce the Nazi ideology (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 365). In doing so, the Jews themselves helped maintain the structures that led to the Holocaust. Arendt’s position on this cooperation policy was uncompromising. She believed that under no circumstances could one legitimize any good (the survival of the Jews) from any evil (the cooperation of the Jewish Councils). There could be no moral justification for a rational pragmatic acceptance of evil, where one selects a number of victims to save a greater number. The

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goals can never justify the means. In addition, the terrible thing was that the result of this theory of working for the least evil in reality led to the greatest possible evil. Arendt’s own movement from the thesis on the radical evil in Origins of Totalitarianism to the notion of the banality of evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem was largely overlooked by the polemical critics. They did not understand the potential of the idea of the banality of evil. On the other hand, one must understand the radicalism of the banal evil, such as the fact that man has abandoned himself to totalitarianism. Arendt had changed her view of the significance of the totalitarian worldview to the individual. In the Eichmann book, she now emphasizes that Eichmann’s motives were linked to his need to feel at home in his place and his role in the system. Eichmann’s thoughtlessness was grounded in his dutiful behavior as a bureaucrat doing his job. Arendt believed that Eichmann’s banality consisted in his having no depth and that evil came from the bluntness of this lack of responsibility and conscience because it was so ordinary. In a sense, the banality of evil is the consequence of radical evil, which made all people bland and superfluous. It is the consequence of the totalitarianism’s destruction of spontaneity and plurality (Bernstein, 1996b, p. 136). One of the harshest Jewish critics of Arendt’s notion of banal evil was Gerschom Scholem, who believed that the only thing left of radical evil in relation to the Origins of Totalitarianism was a “Catch-Word” about the banality of evil. The banality of evil could not be thought-provoking, for it was in reality devoid of content. Scholem would return to radical evil of the critique of totalitarianism, which he believed completely captured the perverted sadism of totalitarianism. Scholem was among those who believed that Arendt had contributed to an unacceptable trivialization of the Holocaust. Scholem’s comment shows that he did not fully understand the radicalism of the concept of the banality of evil, namely, that it is the very condition of carrying out the radical evil that makes people superfluous. It is only if one does not consider people as human beings that one can attain radical evil, but such an ability to make people superfluous can be said to presuppose people who are ordinary people with personal responsibility, since they are particularly capable of abstracting from the humanity of human beings. At the same time, strangely enough, the thesis of “the banality of evil” can also be seen as liberation from radical evil (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 367). Not from the cruelty of the radical evil, but from its

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demonic and all-embracing character. Arendt argues that Eichmann did what he did because he wanted to belong to a community, to be a part of something, to make a career in society, not because of radical evil intentions or extreme hatred to the Jews. Arendt said several times that she had changed her mind about evil. The evil of the Nazis was not radically incomprehensible, but extreme. By paying attention to the ordinary nature of Eichmann’s behavior, Arendt was able to understand the Holocaust as a result of human error, rather than as an expression of a radical evil demonic force that would always operate in history or human nature. Arendt’s positive turn of phrase, with the thesis of the banality of evil, is that evil is not evil that is inherited in human nature. There is no demonic evil, there is no struggle between absolute forces of good and evil in the universe, and evil is not based on evil motives, since it has no depth and only good exists fully. Even if Eichmann were to be a ridiculous clown, it could be argued that the other high-level Nazi criminals like Göring, Heydrick, or Hitler are much more sophisticated and more consciously evil. An obvious reference here could be to understanding the Nazis’ actions in Freudian and psychoanalytic terms, where evil is a manifestation of humanity’ displaced operating life. And although there was a great deal of understanding to generalize the thesis of the banality of evil to possible human actions, there may well be a more radical type of evil arising from, for example, a divine battle between good and evil in the universe. This thesis became the subject of contemporary philosophical discussion of Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt was right in saying that some of the ordinary Nazi criminals could definitely not be attributed demonic motives or real evil intentions or motivations since they had no sense of personal responsibility or moral conscience. However, there was disagreement about the metaphysical implications of this view. Generalizing Arendt’s thesis on the banality of evil would mean a return to the image of an almost Platonic world, where evil was either a deficiency or nonexistent. Although Karl Jaspers had claimed that Arendt in the work of totalitarianism had gone too far with the presentation of the radical evil as an independent force in the world allowed by the God Yahweh (Arendt & Jaspers, 1992, p. 145), he was not without objection to Arendt’s concept of banality of evil. Jaspers pointed out that going from the banality of evil to evil as such is difficult (Young-Bruehl, 1982, p. 370). However, Jaspers did not disagree with Arendt, and some researchers argue that the thesis of the banality of evil actually originated from Jaspers. As far back as in 1948 in a discussion with Arendt, Jaspers should have pointed

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out the triviality of evil (Bernstein, 1996a, p. 148). Jaspers opposed any kind of mythologizing of the evils of Nazism that turned it into something beyond human reach (Arendt & Jaspers, 1992, p. 69). Jaspers then believed that radical evil was neither punished nor forgiven, but at the same time he believed that evil was indeed human.

2.5 Arendt’s Philosophy After Eichmann in Jerusalem Although the thesis of the banality of evil was a great relief to Arendt after she had fought for so many years with radical evil and absolute evil as the reality of totalitarianism in modernity, we cannot say that Arendt stopped reflecting on the problem of evil. After reading The Human Condition, one cannot help but feel that the emergence of totalitarianism and mass society has meant that vita activa may no longer be possible in the modern world. This issue also concerned Arendt, who, in parallel with writing The Human Condition and, not least, Eichmann in Jerusalem, was working on a book on the revolution and formation of the republic, On Revolution (1963). This book can be understood as an attempt to counter the banality of evil and think vita activa in a modern perspective (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). This work discusses the conditions for establishing an authentic political space and founding a Republican state. Arendt provides a detailed study of the basis for creating a new beginning and establishing a legitimate political power. Arendt highlights the American Revolution that resulted in the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. The American Revolution is, for Arendt, the most prominent example of a political revolution in which the founding of the state is based on an active political public. Arendt paid tribute to the Founding Fathers John Adams, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson for their joy in public life, understanding of human freedom, and faith in democratic form of government. For Arendt, it is important that this revolution was based on an endeavor for political freedom based on common sense and common judgment, and Arendt did not believe that economic or social equality has the same meaning as political freedom. Arendt is therefore not nearly as enthusiastic about the French Revolution, which she describes as primarily economic and social emancipation, which did not have the same consequences for the establishment of a public political space, as it was the case in America.

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Thus, On Revolution can be understood as Arendt’s attempt to understand the revolutionary experience as a basis for finding freedom and overcoming domination and coercion. The political revolution expresses the eminent virtues of human action, as a new political order is created here based on the initiative of freedom (Arendt, 1990 [1963], Chapter 5: “Novus ordo saeclorum”). The goal of the revolution is a constitution of freedom: to establish a new society that enables the exercise of political freedom. Arendt has a fundamentally democratic view of the Republican revolution. The power established by the revolution was based on plurality, deliberation, and communication, and could therefore form the basis of a genuine and legitimate political order. Only in such a political order could power be transformed into violence. Politics also had to be limited through the Republican moments of the Constitution. A number of freedoms should prevent the political sphere from spreading to the home, such as one had seen it in the form of the propaganda of the totalitarian systems. The political freedom revolution is thus a revolt against the meaningless violence of totalitarianism and an endeavor to build a common stable and sustained world. Although On Revolution can help regain freedom, the work could be far from answering all the problems Eichmann in Jerusalem faces us with. After Eichmann’s book, Arendt felt that many philosophical categories had collapsed. Kant’s conception of radical evil as a result of humanity’s sinful act and urge for evil could not be used on Eichmann. Although not far from it, Arendt also had difficulty going back to a philosopher like Augustin who believed that evil could not exist for itself but appeared as a defect in relation to good and being in the world (Kohn, 1996, p. 152). Neither Kant nor Augustine could make sense of Eichmann’s misdeeds, which was about doing it out of duty and without motive, and even without being a human person, since Eichmann suspended feeling any kind of responsibility of his actions. He even lacked a consciousness of sin or a bad conscience. Eichmann’s thoughtlessness caused Arendt to ask the question whether “thinking itself can be a protection against evil?” (Kohn, 1996, p. 154). This problem can be said to be one of the underlying themes of the late work The Life of the Mind: Willing, Thinking, Judging, the two volumes of Thinking and Will were published posthumously in 1978. This great three-volume work brings together the philosophical and political sides of the authorship of the analysis of human consciousness skills. The division of the work is inspired by Kant’s critical philosophy. Instead of perceiving

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The Life of the Mind as a reversal of “vita contemplativa” without significance for political practice, we would emphasize that it is rather a reply to totalitarianism’s mindlessness, thoughtlessness, and goal of destroying human dignity by making human beings superfluous and useless in the world. The efforts of totalitarianism to reduce citizens and human beings to functional objects and lonely masses are possible only through the loss of thinking, common sense, and the common world. If humanity maintains its unique ability to think for itself, autonomy, and pluralistic individuality, it cannot be subjugated to totalitarianism. Arendt is a great admirer of Kant’s ideal of enlightenment and self-thinking. She points out that for Kant, reason was autonomous and could not be determined by external conditions. Kant’s moral philosophy implies that one does not contradict oneself and that one’s actions can be made into a general and universal law that is the foundation of morality. Such a link between thinking and morality became the subject of the series of lectures on moral philosophy and moral thinking held by Arendt in 1965–1966 (Kohn, 1996, p. 167), later published in Responsibility and Judgment from 2003. Here Arendt discusses some problems that she could not answer in Eichmann in Jerusalem. She now asks if it is better to suffer than to hurt, about how to distinguish between good and evil, whether it is permissible to calculate with evil to do good, and finally about how the individual can judge at all (comment on Eichmann’s “Who am I to judge?”). The answer to these questions is the key to the connection between Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Life of the Mind. Arendt emphasizes that the experience of inner plurality and freedom and of one’s own unique status as a human being means that one would rather suffer and die for one’s conviction than fall for evil. It is at the same time the ability to think morally through the independent and free selfreflection that makes it possible to distinguish between good and evil, as well as problematizing the right to pragmatically yield to an evil to ensure a good. Finally, a person’s inner disinterested and impartial judgment is emphasized, based on an ability to put oneself in place of the other and relate to a problem in the light of a plurality and common sense (Kohn, 1996, p. 172). Arendt emphasizes that ultimately no external causes and reasons are given, but that the individual is solely responsible for his or her actions. It is ourselves who sovereignly decide whether we will be good or evil if we come to a concentration camp. The Life of the Mind I -III (commenced in 1972) can therefore be said to occupy a central place in the effort to highlight human consciousness,

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responsibility, and judgment as a humanistic alternative to the unhuman Nazi character. If total dominion is about destroying and dehumanizing human beings, the description of the self must emphasize the unique and individual by the abilities of the spirit. Arendt here emphasizes humanity’s thinking, freedom, and will as an expression of man’s efforts to affirm and realize himself in the world (Arendt, 1978, p. 22). At the same time, she struggles with the question of the position of the self in relation to the body and the social and cultural community. It is important to note that Arendt perceives the self as so free and independent of the situation, society, and culture that it can be attributed to moral responsibility, rights, and human dignity (May & Kohn, 1996, p. 200). Thus, in the study of thinking, willing, and judgment, Arendt wishes to emphasize the independence of the human being, which enables him or her to relate critically to the political community. At the same time, she wants to show that evil will is not necessarily part of human nature. Thinking is of a Socratic nature, and it is grounded in the subject’s heart. It is a critical ability to relate to its surroundings. Contrary to animals, human beings choose how they will appear in the world (Arendt, 1978, p. 34). Arendt emphasizes that man chooses himself in interaction with his surroundings. Man chooses himself as appearance in the world. Arendt believes that mental activities are characterized by an inner plurality, where man is constantly in dialogue with himself and where the will fights with himself (May & Kohn, 1996, p. 207). Self-awareness and self-unity are formed in this active presence. At the same time, Arendt rejects the thinking that I should be outside the world. Humanity appears as a bodily being in the midst of the world, which is at one time action and thinking (Arendt, 1978, p. 202). A subject’s basic self-consciousness precedes the division of mental abilities into thinking, will, and judgment. Arendt emphasizes in the description of the will the self’s status as spontaneous freedom, which contributes to creating the world and starting a new beginning. Unlike Heidegger, who emphasizes human being’s existence unto death, Arendt describes humanity as “natality.” Every human being begins anew. Existence must be understood as birth and appearance between birth and death (Arendt, 1978, p. 29). We should emphasize man’s pursuit of the infinite and the eternal. As a concrete existing individual, man seeks to contribute to the creation of a meaningful world. The individual, as the originator of an unrestricted act of freedom, is a vast unity between the past and the present, birth, and death, and here it forms a particular

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personality and form of appearance in the world. Our actions and selfcontrol are thus crucial to the formation of the human character and appearance in the world. Here the connection between language, individuality, and action is important (Arendt, 1978, p. 22). Arendt points out that the human character is shaped as a narrative life story, a narrative identity through its responsibilities and promises in relation to other people, who co-determine whether the individual’s appearance in the world can be perceived as evil or good, honorable or gracious. In connection with the question of the banality of evil, especially the third volume of the of the book about judgment Judging as a final determinant of the spiritual life of the subject would have been of great importance. However, unfortunately, Arendt died prematurely of a heart attack in 1975 at a time when she was merely managed to write the title of this work. It was her intention to think of judgment as based on Immanuel Kant’s maxims of the reflective judgment, which is developed in Kritik der Urteilskraft (1973 [1794]). Fortunately, we are not completely at fault with Arendt’s theory of judgment that can be reconstructed from her other works, especially the posthumously published Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1989), which she held in 1970. This describes the political judgment as an independent capacity for consciousness that is different from both the action life of the will and the Socratic and dialogic rationality of thinking. Judgment is first and foremost a capacity for judging and impartially judging in relation to human action and political activities. We can emphasize that judgment expresses the ability of man to be aware of the plurality and thus to think for himself and to put himself in the place of the other and in the situation of the other human being. When we judge, we distance ourselves from the course of events, and relate critically and impartially to historical action. In her lectures on the judgment, Arendt chooses Kant’s third criticism because it contains an analysis of the common opinion based on deliberation, taste, and common sense. Arendt now argues for an analogy between aesthetic and political judgment. In both cases, judgment is justified by the objectivity and universality of the judgment. The tastes and opinions of the political are based on an ideal common sense (sensus communis). Judgment mediates between the universal and utopian on the one hand and the private and concrete on the other hand. The right meaning and taste are based on a common sense of the beautiful and ugly, the right and wrong, the just and the unjust. According to Arendt, the judgments are based on the ideal of common sense, which, just like the vita activa, should be construed as a regulatory idea, rather than an ethical reality in

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the existing society, since according to Nazism, such morality is not at all certain to rely on. Judicial practice aims to assess whether human political activities are fair and contribute to protecting human dignity and to creating a stable, just, equitable, and more humane society. Arendt highlights the Republican dimensions of political judgment (Arendt, 1989). As we know, Kant was enthusiastic about the political progress of humanity toward the eternal peace of the French Revolution. Judgments about society formulated in the light of the sensus communis are about ensuring the common dignity of the human species in historical development. With an impartial distance, the judgment is able to uncover the political in its concrete phenomenality and historical appearance. “Weltgeshichte is Weltgericht,” as Hegel expressed it. This opens judgment to the critical reflection on the universal validity of action. Arendt mentions Homer and Cicero as precursors to the theory of political judgment. The judge is an impartial “Weltbetrachter” who judges man’s actions in the light of consciousness’s efforts to grasp eternal and to make sense to the world. As such, sentencing can form the basis for drafting a judgment. This theme became, as mentioned, extremely central in Eichmann in Jerusalem, where Arendt’s report was partly about Eichmann’s failure to use his judgment, and partly itself was an attempt to convict Eichmann. One of Arendt’s most important criticisms was precisely that in assessing the legitimacy of his own actions, Eichmann was unable to distinguish between good and evil and to critically place himself in the situation to see the world from the perspective of the other human being. Eichmann was incapable of evaluating his actions in the light of the ideal common sense’s understanding of human plurality and dignity. At the time of Arendt’s death, her authorship was gradually internationally recognized, and in the aftermath only increased interest in her writing. Unfortunately, this has the character of being an incomplete torso. In his way, the never-written work on Kant and judgment was very characteristic of her philosophy. Thinking was a still compelling task, and therefore the notion of a completed work lay at a distance from Arendt. The philosophical work consisted of approaching concrete phenomena through concepts which, by virtue of their being concepts, sought a form of universality. Arendt’s thinking was always caught in such tension. It was always a thinking aimed at specific issues and never metaphysical speculation for its own sake. At the same time, Arendt’s philosophical analysis had a universal perspective. Her attempt to judge her time had the desire to work to ensure that the world remained humane.

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2.6 The Arendt Reception After Her Death in 1975 The evil of the twentieth-century challenges philosophical thinking and our well-established theoretical categories. This has also interested the Arendt reception, which has concentrated on her perception of the problem of evil and its importance to political philosophy. After immigrating to the United States, Hannah Arendt had an important influence on American political philosophy. She was an honorary doctor at a number of universities, and in 1975, shortly before her death, she was awarded the Sonning Prize in Copenhagen for her contribution to European and Greek culture. In immediate time, Arendt consolidated her position as a world-renowned leading philosopher and a political theorist who was a respected commentator of American affairs. She wrote critical articles on racial discrimination, the Vietnam War and the Watergate case in the United States. Her book on revolution was one of the classics of American students who faced the youth rebellion at Berkeley in the late 1960s. Of course, Arendt was of great importance for the more theoretical totalitarianism research in political science. After Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem, her theories emerged as classics in the field, and she was often invited to comment on the works of others in the field. She has had direct influence on the French totalitarian scholars and theorists of democracy Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis, each of whom, in their perceptions of the political democracy in contrast to dictatorship, is based on a theory of the totalitarian state. However, Arendt’s totalitarianism also met with criticism. The book is dominated by her interest in explaining the historical rise of Nazism, and it seems too specific to be able to explain Stalinism or other dictatorship as well (Canovan, 1974, p. 38). At the same time, it can be objected that it is wrong to understand concentration camps as directly intentioned experiments for total domination based on the ideal that everything is possible. Rather there is also an element of contingency and violent sadism of the soldiers of the camps. The destruction of human humanity was less systematic in the Russian camps than in the German camps. In addition, it is difficult to generalize to a general model of totalitarianism based on Arendt’s concept of Nazism as an ideology that will have total power based on a systematic intention to make people redundant. Eichmann in

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Jerusalem helped to problematize the notion of a fixed model of totalitarianism, since Nazism is seen here as the result of an interaction between many different conditions that were at one time necessary and incidental, and Arendt emphasizes that Eichmann’s actions were not well considered at all (Canovan, 1974). After her death, there was silence around her person for a while. Arendt’s thinking continued to play a major role for her students in the United States, including at the University of Chicago and the New School of Social Research, where her philosophy was intensively edited by her students (Vollrath, 1977). In addition, representatives of the critical theory have been inspired by Arendt. Then came Elisabeth YoungBruehl’s great biography. Hannah Arendt. For The Love of The World (1982), which was one of the first comprehensive descriptions of Arendt’s philosophy, which also included a thorough analysis of her Jewish background. At the same time, a number of papers and books on her political thinking began to be written in French (Enegren, 1984), German and English (Canovan, 1974, 1992) on Arendt’s political thinking, which focused on her conception of vita activa, political public and democratic republicanism. In addition, the range of feminist (Benhabib, 1992) and Jewish (Bernstein, 1996a) readings of Arendt’s thinking was increased (May & Kohn, 1996). Arendt research really made a breakthrough when Ronald Beiner published Hannah Arendt: Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy in 1989 with a lengthy commentary essay on her conception of sentencing. This work made the theory of judgment central to Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy. It emphasized the importance of the political public in Arendt’s thinking and highlighted the role of judgment as an independent capacity to judge, in an impartial and distant way, humanity’s historical progress toward democratic republicanism. Beiner opened to the complex discussions about the relationship between aesthetic and political judgment. The problem was whether an impartial judgment could be morally engaged, so it had to be predicted that judgment should apply as an eternal return. Another problem was how to be sure that judgments based on meaning and taste may lead to critical self-thinking, and whether the principle of the universality of opinion formation could at all overcome demagogy and illusion as the conditions of politics.

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Another breakthrough in Arendt research was the publication of the correspondence between Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt, published in German in 1985 and later published in English in 1992 (Arendt & Jaspers, 1992). This work made a number of important contributions to Arendt’s conception of Germany, the Jews and Nazism. In particular, the question of how to define the banality of evil can, as we have seen, be resolved by referring to this correspondence. This work also showed the close connection between Arendt’s philosophy and Jasper’s communication thinking. However, one can also mention the permissibility of public access to Arendt’s letters as an important basis for understanding her political philosophy. Here, loyal Arendt specialist Margaret Canovan has done a great job of systematically presenting Arendt’s political philosophy (Canovan, 1992). Arendt’s judgment and concept of practice have also had an impact on such prominent continental philosophers as Jürgen Habermas and Paul Ricœur. It can be emphasized that Habermas’ overcoming of the Marxist conception of practice by means of the theory of communicative action and deliberation would not have been possible without Arendt’s Marx criticism and the theory of vita activa. Habermas, by the way, also confesses his debt to Arendt (Habermas, 1994, [1977]). Habermas’s factoriented formulation of the discursive validity (Habermas, 1981, 1992) as “deliberative politics” can be said even more to presume Arendt’s Republican democracy concept, and it is difficult to see the difference between the two policy concepts. Arendt’s pointing out of the connection between language and action (Arendt, 1964 [1951]) can also be said to play a major role in Ricœur’s philosophy. He emphasizes Arendt’s phenomenological point of view and is particularly inspired by her conception of the meaning of narrative for personal identity (Ricœur, 1989, 2000). Ricœur also uses Arendt’s concept of practice in his ethics and political philosophy (Ricœur, 1989, 2000). Finally, he has made her conception of judgment central to his own philosophy of justice (Ricœur, 1995). Contrary to this influence of philosophers in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical theory, Arendt’s philosophy has more or less explicitly come into critical focus in postmodern thinking. Although Baudrillard does not mention Arendt directly, his book La transparence du mal (The Transparency of Evil) can be said to represent a critical interaction with Arendt’s moral reading of the banality of evil (Baudrillard, 1991). In postmodern reality, contrary to what Arendt believed, it is no longer possible to distinguish between evil and good, the true and

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the false, the beautiful and the ugly. We live in an empty culture that is characterized by an endless series of superficial signs that do not refer to anything. Baudrillard’s diagnosis of the postmodern society of today gets a nightmarish character when he argues that today we are far beyond both the traditional notion of the radical evil or the banal evil. That we have transcended the contradiction between good and evil means that we can no longer distinguish between them. Many people doubt the existence of the concentration camps, and in the media’s constant buzz, we become ignorant—indifferent to the biggest bloodshed in other countries, such as Rwanda or Kosovo, Iraq, Iran, libya, or Syria. The problem, however, is that this dissolution of otherness cannot suppress evil. It comes back with renewed vigor as inexplicable events, a kind of fate that unpredictably breaks the logic of society’s systems. We do not see evil as banal because it is beyond comprehension. There are rupture and terror in all types of system and we are unable to control reality. Arendt’s philosophy can also from a somewhat different perspective be considered as an important foundation for developing ethical principles in health science and bioethics and biolaw (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). In this context, Arendt’s philosophy of judgment and moral thinking are important as foundations of humanistic medicine in the perspective of existentialist philosophy as well as phenomenology and hermeneutics. This is also the case of application of Arendt’s concepts of political practice and ethics to reflections of cosmopolitan business ethics and application of basic ethical principles in business ethics where the concept of judgment is essential as foundation of business ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). In this context, Arendt’s political and social philosophy can also be considered as the basis for values and ethics in management (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Thus, we can regard Arendt’s social and political philosophy as an important contribution to ethics and philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d).

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2.7 Conclusion: From Arendt’s Political Philosophy to Philosophy of Management Thus, in this book, I consider Arendt’s political and social philosophy as an outstanding contribution to the research traditions of philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). Moreover, Arendt’s approach is also important for understanding business ethics and the ethics of organizations (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Indeed, this also applies to the application of Arendt’s social philosophy to ethics and values in management (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). On this basis, Arendt’s thinking on contemporary issues about radical evil and banality of evil is very important for the study of modern organizations and institutions. These themes are already included in earlier research on Hannah Arendt’s philosophy, which has chosen to focus on the importance of Arendt’s conception of judgment and the banality of evil for today’s social institutions (May & Kohn, 1996). In this perspective, the institutionalization of the banality of evil in relation to modern hierarchical and bureaucratic institutions implies the impersonal duty of managers and administrators (May & Kohn, 1996, p. 84). This is important for a move from political philosophy to study of organizations and institutions in the perspective of ethics and philosophy of management. It is acknowledged that it was the institutional factors of the Holocaust that allowed Eichmann to commit his criminal acts. Just as he was raised to be a good family father, Eichmann was socialized to be the loyal bureaucrat without personal moral responsibility for his professional actions. If we apply Arendt’s study of Eichmann to philosophy of management, we can use her philosophy as the basis for understanding moral blindness in organizations and institutions. This research focuses on Eichmann’s personality and the moral blindness that resulted from his institutional socialization. It is a matter of providing opportunity and scope for thinking and judgment when people contribute to collective action in institutions. In this context, the Eichmann problem does not only apply to the Holocaust of the Nazis, but collective action in all forms of modern institutions and organizations, schools, hospitals, ministries, military organizations, companies,

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etc. Institutionalism is an interdisciplinary research tradition that works across economics, law, sociology, philosophy, and other sciences. In an attempt to understand the interaction between actors and institutions, Arendt’s political philosophy and study of Eichmann can be used to understand the evil and ethical problems of business corporations and public organizations and institutions.

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Rendtorff, J. D. (2019a). Sustainable development goals and progressive business models for economic transformation. Local Economy, 34(6), 510–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269094219882270. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019b). The concept of business legitimacy: Corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate governance as Essential elements of ethical business legitimacy. In D. Crowther, S. Seifi, & T. Wond (Eds.), Responsibility and governance : The twin pillars of sustainability (pp. 45–60). Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Switzerland: Springer VS. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019c). The honest businessperson: Cosmopolitan theory and cultural praxis (The example of Denmark and Scandinavia). In C. Lütge & C. Strosetzki (Eds.), The honorable merchant—Between modesty and risk-taking: Intercultural and literary aspects (pp. 41–53). Ethical Economy, No. 56. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019d). Philosophy of management and sustainability: Rethinking business ethics and social responsibility in sustainable development. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Rendtorff, J. D., & Kemp, P. (2009). The Barcelona Declaration: Towards an integrated approach to basic ethical principles. Synthesis Philosophica, 23(2), 239–251. Rendtorff, J. D., & Mattsson, J. (2012). Ethics in the bank internet encounter: An explorative study. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 10(1), 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211210649. Ricœur, P. (1989). Lectures 1. Autour du politique. Paris: Le Seuil. Ricœur, P. (1990). Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Le Seuil. Ricœur, P. (1995). Le Juste. Paris: Editions Esprit. Ricœur, P. (2000). La memoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Le Seuil. Robinson, J. (1965). The Eichmann trail, the Jewish Catastrophe and Hannah Arendts narrative. New York: Macmillan. Young-Bruehl, E. (1982). Hannah Arendt, for the love of the world. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Villa, D. R. (1999). Politics, philosophy, terror, essays on the thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vollrath, E. (1977). Hannah Arendt and the method of political thinking. Social Research, 44(1977), 160–182. Zelizer, B. (1998). Remembering to forget. Holocaust memory through the Camara’s eye. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 3

Judgment’s Historical Responsibility: Hannah Arendt and Our Conception of the Holocaust

3.1

Introduction

Questions of evil in totalitarianism and in the Holocaust are central to Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. These themes are addressed in the main works The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958) and not least Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (1964). A reading of these works can help us understand how today’s democratic society must relate to the past and ensure that something like totalitarianism and the Holocaust massacre of six million Jews during World War II will never happen again (May & Kohn, 1996). As Arendt argues, with the Holocaust, something happened that should never have happened. Therefore, it is important to prevent that it ever happens again. It is about the collective memory of society as well as the historian’s ethical and political responsibility to account for history in a way that testify to the existence of evil in history. In this chapter, I will place Arendt’s work in the context of the historical memory and the clarification of the institutional dimensions of banality of evil for research in philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). Here, Arendt’s philosophy is an example of a thinking of the relationship between historical responsibility, modernity, and judgment. Moreover, I will relate Arendt’s philosophy to the problem of evil in business ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). This is important for understanding historical responsibility and relation to the Holocaust in ethical management © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_3

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(Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). It is a problem in Arendt’s thinking how to properly portray the Holocaust when the real scandal was the banality of evil, i.e., that it was ordinary people who committed the greatest crimes against humanity with no personal responsibility. The issue is no less urgent today. Recent studies 75 years after the liberation of the Jews from Auschwitz have shown that many young people in Europe do not know about the Nuremberg Laws or the Crystal Night. Conversely, in Israel, it is claimed that children have their ears full of the Holocaust to such an extent that it is a natural part of their daily lives. The active Jew is contrasted with the passive victims who volunteered to be gassed in the concentration camps. Turning to the film and television industry or exploring the emergence of many Holocaust museums and monuments, it seems that everyone will hear the story of the Jewish exterminations over and over. At the same time, the Internet is full of revisionist sites that deny that the Holocaust took place. These different perceptions of the Holocaust naturally raise the question of how to account for the Holocaust and other genocides. How can one represent the radical or banal evil at all? This has been the discussion about the 1978 American television series The Holocaust and the films Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah from 1985 and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List from 1993, which express very different ways of reproducing the Holocaust. In the two American films, it happened with the use of all of Hollywood’s traditional means, while Lanzmann emphasized that the Holocaust was so dreadful that it could never be appropriately reproduced with images. This image ban has then been challenged by people who have argued that the reflexive processing of a trauma is a necessity in order to live with the trauma of history. At the same time, the Holocaust is of great importance for today’s war crimes in courts and trails for the political responsibility of society to avoid ethnic cleansing. Here, following Arendt’s criticism of the tendency to turn evil into something absolute, a radical and incomprehensible evil that in principle cannot be explained (Arendt, 1992 [1964]), one could argue that the strong interest in evil and the Holocaust has been typical and that modern society needs the Holocaust for to find a common identity. One might ask if it is fortunate that the Holocaust has become a symbol of Jewish culture in the twentieth century and that this will continue in the twenty-first century. This critical remark also applies to other groups that try to define their cultural identity based on their victim status, such as gay or black.

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From this perspective, identity politics can lead to a dangerous victimization and discrimination. In this regard, the question of the prompt reference to the Holocaust in any case of discrimination is two-fold. This means, rather paradoxically, that the logical consequence of discrimination seems to be a slippery slope toward gassing and killing. An even more radical position has been advocated by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. He has argued that one can never understand the Holocaust (Novick, 2001, p. 381). Wiesel believes that anyone who has not experienced the Holocaust will never understand the event. Wiesel’s view implies that we cannot make sense of the Holocaust in our ordinary language. The event is so terribly and historically unique that it transcends any linguistic expression. Nor can it be illustrated with pictures, films, or quite as many philosophical works or historical depictions of facts. By extension, it can be argued that this is an irrational mysterious event that can only be understood by the victims, and the survivors are therefore the only witnesses of the episode. It has also been claimed that the Holocaust as a genocide of the Jews is radically different from other types of genocide, such as in Bosnia or Rwanda in the late twentieth century or in Iraq, Libya, or Syria in the twenty-first century. Steven Katz of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, in a work on The Holocaust in Historical Context (1994) sought to clarify how the killing of Jews because of their religion and culture constitutes a whole unique type of genocide in history. Conversely, it can be problematic to trivialize the crimes against the Jews by claiming that the Holocaust seen in the light of the 50–60 million people killed in World War II was not very large. However, the problem may not be real. It was not only the Jews who were killed, and in continuation of Hannah Arendt’s sharp arguments in the Eichmann book (Arendt, 1992, p. 5), it cannot be emphasized too often that the Holocaust was a crime against humanity. Furthermore, it is believed that by granting the Jews a patent on the Holocaust, we will implicitly give Hitler half a victory, since we recognize that the Jew is a chosen pariah in historical development. Against this background, Hannah Arendt’s discussion of the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann’s banal wickedness and ordinary personality in Eichmann in Jerusalem poses the question of Nazi malice as historically unique, or perhaps the expression of human mediocrity in a mechanical totalitarian system (Arendt, 1992, p. 49). Arendt’s critique of the banality of evil questions whether we can learn anything from the Holocaust at

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all and whether it serves the community at all times to return to the Holocaust in order to understand evil (Novick, 2001, p. 28). Should we really make the Jews look like a sacrificial people who painfully had to go through great suffering to be selected as Gods chosen people? In the aftermath of Arendt’s reading of Eichmann and the Holocaust, it is considered dangerous to make the Holocaust a mysterious sanctuary that gives the Jews their new identity in a secularized society.

3.2

The Holocaust as a Historical Event

It is integrated in Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil that memory is necessary in any case, but the question is at the same time how to appropriately remember the Holocaust, honor the victims and fight similar crimes. Arendt’s analysis of the Holocaust as based on the Nazis’ boundless obedience, moral blindness, and thoughtlessness combined with effective bureaucracy in a totalitarian society (Arendt, 1992, p. 136) documents that it is dangerous to make the Holocaust a unique event beyond history that must never be repeated. We can best respect the victims if we try to penetrate the causes of this cruelty. The requirement to analyze the Holocaust as a historical event serves the purpose of remembering that inhumanity was created by ordinary people who did not have capacity of moral thinking. In this context, however, it cannot be ruled out that it turns out that we cannot learn anything from the Holocaust at all. It can be argued that the event is not mysterious but so meaningless and irrational that there is nothing to understand. Contrary to making the Holocaust a mysterious incident, as Wiesel seems to do, we can learn from Hannah Arendt that we must cease to consider the Holocaust as intangible mysticism, but try to explain it as much as possible with our present social science theories. By emphasizing the banality of evil, Arendt’s point of view can reject any form of mysterious determinism in the Holocaust. It does not make sense to claim that Auschwitz was the natural endpoint of anti-Semitism or a necessary step toward the creation of Israel. It follows that an excessive focus on the Holocaust leads to greater anti-Semitism and thus may have the opposite effect than an act of respecting and honoring the victims. It is implicit in Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism that the use of technique and bureaucracy in the Holocaust makes the event part of our modern world (Arendt, 1992, p. 114). This is often criticized for being an imprecise analysis that theorizes rather than captures the real evil.

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According to Arendt, one of the most uncanny things about the Holocaust is not only that it was performed by ordinary people, but also that it was done while the whole world was passively doing nothing. Although information about the Jewish persecution came out, most people in Europe and the United States were indifferent without interfering with the context. It is the same moral blindness and indifference that we observe on a daily basis when people in the street tend to be passive when something happens to others within their reach. This indifference and lack of sensitivity is the fate of modern masses. Arendt’s interpretation of the banality of evil, however, is not only at odds with those that make the Holocaust an irrational mysterious event. She would also have to be critical of those who deny the Holocaust. This is, as Deborah Lipstadt argues in Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1993), a terrible way to avoid truth and recollection. It is thus right that the German Constitutional Court in the 1990s, after many years of voting, made it a criminal offense to deny that the Holocaust took place. In a democracy, we cannot accept that right-wing groups play with the cruelty of history. In addition, some symbolic institutionalization of Holocaust remembrance in museums and memorials is necessary to avoid the trivialization of events. This is in the aftermath of Arendt’s writings, who ironically mocks Eichmann’s inability to think, but also to remember. She perceives reflective memory and moral thinking as an important aspect of being human (Arendt, 1992, p. 252). Arendt said she felt compelled to go to Jerusalem and write about the Eichmann case of responsibility for her own past and she became upset and frustrated when she learned about the character of Eichmann who did everything not to take responsibility for the Holocaust saying that he was only obeying orders without being personally involved. In addition to a report from the Eichmann trial in Israel, Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem is a critical remark to the intentionalist school of Holocaust research, which claimed that the Holocaust was a result of Hitler’s and other Nazis’ explicitly motivations of hatred and willed evil intentions as a natural consequence of Nazi ideology and the racist worldview (Cesarani, 1996 [1994], pp. 5–6). Although she never denied Eichmann’s ideological commitment to Nazism as an integrated part of his worldview and life convictions, Arendt emphasized the systemic dimensions of the Holocaust. Arendt is thus closer to the so-called “functionalist” and “cybernetic” school, as she explains the Holocaust from the interaction between a totalitarian ideological system, boundless obedience

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of the executioners, and the inability of the victims to mobilize effective resistance. Eichmann is the best illustration of the mediocre cog in the system whose inability to judge and critical reflection helped to trigger the Holocaust. This shows Eichmann’s incapacity to speak without use of clichés and his poor memory of the events, and Arendt emphasizes how he could not remember his own dispositions with particular accuracy. He had trouble remembering the exact course of planning of the final solution (“Die Endlösung”). Although he had organized the Wannsee Conference, an important step in coordinating the Jewish exterminations, it had not made much of an impression on him (Arendt, 1992, p. 54). Moreover, Eichmann had stayed away from the concentration camps, which he visited only a few times. Eichmann is a desk and office killer at a distance from his victim. His poor memory illustrates his insensitivity, banality, and inability to take moral responsibility for his actions. However, we cannot avoid the complete and unambiguous reproduction of the past (Ricœur, 2000, p. 31). This difficulty has been highlighted by the philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, who in the 1980s in a philosophical study of language with a somewhat sought-after point, pointed out that it seems impossible to remember the Holocaust since the victims, who are the only ones who had direct access to the event, has died (Lyotard, 1984). To get beyond this paradox, we would like to emphasize that memory is always a reflexive activity. It is all about linguistic processing of events. At the same time, remembrance is not just the past. It is important to understand Arendt’s analysis of the Eichmann case and the discussion of the Holocaust in the light of the present. The presence of the past in today’s space is a condition of the memory of the past. It cannot be ignored that the memory is a contemporary experience, dating back to a series of events from the past that are evaluated in reflection (Ricœur, 2000). At the community level, there may be collective traumas and pathologies. The Holocaust expressed such a gigantic grief work for the victims, but also for the German people who had to come to terms with their own history. The goal of the grief work is to re-establish a bearable relationship with the past. The manipulated memory is an expression of the fragility of identity. It is obvious to understand Eichmann as the cynical and perverse killer with a split self, where his double personality suppresses the evil attitude in the morbid normality. Nevertheless, this is unlikely, according to Arendt. In the courtroom, there was nothing terrifying or devilish about Eichmann. The compartmentalization of his

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personality in a private and professional self was combined with a general closure of the self of moral thinking and judgment. The question is rather whether Eichmann, this ordinary and banal person, had any connection to life and existence at all in his life. Arendt repeatedly mentions his lack of realistic self-understanding and lack of self-reflection. A self who has no control over his memory and his relationship with the past can easily live a melancholy dream life where the person has no connection or narrative unity of a meaningful life-story in his life. Arendt’s description of the banality of Eichmann’s personality testifies to his empty identity. This is also evident in Eichmann’s own diaries, which he wrote at the trial in Jerusalem, and which he would have liked to publish after his death, but which the Israeli state seized and first made available to the public many years after in the year 2000. This 1200 pages densely written work does not add decisively new to Arendt’s analyzes, but it does testify to Eichmann’s difficulties in establishing a coherent personal identity. In the diaries, Eichmann continues to relinquish the responsibility of the Jewish exterminations and emphasizes that he obeyed orders only. This manuscript shows that Eichmann was not much committed to Anti-Semitism when he entered the SS and that his ideological understanding of Nazism remained superficial. It documents that his job consisted in organizing the deportations of Jews from many parts of Europe to the concentration camps. Moreover, he was in charge of combatting propaganda against deportation and convincing skeptical local authorities to contribute to the deportations of Jews. In this sense, the diaries witness the ideological clichés of Eichmann’s personality, which was combined with his greyness as an ordinary bureaucrat who actively did his job as required by his position in the Nazi hierarchy. The diary manuscript, which should be titled Götzen (Idols), referring to the Nazi leaders who Eichmann initially perceived as gods, but later described as idols because they represented hell on earth and absolute evil. According to Eichmann’s detailed instructions, the work should be neatly bound and his name should be on the front with clear letters. This is a illustration of the narcissism and narrow-minded self-concern of the figure of Eichmann as an illustration of a thoughtless and opportunistic administrator. In his diaries, Eichmann tries to portray himself as a good human being without evil intentions, which, however, deplorably ended up in an inferno of evil. He himself describes how he was fainting and had to strengthen himself with his pocket book as he saw gasses, choking, and burial in mass graves after the soldiers pulled gold chunks out of the

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victims’ teeth. Eichmann’s self-pitying writing is marked by an attempt to disregard Nazism, even though one had previously heard that he fully endorsed Nazi ideology. In this regard, Arendt’s analyzes of the banality of evil of the Nazis may in fact not be so far from Daniel Goldhagen, who in the 1990s received a German Democracy Award for his criticism of German anti-Semitism in Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996). Unlike the revisionist historians who considered the Holocaust as a parenthesis in German history in the infamous German debate between historians Historikerstreit in the mid-1980s, Goldhagen argued that the Holocaust was not just a coincidence, but also a well-thought-out ideological aggression on the part of the Germans. He claimed that the Germans were more violent than the Jews, and that the entire German nation was behind the killings and the persecution of the Jews (Goldhagen, 1998). Goldhagen’s book is written as an argument against the German historian Ernst Nolte, who believed that the terror of the Nazis could not be understood without involving the terror of the Stalinists in the USSR. Although the Nazis used almost industrial methods, their actions were basically inspired by the communists. Therefore, Nolte argues, we must revise our view of the Holocaust. At the same time, he believes that the Germans, even though they clearly crossed all moral borders with the gassing, had the right to make the Jews prisoners of war, since they had declared Germany war. Nolte’s revisionist position was proposed as the basis for efforts to give Germany a new identity that frees the country from the collective guilt of Nazism. Although Arendt emphasized the institutional conditions of the banality of evil, she is open to this focus on personal moral responsibility of the Nazis as criminals. She points out that the victims’ lack of resistance borders on “cooperation” and she shares with Goldhagen the need to argue for a self-critical history science and historiography aiming at finding the truth even how uncomfortable it may be. Arendt emphasizes that the commemoration of the Nazis’ crimes against humanity should find a place in the collective memory of German and international society (Arendt, 1992, p. 269). As we read the Eichmann case, we should be aware that this was necessary even if it was not a matter of necessity for the Germans after the war. Such a critical search for the truth of the past is a condition for a society to function as a genuine moral and political community. Instead of explaining evil and making it a small part of national political history, a democratic society should have a self-critical and responsible attitude to history. Here it is important to note that the Holocaust was

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not a random event in human history, but a result of Nazi political ideology and a violent dictatorship with cynic executioners who used banal henchmen like Eichmann to carry out their crimes. In order to prevent this from happening again, the international community should be constantly aware of the Holocaust as a common human problem. Thus, it is necessary that the memory of the Holocaust be kept alive in the common history.

3.3 The Banality of Evil and the Phases in the Conception of the Holocaust Philosophical history writing has a great responsibility to contribute to the collective memory (Ricœur, 2000). Arendt’s analyzes of totalitarianism and the banality of evil help to determine the rationality underlying the Holocaust as an integral part of modern society. Arendt here assists in the critique of the Enlightenment dialectic, where the Western rationality that should create democracy and tolerance ends in ideology and terror. Arendt’s analyzes are a representation of the past that helps us to understand the sociological, historical, and philosophical preconditions of totalitarianism (Arendt, 1992). Although we cannot escape the idea that imagination can be ideologically marked, we should maintain that historical representation endeavors to portray the past as it was. This is done by using scientific models and theses that explain causal relationships and establish the economic and geographical legalities for historical development. Here we can read Hannah Arendt’s critical philosophy of the judgment of history in light of Frederick Nietzsche’s problem of the relationship between history and life, where Nietzsche argued that history should be of use to life (Ricœur, 2000). In her interpretation of Kant’s theory of judgment, Arendt can be said to formulate a “critique of historical judgment” (Arendt, 1989). As world spectators, we try to place ourselves on the brink of events to judge them as accurately and impartially as possible. Arendt is aware that the judgment of history is not emanated from a place outside history, but at the same time, she believes that humanity’s belonging and being in history do not exclude a commitment to historical objectivity. Thus, we would like to emphasize that the concepts of critical verification and truth should be an integral part of the historian’s work (Ricœur, 2000, p. 417). It may not be the historian’s first task to make a moral

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assessment of the past. Just as it is important for Arendt to distinguish between judgment and action, we should emphasize the fundamental difference between the historian and the judge. When a judge deals with the past in a war crimes court or court of law, it is not primarily about truth, but about restoring public order and respecting the dignity of victims as human beings. Therefore, the duties of the judge and the historian are in principle different. The historian must tell what happened, while a judge, taking into account the victims, must convict the guilty criminals and give them the right punishment. If the historian alone makes a judgment on history, he or she risks becoming biased, making it difficult for other historians to doubt his or her research. Historians continue to disagree, and in the case of history, new material may appear rewritten. In a lawsuit, on the other hand, the judge takes a decision on many different historical testimonies and can therefore have a more varied perspective on the case (Ricœur, 2000, p. 412). It is the task of the courts, within the limits of its jurisdiction, to make a fair judgment. This view of the relationship between judge and historian helps us understand how the historian should relate to the Holocaust. In the Historikerstreit , Habermas criticized the revisionist German historians for claiming that there was no great difference between the German Holocaust and Stalin crimes. Habermas could therefore later welcome Goldhagen’s theories of the Germans’ intentional wickedness in the Holocaust, as they expressed a critical acceptance of Germany’s guilt. Habermas argued for the importance of historical responsibility for the past for ethics and justification of the rule of law (Habermas, 1992, 1998). This need for historical and legal truth in relation to history is also justified by the grief of the dead and the longing for justice. This relationship to history is by Arendt described by the concept of natality (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). This view of human beings emphasizes humanity’s ability to begin anew, and it paradoxically testifies to both life, generation, and death, since the dead today are those who are living testimonies of actions and sufferings of the people from yesterday. Against this background, we have a responsibility not to forget. We need to explain the events and understand relations of guilt and responsibility in relation to the Holocaust. However, at the same time, there is a necessary oblivion of the Holocaust. Oblivion is the expression of the vulnerability of human life. It bears witness to the sick memory that has lost its ability to remember. Still, one can talk about some kind of happy oblivion. For example, Argentine writer Louis Borges has written short

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stories about the awfulness of being a human being that cannot forget or be forgotten (Ricœur, 2000). Thus, there are at least two forms of oblivion, a total blurring of the past in consciousness as well as a covering of the past, which remains present with the possibility of reliving and recognizing. Today, one can already talk about the history of the Holocaust remembrance. Remembrance can be understood from the French sociologist Maurice Halbwach’s theory of collective memory. Collective memory expresses a simple and unifying common memory. It is almost an ideological concept. In this perspective, the collective remembrance of the Holocaust can be seen as a constructed historical reminder. This is especially an example of how the past merges with the present (Zelizer, 1998, p. 3). In the collective memory, twentieth-century mass murder is depicted in various ways that reflect our relationship with the past. The historical development of the conception of the Holocaust shows a number of very different ideas. At first, no one believed in the grotesque magnitude of the killings of the Jews. During the war, the Jews had not been considered special. There had been a lot of silence about in relation to the German killing of the Jews, as when the Jewish leaders kept it secret for their own people. The Germans had all of humanity as an enemy. Just after the war, the size of the Holocaust was degraded compared to other wartime crimes. After the war, many governments were afraid to highlight the Holocaust, as no further anti-Semitism would be exposed (Novick, 2001, p. 66). In addition, that time’s indifference from the outside world was one of the most striking features of the world’s indifference to the murders. During the war, some foreign resistance movement participants had suggested helping the Jews. It had been argued that one could bomb the railways and train tracks to Auschwitz or even Auschwitz itself. Possible explanations are that the bombing was rejected because it was impossible to achieve the given precision in the bombs, that they were afraid to kill the victims and finally that they simply did not know about the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. However, the problem was never really seriously discussed, and many felt that it was difficult for the Allies and the United States to save the Jews (Novick, 2001, p. 84). After the war, the United States was proud of its efforts. The victims of the Holocaust have gone through a strange fate. At first they were considered liberated, then as “Displaced Persons,” later they had to find new nationality in the countries to which they emigrated, and finally today the term “Holocaust Survivor” has been invented. Being a victim of Nazism seems endless. In some fundamentalist Jewish circles, it

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has been argued that the Holocaust was part of God’s plan so that Israel could be formed. After all, Israel was established in 1948 on the basis of the West’s guilt for not interfering with Hitler. There was great compassion for the survivors, almost two-thirds traveled to Israel and most of the rest to the United States. It is prominent that the visual image from the beginning was an important complement to the historical account. The Holocaust was initially communicated to the world public through the images of American soldiers reproduced in the newspapers. The first phase of this Holocaust remembrance is marked by great horror at the murderers. There were so many camps that the Allied liberation troops just could not avoid jumping into them. The photographic images played a major role in telling the outside world about the massacres, gas chambers, mass graves, etc. The pictures and stories bear the evil horror of horror, and the soldiers had difficulty understanding what they saw. Many journalists stopped asking questions, and they could not find the right metaphors to describe the horror of murdered bodies and dehumanized victims they saw in the camps (Zelizer, 1998, p. 84). The photographers and journalists were in a perpetual dilemma whether to print their accounts of brutality so terrible that it was almost indescribable. These direct descriptions of the facts of the concentration camps were important in a time when nobody could deny the existence of the Holocausts. After the war, however, the attitude toward the Jews changed rapidly. The Western world had great interest in trivializing the events of World War II, since the United States had also done evil at a distance when they threw nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Germany became necessary as an ally against the USSR, which had become a totalitarian state. Thus, the Holocaust was quickly ignored at the beginning of the Cold War (Novick, 2001, p. 120). In the 1950s, it was the relationship with communism and not the Holocaust that played a role in international politics. The Holocaust was a trifle to form a common front in the Cold War. For example, in the definition of genocide from the Genocide Convention, the term was used in a suitably broad way. Thus, another phase of the Holocaust remembrance quickly emerged, focusing on the symbolic dimensions of the stories or simply displacing the Holocaust by focus on personal narratives of the victims. The personal testimonies of the Holocaust were so terrible that in the post-war years of the 1950s they would most likely be forgotten. From one day to another,

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the past was gone, as author, Saul Friedlander has said (Zelizer, 1998, p. 163). You would rather forget everything, and it was initially very difficult to get the Holocaust classics published such as Anne Frank’s diary (Zelizer, 1998, p. 166). Although this process of repression was quite strong among ordinary people, the trial of Eichmann in 1961–1962 and Arendt’s depictions of it ushered in a new phase in the remembrance of the Holocaust, becoming much more aware of both the facts and the symbolic dimensions of the genocide (Arendt, 1992). Instead, one was asked why, when it began and where and when it happened (Zelizer, 1998, p. 174). The capture of Eichmann was a significant change, since one person at the trail was directly accused of the Holocaust. Now the Holocaust was launched as a direct attack on the Jews. Unlike in the past, where it was problematic to show the Jews in a sacrificial role vis-à-vis the brutal Nazis, the Holocaust became a common topic of debate. Arendt’s interpretation of Eichmann’s banality here went against the flow of finding an evil and sadistic person responsible for the Holocaust, but it enrolled in the contemporary debate on totalitarian society. Subsequently, many times Arendt’s theory that the victims cooperated with the executioners has been problematized as dangerous to understand the contemporary moral blindness. A lot of research has problematized her views by documenting some underground resistance among the Jews (Cesarani, 1996 [1994]). Of course, it is problematic when you consider that the Jewish leaders undoubtedly had a great deal of subjective will to protect their people, and yet we cannot avoid the fact that the Jewish Councils objectively became a means that the Nazis could use to implement their plans (Novick, 2001, p. 191). However, Arendt was fully aware that ordinary Jews had very little opportunity to revolt or flee without endangering life. For example, the Jews did not resist the Warsaw ghetto before it was too late, however, shows that they had no choice but to go to war against the Germans. At the same time, Arendt denies absolutely not that camps like Auschwitz were killing centers, where they were killed immediately after arrival, where it was impossible to resist, and where those who were put to work lived in such unhygienic and inhumane conditions that they quickly starved to death and lost all their human dignity. Therefore, it was difficult to mobilize solidarity or uprising in the camps. Yet, there was both an inner and outer resistance movement that fought to save people and make the world aware of the camps. Although it was rare for anyone to

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escape, escape was important in making the outside world aware of the miserable conditions. In the context of the Six Day War of 1967–1968, the Holocaust was again on the agenda. Society moved toward a third phase in which the Holocaust again gained crucial political and symbolic significance. Begin often cited the Holocaust as the legitimacy of the Israeli defense and acts of war against the Arabs. Sadat was accused of being a Nazi and the Holocaust was constantly on the political agenda. Since the Holocaust television series effectively disseminated knowledge of the phenomenon in society in 1978, it has not remained at the center of the discussions. Reagan’s visit to an SS cemetery in Germany was condemned by the world press, Austrian Kurt Waldheim had to step down as president because of his help transporting Jews to prison camps, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, perpetual war criminals like Klaus Barbie, sentenced in Lyon, Josef Mengele, believed to have perished in Brazil or a worker from Cleveland, who was mistakenly mistaken for the “Ivan the Terrible” executioner from Treblinka. This phase is characterized by a number of important discussions about how the Holocaust should be remembered, and whether justice can be given to the memory at all through the pictorial expression. Contrary to historical source-critical research, the need for symbolic respect was emphasized. Later, the Holocaust even became a political genre. When the Vietnamese tried to set up a Holocaust museum, under Pol Pot’s regime, they were inspired by museums in Eastern Europe. Saddam Hussein was consistently compared to Hitler (Novick, 2001, p. 316). In other contexts, such as in Afghanistan or in Rwanda, there has also been talk of evil, and after September 11, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have also been made representatives of absolute and totalitarian evil. This has also been proposed as general criticism of Syrian president al-Assad accused of using chemical weapons during the civil war in Syria. In the future, we will also have to discuss the banality of evil in a number of international conflicts. It is paradoxical that one constantly encounters new Holocaust situations where it is repeated “never again.” One may wonder whether the true banality of the Holocaust is in reality the modern human being’s indifference and lack of sensitivity to evil (Novick, 2001, p. 327). It is the task of the future to prevent the Holocaust and evil from being hacked as part of human life in the same way as was the case with the SS soldiers in the concentration camps.

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The question then is whether we are heading into a fourth phase in which Holocaust remembrance has gone beyond thread and we have forgotten that this is “the banality of human evil?” The emergence of the many Holocaust films and TV shows, the introduction of Holocaust education in schools in many Western European countries, and the establishment of Holocaust museums and monuments such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington or a Holocaust sculpture in the middle of Boston have meant that today the Holocaust is a permanent part of the modern human experience. In addition, many people today go on a pilgrimage to the Auschwitz Museum at Krakow in Poland and other Eastern European monuments. The Holocaust is no longer just a symbol or historical fact, but functions as a living photographic and pictorial experience. The public space is filled with images, objects, and monuments that testify to the Holocaust. The Holocaust industry is living at its best, and a lot of money can be made at the various movies, museums, or events to remember the event. The risk of this “overexposure of memory” is that the past is mythologized so that fiction and reality merge, so that it loses its symbolic meaning and thus becomes trivial and meaningless (Zelizer, 1998, p. 201). In the twenty-first century, we have in this context moved from the experience of the victims to the experiences of the grand children of the victims of the Holocaust. This problem becomes even more relevant when we think about how we should deal with genocide and ethnic cleansing in a historical perspective. We are inundated with images from the US war in Afghanistan and Vietnam, Pol Pot’s purges in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein’s intervention against the Kurds, the struggle between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, and not least the Serbian ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. More, recently, we have experienced the challenged of the terrorist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we also face the banality of evil from the wars in Libya and Syria. Last, we have been confronted with the meaningless terror of terrorism, that is present all over the world. Our recent historical time has been the age of genocide, terrorism, and war, and although we are against the Holocaust and have adopted several UN conventions against ethnic cleansing, the world community is relatively immobile, despite being constantly flooded with images and reports of ethnic cleansing. We face great challenges as to how we can portray these events, so the result is that it does justice to the historical truth and the moral aspects of the terrible genocide.

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3.4 Overcoming the Banality of Evil: The Impossible Forgiveness An urgent problem that arises after the meeting with the Holocaust and the modern war crimes is in this context how society should deal with all the war criminals and Eichmann-like banality of evil-affected, ordinary persons who, as a result of the many misdeeds and massacres of the twentieth century and the twenty-first century still populates our globe. Political philosophy should take genocide and war crimes very seriously as they are a function of modern political power rationality (Agamben, 1996). It can be argued, with the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, working in the aftermath of Arendt’s political thinking, that one of the most important challenges for a future political philosophy is to protect the naked and unique human being in relation to states’ efforts to control life and death by understanding the members of the nation-state as a totalitarian and ideological “Volk,” a whole that they can model and transform as needed. In continuation of Arendt, Agamben emphasizes that the concept of rights has been narrowed to only apply to those people who already live in a state (Agamben, 1996, p. 19). Although human rights have been the original figure for inscribing naked human life in the nation-state, it has at the same time meant that the concept of rights has been reserved for those who already live in states. Agamben agrees with Arendt that today we should extend the concept of rights so that it not only includes people in nation states, but instead also is based on the naked person, represented by the refugee, the stateless and the nomad or gypsy who lives permanently outside states and therefore cannot be included in the state’s crude government rationality. This is a crucial condition to get beyond the indifference of evil and lack of sensibility in they way society treats human life of those who do not have rights. In this context, Arendt’s political thinking can be said to contain a similar quest to respect the naked, “holy” human life. The crux of his Republican political philosophy is that we all have rights as basic political beings. The political sphere is expanded so that the policy is based on an infinite respect for the minority. It is important to avoid the threat Agamben thinks is affecting our society, namely, that the “biopolitical nomos” of the concentration camp becomes the governing of our society (Agamben, 1996, p. 60). This is why we should constantly uphold Arendt’s ideal of politics as based on a “vita activa” in which all people, regardless of their origin and character, participate on an

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equal footing with others in political life. Here, one respects the infinite dignity and right of the individual to be different from the others. Here, politics is never based on an instrumental goal rationality, but authentic politics must be understood as a sustained deliberation on the right means (Agamben, 1996, p. 136). In this perspective, republicanism is a humanistic thinking in which the respect for naked life as in Arendt’s philosophy is based on a judicial democracy, a sustained respect for common humanity and vulnerable nudity of the human person in a common political sphere of respect for difference and plurality of individual human beings. Agamben also gives us help to formulate the theoretical premise of our reasoning that the Holocaust can and should be remembered and reproduced to ensure that it never happens again. The crucial question, as I said, is whether you can remember this cruel thing at all when, as a concentration camp victim, you have lost all humanity and become a living death. With reference to Primo Levi, who himself was a concentration camp victim, but stayed alive to witness the evil, Agamben believes that consciousness is the necessity that enables society to maintain humanity. Language and communication are the dedication that transforms nature to the expression of humanity’s naked life (Agamben, 1996, p. 99). Thus, it can be said that it is the langue of communication and witnessing of the experience that in turn enables the victims to be human. This problem can be discussed with regard to the poor prisoners who above all lost their humanity in the camps, the so-called “Sonderkommando,” special forces of prisoners of the camps who was tasked with looting and burning the dead bodies. In the aftermath of Levi, it can be argued that these people could only survive because they could witness the total destruction of totalitarianism in their lives. In the later buried manuscripts found around the crematoriums, one of the prisoners had buried a story in Hebrew about the crimes. These people had an enormous sense of shame for the Allied troops when they were liberated. They felt that they should be dead and someone else should be living instead of them, but one can never live instead of another, and they were tasked with witnessing the atrocities. The ethical significance of consciousness is emphasized by the fact that it is one of the central reasons why people can live on and not break physically and psychically totally down in a concentration camp. Levi has described those who do not speak, as “muselmänn,” a nickname in the camps of the living dead (Agamben, 1999, p. 44). These living dead have lost all dignity and self-respect and have in truth become the naked human life of the wandering bodies that Arendt described. The Muselman lives

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in a gray zone between human and non-human and can only become human again when he witnesses what it was like to live when one has completely destroyed his humanity. Thus, Levi and Agamben can solve the problem that one can witness the Holocaust only if one has experienced it, which is impossible because the one who has experienced the Holocaust, per definition is dead and gone in the gas chambers. Only the one who linguistically witnesses the total human degradation can get beyond his own loss of dignity and regain his self-respect. However, this also means that only the one who is completely destroyed is truly human (Agamben, 1999, p. 134). In contrast to Eichmann, whose memories testify the empty and ordinary identity of the office desk killer, the victims can just hold onto their humanity by virtue of witnessing the evil that was done in the Holocaust. In her treatment of Eichmann, Arendt addresses this question of whether it makes sense to punish criminal acts as much as genocide and crimes against humanity (Arendt, 1992, p. 255). It is Arendt’s position on the Eichmann case that Eichmann’s crime, in all its banality of evil, cannot in principle be forgiven. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt seems to think that one cannot forgive anyone without forgiving everything. At the same time, Arendt advocates the death penalty for Eichmann, since what he did was unforgivable and no one can share a space with him on earth. The paradox of Eichmann, however, was that his crime could not be forgiven, but he could not be punished either. However, Arendt still thinks that he deserved the death penalty, as she wrote in the Eichmann book. In this context, the question of how to deal with war criminals is an important area to which Arendt’s political theory directly applies. Should they be punished or forgiven? Is not amnesty or forgiveness of war criminals a “commanded oblivion” used more for pragmatic reasons than for enforcing justice? (Ricœur, 2000, p. 637). Instead of abandoning the sanction of the truth of the past in this way, it can be argued that one of the greatest future challenges for an Arendt-inspired Republican philosophy is to find an opportunity to reconcile the people of contemporary society who give them the opportunity to live on in a well-functioning democratic society. Here, Arendt changed the position in the Eichmann book in relation to her analysis of forgiving and forgiveness in The Human Condition, where she argues that while it is in principle difficult, we really have to forgive the actions of other people in order to live together in a commu-

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nity. If we want to save the vita activa, the active political community based on plurality and difference, we should be able to reinstall the major political criminals in society, even if their crime is unforgivable and cannot be punished. This is also the case of administration and management of evil in all kinds of organizations and institutions of contemporary society. Today, this problem has been given great momentum because we have so many countries, for example in Bosnia or Rwanda or Syria, that have been characterized by massacres and malice, and we have a lot of new criminals here. In addition, what about the terrorists? After all, we cannot give them all the death penalty, and maybe you are only really good if you can forgive your enemies and reintegrate them in a political community where you can live together. Here it is difficult to justify Arendt’s claim that a reflected person would not be able to justify living with Eichmann on earth. Perhaps one could try to go back to Arendt’s interpretation of forgiveness in The Human Condition to solve the problem (Ricœur, 2000, p. 637). Here, Arendt emphasizes that the implicit tragedy of the act, as described in the Greek tragedies in which good people come to do evil, should presuppose forgiveness. This is ultimately based on an acknowledgment of the plurality of every human being, and it is the victims’ sovereign operation to be able to say to the guilty: “We forgive you if you truly regret and promise us never to do something similar again,” but are included in our political community. If so, it is acknowledged that every human being is worth more than his or her actions and that the painful act of forgiveness is the only way forward (Ricœur, 2000). However, the necessity to forgive is also linked to the fragility of the political community, because stable political institutions are built on social integration. In addition, we must admit that we find it almost impossible to forgive the biggest criminals like Eichmann, although some reciprocity is a condition for a society to survive again after a genocide. The problem is whether it is meaningful to have banal and identity-less people repent their actions when it is difficult to make them acknowledge their guilt. So the challenges of our time for a future democratic republicanism are, first and foremost, to create the opportunity to reconcile societies with their past (Arendt, 1990 [1965]). This was, for example, the case of the lawsuits against war criminals in Serbia and Kosovo and in connection with the re-establishment of new political communities throughout the world. This also the case of the required legal processes in relation to Syria and other societies with totalitarian governments. In this context, it is necessary to establish legal processes against the perpetrators to make clear personal responsibility for evil actions in totalitarian regimes.

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3.5 Conclusion: Insights for Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management Thus, moral conscience and the reflective thinking are of central importance when dealing with evil in a historical context. Arendt’s contribution to understanding genocide and war crimes is thus of great importance for the pressing issues of today’s philosophical and social theoretical debate. Arendt’s detection of Eichmann’s banal malice is one of the most outstanding contributions to Holocaust research, though it may not be historically rigorous at times. The Holocaust is to be understood as part of modern history. The Holocaust was not outside the world, but should be analyzed as the complex interplay of events that led to the disaster was a consequence not only of German history but of all modernity. The creators of war crimes seem incomprehensible and upset, but nonetheless were the people whose actions we should relate to. Focusing on the banality of evil contributes to an explanation of the Holocaust that allows similar incidents to be avoided in other institutions and organizations. We may ask what significance remembrance of the Holocaust and the banality of evil may have for business ethics and philosophy of management. Here, we can point to the ethical reflections on the Holocaust of medical science and medical community after the atrocities of medical science under the Holocaust. In fact, bioethics and biolaw as well as medicine reacted very strongly against the Holocaust formulating ethical principles of protection of the human person as the basis for bioethics and biolaw (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). In a similar way, the Holocaust can be a horrifying picture of what management and business should not be. We cannot avoid that problems about the banality of evil also exist in modern welfare states when administrators and bureaucrats are characterized by the same banality that characterized Eichmann. Thus, the discussion of banality of evil in business, organizations, and corporations is important to understand what it is that business ethics and thinking in philosophy of management is reacting against. Thus, business aims at avoiding banality of evil in organizations and corporations (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Moreover, philosophy of management aims at developing concepts of thinking and moral reflection in philosophy of management and leadership (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b,

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2015a, 2017c, 2019d). An example of this learning process would be to make a comparison between the administrative bureaucrat Eichmann and the businessperson Oskar Schindler from the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List . Schindler was a very opportunistic businessperson and member of the Nazi party who earned a lot of money on a factory, that was using forced labor by Polish Jews. Nevertheless, Schindler changes during the movie, when he sees the treatment of the Jews in labor camps. When his workers are supposed to be moved to Auschwitz, he decides to try to save them, by making a list of all his workers that he buys from the Nazi captain who is in charge of the local work camp. The movie depicts Schindler as an executive who after all has conscience and wants to save his workers. In terms of business ethics, such responsibility should be assumed in difficult times by business people and Schindler’s list shows us that in Nazi Germany it was possible to act otherwise than Eichmann did. Thus, the Holocaust is not to be understood as a motionless symbol, and the historical-philosophical calculation of events is necessary as an honor to the victims and as a necessary respect for plurality and human dignity. In the perspective of social theory of organizational evil, the Holocaust is indeed a symbol of the destruction of human beings and humanity through rational organization of evil as means for meaningless, absurd, and irrational ends without responsibility and moral thinking.

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CHAPTER 4

Adolf Eichmann as the Prototype of the Evil Manager and Administrator

4.1

Introduction

The background for Arendt’s analysis of the banality of evil was that in 1960–1961 the Israeli agents and Nazi hunters managed to capture one of the largest German Nazi criminals Adolf Eichmann, who had been responsible for the logistics of the Holocaust in Auschwitz. Eichmann had been in charge of planning the extermination of over 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany concentration camps and was now being dragged to Jerusalem to be held accountable for his deeds before an Israeli court. In this context, Hannah Arendt was asked by the weekly newspaper The New Yorker whether she wanted to cover the case against Eichmann for the newspaper. This became not just a collection of articles, but also an entire book on Eichmann and a philosophical work that not only depicts the trial, but also delivers an in-depth discussion of the provocative question of how totalitarian regimes and the Holocaust could be possible in a modern, thoroughly rationalized society. For Arendt, the problem is how we should understand the evil and what it was about Eichmann’s personality that enabled him to be unaffected and without much reflection lead the practical organization of the gathering of the Jews in the concentration camps. Her answer is that it was Eichmann’s banality and mediocrity, his complete lack of moral insight and judgment that was the real cause of his deeds. At the same time, she emphasizes that totalitarianism, in its essence, is a product of

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the modern social rationality that has forgotten the respect for humanity and human dignity. The story of Eichmann points beyond itself. It is about the nature of evil in individual and organization in modern society. In this chapter, I would like to go deeper into the analysis of the character of Eichmann the prototype of the evil manager and administrator in order to draw some conclusions for business ethics and the ethics of administration (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Parts of this chapter is an improvement of the original text which was the basis for another version of the chapter (Laustsen & Rendtorff, 2002). Eichmann illustrates radical evil in the sense that he did not take any responsibility for his actions, since he insisted that he was a bureaucrat who was just obeying orders. Eichmann’s radical evil makes us aware of the necessity of strong ethical principles for protection of the human person in ethics and law (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). Thus, bureaucratic evil becomes an evil of organizational systems and bureaucracies with no deeper roots in an evil personality. This evil was for Arendt a new sort of radical evil in the world, that was difficult to capture, since it was difficult to locate and find its roots. Only deep reflection and moral thinking of a self that is capable to relate reflectively to itself in thinking and self-reflection could be related to this kind of evil. This is why we need philosophy of management to evaluate decision-making in organizations and corporations (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). In her analysis of Eichmann, Arendt emphasizes that Eichmann was with his ordinary character as a grey bureaucrat incapable of moral thinking. By thinking, Arendt referred to the two-in-one dialogue that we have with ourselves in our heads where we reflect about our understandings of guilt, responsibility, and personal conscience related to the world and our actions. In administration and business, this is a personal dialogical reflection on values and ethics (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). The problem with Eichmann was that he was not thinking. He did not have this kind of self-conversation with himself. He was only an ordinary person who was sitting behind his desk, as desk murderer, where he was sending millions of Jews to Auschwitz. Instead of being an evil genius and a charismatic person or a terrible monster who was characterized by some kind of satanic greatness, Eichmann was just a normal person who was following orders as a part of his job. In her ironical description of Eichmann as the little

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man who was characterized by clichés in his language and with no deep self-relation and no sense of the past, Arendt presents Eichmann as the prototype of a civil servant and administrator, who was doing his job without personal involvement. In the following we will discuss Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann with focus on (1) The story and trail of Eichmann (2) Arendt and Eichmann’s evil (3) Determining dimensions of moral blindness in management and organization (4) Conclusion: Evil in modern and postmodern organizations.

4.2

The Story and the Trail of Eichmann

The background of Eichmann in Jerusalem—A Report on the Banality of Evil (1964) is thus the capture of Eichmann. Nevertheless, who was Eichmann? He appears to the people of today as the executioner over all the executioners, the incarnation of totalitarianism as radical evil. He is incomprehensible to Christian moral tradition and in a deep philosophical sense. His inhumanity consists in his lack of the ability to reflect on one’s own actions and to decide, with his lack of common sense and judgment. This meant that he simply did not have the capacity to understand, what was the right decision. Eichmann was an ordinary and normal human being, a bureaucratic soldier and organization man whose onedimensional understanding of life meant that he placed in a totalitarian system without major scruples could send 6 million Jews into concentration camps. It was therefore a scandal to the world community and not least to Israel that, like a number of the biggest Nazi criminals, he managed to escape from the Allies with help from the Red Cross and the Vatican (Steinacher, 2011) and therefore could not be prosecuted under Nuremberg trails just after the Second World War. After the war, he managed to stay hidden in a prison camp. Then, for a few years, he worked in Hamburg under a different identity until he immigrated to Argentina and was employed at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Buenos Aires. His family was brought to him in secrecy. Only in 1961 did the Israeli intelligence service succeed in arresting him near Buenos Aires. When he was caught, he made no attempt to escape the Israeli agents (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 241). In 1963, he was then brought before the court in Jerusalem. According to the controversial description of Arendt, the first impression of Eichmann at trial was that he was an ordinary, nearly simple person. He was born in 1906 in a petty bourgeois family. His father was

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a bookkeeper. He had an conventional ordinary upbringing. He was a simple, grey, ordinary, middle-class citizen who had no particular taste or cultural formation. He was a good family man who liked his children. He loved classical music. After his studies, he was employed as a sub-director of a tram and electricity company and salesperson before joining the Nazi Party in 1932. He then joins the SS and later becomes director of the Nazi regime’s RSHA security office. Eichmann understood himself as the dutiful official and manager who, as a good employee of an effective bureaucracy with his actions, had simply obeyed orders. Eichmann had a great admiration for Hitler. Especially because Hitler himself was an ordinary human being who, from being an insignificant corporal, had become the sovereign sole ruler of over 80 million Germans. Eichmann was therefore proud of working for Hitler. Eichmann liked to be a part of something. This made it possible for him to advance in the social system and gave him the feeling that he was accomplishing an important function in society. He was happy about his job as responsible for deportation of the Jews. When he later became responsible for sending them to Auschwitz, he was also proud of the promotion, although he eventually felt that the title of Obersturmbahnführer did not quite match his work and qualifications (Arendt,1992 [1964]). Eichmann had never read Hitler’s Mein Kampf , and he had not much theoretical insight into Nazi ideology Eichmann just accepted the new ideas of Nazism because it had become the general truth of society. He did not go into the party for ideological reasons. At the beginning of Nazism, he was even a Zionist and contributed to the deportation of many Jews to Israel. Immediately after the Nazis seized power, he supported Zionist Jews in their efforts to form the Jewish state in Israel. Following Arendt, Eichmann was not an incarnate Jew-hater. He often helped Jews. Once he even had an affair with a Jewish woman. He considered his job in the Nazi bureaucracy some ordinary work, which had nothing to do with his personal preferences for or against Jews (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). Nevertheless, during the 1930s and at the outbreak of the war, Eichmann became part of the Nazi technical administrative apparatus, which was tasked with eliminating European Jews. The grab on the Jews was screwed together bite by bite. First, the Jews were fired from their jobs in the Nazi state. Then came the Crystal Night, where they were persecuted

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by the Nazis. During the war, the Jewish question became the most difficult problem for Hitler’s Eastern policy in Poland, where he would give way to the German-speaking people and at the same time get rid of the Polish Jews. At the same time, the Jews from the occupied territories all over Europe were also to be captured and sent to concentration camps (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). This culminated in the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where the logistical responsibility for Die Endlösung was coordinated between the various bureaucracies and administrations in Nazi Germany. Eichmann, who had planned the conference, participated as the responsible officer under Himmler’s ministry for carrying out the difficult transport of the Jews to the various concentration camps. Eichmann was proud of this task, as it was the first time he really came in personal contact with the top Nazi leaders. He was allowed to talk informally with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heinrich Himmler’s subordinate, while standing by the fireplace with a heavy sigh and smoke. At the same time, Eichmann had little idea of the seriousness of the conference’s decisions (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). During the trial in Jerusalem, he mentioned that he felt like Pontius Pilate during the meeting, where it became clear to him that they wanted to carry out the operation to exterminate the Jews. As the professional official, administrator and manager he was, he washed his hands and set out to carry out the order. For what could he even say, when it was a fact that the chief of the Third Reich was quite in favor of the matter (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 114). During the trail, Eichmann pleaded guilty to God, but not to the law. He claimed to have done nothing but his work, to carry out Hitler’s order and to be absolutely obedient to the Nazis. He obeyed the commands of Hitler and Henrich Himmler without questioning the legitimacy of the commands. The orders had been communicated to him by the officers of the SS Corps, especially the Nazi-officer Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Thus, Eichmann served as an instrument for the Nazis as it was his job to bring Jews to the camps where Holocaust killings were carried out. The reckless murders in the concentration camps were legitimized by Hitler as “pity killings” covered by a bureaucratic and medical language code to give the killings a pseudo-scientific meaning. In the camps, the Jews were either gassed or killed. At the same time, Eichmann had a good relationship with Rudolf Höss, a commander in Auschwitz and whom he had met on several occasions. Eichmann knew what was happening in Auschwitz, though he would not think about it because he thought it

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was unpleasant. Höss saved him from seeing the most violent and deadly killings going on in Auschwitz. Therefore, in fact, Eichmann did not see the actual execution of the Jews during his visit to Auschwitz. He was just a loyal henchman, a cog in the system and a political trustee sending the victims to the executioner. Moreover, he let others among the Nazisoldiers to do the dirty work of the killing and gassing operations. Eichmann was very effective at doing his job. He knew that it was not possible to send the Jews to a concentration camp without close cooperation with the local authorities in the different countries. Therefore, he was in close contact with the governments of the occupied countries, especially in Austria and the Balkans. He also worked closely with the Jewish organizations. They did not dare reject the deportations and therefore tried to negotiate for the least evil. They thought it was rational for them as victims to cooperate. Nevertheless, they forgot that the Nazis were not rational at all, but had only one goal, namely, the total extermination of the Jews. It was a negation of all the ideals of political humanity in the nihilistic terror of totalitarianism. The Jews were also disciplined by their own police organizations. In the ghettos, Jewish leaders helped determine who should be selected for concentration camps. Eichmann understood the exploitation dilemma of the Jews, and he therefore had a very good relationship with the Jewish leaders, which helped to make the transport of the Jews to Auschwitz more efficient. Eichmann is the typical example of the bureaucratic official who as an administrator and a manager, without questioning, follows the orders of his superiors as an expression of the will of the state. His obedience and allegiance to his superiors were blind and endless. During the trial in Jerusalem, he referred to Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative to justify his obedience. He felt that Kant should claim that “the principle of my will must always be abrogated to a general law” (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 136). He remained true to the Nazi system by always acting according to the will of the state. Nazi Germany’s Justice Minister Hans Frank had formulated the categorical imperative as follows: “Act so that, if he knew of your act, the Führer would always accept it” (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 136). Eichmann testifies to the discipline of totalitarianism as a loyal henchman and trustee of Hitler. His personality was in fact the same as “a regular postal official” who was responsible for the dispatch of Jews and nothing else. He had made every effort to carry out Die Endlösung, not out of hatred for the Jews, but out of duty to the driver.

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Eichmann was even on the Hitler’s side against Himmler, as he would stop the Jewish persecution. Despite his thoughtlessness, Eichmann had a weak sense of having done something wrong. At trial, he claimed that he had not opposed the capture because he wanted peace with himself and avoided future generations of Germans being convicted for his cause. He maintained to the end that he had never been a Jew-hater, but had just done his job. He felt that he was not responsible for the Nazi system and had to be respected for his dutiful actions. Eichmann was someone who wanted to take part of the system and to be respected by the social system through the internalization and acceptance of the dominant social norms of his society. However, Eichmann was not exempted from crimes against humanity (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 211). He was sentenced to death. Before the hanging, he could do nothing but repeat his clichés about being a conscientious official, and he died after greeting the world with a symbolic Nazi sign as a farewell to the eyes of the world press.

4.3

Arendt and Eichmann’s Evil

Arendt’s account of Eichmann’s fate leaves us with a mixed feeling of chock and sadness. At the same time, Eichmann’s personality challenges our perception of evil and of political reason. Arendt understood this in Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. Her treatment of Eichmann’s evil can be seen as a contribution to a central debate about political rationality and how we can ensure a good and stable society. Arendt’s great astonishment appears in her dismay when she first saw Eichmann “Well he is not wicked and demonic.” The banality of evil expresses that human society has become inhumane. It is the task of politics to prevent this inhumanity by paying attention to the banality of evil. Arendt’s emphasis on the banality of evil must be seen in the light of Immanuel Kant’s considerations of the radical evil. Kant’s conception of evil meets its own limits in the totalitarian system. A new type of evil has emerged, perpetrated by ordinary people. The radical evil was defined by Kant based on the evil will and the demonic man. Arendt challenges this view when she describes Eichmann as a mediocre human being using a stereotypical language and a series of ordinary clichés. Arendt thus finds radical evil in the banal evil, in the ordinary man’s lack of thinking and

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reflection. This analyzes leaves a number of basic problems and we may ask whether this means that evil does not originated in wicked intentions. Arendt does not believe that human beings can be radically evil. A human being is not a demon. The paradox of radical evil is that evil does not originate in a deep human person, but instead in a surface phenomenon, that functions as a fungus or a sandstorm, without origin in deep intentions and motives. And it is this paradox of evil that makes it difficult to understand what evil really is. Thus, this means that there is a fundamental ambiguity in the concept of the radical evil. The question of the depth of evil is accordingly very complex. What is radical evil when we cannot refer to deep motives and intentions of evil actions? Here, Arendt sometimes says that she had changed her mind of evil when she looked closer on Eichmann. She only saw an ordinary human being. Nevertheless, Arendt’s treatment of Eichmann testifies to an ambiguity between the banality of the evil and the misdeeds of a normal human person, since Eichmann’s actions were so monstrous while he remained so simple, grey, and empty in his appearance. Therefore, the question is how to understand the connection between normality and totalitarianism in organizations and institutions. The story of Eichmann shows that the executioners were ordinary people who organized the massacre of the Jews with wicked and cruel precision. From this point of view, it was ordinary people who did the evil. It was a coincidence that it was Eichmann. Any official and manager in the German ministries could have been put to work by Eichmann. They were all ordinary bourgeois people. Arendt understands very well this combination of commonality and the uncommon in the totalitarian system. The destruction of the Jews in the concentration camps was possible because the grey ordinary people, as a part of the morality of everyone in mass society in their lack of reflection failed to ask the important questions of justifications and legitimacy of social norms and actions. The ordinary person does not reflect on one’s own actions, but lives in the general view of society. The injunction to kill had become the law of Hitler’s terror regime. The relationship between evil and good was reversed in the Third Reich. There were no longer any moral rules in civil society that could curb evil. Therefore, Eichmann could do his job and at the same time be normal without having a nag of conscience (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 150). As someone who fulfilled his role in community and did his duty to society, Eichmann thought that he was someone to be praised for his obedience and commitment to his job.

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Arendt emphasizes that we should not attribute to Eichmann great ideological motives for following Nazi thought and ideology. Admittedly, he sometimes describes himself as an idealist, claiming that he will sacrifice everything, even his own father, to hold on to society. Nevertheless, Eichmann’s self-understanding, according to Arendt, is characterized by cliché-like phrases, which he has coincidentally extracted from the Nazi propaganda apparatus. It is hard to take Eichmann seriously. He had a poor memory and could no longer remember what had happened in Germany during the war. During the trial, Eichmann covered himself behind the generalized lie and fictional world of ideology to justify his actions. However, even this was marked by the absence of thinking and depth. Arendt thought that this made the trail in Jerusalem against Eichmann look like a tragic comedy where Eichmann appeared as clown that made people laugh a sad and desperate laughter, confronted with the strange combination of terrible evil and smallness of the person who committed this evil. The comedy came from the lack of rational reflection and motivation in Eichmann’s evil. He was just morally stupid without ability of moral thinking. The thoughtlessness and mediocrity made him one of the greatest criminals in world history. It is possible to find the demonic depth of radical evil in Eichmann (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 288). His wickedness was empty, blank, and meaningless. It is Arendt’s view that we cannot understand Eichmann because there is nothing to understand. He acted as an instrument in a regular bureaucracy without being able to follow human judgment or political responsibility. Arendt points out Eichmann’s inability to think and his incapacity to put himself in the other’s place (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 49) He was unable to reflect critically on his own situation. He could not see the the world and a particular situation from a universal point of view. No communication and establishing a joint human reality of togetherness was possible with him. He isolated himself from reality and from other people. Eichmann is an inhumane negation of the human world. This analysis of Eichmann’s evil leaves a number of questions and issues. Eichmann’s actions pose a radical challenge to our conception of political rationality. In totalitarianism, the common sense of humanity is broken and destroyed. It is no longer certain that man has a critical ability to with Arendt’s words to independently and spontaneously “to begin anew,” independent of public opinion. The mass man in the mob and the authoritarian personality can no longer distinguish between good and

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evil and are characterized by thoughtlessness and loss of the ability for critical reflection. One intriguing question, however, is whether Arendt goes too far in her rejection of Eichmann’s demonic wickedness, and whether evil is really as banal as she claims? Is it not insensitive and arrogant to belittle Eichmann as a banal human being and ordinary man. Many people found Arendt’s irony insensible and too demonstratively arrogant. Should we not maintain Eichmann’s guilt, even if we find that he had no depth and was characterized by a lack of thinking? Is she right when she claims that Eichmann was neither demonic nor monster-like, but characterized by a lack of ability of moral thinking. Eichmann is somebody who refuses to be a human person with responsibility and consciousness. Here, Arendt maintains that one cannot fail to judge people in relation to their individual moral responsibilities. Instead, individuals must always be held accountable for their actions, even if they can be explained by the situation, environment, and external pressure. Eichmann’s actions therefore remind us of the critical necessity of judgment. We have a responsibility to try to understand radical evil to preserve human freedom and dignity. However, this shows why judgment is tragic when we judge political disasters in the history of humanity. At the same time, the question is whether we should do an effort to understand Eichmann and totalitarianism at all. If understanding and striving to make sense of the world is part of judgment, does the judgment against Eichmann involve forgiveness and forgetting? The problem is that our effort to understand makes Eichmann an ordinary human, and we are not far from forgiving, for every human being would not have acted equally mindlessly in his or her situation. Is there a necessary connection between judgment, forgiveness, and understanding? The case against Eichmann therefore testifies to totalitarianism’s complete oblivion of the humanistic ideals of common life in a good society. Accordingly, we will discuss Arendt’s question about Eichmann, administration, management, and totalitarianism in relation to the problem of moral blindness and banality of evil in organizations. This can in a negative way be said to teach us the need to in leadership and organization to uphold the noble ideals of democracy of conversation, deliberation, plurality, authentic practice, enlightened self-thinking, judgment, organization, and political community.

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4.4 Determining Dimensions of Moral Blindness in Management and Organization Although I know that that there are many differences between Eichmann’s context during the Holocaust and contemporary moral blindness, I would like to point to some structural and conceptual content of the concept of modern blindness that we can deduct from the previous analysis and apply to modern bureaucracies and business organizations. However, first I will present the institutional conclusions concerning blindness that we can draw from Arendt’s analysis of the banality of evil. The dimensions of the concept of moral blindness in management include a general role-playing of efficient obedience of the manager and administrator to the functional role in the system. The idea of moral blindness in management and organizations implies that the manager, business leader, or public administrator has no capacity for moral thinking. What happens is that the manager does not see an ethical dilemma in his or her actions or that this ethical dilemma is ignored in favor of the duty to obey the organizational imperative. The manager, business leader, or public administrator only follows orders and justifies his or her actions by reference to the technical goal rationality of the organizational system. This is a function of the duty to the organizational system and we can say that management by objective has replaced any deeper reflection on outcomes and aims of the action. Here, the manager is strongly influenced by the ideology, principles, or instrumental values of the organization. The manager cannot see beyond the specific ideology that characterizes the organizational system and this ideology determines the actions of the manager with regard to employees and external and internal stakeholders. This attachment includes an abstraction from concrete human needs and concerns in the business organization. This focus on the ideology and rules of the organization implies the incapacity to regard stakeholders as other than systemic elements. They do not appear with names and faces but are treated according to the rules of the system. In many cases, moral blindness strangely enough includes collaboration on the part of the victims of the harm. This implies that managers outsource difficult and hard decision-making to the victims so that the victims can help the managers by implementing the harm to victims that must be introduced according to the rules of the system.

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The victims follow the rationality of the system and they identify with their roles, motivated either by pure obedience or by an attempt to minimize greater harm. Here we see how the interaction between victims and perpetrators, managers and people in the system who are managed by the managers is a mutual social relation and the outcome of the interaction also depend on the role-playing by the victims. Moral blindness contains a dehumanization of the victims and other stakeholders implied in the process, rendering them as elements, things, or functions of the system. Managers conceive the victims not as human beings but as elements or functions in the system. In the process of interaction, there is a tendency that the victims internalize these elements. Moral blindness relies on total obedience by the administrators of the system. The administrators of the system do not go beyond the system but identify with the system and they identify with their roles because they do not have capacity of going beyond the system and there is no possibility in the rationality of the system to go beyond the system and consider the system from outside. Technology and instrumental rationality is an essential element in the administration of the organization. The managers use technology and instrumental rationality as the driving force in their decision-making and this decision-making is determined by the techno-scientific instrumental rationality. Each participant in the organization accomplishes a specific work function with a specific task but he or she has no general overview of the organizational system. There is an element of compartmentalization where nobody in the system has an external overview of the content of the system. They cannot see the outcome of what happens in the system but they can only see the result of their own particular actions. Top managers and leaders may behave opportunistically to follow their own interests with regard to the main goal of the instrumental system. The top of the system is supposed to follow the high ideals that are proposed as the ideological justification of the system. In reality, they may act opportunistically and follow their own particular interests. Top managers, administrators, and leaders may act irrationally beyond common human understandings of morality in order to serve the instrumental rationality of the organizational system. They may be so linked to the system that they have no external position from which they can see the system. They may act in ways where they incarnate the system even though it is beyond human sense and common reason. The administrative and managerial obedience to realize the organizational aim becomes the central interest of the managers or administrators of the organization.

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Here we see that the managers forget any reason to obey the system outside the system and they see the obedience to the system as the central basis for their action. Obedience, role identification, and task commitment remain the central and ultimate virtues of the commitment of members of the organization to the organizational system. Again, we see how the commitment to the system is dependent on the role that the employee or manager has in the system. The rationality of the action is the sense of belonging to the role in the system. Each member of the organizational system commits themselves to the values of the organizational goal of the system. It is an integrated part of role-playing and compartmentalization in the organizational system that there is no critical evaluation of the ethics of system as such and that individual only identifies with the system through role identification and role-playing as an individual with a specific position and task in the system.

4.5 Conclusion: Evil in Management in Modern and Postmodern Organizations What conclusion can we draw from this kind of analysis? A pessimist philosopher like Theodor W. Adorno who would argue that modern times since the Holocaust has become a new Age of barbarism. Adorno wrote that morality and ethics was rather impossible and sometimes even barbaric after Auschwitz, since human civilization had died. Nevertheless, a more optimistic reader would still argue that it has not really been shown how the moral blindness of Eichmann and of totalitarianism is the same as the moral blindness that we find in the modern business, administration, and bureaucracy. This may be true. However, our contemporary world is full of moral blindness, where administrators and managers ignore harm and wrongdoing in organizations. In fact, in order to understand the social institutional dimensions of understanding moral blindness in complex systems, we could for example look at the self-understanding of business people in business organizations. Behind the financial crisis in the United States in 2008 with bankruptcy of credit institutions and financial firms, there was a strong opportunist and greedy behavior of financial managers. It turned out that self-understanding of business people was following the logic of the system, based on borrowing more and more money to take more and more risks. The corporate culture of investment capitalism was characterized by a neo-Darwinian metaphors of “every day is a battle – you will have to kill the enemy” and their integration in the daily understanding

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of work. Moreover, there are many more examples of contemporary business and administration, where we can detect moral blindness in corporate culture and bureaucratic systems and in the self-understanding of the involved actors. A critical approach to business and administration would have to detect moral blindness in economic-technological complex of systemic rationality and systemic action in contemporary business, corporation, and administration. Following Habermas who distinguished between system and life world, where morality is formed in the communicative encounter of the life world, it is important to avoid moral blindness in systems and organizations. Habermas says: “Moral feelings play an important role in the constituting of moral phenomena. We will not perceive certain conflicts of action as being at all morally relevant if we do not feel that the integrity of the person is being threatened or violated. Feelings form the basis for our perception of that something is moral. Anyone who is blind to moral phenomena has blind feelings. He lacks the censor, as we would say, for the suffering of a vulnerable creature which has the right to the protection of boths its physical self and its identity, and this censor is clearly closely related to symphaty and emphaty” (Habermas, 1990). Thus, Habermas agrees with Arendt in the importance of moral thinking. Moral perception and moral thinking is an integrated part of the two-in-one dialogue that constitute human moral reflection. This was what Arendt called thinking. The manager and administrator need to practice moral thinking, not to be captured by the nonthinking of the banality of evil. We need to educate civil servants and managers who have the capacity of moral perception and being open to moral dimensions of their actions in order to avoid bureaucratization of modern life. This is the role and function of business ethics in organizations and administration (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). Moral reflection and moral thinking need to be integrated in the mindset and culture of managers, leaders, and administrators in order to avoid the terrible evil without roots where nobody has the integrity of feeling guilt and being responsible (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). The manager needs an enlarged mentality and overcomes the clichés of the bureaucratic and corporate system of which they take part. Thus, moral thinking in management implies philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). This includes concern for ethical principles autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability and basic rights of human beings and stakeholders

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of organizations and administrative systems (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c). Thus, with Arendt we can emphasize the need for moral thinking and judgment at all levels of society and political community. Personal responsibility and moral sensibility must be practiced according to critical judgment. This is necessary in order to protect humanity and human dignity in organizations, bureaucracies, and their environments. Here, the concept of the banality of evil and moral blindness function as an explanation of the idea of institutional pathologies. By this we can understand some contemporary phenomenon of more or less explicit violence and domination in organizations. Thus with the analysis of Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report of the Banality of Evil in a contemporary perspective, we can use this concept of banality of evil and moral blindness to explain phenomena of lack of ethical insight and sensibility as well of the lack of ethical formulation competency in organizations.

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PART II

Systematic Elements of the Concept of Moral Blindness in Social Theory

CHAPTER 5

Interpretations of Evil in Modern Philosophy and Social Theory: What Significance for Ethics and Philosophy of Management?

5.1

Introduction

The myriad wars, acts of terror, and acts of violence in the secularized and post-metaphysical age of our time raise a classic philosophical problem, namely, the question of what is evil and whether it exists at all? This is based on a critical account of the classical conceptions of the problem of evil, where evil is explained as the will of God, as an evil act, created by a human or other absolute, demonic and devilish evil will, or something that human beings create as a part of the strife for a higher good. In my opinion, as an alternative to the classic discussion of the Theodicy, one can emphasize the following conceptions of evil in today’s philosophical discussion: (1) The banality of evil (Hannah Arendt) (2) Evil as a result of freedom’s choice (Jean-Paul Sartre) (3) Evil as nihilism or as unpredictable postmodern transparency (André Glucksmann and Jean Baudrillard). The fundamental topic of the chapter will on this basis relate the different concepts of evil to the discussions of philosophy of management and corporations (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). The problem is how reflections on philosophy of management can be related to the discussion of the metaphysical foundations of evil in organizations. Here, the metaphysical discussions of evil relate to the ethical foundations of human actions in organizations (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). We can say that the presentation of discussion of © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_5

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evil helps to clarify the debate about the basis for values, integrity, and ethical culture in organizations (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Moreover, the presentation of the metaphysical foundations of evil relates to the foundations of the ethics of protection of the human person. In addition, the basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, vulnerability find their basis in this clarification of the metaphysical discussion of the nature of evil (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003a, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). Thus, the aim of this chapter is to provide the metaphysical, theological, and philosophical foundations for understanding evil in organizations and administrations. This chapter is based on my earlier research on different concepts of evil (Rendtorff, 2003b). On the basis of the presentation of the personality of Eichmann and the Holocaust from the perspective of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy, this chapter presents the different concepts of evil that are relevant in relation to the definition of evil in organizations and administration. With this we get a better understanding of the basis for good and evil in organizations and administrations. Finally, the chapter will debate the possible conclusions for ethics and philosophy of management of this discussion.

5.2

Revolt Against the Classical Theodicy

Common to the (post) modern notions of evil is that they make up a rational explanation for the problem of evil in the classical philosophical tradition, which, with various variants of Theodicy, sought to justify evil based on the will of God, human freedom, or the course of history. In Greek cosmology, human beings were seen as part of a harmonious universe in which all things strived for good. In fact, evil first became reality with Christianity, where it is the human being, who, in the fall and rebellion against God, instigates the evil in the world. This created the Theodicy, where one would rationally explain why God allowed evil to exist in the world. Evil was not seen as the work of God, but an expression of a truly existing negative power in the universe, i.e., like the actions of the devil. This led to the notion of the battle between evil and good in the universe, where God and good would ultimately always be the strongest. Against this, stands the idea of evil as rooted in a sinful human will that can be seen as a modern version of Theodicy. This was clearly expressed

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by Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant, who believed that the radical evil was rooted in man’s free will to do evil. Evil is a will of destruction that has turned away from morality and good for the sake of its own gain. For Kant, it is thus a point that evil does not really exist in itself, but is merely the result of a failed human act. This rationalization of evil no longer makes sense to those who have experienced the twentieth century with its inhuman horrors. German philosopher Hans Jonas puts the criticism of the Theodicy at the forefront in a famous lecture on “The concept of God After Auschwitz” (1984). Here he discusses whether the existence of an almighty and almighty God may be in harmony with the crimes of the Nazis in the concentration camps (Jonas, 1994). How can a good God be present in the world and at the same time allow a myriad of totalitarian regimes, bloody wars, ruthless killings, and meaningless extermination of innocent people? The barbarism of suffering in the twentieth century means that it no longer makes sense to speak of an almighty and loving God whose actions are understandable to man. Therefore, Hans Jonas believes that if the concept of God is to make sense today, God must be a “suffering God” who looks with concern but does not have the power to intervene in the evil deeds of man. God after Auschwitz, in shame and despair, has withdrawn from the world and left to human beings themselves to relate to the good and the evil (Jonas, 1994).

5.3

Hannah Arendt: The Banality of Evil

German-Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) had a long experience as refugee and stateless person without citizenship. In 1933, she had to flee from the Nazis to France and later she traveled to the United States when France was occupied by the Nazi Germany. She published in 1951 one of the most important works on twentieth-century system terror, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt, 1964 [1951]). In this context, Hannah Arendt’s philosophy contains a revolt against the notion of evil as a result of a demonic and devilish evil will. Arendt’s position thus marks a showdown with the Theodicy in political ideology. As an example of this ideology, we can mention the reactions to September 11 in 2001. Following the terrorist campaign against the World Trade Center in New York, President Bush repeatedly emphasized that the fight against Osama bin Laden was a battle between the good and the bad. In addition, the war against Iraq was conceived as

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a crusade against a devilish force in the world. Even the Danish Queen Margrethe said in her New Year’s speech in 2001 that terrorism incarnates the “willful evil.” Bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s radical evils were compared to Hitler’s, Stalin’s, and the other totalitarian regimes as an expression of the “absolute evil” of the twentieth century. Moreover, in the war against Libya in 2011, in the war against Islamic State, and in the civil war in Syria, it has been proposed that Gadhafi, Islamic State, and Assad were representatives of radical evil. Thus, since the beginning of the twentieth century this absolute concept of evil has again been dominating. In her political philosophy and social theory, Arendt reflects on how the Holocaust, i.e., the killing of six million Jews in concentration camps was possible. She believes that such evil is beyond any human sense (Arendt, 1964 [1951]). “This ought not to have happened” (Arendt, 2005, p. 15). A terrible borderline of human action was passed with the death camps. Nevertheless, evil requires that we try to understand it in order to be able to protect it. Arendt therefore concluded that the evils of totalitarianism in Nazism must be understood as a historically conditioned, modern political phenomenon that is essentially different from earlier types of tyranny and despotism. According to Arendt, totalitarianism is characterized by the fact that technical rationality and utility are used to realize an irrational ideology that is often based on anti-Semitism or racism. Totalitarianism has nightmarish character when it uses technical rationality and modern technology to radically transform people and society through systematic murder and ideologically organized madness. The terror creates a constant uncertainty and insecurity between individuals. In totalitarianism, the elites sanction their power by using the secret police. Concentration camps and death camps are essential to establishing total power for totalitarian leaders. The function of camps was, in Arendt’s pretentious words, to make people superfluous and meaningless (Arendt, 1964 [1951], p. 441). Arendt argues that the radical evil of the totalitarian regime consisted in its attempt to assert itself over human nature and, consequently, in its attempt to shape the human being at will. Arendt remained one of the most important American political philosophers in the 1950s and 1960s to be preoccupied with the problem of totalitarianism. In 1963, she offered the weekly newspaper The New Yorker to report from the trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann, who was believed to be the top responsible official for transporting Jews to concentration camps, escaped the Allied

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liberation troops and fled to Argentina, where in 1961 he was captured by Israeli secret agents. Based on her articles in the newspaper, Arendt now wrote her second major work on the problem of evil Eichmann in Jerusalem. An Essay on the Banality of Evil from 1964, in which she at one time reassessed and developed her theories of totalitarianism. Arendt argued against the dominant opinion that Eichmann, whom one had wanted to portray as the symbol of the willful evil, almost like the devil’s incarnation, was nothing special. Contrary to world publicity, Arendt reduced Eichmann to being a banal and petty bourgeois official (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). He had no depth or moral imagination, and his malice came from his thoughtlessness. Contrary to the cultivation of the devilish personality, Arendt believed that Eichmann’s evil consisted in the fact that he could not distinguish between good and evil. Thus, the banality of evil is the consequence of radical evil, which made all people bland and superfluous. Even if Eichmann was not characterized by an evil will with satanic greatness, one could argue that the other Nazi criminals like Göring or Hitler were full of demonic evil and were genius masterminds of evil in the world. In addition, should we not, for moral reasons, hold on to the notion of the other fanatical terrorists as the embodiment of evil? Arendt’s thesis was provocative because it was contrasted with the enemy image of today, where one would make an icy, calculating brain responsible for the killing of Jews in concentration camps. However, Eichmann’s thoughtlessness was grounded in his dutiful behavior as a desk bureaucrat doing his job. It was very difficult to accept to the victims that many of the German soldiers and superior officers were ordinary people who obeyed orders in a large military system without even thinking (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 42). However, the genius of the thesis of the banality of evil is that it helps to free us from the radical evil. We do not have to demonize the world by inventing mysterious terrible enemies or turning people like bin Laden or the terrorist of Islamic State into smart, intelligent, and exciting criminals. By paying attention to the banality of Eichmann’s behavior, Arendt was able to understand the Holocaust as a result of human error and wickedness, rather than as an expression of a radically evil force that would always operate in history or human nature. Arendt’s great achievement with the thesis of the banality of evil is the claim that evil does not originate in human nature as such. Evil is not based on evil motives, since it has no depth, and only good exists

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fully. Rather, evil stems from mediocrity and dogmatic blindness. This can be generalized to the terrorists and ideological fanatics of our time as well. In reality, it is people characterized by the banality of evil, who have lost their human dignity due to a distorted self-perception and a lack of moral sense. However, there are critical objections to Arendt’s thesis on the connection between radical evil and the banality of evil. If we generalize the thesis of the banality of evil, would that not mean a return to a classical worldview, where evil is either considered a deficiency or nonexistent? Even if Eichmann was not driven by evil motives, but was rather thoughtless and ordinary, one could argue that the other Nazi criminals like Göring or Hitler were full of radical wickedness and evil? Moreover, should we not, for moral reasons, hold on to the notion of the other fanatical terrorists as the embodiment of evil? I now incline more to claim that radical human evil is based on the banality of evil without demonic depth in the sense that the most radical evil is the one where there is no humanity behind. Following Arendt, we can argue that evil of the Nazi criminals was like a fungus in a system where there was no humanness or responsibility left. In this sense, the horror of evil in the Nazi system can be compared to natural phenomena like an typhoon or ocean storm that captures everything and everybody without roots or origins. The thoughtlessness of the criminals and the horror of their deeds was not characterized by the satanic greatness of the doers of evil. With the distinction between the doers of the actions and the horrible content of the actions as deeds, Arendt emphasizes that the doers were small ordinary people with no civilization, sense of poetry or music or capacity of philosophical and metaphysical thinking. Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil is characterized by a heroic irony where she by making the distinction between the banality of Eichmann as a person and his radical evil horrifying actions could avoid giving the Nazi criminals any kind of credit of human evil genious. From this point of view, it gives us strength not to have to fight with demon and radical evil as a part of human nature, whose unmistakable theoretical and practical consequences bear witness to current demonization of terrorists. Moreover, this does not have to rule out another form of radical evil that, for example, stems from the fate, the will of God, or a divine battle between the good and the evil in the universe. Nevertheless, this evil goes beyond meaningful human actions. Thus, it cannot be justified by the evil will of especially demonic people.

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As an expression of a new view of the problem of evil that we badly need in dark times of anguish and nervous enemy images, Arendt’s reflections are a good example of creative political thinking, which in its method is separated from both empirical political science and sociology. This philosophy is critical of the system builders in the tradition from Plato to Hegel and Marx. Political thinking is based on human freedom and dignity and it is the task of political theory to fight for a human world based on respect for individuality and diversity. Here Arendt stands in continuation of European humanism, incorporating aspects of Greek and Roman culture. Arendt also highlights the independence of the United States in 1776 because, unlike the French and Russian revolutions, it led to the formation of a truly democratic political community, in which the constitution was based on respect for human freedom and common moral sense. This democracy was oriented toward human freedom and equality, as it went against a sharp divide between rulers and citizens. Arendt’s political thinking addresses the hierarchical totalitarianism and searches to avoid the banality of evil by fighting for a classic republicanism in which free and autonomous citizens in mutual respect and consultation endeavor to promote the common good.

5.4

Jean-Paul Sartre: Critique of Absolute Evil

The existentialist philosophy of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) helps Hannah Arendt to denounce the belief that evil exists as something in itself in the world. His famous play The Devil and the Good God (1952) shows that it is meaningless to define good and evil as absolute concepts. Sartre’s play has been called a “war machine against God.” Believing in God’s existence as a precondition for the meaning of life simply leads to violence and inhuman suffering. There is no human nature, for there is no God to tell people how to live. Besides not making much sense to claim that God is in the world, the concept of God is meaningless. You cannot both be eternal and necessary and at the same time create out of nothing. Instead of nostalgically believing in a good God and a predetermined human nature, ethics must build on the actions of free people in specific situations. The Devil and the Good God takes place in the time of the sixteenthcentury Reformation, and is about a rough army commander Götz who ruins one city after another. Götz loots, whores, kills and steals (Sartre, 1984 [1951]). He does not like men, and he wants to challenge God by

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dealing with the devil and do as much evil as possible, not of willpower and interest, but of the intention and motivation of being as evil as possible at all. One day, Götz meets one of his opponents, a priest who says that it is easy to be absolutely evil in a world where God is absent. We are all damned to hell. Goodness, love, and justice cannot be realized. This challenges Götz’s pride, and he is provoked to change his life project to show that it is possible to do the absolute good. His effort to be good, ironically, makes everything much worse because the consequences of the actions that should be good are in reality evil. When Götz willfully gives away his property and fortune, it leads to bloody struggle and peasant revolts. His former mistress dies of shame because she cannot stand being a whore when he is so good (Sartre, 1984 [1951]). Therefore, it does not matter if Götz does the evil or the good. In both cases, the result is disastrous, and Götz’s attempt to live by absolute moral standards based on God’s command that destroys the humanity in himself and those around him. Götz gradually realizes that it does not matter whether he serves the devil or God, and that the efforts to consistently be good cause him to lose the ability to judge situations. At the end of the play, it becomes clear to Götz that God does not exist at all. Götz understands that good and evil depend on human action situations. In Sartre’s words, Götz becomes aware of morality’s dependence on “human freedom in the situation,” and it causes him to join the poor peasants in the fight against the oppressors for better conditions. In other words, it leads to a revolutionary commitment and hope of overcoming material scarcity in order to realize human freedom on earth. Between God and the devil, Götz chooses the human and realizes a complex connection between good and evil. This does not mean that he rejects any violence of his actions, but the necessity of the violence must be seen in relation to the possibilities of freedom in the situation. The theater play about devil and the good God is a good illustration of Sartre’s existentialist philosophy of how man must become aware of his living conditions. In reality, we are condemned to be free. Existence precedes essence. A human being is born with freedom. We live and realize an existence project in order to choose ourselves in life choices. Human reality is what it is not, and it is not what it is. Life is a great comedy in which we play roles that shape our choice of identity. Nevertheless, we often refuse to accept this contingency and freedom of our lives. Therefore, a human self escapes away from oneself in bad faith,

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anxiety, self-deception, and dishonesty by making itself a thing, among other things, or by seriously believing in God. The book Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) in which Sartre, by emphasizing human freedom, places a human being in a situation in the world what gives it a unique and indefinable place in the universe, in a humanistic tradition dating back to the Renaissance (Sartre, 1946). The autonomy and dignity of the human being as a moral being means that it can choose for itself whether to descend to lower levels, which are animal, or to rise to higher levels, which are divine. Hence the moral responsibility of human beings, which requires that he or she conscious of the total indifference of God to the good and the evil, confront him or herself with the reality of life and create his or her own historical and human morality. The absence of absolute meaning does not have to lead to emptiness, defeat, and paralysis. Instead of being determined by abstract systems and totalitarian ideologies, such as capitalism and communism, to be human and realizing our human freedom means appreciating the world that opens up to human freedom and loving the other human being as it is. Through its choices in life, human freedom sets a norm for good and evil for which it is sovereignly responsible. That is what lies in Sartre’s words that a human being is what it chooses to be. By virtue of humanity’s desire for the divine, freedom is based on a good will, and we cannot wish the evil without contradicting ourselves. Ethics is based on a quest for the beautiful life of mutual openness and respect. Today, there is no consensus about the excellence of this philosophy. Humanism is a Janus head with two faces. The postmodern French intellectual Alain Finkelkraut has claimed in L’Humanite perdue (1996) that Sartre himself falls victim to the absolutist philosophy that he criticizes. It is neither God nor the devil, but human beings who are to blame for the twentieth-century’s violence, terror, and destruction. Humanism, while tearing man loose from God and claiming that everything is possible, has made an abstract idea of humanity the basis of morality. The result of this is inhumane violence, because one has to define what is human by distinguishing between humans and nonhumans, of which only humans have a moral significance. Finkelkraut argues that the notion that man can take fate into his own hand and create himself is extremely dangerous because it ignores all but human freedom (Finkelkraut, 1996). If we pay homage to freedom and reject that man has a nature that underlies his

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inviolable dignity, which it can never lose, one cannot argue against the use of totalitarianism by violence to improve man. Humanism is totalitarian because it is based on an abstract, contentless idea of the universal human being defined by, for example, human rights, freedom, etc. Humanism has in common with the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin that it understands man as anothingness that claims itself over nature and by its own will in the course of history must realize its humanity. Here, the “boot of history” steps toward a better society in God’s place in the world. In addition, the enemy becomes the sub-human, the Jew, or the natural, which must be exterminated in the march of humanity toward greater perfection. According to Finkelkraut, universal humanism, where humanness is the smallest common denominator, is yet another violent abstraction that does not respect the uniqueness of the individual and disregards historical and cultural differences. Wanting to liberate humanity from its chains by forcing it to be free from God and cosmos makes each individual one of many numerically identical copies of Homo sapiens. The belief in the historical progress toward the universal spirit of reason may ultimately contradict the dignity of the individual. Although it addresses the problems of making humanity the “scale of everything,” I do not believe that this criticism affects the ethical possibilities of Sartre’s philosophy. The ethics of freedom does not disregard what is unique and different. The ideal of free recognition between creative freedoms is precisely not to downplay and limit one another. As we learn from a brilliant work of art, the beautiful and authentic life between people is determined by mutual giving and receiving, free generosity in which man gives himself to form meaning in the world and create the other human being as a free subject with no back thoughts and expectation of getting something in return for its generosity. Following Hannah Arendt’s detection of the banality of evil as a result of the ordinary man’s thoughtless actions, Sartre’s philosophy helps to refute the existence of an absolute evil will. The humanism of freedom can overcome evil. Nevertheless, the tragic thing is that this moral demand to the committed freedom to overcome discouragement and to fight external alienation often ends in conflict and violence. Unfortunately, violence and meaningless coercive relationships dominate. This challenges humanism, as a search for diversity that dissolves in society’s bureaucratic structures and systems of oppression. This is not bettered by the fact that humanism has lost the opportunity to place the root of human dignity in

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a larger cosmic entity. This is probably why the Theodicy no longer makes sense and why it can be argued that from a pessimist point of view that a suffering and concerned God has withdrawn from the violent human world.

5.5 André Glucksmann and Jean Baudrillard: Evil as Nihilistic Play or Postmodern Revolt Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre maintains humanism and faith, based on the reflective capabilities of human freedom, and committed moral choices. This is despite their revolt against the traditional rationalization of evil as part of God’s plan, as an expression of a truly existing power in the universe or as a result of man’s absolute evil will. In this context, French philosophers André Glucksmann and Jean Baudrillard go even further in their criticism of the Theodicy’s rationalization of evil by questioning human possibilities. Rather, they see evil as a result of the nihilism of society and the postmodern conditions in which there is no deeper meaning. André Glucksmann addresses in Dostoevsky in Manhattan where Sartre ended by asking Dostoevsky’s question “everything is allowed when God is dead” and putting this in relation to the terrorists against the World Trade Center. Glucksmann’s point is that the terrorist group that kidnapped the planes as they flew into the World Trade Center were not ordinary religious fanatics, but rather convinced nihilists expressing a kind of modern spirit of dispair (Glucksmann, 2002). Thus, they can be said to combine Eichmann’s banality, Götz’s playful quest for evil with modern man’s lack of faith in anything. Dostoevsky’s novel character Raskolkov is the character that incarnates this total nihilism. Glucksmann’s analysis can therefore be said to at once supplement and transcend the humanistic perspectives of Arendt and Sartre. For Glucksmann, evil is not the result of God’s plan for humanity or the existence of a particularly evil power in the universe. Rather, it comes from the generalized nihilistic mood of our time, where there is no meaning at all. Thus, Glucksmann does not see the terrorists as expressions of Islam or religion, but as an example of a destructive will that comes from the nihilism of modernity (Glucksmann, 2002). Nihilism, by the way, is everywhere in today’s violence. The rationality of war as defined by Clauswitz as an instrument for achieving political goals by other means is challenged by the absurdity of suicide. As an act of violence, terror is an

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expression of absolute willpower that has no purpose other than destruction. In doing so, the religious nihilist’s quest for total destruction revolts against Arendt’s and Sartre’s belief in moral thinking of human freedom. The nihilist is not influenced by the belief in a political and ideological message, and therefore the aimless terror is replacing political and ideological terror. Glucksmann believes that on September 11, the terror should be read in the wake of the notion of the death of ideologies and the dissolution of liberal democracy, in which a sharp split has emerged between the economically goal-oriented person on the one hand and the religious person on the other. The religious nihilist is a person who can find no meaning in his life and can see no other settlement of economic rationality than the total destruction of the democratic state. A similar nihilism characterized the Taliban regime and perhaps the dictatorship of Iraq and the violence in Syria and Islamic State, which quickly found itself on the other side of good and evil, and where terror was becoming an end in itself. In nihilistic politics, the goal is total annihilation, and Glucksmann argues, as Finkelkraut pointed out, that modern totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were characterized by the nihilism that is also in danger of affecting the great empirical superpower of the United States of our time. To modernize is not necessarily to civilize, and the attempt to create more freedom is in danger of ending in the void of nihilism. If we look around the world, human beings today live as if God did not exist and it creates a breeding ground for nihilistic terror both individually and collectively. For the nihilist there is no higher purpose for our actions. The nihilist perceives destruction as a play, and finds enjoyment in the intensity of the play and not in the result. Ideology and religion are used as an occasion but have no purpose in themselves. The active nihilist (the terrorists of September 11 or Islamic State participants) face the passive nihilists (such as Eichmann) in the bureaucratic society, where empty structures have replaced any piety for ideological coherence. According to Glucksmann, after the death of ideologies, our society is thus characterized by generalized nihilism without any deeper meaning, and where destruction is also of no greater significance than a possible intensity for the pleasure-seeking terrorist. Thus, Glucksmann is far from Baudrillard’s criticism of humanism in his description of evil’s transparency in a world where the contradictions between good and evil no longer make sense.

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Jean Baudrillard contrasts the contemporary culture of consumption in L’Echange symbolique de la mort with contemporary Western societies, in sharp contrast to the closed traditional societies of the past, characterized by strong symbolic structures based on the myth of eternal return, destiny and integration of life and death and evil in a cosmological symbolic entity (Baudrillard, 1976). This analysis has the character of a metaphysics of death, where it is claimed that the nothingness of death is the only thing behind the sign systems of culture. In this perspective, Western culture is characterized by an empty nihilism in which the materialism of the consumer society has taken over from the symbolic relations. This is also an exclusion of the negative aspects where codes and simulations appear as solid structures. At the same time, Baudrillard shows how death constantly manifests itself behind a symbolic structure that one tries to displace. The symbolic breaks with the immunity of exchange logic. The symbolic is radically different in relation to the consumption economy (Baudrillard, 1976). The pleasure principle of enjoyment of sexuality involves its contradiction, which is the death drive and the genetic description of man also presuppose its own resolution. Behind the objects’ ideally rendered structures, the indeterminacy of death lurks. Death is the indeterminacy of the code behind the logic of the exchange, and it cannot be avoided even in the most perfect virtual systems. This is shown by concrete analyzes of work, fashion, body, and poetics. Baudrillard gives in La transparence du mal a characteristic of the postmodern era as a world after the orgy (Baudrillard, 1990). Aesthetic postmodernity no longer operates with the heavy contradictions of modernity between true-false, good–evil, uglybeautiful, male–female, etc. We live in an empty culture characterized by an endless series of references that do not refer to something other than himself. The reference line between characters is immanently closed in a way that causes the culture to reject all negative components that are shut out from the system. When Baudrillard talks about a transparent reality, he believes that we live in a society where there is no more mysterious underlying foundation that we must try to find. We have come to the bone of reality. This is illustrated by society’s relationship to sexual nudity. Everything is transparent and uncovered genitals are only as interesting as pornographic images, yet so virtual that you can say that obscenity has replaced reality. Thus, according to Baudrillard, it no longer makes sense to talk about human nature, since our bodies are mixed with machines and prostheses and defined by aesthetic character relationships that immanently

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relate to each other without being based on an underlying essence. The subject is no longer trying to find itself by transcending itself, but it has become a “fractal self,” which manifests itself in a multitude of fragmented “I’s,” through aesthetic and technical perfection of the body (Baudrillard, 1990). All the dualistic genres and categories of modernity are slowly dissolving. For example, it no longer makes sense to talk about the sexual difference when any woman can dress up as a man and men can have sex change operations. Rather, we live in a Xerox copy culture where there are no longer any originals and everyone can create themselves according to their own aesthetic needs. Likewise, communication and conversation have become devoid of depth, and the diversity of transpolitical, transsexual, and transesthetic forms has taken over the culture. Baudrillard’s diagnosis of the postmodern society takes on a nightmarish nature when he argues that in our culture we are far beyond the Enlightenment concept of radical evil as based on human subjective intentions. The fact that we have transcended a common contradiction between good and evil means that we have a much harder time distinguishing between them. We doubt the existence of concentration camps, and in the media’s persistent, superficial self-referential play and exposure, we become indifferent to the biggest bloodshed we hear about on television and radio, such as Rwanda and Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Islamic State terror, or the war in Yemen. The problem, however, is that in a time when absolute truths no longer exist and where the dialectical contradictions and the difference between the same and the other are dissolved, we can nevertheless not hold down the evil. The principle of evil is a “cursed share” or “damned remnant” (part maudite). Despite highlighting the resolution of ordinary moral notions of guilt and responsibility, Baudrillard maintains his critical perspective and understands evil as something absolute. However, it is a point that addressing a system of closed character relationships that have excluded any form of negativity is far more indeterminate, a pathology of system coding that can result in anomaly and metastasis. Evil thus comes back with renewed vigor as inexplicable events, a kind of fate that unpredictably breaks the logic of society’s systems. There are rupture and terror in all types of information systems, and we stay away from controlling reality. Terror, war, and violence in postmodern media illustrate this. Often evil is impossible to understand and it is difficult to find reasons for such things as terrorist acts. In contrast to past political and moral reaction to anomaly, the new

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coding systems anesthetize the anomaly and try to incorporate it into the well established system. The relationship to the downfall and apocalypse of society is not dealt with morally, but is changed into a sensation or aesthetic phenomenon in the virtual sign system. In this regard, Baudrillard sought to interpret the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, in a postmodernist perspective. While he had previously claimed that the time of events was past, that historical changes no longer existed, in L’esprit du terrorisme from 2002, he claims that the terrorist act was the expression of the event’s pure form or all of the “mother of events.” This means that terrorism is the shadow of globalization and the power system and that the collapse of Twin Towers was a strong symbolic shock to Western civilization’s belief in absolute omnipotence. Terrorism was a computer virus in an otherwise perfect economic and political system (Baudrillard, 2002, p. 16). The terrorist action shows how even the strongest establishment of the hegemony of the good in the Western democracies is countered by another, symbolized here by the symbolic war of terrorists, which at the same time makes the West’s war against terror a sacred union against evil. Terrorism shows that nothing can be established as absolute hegemony. If, on the contrary, it was not Western capitalism, but Islam or Islamic State, which had gained the dominant place in the world, then terrorism would have emerged as Islam’s and Islamic State’s big other, thus enshrining this world domination. Although Baudrillard agrees that terrorism was immoral and reprehensible, he prefers to analyze it as a postmodern phenomenon that questions the Enlightenment philosophy’s belief in eternal progress in science, technology, and democracy. Terrorism shows that good can never completely eliminate evil, which will always be left as a “cursed share” or “damned remnant” (part maudite) that comes full force as soon as you think you have been overcome. Thus, Baudrillard’s postmodernism differs from Glucksmann’s analysis of nihilism by claiming that good and evil are absolute reality that cannot be conceptualized. Terrorism expresses the symbolism of evil that comes into being when you thought that you had finally come free from evil. It is a sacrificial logic in which the symbolism of evil reigns in terrorism at a time after the Cold War’s end, where everyone thought we lived after the end of history, agreeing on the perfection of Western economic values. By putting their own lives at risk, terrorists embark on a radical revolt against Western rationality. Because of their belief that they will die a hero’s death and return to paradise, Baudrillard problematizes André

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Glucksmann’s argument in Dostoïvski à Manhatten that the terrorists are nihilists, and that the terrorists should be perceived as Nietzschans who sacrifice their lives for nothing. At the same time, it is the exact opposite of a common rational recognition logic, since terrorist violence first and foremost is symbolic violence, given an unreal status when it plays on the fictions that the West itself has created after watching movies for decades on bioterrorism, virus attacks, and disasters in Manhattan. This symbolic unreality makes September 11 a mythical nonevent, a fictional otherness that plays with the very foundations of Western rationality and civilization.

5.6 Conclusion: Challenges for Philosophy of Management In this chapter, as an alternative to the traditional rationalization of evil as an expression of God’s plan or intentional demonic evil will, following Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil as radical evil, I have presented some alternative notions that explain evil. Here, we can distinguish between (1) The origins of evil of an ordinary, thoughtless person (2) Evil as a choice of the good and the evil in a concrete situation (3) Evil as a nihilistic play without notions of good and evil or a postmodern revolt against Western rationality. These different views express a critique of a conception of good and evil as absolute forces in the universe. However, while Arendt and Sartre are more or less open to a humanistic generosity as the ethical basis for an account of evil, the nihilistic and postmodernist view of the evil also questions the possibilities of humanism to overcome and stop evil in the world. From this, we can learn that humanism should make clear its own preconditions in order not to end tragically in a situation, which it would like to avoid. These different concepts of evil help us to understand the challenges of organizational evil in the contemporary context of evil and harm in organizations. In fact, all three concepts represent a criticism of the idea of evil originating in a satanic genius like for example the figure of Richard III in Shakespeare’s play. The contrast between Richard III and Eichmann shows that the evildoer may not be an evil demon. Arendt considers Eichmann as a person without evil intentions, who was so banal that it even become somewhat funny, since he was so far from human commonplace with his lack of relation to the world. While Eichmann was thoughtless about his evil, Richard III is the Machiavellian evil ruler who is also a physical monster. Richard III is an example of a figure who is very villain.

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In the play, he declares that he wants to do as much evil as possible. He says that his evil is due to his physical deformity and that he is unloved. At the same time, Richard III is fascinating as a character and you nearly sympathize with him because of his strong personality and his monologues in the play where he presents his evil thoughts and charms people who even know about his deeds. Shakespeare tries to present an evil person as a sympatric figure in order to challenge the audience’s perception of good and evil. However, during the play it becomes more and more apparent that Richard III is a fully evil monster and we lose our sympathy for him. Moreover, Richard III becomes more reflective about his actions and this reflection challenges his efforts to do evil. The different concepts of evil apply directly to the organizational context. It is implicit in Sartre’s view on good and evil that Richard III like Götz eventually would have to give up on being absolute evil since evil even in the Machiavellian framework serves some good. We can read the play of Richard III in this way that Richard III during the play and his inward reflections reaches the limits of his own evil and that he is not far from reaching the point of “stop and think” which is the case of Götz, but which was impossible for Eichmann. Eichmann is exactly incapable of the two-in-one dialogue that characterizes the Richard III. Eichmann cannot “stop and think” about his actions. He does not exist in the same perplexity and existential confusion that is the character of Richard III. Where Richard III is the master of language, Eichmann is incapable of thinking. He has no existential conversation with himself as it is the case of Götz. Eichmann has also no relation to the past and his own existence as it is in contrast the case of Richard III in his reflections on his own actions. Thus, reflection on the origins of evil and the different personalities of leaders and administrators from Richard III and Götz to Eichmann and contemporary other evildoers like nihilistic terrorists or totalitarian dictators show the horrifying novelty of systemic evil in modernity and postmodernity, where evil is a production of a bureaucratic system of administration and organization. This is a challenge for philosophy of management that should look at the structural and organizational dimensions of evil in organizations (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). We need to focus on the dangers of people who just do their jobs without any reflections of the ethical consequences of their actions. We need to focus on the actions and responsibilities of the individual cogs in the organizational in order to conceive the dimensions of wrongdoing in organizational

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systems. The dangers of these systems are that evildoers are thoughtless mediators of evil in systems and organizational cultures that are characterized by inhuman instrumental rationalities violating basic ethical principles of respect for human autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen et al., 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003a, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). Radical evil associated with antagonists, anti-Christ, and villains is not the only kind of evil that we should focus on when we want to study organizational evil. In business ethics, we also need to look at the culture of organizations where it is not cold calculating monsters with an overriding sense of maliciousness that should be the focus of analysis of values and culture (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Business ethics should rather focus on what Eichmann due to his sleep-walking, mindless obedience, and self-deception was incapable of, namely, the capacity of empathy and putting one self in the place of others as the basis for ethical reflection (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Thus, evil and harm in organizations and bureaucracies must be analyzed from the perspective of the banality of evil and thoughtlessness of action. This implies looking at the challenges of choice of good and evil in concrete situations and of the nihilistic play with the ambiguities of the tensions between the notions of good and evil in the postmodern challenges to the instrumental rationality of organizations, corporations, and administrative bureaucracies in contemporary societies.

References Arendt, H. (1964 [1951]). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. Arendt, H. (1992 [1964]). Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the banality of evil. New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, H. (2005). Essays in understanding 1930–1954. Formation, exile and totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. Baudrillard, J. (1976). L’Echange symbolique de la mort. Paris: Gallimard. Baudrillard, J. (1990). La Transparence du Mal, Essai sur les phénomènes extremes. Paris: Galilée. Baudrillard, J. (2002). L’esprit du terrorisme. Paris: Galilée. Finkelkraut, A. (1996). L’Humanite perdue. Paris: Gallimard. Glucksmann, A. (2002). Dostoïevski à Manhattan: Paris: Robert Laffont.

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Jonas, H. (1994 [1984]). Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz: Eine jüdische Stimme. In Philosophische Untersuchungen und metaphysische Vermutungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag. Jørgensen, K., & Rendtorff, J. D. (2018). Patient participation in mental health care—Perspectives of healthcare professionals: An integrative review. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(2), 490–501. https://doi.org/10. 1111/scs.12531. Jørgensen, K., Rendtorff, J. D., & Holen, M. (2018). How patient participation is constructed in mental health care: A grounded theory study. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(4), 1359–1370. Mattsson, J., & Rendtorff, J. D. (2006). E-marketing ethics: A theory of value priorities. International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 3(1), 35–47. Pedersen, J. S., & Rendtorff, J. D. (2004). Value-based management in local public organizations: A Danish experience. Cross Cultural Management, 11(2), 71–94. Rendtorff, J. D. (1998). The second international conference about bioethics and biolaw: European Principles in bioethics and biolaw. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 1–4, 271–274. Rendtorff, J. D. (2002). Basic ethical principles in European bioethics and biolaw: Autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability. Towards a foundation of bioethics and biolaw. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 5, 235–244. Rendtorff, J. D. (2003a). Bioethics in Denmark. In J. F. Peppin & M. J. Cherry (Eds.), The annals of bioethics: Regional perspectives in bioethics (pp. 209–224). Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Rendtorff, J. D. (2003b). ‘Nogle opfattelser af det onde i nyere kontinentalfilosofi’ [Some conceptions of evil in contemporary continental philosophy]. Psyke & Logos, 24(1), 107–125. Rendtorff, J. D. (2008). The limitations and accomplishments of autonomy as a basic principle in bioethics and biolaw. In D. N. Weisstub & G. D. P. Pintos (Eds.), Autonomy and human rights in health care. An international perspective (Vol. 36, pp. 75–87). International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2009). Basic ethical principles applied to service industries. Service Industries Journal, 29(1), 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/026420 60802116404. Rendtorff, J. D. (2010a). Philosophy of management: Concepts of management from the perspectives of systems theory, phenomenological hermeneutics, corporate religion and existentialism. In P. Koslowski (Ed.), Elements of a philosophy of management and organization (pp. 19–47). Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Heidelberg: Springer.

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Rendtorff, J. D. (2014c). Risk management, banality of evil and moral blindness in organizations and corporations. In C. Luetge & J. Jauernig (Eds.), Business ethics and risk management (pp. 45–71). Ethical Economy, No. 43. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. Rendtorff, J. D. (2015a). Case studies, ethics, philosophy and liberal learning for the management profession. Journal of Management Education, 39(1), 36–55. Rendtorff, J. D. (2015b). The need for a theoretical reexamination of sustainability in economics and business. In G. Aras (Ed.), Sustainable markets for sustainable business: A global perspective for business and financial markets (pp. 41–58). Finance, Governance and Sustainability: Challenges to Theory and Practice. Farnham: Gower Publishing. Rendtorff, J. D. (2015c). Integrity, concept of. In H. ten Have (Ed.), Encyclopedia of global bioethics (pp. 1–7). Cham: Springer Science+Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2. Rendtorff, J. D. (2016). Review of Le tournant de la théorie critique, Collection Solidarité et société, Éditions Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2015. Journal of Classical Sociology, 16(3), 305–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X1 6646468. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017a). Cosmopolitan business ethics: Towards a global ethos of management. Finance, Governance and Sustainability: Challenges to Theory and Practice Series. London: Routledge. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017b). Creating shared value as institutionalization of ethical responsibilities of the business corporation as a good corporate citizen in society. In J. Wieland (Ed.), Creating shared value: Concepts, experience, criticism (pp. 119–139). Ethical Economy, No. 52. s.l.: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017c). Perspectives on philosophy of management and business ethics: Including a special section on business and human rights. Ethical Economy, No. 51. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017d). The Danish model of corporate citizenship: The Novo Group. In E. O’Higgins & L. Zsolnai (Eds.), Progressive business models: Creating sustainable and pro-social enterprise (pp. 221–240). Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business in Association with Future Earth. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31958804-9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58804-9_10. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019a). Sustainable development goals and progressive business models for economic transformation. Local Economy, 34(6), 510–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269094219882270. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019b). The concept of business legitimacy: Corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate governance as essential elements of ethical business legitimacy. In D. Crowther, S. Seifi, & T. Wond (Eds.), Responsibility and governance: The twin pillars of sustainability

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(pp. 45–60). Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Cham, Switzerland: Springer VS. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019c). The honest businessperson: Cosmopolitan theory and cultural praxis (The example of Denmark and Scandinavia). In C. Lütge & C. Strosetzki (Eds.), The honorable merchant—Between modesty and risk-taking: intercultural and literary aspects (pp. 41–53). Ethical Economy, No. 56. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019d). Philosophy of management and sustainability: Rethinking business ethics and social responsibility in sustainable development. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Rendtorff, J. D., & Kemp, P. (2009). The Barcelona Declaration: Towards an integrated approach to basic ethical principles. Synthesis Philosophica, 23(2), 239–251. Rendtorff, J. D., & Mattsson, J. (2012). Ethics in the bank internet encounter: An explorative study. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 10(1), 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211210649. Sartre, J. P. (1946). L’Existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Nagel. Sartre, J. P. (1984 [1951]). Le Diable et le bon Dieu. Paris: Gallimard.

CHAPTER 6

Moral Blindness and Modernity: Interpretations and Developments of Arendt’s Concept of Banality of Evil

6.1

Introduction

Hannah Arendt points out in Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil that Eichmann’s banality of evil and wickedness was possible only because of his inability to think. She had previously argued that the problem of evil would become one of the most fundamental issues in postwar Europe (Bernstein 1996a, 1996b, p. 12). Arendt, in contrast to Goldhagen (1996) and Katz (1994), believes that the Holocaust cannot be considered a historically unique genocide of the Jews, but crime against humanity since it was based on totalitarian structures of dictatorship. She opposes the ideological approaches to the genocides of a Holocaust industry that makes them a sacred and mysterious symbol of evil (Finkelstein, 2000). The moral blindness of Nazism should be explained by the historical and social circumstances that prevailed in contemporary times. Arendt already believed in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) that Nazism must be understood in line with other totalitarian systems of our time, i.e., Stalinism and imperialism, and that all three variants are characterized by technical destruction of human autonomy, dignity, and integrity. The evils of Nazism are no different from other crimes against humanity in the twentieth century (Delacampagne, 1998). Genocide and massacres in the Soviet Union, after the cold war in 1990s in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo and in the wars in the 2000s in Iraq, Libya and Syria or the terrorism of Islamic State express the same recklessness toward the humanity of human beings. © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_6

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The various dimensions of Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil will in the following be discussed with the involvement of a number of other authors (including Sartre, Müller-Hill, Bauman, and Milgram). This is done with perspectives on the philosophical and social science dimensions of the banality of evil. I believe that the banality of evil is manifested in many different ways in specific contexts of modernity. The most important are the blindness of anti-Semitism, medical ideology, bureaucratic goal rationality, all of which presuppose the capacity of ordinary people to obey authority without asking questions. The aim of the chapter is to relate these discussions of the contemporary concept of moral blindness to the discussions of the foundations of ethics and philosophy of management. This chapter is a development of my previous research in the field of moral blindness (Laustsen & Rendtorff, 2002). In particular, we can argue that it is necessary to detect moral blindness in order to protect the human person. Therefore, the detection of moral blindness serves as the basis for the basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). In the different descriptions of moral blindness, there is also the dimension of destroyed moral culture and the sick background mentality in institutions and organizations, which is one of the dimensions of moral blindness. Therefore, moral blindness functions as the negative basis for an ethical theory of values and cultures in organizations (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Moral blindness and the banality of evil as the greatest evil in the world is according to Arendt committed by people who like Eichmann who refuse to be persons. The obedient bureaucrat is someone who acts without responsibility and moral thinking. Therefore, detection of moral blindness reminds us of the necessity of research and reflection on business ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). At the same time, it is important to remember the ideological dimensions of the mentality of people like Eichmann. Here, we can say that the evil of Eichmann consisted in his acceptance of the ideology of Nazis. By this, Arendt argues that although Eichmann tries to argue that he was a cog in the system and a bureaucrat and saying that he was not personally

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involved, he was nevertheless morally responsible for his actions. In addition, the error of Eichmann was that he was not capable to think and put himself in the place of the other. By moral thinking, managers and administrators can be persons who have responsibility and dignity as human persons. Thus, what is needed is ethical reflection and moral thinking in philosophy of management and administration (Rendtorff 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). This chapter begins with a brief definition of moral blindness from the works of Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1964). After this, I will go into some of the dimensions of the moral blindness of the Holocaust and draw some consequences for the concept of moral blindness. First, I will discuss the exclusion of the Jews as an essential element of the logic of banality. After this, the evils of Nazi medicine are being investigated. Furthermore, the technical rationality of the Holocaust is analyzed and then the chapters asks the question whether the banality of evil is a feature of human nature implying that “there is an Eichmann in all of us” in the sense that there is a danger that ordinary people in their efforts to comply to social norms contribute to harm and evil caused by inhuman structures of community. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion on whether moral blindness is a general challenge to our bureaucracy in modern society.

6.2 Hannah Arendt’s Definition of Moral Blindness Arendt emphasizes many times that the totalitarian state destroys the social space for the exercise of judgment. The consequence is that the actions become morally blind. Therefore, it is socially integrated, welleducated bureaucrats, e.g., organization officials like Eichmann who become responsible for evil. Arendt, above all, understands the concentration camps as the radical evil that only becomes even more cruel when we observe the immense banality of the Nazis. The Holocaust was what should never have happened. Totalitarianism combines unlimited obedience to the system with total lack of responsibility and care for humanity. There is a clear continuity between Arendt’s analyzes of the radical evil of Origins of Totalitarianism and the banal evil of Eichmann in Jerusalem. Firstly, Arendt concentrated on the consequences of evil, viz., the redundancy of people in the concentration camps. Secondly, she then described the persons behind this radical evil. It was generally ordinary people, who

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were capable to perform such evil because they, like Eichmann, were totally captured by ideology and had no deeper understanding of what they were doing (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 252). We cannot describe the banality of evil without relating it to radical evil. There is a close connection between the actions of destruction of humanity by making human beings superfluous of radical evil and thoughtlessness and banality of the doers of the actions. Nevertheless, in both cases, evil is incomprehensible and meaningless. It is an evil, which cannot adequately be described as sadistic and demonic as someone like the evil characters of Shakespeare like the inward reflective Richard III or the evil antagonist of Othello, Lago, who manipulates Othello and his family in the play. Arendt thus does not see motives and intentions as the only explanations for the Nazi genocide. Nor does she accept that evil and anti-Semitism should represent a well-thought-out and reflected attitude on the whole German population. Of course, Eichmann and the other criminals adopted the Nazi ideology, but the evil Nazis were also characterized by the general ideological brain-wash and refusal to think deeply about one’s action from the perspective of philosophy and culture. An eye-catching aspect of moral blindness was the ability of the Nazis to isolate a relatively small and harmless group of people as their greatest enemy. Already this is incomprehensible. Why did they act so irrationally and use so much resources to kill the Jews in a war-torn society? The answer can only be the combination of radical evil, where superfluity and dehumanization are part of state politics, and the banality of evil, where the orders are executed by executioners who, through a bureaucratic apparatus, distance themselves from their victims. Arendt recognizes the ideology as an important factor for this discrimination, but she also reminds us that not only the Jews were victims of the Holocaust. The Jews had been turned into scapegoats for centuries in Europe like those who had killed Jesus. This hatred became central to Nazi ideology, but has a completely different consequence given the systematic use of modern technical means in a radical extermination policy. Auschwitz and the many other prison camps were technological structures established by the Nazi state in order to accomplish mass murder and totalitarian destruction of the humanity of human beings. Arendt highlights in Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil several times the terrible paradoxes of the cooperation between executioners and victims. Rudolf Höss, a commander in Auschwitz, said that the victims thought they were going to shower and therefore guards

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hardly needed to watch them as they went down the gas chambers. Such exploitation of the victims helped to systematically violate them and destroy their humanity. They were forced to do as much as possible themselves, and some Jews that were selected for special work in the camps even survived because they had been forced to help with the killing of other victims. Although the concentration camps were notified early on, the German population remained largely silent (Cesarani 1996 [1994]). This contributed to the external concealment of the Holocaust, just as the general acceptance of the project by senior executives was an internal concealment that caused Eichmann and the other SS officers not to question their orders. This moral indifference, which must not be confused with willful and motivated evil, is one of the main reasons why the Nazis succeeded in effectively combining the banal and radical evil of the Holocaust. A structural element of the conditions of the camps was the division of labor in the bureaucratic organization. The Nazis cynically used employees’ socialized sense of duty. Eichmann was a dutiful man who did his job. He understood himself as an element of an effective bureaucratic system that worked soberly and case-oriented. The ideological clichés and obedience to the superiors were legitimate reasons for the effectiveness of the bureaucratic death machine of genocide. Moral blindness becomes possible when people are guided by a given social norm without questioning whether this social norm is morally acceptable. Eichmann’s conscientious execution of orders illustrates a dutiful behavior that was morally pathological but at the same time functional given the tasks he was to perform and the system, he served. In addition, the Nazis did everything they could to destroy the Jews’ humanity. Legally, it was a rather complex undertaking to deprive people of their citizens’ rights and their place in the world. The Nazis had to have the help of prominent lawyers in the state administration to make the Jews lawless and stateless. The deprivation of the citizenship of the Jews was of great importance as they were deprived of their opportunity to flee. Without papers, they would also not be recognized as legal subjects by other states. Later, dehumanization was continued in the concentration camps, acting as laboratories to experiment with human nature (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 458). Thus, the Holocaust cannot be explained solely on the basis of pathological crime (Finkelstein, 1998, p. 100). There was a complex interplay between technical rationality, lack of moral sensibility, and morbid obedience. Arendt emphasizes that

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the concentration camps as a combination of irrational utility and technical precision were completely incomprehensible (Arendt, 1987 [1950], p. 373). Death served no purpose other than depriving people of their personality, humanity, individuality, and freedom to ultimately deprive them of a place in the world.

6.3 Anti-Semitism as the Logic of Banality: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question One could say that the exclusion of the otherness of the other, the alien, and the stranger is an important element that can be deduced from Arendt’s definition of moral blindness. The anti-Semitism of the Nazis is considered a product of ideological propaganda. Arendt also emphasizes that the Holocaust was a crime against humanity. It was not only Jews who were gassed in Auschwitz, but also Poles, Gypsies, Communists, gays, and others. Arendt was critical of a cultural or religious definition of the Jewish race. She perceived anti-Semitism as a political issue and for this reason she was skeptical of racism. There is little point in denying or fighting the Jewish by being assimilated or creating a Jewish state ghetto, but on the other hand it is about being aware of the responsibility that comes with the attribution of a Jewish identity (Bernstein, 1996a, p. 28). If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew, as Arendt repeatedly said. As an outcast group, the Jews must assume political responsibility. They should defend their right to a place in the world. The struggle does not just apply to the Jews, but expresses a general human quest for liberation and against oppression, poverty, and degradation (Bernstein, 1996a, p. 34). Since Arendt has been assigned to the role of rebellious pariah, she believes that this position obliges her to fight for the freedom of all people and for the right to diversity. For Arendt, the division of humanity into different categories is a totalitarian method of creating an ideologically supported community. Totalitarian reality is a “fool’s paradise” in which the elite influenced the masses to believe that the statement “Jews are inferior” means “Jews are to be excluded and exterminated.” The crime against the Jews was a political crime against humanity. Anti-Semitism was based on an ideological construction of the other, aliens, and strangers, and it aims to keep the state together. Jean-Paul Sartre has in his analysis of the racist hatred of the Jews developed the concept of “le visqueux” (the sleazy), which means “the other” that no one else wants anything to have to do

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anything with. Anyone can take the place of the Jew. Sartre argues that the Jew is the embodiment of everything that should be feared and hated in Nazi Germany. The Jew was the universal pariah who secured the unity of the German people (Bauman, 1991, pp. 45ff.). In his reflections on the Jewish question, Reflections sur la question juive (Sartre, 1964 [1946]), Sartre argues that society helps to designate the Jew as the other. Sartre writes that if the Jew did not exist, then the Jew-hater would have invented him or her (Sartre, 1964 [1946], p. 14). Being anti-Semite is basically a choice of an identity—a choice of oneself. One chooses an attitude not only toward the Jews, but also toward society and history in general. Jewish hatred becomes a view of life and a passion that constitutes the individual. The internalization of racial hatred turns out not only conceptually, but also as a physical discomfort. All of a sudden, everyone knows about the stories of how some men have become impotent from having a love relationship with a Jewish woman. Moreover, they have heard people say, “I’m not a Jew hater, but honestly, they cause a physical discomfort when they get too close.” This commitment of the mind and the soul to racism became a bodily feeling that arouses the hatred of the Jews in the individual (Sartre, 1964 [1946], p. 12). When he sees a naked Jewish woman, the desire of the Jew-hater transforms into hatred. Sartre writes that the anti-Semite justifies the evil in the service of a higher cause, namely as part of a struggle for good against evil. Therefore, evil becomes a sacred mission: to annihilate the Jews and restore the lost paradise (Sartre, 1964 [1946], p. 52). The Nazi has chosen to be evil and anti-humanism has become part of his identity. The skilled and wise Jew is even more uncomfortable as he represents an even greater threat. The anti-Semite incarnates mediocrity, which he perceives as a virtue. He turns himself into an object, a thing, and a nonperson. He accepts the identity as a member of the mob of the masses. In Sartre’s optics, therefore, one can say that Eichmann has chosen himself as banal and mediocre, and that it is precisely the nature of the anti-Semite to be banal. Nevertheless, you do not have to be reluctant and modest just because you are mediocre. Rather, for Sartre, the mediocre has a passionate pride in his mediocrity and loves his participation in the class of the petty bourgeoisie. Thus, the anti-Semite needs the enemy to become himself (Sartre, 1964 [1946], p. 33). The construction of the enemy—the Jew—enables the petty bourgeoisie to unite in thoughtless and ordinary solidarity. To give the community weight, the Nazis invented the story of the Jewish

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conspiracy against the existence of society. Racism thus becomes the foundation of society. However, Sartre claims that the mediocre anti-Semite escapes from life. He makes himself a thing. He is content with just being part of a lot as a member of the collective group of racists. When we refer to human rights, we say that the Jew is above all a human being. Nevertheless, as anti-humanists, the Nazis created the “Jews as the humanists that they hated above all. The Jews represent the universal philosophical rationality and humanism. This is due to their peculiar critique of violence and racism” (Sartre, 1964, p. 147). The “Jews” were proud of their identities as the chosen people, but this was paradoxically also the reason for their destruction. The “Jew” is not born as a Jew, but is created by society. Neither race, religion, morality, nature nor culture explains that some people become “Jews.” Like Arendt, Sartre believes that it is not only the Nazi, who is behind this construction. Like every other person, the Jew is also a human being who must choose himself. He or she chooses specific traits to define his existence. The Jews have created themselves as people and race, and they have used their status as a pariah as a means of gaining an identity as a group. Thus, many Jews became, in the Nazi context, a form of masochists who accepted the humiliation, shame, and violence of pride in being Jews (Sartre, 1964 [1946], p. 130). They were, for example, forced to wear the Jew star. It is important for Sartre to emphasize that no one can become free until the mutual degradation and oppression of the master–slave relationship of racism is abolished. This supports Arendt’s description of Eichmann’s banality. Sartre helps to highlight that it is an element of Eichmann’s banality of evil that he was totality convinced and committed to Nazi ideology. The paradox is that the commitment to the ideological clichés became an integrated part of Eichmann’s banality. Arendt and Sartre stand together in an effort to show that anti-Semites and Jews together created and enabled the Holocaust, respectively. Both executioners and victims were dehumanized. Both groups were caught in inhumane roles. Here it is important to emphasize the responsibility of the Jews to come out of these roles. They, as freely acting individuals with their own judgment, had a political responsibility to rebel against their oppressors (Bernstein, 1996a, p. 56). This is the meaning of Arendt’s emphasis on the need of those attacked as Jews to defend themselves as Jews. Overcoming such mutual exclusion logic is an important element in avoiding moral blindness. The only way to overcome oppression as

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victims is to fight for one’s rights to live as free citizens in a democratic society.

6.4 The Medical Science ¨ of the Holocaust: Benno Muller-Hill By looking at the role of medical science in the Holocaust, we can see the moral blindness in function. This has been examined by German geneticist Benno Müller-Hill in the book Tödliche Wissenschaft ([Killing Science] 1984). He describes Nazi Germany’s sterilizations, castrations, and later euthanasia actions against Jews, the weak and gypsies (MüllerHill, 1984, p. 9). Müller-Hill’s question is how geneticists and medical practitioners from the venerable research institute, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute—most of whom even came from the German bourgeoisie, could participate in Nazi systematic extermination of Jews and other groups. Müller-Hill emphasizes that the ideological priority of the European and white race was common throughout Europe in the years before World War II. It was feared that the welfare state would crumble if it did not stop the degradation of the human heritage. Nevertheless, it was in Germany that the inheritance hygiene policy was seriously abused (Müller-Hill, 1984, p. 42). It began with a law in 1933 on forced sterilizations that aimed to limit the cases of inherited diseases. A court examining genetic disease and inheritance was set up, and many argued that criminals and asocial elements should be sterilized through organized social and medical programs. In 1934–1936, thousands of people were gassed as a result of inheritance regulations. In 1935, the infamous Nuremberg Laws were introduced regarding the pure German blood and the pure German marriages. This law was later tightened through regulations on the eradication of alien races and ethnic groups. The laws prompted a series of euthanasia actions that quickly became more and more extensive leading to the gassing of nearly two hundred thousand psychiatric patients in 1941. Thus, medical science helped to legitimize German racial politics. Kaiser Wilhelm Institute staff believed it could provide an objective genetic determination of who belonged to the Jewish race, without having to have anti-Semitic implications. Until the end of World War II, they investigated whether the population had Jewish racial characteristics. These assessments formed the basis for selecting individuals for the “pity killings” of euthanasia. Following the outbreak of World War

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II, racial politics became an integral part of Nazi Germany’s population policy, which, in addition to euthanasia, also included the deportation of Jews, Gypsies, and other “inferior races” to camps in eastern Poland. The so-called “Jewish question” was quickly linked to “euthanasia” and considered a “medical matter” (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 114). Soon Hitler’s unwritten command of the total annihilation of the Jews was spread among the Nazi leaders. First, Göring wrote a decree on a comprehensive solution to the Jewish question, which was continued by Himmler and Heydrick. At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, a number of medical and legal experts, based on Eichmann’s practical preparations, determined the logistics of “the final solution” (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 113). It had been estimated, that it was practically possible to kill many millions of people in a short time in the concentration camps with gas chambers. In addition, it was decided that there should always be a doctor present at the gassing in the concentration camps. An overall plan for deportations of Jews and more generally for the development of Eastern Europe was adopted. This plan was prepared by officers of the SS. In the concentration camps, the killing of the Jews intensified following the new instructions. Thus, in 1943, over four thousand people were killed a day in the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Many of the German doctors did not distance themselves from what happened in the concentration camps. Instead, some of them received money from the German Research Council to conduct medical research in the camps. The researchers were confident that the large “empirical material” would enable progress in medical research. Research leaders from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Eugen Fischer and Professor Freiherr von Verschuer organized medical experiments in the concentration camps and the subsequent research into the prisoners’ genetic and biological characteristics. They worked closely with the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, who had previously been a visiting scientist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and later became a camp physician in Auschwitz. Other research projects using human material from Auschwitz were about the lineage and inheritance of various properties. Here, it was characteristic that the prisoners in the concentration camps were not considered humans at all. In this connection, over a thousand twins were selected for experimental examination by Mengele. After this was completed, the dead twins were sent to the institute in Berlin Dahlem, where they were preserved in alcohol (Caplan, 1992).

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Arendt argues that the concentration camps were used as the rulers’ laboratory for total control over everything human (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 437). The doctors had no direct political power, but as scientists, they were instrumental in justifying the mass murder of Nazism. Typically, death in concentration camps was a “medicalized death” (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 437). This means that the gassing of the Jews was not regarded as murder, but as a medical necessity intended to purify the community’s heritage. The Nazi doctors claimed that the question of the quality of the genes was far more important than, say, the ideological war between the socialist and capitalist systems. Both Verschuer and Eugen Fischer considered racial hygiene as “objective” medical science, a cornerstone of national socialist politics. The unfortunate thing is that Professor Verschuer had a leadership position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. He was never really accused or convicted. After the war, he became professor of human genetics in Münster, and in 1962 he even published a book claiming that the time had now come to restore eugenics as a respectable science. Race ideology was an integral part of the medical scientists ‘science, and this helped the researchers’ careers. Their promotion opportunities were noticeably increased with the dismissal of the many Jewish professors. They were parties to a struggle for social prestige, and with the disappearance of the Jews, they could rise in degrees. What is also paradoxical is that the Nazi geneticists of the first half of the 1930s were internationally recognized. Among a number of other international research projects, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute until 1936 was supported by the American Rockefeller Foundation. These were young, ambitious scientists, who viewed biological race thinking as a rescue of a decadent society. The reason why German medical science became a “death science” must, among other things, be explained by the doctors’ technocratic self-understanding. The doctors believed that they had an apolitical approach to racial hygiene. They believed that it was possible to give an objective, neutral description of the Jewish racial characteristics. At the same time, psychiatry of that time was completely powerless. There were no proper treatment methods and the staff therefore often felt powerless and disgusted with the patients. Doctors were often afraid of those who were different. Thus, the murders of the deviants can be explained on the basis of doctors’ convulsive self-understanding. A psychoanalytically inspired interpretation of these paradoxes is found in Robert J. Lifton (1986) who, in his analysis of the Nazi doctors,

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emphasized that in order to live with their terrible actions, they split their personality in two. The self was divided into a normal and an ideological part. When the researchers worked in their offices or in the concentration camps, they suppressed their ordinary personality. The totalitarian self that blindly obeyed the ideology of Nazism became dominant. The psyche was directed by a displacement mechanism that could keep the two personalities completely separate from each other. This shielded doctors’ conscience from dealing with the consequences of their actions. As with Eichmann, it became possible to regard their murderous activities as ordinary work. The normal personality then returned when they were with their wives or their children. The Nazi doctors were forced to develop this dual personality to overcome the contradiction between killing and healing. The medicalization of death in the concentration camps made it possible to effectively displace what one did. It was a symbolic cult of sacrifice and death, in which the natural sciences contributed to isolation, selection, killing, and sacrifice of those who were different. With Benno Müller-Hill, one can therefore also emphasize the mythical aspects of Auschwitz, which at one time was a Nazi sanctuary and cult of death. In this annihilation of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political rebels, and others, the doctors and SS soldiers were given a function as priesthood and Hitler as an “oracle of annihilation” (Müller-Hill, 1984, pp. 94ff.). Those who would understand him then understood him too. Just as one must not pronounce the name of the idol of God, one must not mention the name of the annihilation. Therefore, Hitler’s command of the final solution was never written down. Nevertheless, in spite of this, the desire to annihilate the enemies of the German race was the basics of Nazism. The “will to kill” thus became the background mentality of the displaced and thoughtless evil. It should be emphasized that the euthanasia actions were not simply the result of the moral failure of individuals. The ideological views behind these found broad support in the psychiatry and anthropology of the time. Human dignity and humanity were not particularly taken into account. Humans were instead reduced to research objects. Like Eichmann, the Nazi doctors were often “ordinary” people conforming to social roles and personal ambitions with no capacity of moral thinking. They, like many others, followed Hitler’s “categorical guiding principle.” They were captivated by the unlimited obedience to the Nazi system and were therefore completely devoid of moral sensitivity.

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6.5 Technique and Bureaucracy in the Holocaust: Zygmunt Bauman The technical dimension of the moral blindness of the Holocaust has been described by the Polish-English sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in the work Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman, 1991 [1989]). Bauman can be said to have helped to systematize the main points of Arendt’s theory of the bureaucratic rationality behind the Holocaust and of the official’s moral blindness. In contrast, for example, to Goldhagen, who stressed that all Germans were Hitler’s willing executioners, Bauman emphasizes that the genocide was only possible given a modern technical organization and technical rationality. The rational organization of the killings was more important for their successful outcome than individual motivations and intentions to do evil. In collaboration with the physicians, Eichmann and the other SS personnel used strictly organized rational instrumental practices to implement the Holocaust as a medical and clinical operation (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 114). Science, bureaucracy, and instrumental goal rationality were therefore united in the perverted care of the Nazi state for its citizens. The Nazis were not interested in the individual, but rather in the population as a whole. Nazism was the absolute opposite of a humanistic “ethics of care,” where the state takes care of the life of the citizens. Perverting the state’s commitment to care is therefore also central to Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann. Eichmann is the example of the state’s servant, an administrator who has totally lost his sensitivity to the humanitarian aspect of government tasks. The fact that the Holocaust was an integral part of modernity means that it was a meeting of a number of factors that were at once unique and very common (Bauman, 1991, p. 81). One must be skeptical to reduce the event of the genocide of Holocaust to be conditioned by special circumstances in Germany. It more generally shows the weaknesses of modern society. It was only possible in a purposefully organized, manipulated, and controlled world. With Bauman, one can argue that the Holocaust expresses the latent potentialities of modernity (Bauman, 1991, p. 12). According to this view, Auschwitz is a “pendant” to the modern factory, but the raw material was concrete people and the end product death. Arendt therefore has an important point when, in her analysis of modernity, she points out that the dissolution trends in the nation-state

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were one of the reasons why the Jews, who had otherwise been well integrated in the nineteenth century, would become scapegoats and threats to social order. Arendt emphasized in The Origins of Totalitarianism that Jewish self-consciousness is a product of anti-Semitism (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. XV). Anti-Semitism will exist as long as the Jewish people exists (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 6). The coincidence between the undermining of the nation-state and the organized extermination of Jews means that the extermination of the Jews must be seen in the light of the ordinary history of the nation-states (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 9). Arendt believes that ideology is used to give the undefined and substance-less masses a new home. Thereby, a sense of security is institutionalized and rationalized in the isolated and atomized individuals of mass society (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 351). Furthermore, Arendt points out that the totalitarian ideologies are characterized by the concept of social reality as a social destruction and construction. Totalitarianism arises in a society where the masses have become homeless and therefore desperately seek a meaning with life. Total domination becomes possible on the basis of the collapse of the class society and with it the dissolution of the corresponding identities associated with class and work. Life under this dominion is ideologically determined through the citizens’ membership of totalitarian mass organizations. Here the individuals are shaped. Fanatical elites who cultivate the social engineering arts govern these organizations (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 324). The elite also uses total power for a reassessment of all values (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 327). The masses have the central role here, since they are organized with a view to turning the ideological lie into reality. The people in power maintained the endeavor, through terror and propaganda, to make the lie true (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 341). They believe that it is possible to construct better and more beautiful people, and so that man himself can shape his humanity. The rulers, under Nazism, were social engineers who, in a state of childish euphoria, played with producing new people. Bauman describes Nazism’s constructivism as a “social farming” (Bauman, 1991, p. 70). The totalitarian state is based on a rational governance of society and the realization of the objectives of ideology. Hereby, a sense of security is institutionalized and rationalized in the otherwise isolated and atomized individuals of the mass society (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 351). The bureaucracy is based on well-defined instrumental calculations of

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goals and means. Thus, the system that realized the Holocaust acted uncommonly rationally, although the goal of the action was definitely not rational. The SS troops had the most rational organizational routine and administrative discipline. Thus, violence and dehumanization were generally authorized through a purposefully and instrumentally well functioning system. The system was characterized by a division of labor, with which no one was fully responsible for an action. There was a considerable distance between those who commanded the actions and those who performed them. There was no one who could be identified as actually responsible for the actions (Bauman, 1991, p. 25). No one can thus be identified as the source of evil, and therefore, as in Kant, it no longer binds with an “evil will,” but instead with a banal and intangible thoughtlessness. The individual is just part of a long chain. You distance yourself from the victims—both physically and psychologically—and in doing so they become invisible. The individual is unaware that they are killing people. Bauman argues that in order to make the victims invisible, one must simply isolate them from the officials who were committed to the duty universe of bureaucracy (Bauman, 1991, p. 27). The obedient official is the individual who, without blinking, performs well-defined tasks in the bureaucratic system. The bureaucrat will perform a system function, where it is defined as based on the system and where the authoritarian personality is thus an integral part of the institution. This was for example the case for Eichmann, who only thought of his self-preservation, career and promotion. The bureaucracy is based only on the efficiency of the funds and therefore does not take into account the consequences of the action. Thus, a rational instrumental organization can easily help achieve irrational goals. It is therefore a pervasive thesis of Bauman’s interpretation of Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil that “it was rational for the victims to cooperate” (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 150). From their perspective, they fought for their survival. They could not know that they were precisely contributing to their own killing and that the Nazis were using them for their project of total extermination of the Jews and other “undesirable” individuals. This can be illustrated by the “Prisoners’ Dilemma” in the “Rational Choice” theory. Here it is argued that by working together, one can achieve the best result. However, it assumes that the prisoners know the rationale of the rulers. If they fail to do so, one cannot be sure that rational action will contribute to the achievement of one’s goals. The

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instrumental rationality is defined by the interaction between the executioner and the victim. The executioners upheld the Jews in a cooperative rationality aimed at achieving an irrational goal. Thus, it is dreadful to have to admit that the ghettos “selfdetermination council” against their will came to help the Nazis with all kinds of daily activities, and that made it far easier for the Nazis to achieve their goals. By only allowing negotiation with the Jews’ selfdetermination council, and not with the individual Jew, it became much easier to plan the deportations. The Jews became part of a rationally organized command hierarchy, where, as people who believed in morality and goodness of humanity, they were wrong, and their persistent attempt to compromise to avoid greater evil through cooperation really helped the Nazis to carry out the genocide much more efficiently (Bauman, 1991, p. 135). The Nazi official was able to carry out his orders because he was at a distance from his victims. Gassing was a technical killing method where the soldiers could do it at a distance. Of course, this does not explain the many killing at close range. In addition, this requires greater blindness or explicit sadism. Differentiation and distance mean that the individual can execute death orders without confronting the results of his or her actions. The necessity of distance between the executioners and the victims was important in carrying out the exterminations of the Jews. In Auschwitz and the many other concentration camps, the distance was created through the total dehumanization of the victims. It is described in the concentration camp prisoner Primo Levi’s novels. He has described how the Nazis as blinded and absorbed by their ideology regarded the prisoners as animals and not as humans. Arendt also claims that humans are made into specimens of an animal species and that they thereby lose their humanity and individuality (Arendt, 1979 [1951], p. 458). Thus, without modern civilization, there could not be a Holocaust, although modernity does not necessarily lead to a Holocaust. The Holocaust was a modern product because it was planned, rationalized, and organized effectively by government officials and scientific (medical) experts. Here we follow Arendt in her understanding that the rationality of modern society can lead to terror. The totalitarian state uses lie and fiction to reduce human plurality and diversity to banal and authoritarian personalities of the mob. Here, effective expert actions are the only criterion for success. The bureaucratic objects are described in purely technical and ethically neutral terms (Bauman, 1991, p. 102). It is characteristic

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of moral blindness that humans are dehumanized and treated as things, numbers, or objects and that it is no longer necessary to have a moral relationship with such dehumanized objects. The bureaucracy aims for the most effective solution without looking at the human costs.

6.6 Authority and Obedience in Hierarchical Systems: Stanley Milgram Now we can show that the unlimited obedience that characterized Eichmann and other SS soldiers is perhaps a feature of human nature. Following Bauman and Arendt’s analyzes, this will be expected. The most uncanny thing about the Holocaust, according to Arendt and Bauman, is that anyone and everyone could do it (Bauman, 1991, p. 152). The modern human beings can easily be made to do evil. We can read Yale University Professor of Social Psychology, Stanley Milgram’s study Obedience to Authority. An Experimental View from 1974 in the perspective of Arendt’s book on Eichmann in order to provide a general theory of moral indifference of administrative bureaucrats in management and organization. Milgram provided us with an analysis of individual and collective obedience and the loyalty of employees in the organization. Although I know that there are many differences between Eichmann’s context during the Holocaust and the university-based experimental work of Milgram, I would like to point to some structural and conceptual content of the concept of moral blindness that we can apply to modern business organizations. Milgram shows us that the unlimited obedience that characterized Eichmann and other desk killers is perhaps a feature of human nature. In continuation of Arendt’s analyzes, this is to be expected. The most uncanny thing about the Holocaust is that anyone and everyone could do it (Bauman, 1991, p. 152). Modern human beings can easily be made to do evil in their work in organizations. This hypothesis has among other things been advocated by Milgram, who, using a rigorous behavioral experimental method of social psychology, would investigate the obedience of ordinary people under authoritarian pressure. Milgram’s analyzes were strongly inspired by Arendt and his experiments have been called the Eichmann experiments (Milgram, 1974, p. 178). Milgram claimed that the experiments showed that the banality of evil “is closer to the truth than anyone could ever

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have imagined” (Milgram, 1974, p. 6). The moral blindness of obedience cannot be understood according to a theory of animal aggression, but must be considered on the basis of the structure of an authoritarian system (Milgram, 1974, p. 165). Ordinary people would disregard their own moral norms if placed in a hierarchical bureaucratic order. Milgram’s attempt illustrates that ordinary people, by virtue of organizational pressure, are prepared to perform the most horrific and morally problematic actions (Bauman, 1991, p. 193). It describes how members of an organization first strive to fulfill their technical function and only secondarily give importance to their moral responsibilities. More specifically, Milgram’s social psychology experiments were to demonstrate that what was inconceivable to the individual would be carried out without hesitation if he or she acted according to order (Milgram, 1974, p. xi). It was about testing the unlimited obedience and compliance to social norms in organizational hierarchies. Obedience was defined as the fact that one person is willing to make himself an instrument to carry out another person’s orders, and thus no longer perceives himself as responsible for his or her actions. Obedience is a psychological mechanism that connects the individual to a social purpose (Milgram, 1974, p. 2). When the individual is set to perform morally problematic actions, obedience is associated with a psychological and existential dilemma. Milgram constructed a simple experimental setup and advertised in the usual way for locals in the local area. These volunteers could, without sanctions, go very far in obedience to the experimental authority. The subjects were placed in a laboratory and assigned the role of a teacher to give a student an electric shock each time they answered incorrectly to some simple questions. For every wrong answer, the current was increased—up to 450 volts. Even though the electric shock was spinning, every time he got a shock, the student would moan or scream in pain. The experimenter was told that the experiment was about testing learning capacity, but was not informed that it was not the student but the teacher’s willingness to give electric shock that was the focus of the experiment. During the course of the trial, the credible teacher would be instructed by the supervisor, as determined, but without physical coercion up to four times, with varied statements, requiring the teacher to continue and the student not sustaining permanent harm, even if the student appeared felt great physical pain. Milgram’s surprising results were that, under these

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circumstances, over half of the subjects were willing to go all the way to give the student the highest electric shocks. Milgram explained this surprising obedience from the fact that ordinary people have a sense of commitment to the organization or hierarchical order in which they are part. Many continued, even though they found discomfort with their actions. The compelling factors here were a sense of courtesy, their promise to contribute to the attempt and an ability to adapt to authorities (Milgram, 1974, p. 8). In particular, the externalization of responsibility, in which the individual felt subject to an external force, played a role. The subjects did not judge their own actions morally. Like Eichmann, they could justify their behavior by not being responsible for them themselves. Milgram argues that organized evil in modern society is possible because of this willingness to be reduced to agents in a hierarchical system where human individuals are at a distance from the suffering of the victims and thus the consequences of their actions. After working on his simple trial setup, Milgram varied the trial in various ways to investigate what mechanisms could cause people to pressurize authority against innocent victims. The tension between distance and proximity to the victim was quickly found to play a crucial role. When the subject was close to the pupil and could hear his or her pain, they quickly refused to proceed (Milgram, 1974, p. 36), conversely, there were far more people who performed the experiment when they were at a distance from the pupil and could not see any direct connections. Distance had an important significance for the relation between their actions and the learner’s suffering. Milgram also demonstrated that many of the subjects felt a strong nervousness and excitement as they continued the trial. Milgram explained this nervousness and excitement as an expression of the perceived contradiction between their personal morals and the demands of the experiment. However, some subjects performed the acts without pleasure and were almost annoyed that the student (victim) did not cooperate more willingly. Others turned their gaze to the trial manager and continued when he emphasized that they would take responsibility for their actions. Like Eichmann, they felt that their actions were justified when they were cheapened by people higher up in the organization’s hierarchy. Milgram then tried other variations, which, however, showed little change in obedience. Based on the hypothesis that obedience may have been justified in the institutional context, e.g., Milgram repeated the experiments in some buildings far from the university. In another case,

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he told the subject that the student had a minor heart problem and that high electroshocks could be problematic. Milgram also experimented with women as subjects, to see if they were less obedient than men. When the interviewees learned the real context of the trial, they were astonishingly unreflected. A man spoke like Eichmann about his actions as they were just normal, despite the fact that they would in fact have killed a human being. A nurse did not understand the problem and was satisfied with her own obedience. She observed that she had no problems obeying, but that she was a little dissatisfied with not knowing her rights, as was usually the case at her work (Milgram, 1974, p. 77). She emphasized compliance with the rules, even though she had compassion with the student’s pain. From these altered experimental positions, one can deduce that the authoritarian relationship between the subject and the test leader was crucial to obedience. If the subject was put in the place of the test leader, the willingness to go up to 450 volts was much lower. This was also the case if the victim was the one who demanded that the trial should continue. It was also found that the individual’s lonely relationship with the authority played a major role. If the subject was allowed to be part of a group where the other two members refused to continue the trial, they would endorse their position. However, if the other members continued without hesitation, the individual would also act as part of the group. Very few had the capacity, will or power to act against the unity of the group (Milgram, 1974, p. 121). This explains why in modern bureaucracies and business organizations it is often the few who are directly involved in the most dirty acts, as it is psychologically difficult for individuals to be directly confronted with evil and pain. At the same time, it is emphasized that the capable leader is a person who is able to organize team work and groups so that the weakest and potentially skeptical personnel do not take part directly in the destructive actions (Milgram, 1974, p. 121). After examining many hundreds of subjects, Milgram attempted a theoretical analysis of the obedience phenomenon. He believed that obedience was based on a person’s placement in a hierarchical disciplinary system. Milgram does not reject biological and social-psychological explanations, but above all presents a cybernetic perspective on obedience. Humans possess a potential for obedience provided through socialization (Milgram, 1974, p. 125). We are able to act as automatic and self-regulating agents in organizations where we suspend our own moral beliefs and act solely on the system’s premises. When we become part of

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the system, there is an instinctive pressure to act reflexively in relation to the system’s technical rationality. Each element of the system will function internally in relation to the other elements of the system, where it is the system’s internal context that provides the ultimate goal. In a hierarchical system of obedience, all higher authorities are subjected to it, which is why Eichmann could act obediently. Hitler was the only one in control of the Nazi system as a whole. Everyone else could point out that they were just cogs in a system. Milgram’s analyzes of obedience show that the placement in hierarchical structures can make people act morally blind. As an integral part of the system, the individual does not act autonomously but reflexively in relation to the logic of the system (Milgram, 1974, p. 133). The functional hierarchies that are present in society regulate the actions of individuals. Milgram argues that the urge for obedience is to be found in all the plans of the community: family, schools, working life, etc. Obedience occurs because, as part of the system, the individual has a strong sense of compliance with his role. This internalizes obedience and loyalty to the system as part of the individual’s personality. In the aftermath of Milgram’s study, it can be argued that moral blindness does not cause the sense of morality to disappear, but rather to give it another focus (Milgram, 1974, p. 146). The prevailing morality becomes the sense of loyalty, discipline, and honor, which is motivated by the individual’s desire to become an appropriate member of the organization’s authoritarian community. Milgram’s study, which could also be called a lesson in cynical business administration and management, demonstrates that ordinary people can be pushed to limitless obedience as long as the following conditions are present: (1) a prearranged pseudo-legal contractual obligation exists; (2) participants have meaningful “positive” roles to play in the experiment (e.g., teacher, learner, etc.); (3) basic rules are established that are arbitrarily and impersonally used, justifying mindless compliance by insisting that “rules are rules”; (4) the semantics of hurting victims becomes transmuted into a higher purpose by using positive words; (5) responsibility for negative outcomes is diffused to subordinates; (6) insignificant beginning steps eventually lead to a slippery slope toward greater harm; (7) by making small steps (e.g, only 15 volt increases) no one notices the increasing harm; (8) the authority figure (in Milgram’s study the scientific expert) changes from being just to becoming more and more demanding and irrational; (9) high exit costs imply that the victim with difficulties

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can dissent; and (10) an ideology is used as a rationale for justifying the operation as an excuse for the maintenance of power in the authority relationship (see “Ten lessons from the Milgram experiment,” Zimbardo, 2007, p. 275). In a recent interpretation of the Milgram experiments, we find by Patricia Werhane and her colleagues an analysis of implications for organization and leadership of Milgram Experiments (Werhane et al., 2013). The argument is that Milgram provides us with a presentation of the narrow, blind, or closed mental models that presuppose the moral dimensions of a decision or action. These are due to an inability to question management decisions and demands from a presumed management authority whose decisions are followed without questioning their moral legitimacy. Behind the people participating in Milgram’s experiments, we find mental models of authoritarian obedience without analytical thought. The experiments illustrate how the mental models act as a social schema behind the autonomy of human beings. In terms of moral indifference, this means that the ability to see moral problems is an essential dimension of our decision-making model that determines our mental models. Werhane argues that we need an ethical imagination to overcome the limitations of our mental models. There is an element of focusing, framing, ordering, organizing with an imaginative element, which is essential to decision-making processes. In this perspective, the Milgram study shows how organizational decision-making and leadership are determined by cultures and system structures that limits ethical imagination and decisionmaking based on sound judgment and honest dialogue with other human beings. Thus, moral imagination is needed in business to overcome moral indifference (Werhane, 1998).

6.7 Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil in Organizations: Philip Zimbardo In his book, The Lucifer Effect (2007), Philip Zimbardo—a friend and classmate of Milgram—takes up the challenge from Arendt and Milgram and presents a comprehensive account of his Stanford prison experiment nearly thirty years after it was conducted. Among other events, the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal after the Iraq war motivated Zimbardo to write this book about how ordinary people can do evil things in dehumanizing and humiliating conditions due to a combination of moral

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insensibility, conducive situations, and system roles (Zimbardo et al., 2000). In contrast to Milgram’s study, which focuses on obedience to authority, the core of Zimbardo’s analysis is role-playing and role adaptation in organizations, in other words the “social construction of compliance” (Adams & Balafour, 2009, p. 9). In the basement of the Stanford psychology department, Zimbardo constructed a prison simulation social psychology study involving ordinary middle-class psychology students who volunteered to assume the roles of either guards or prisoners (Zimbardo, 2004). During the experiment, which was supposed to last two weeks but was stopped after six days due to the semi-pornographic aggression and humiliation of prisoners by the guards and the strong hysterical reactions of the prisoners, the participants in the experiment identified very well with their roles and started to act as though they were real guards and prisoners without any moral or social reservations about their roles. As the conventional and arbitrary separation of the participants into prisoners and guardians was forgotten, new rules were introduced that led the guards to become more sadistic and the prisoners to identify more closely with their roles as victims. Both parties to the game started to take their roles seriously. Accordingly, certain prisoners experienced very strong personality transformations where they changed from being independent and critical students into subordinate and stressed prisoners. The same thing happened to the guards who very soon transformed from being normal and anti-authoritarian students into brutal and authoritarian guards. These changes can be explained as an effect of role-playing and the power of social structure and reality to construct human patterns of behavior. The institution of the prison automatically structures human role-abiding behavior in terms of specific patterns of action based on what Zimbardo refers to as the “alchemy of character transformations” (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 194). Even Zimbardo began to like his role as superintendent of a mock prison. It was only after his girlfriend, who was a psychology graduate student, saw the conditions of the prison and objected to the treatment of the students, and after several arguments, that he began to realize he had to stop the experiment (Zimbardo, 2007). Being confronted with her heroic resistance and immediate reaction as an outsider helped him realize that something was really wrong. After roughly a week, he had to stop the experiment due to the aggressive and sadistic developments of

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the role-playing and role identification within the institutional setting of the fake prison that had become more and more a model of a real violent prison. In his interpretation of the experiment, Zimbardo emphasizes the close relation between good and evil as two sides of the same coin in the construction of social reality. We adopt certain roles and aim at realizing these roles without looking at their general impact on human beings. When we deal with authoritarian systems and institutions, we are confronted with institutional structures where it is not individual actions but their functions and roles in the system that are important. We can say that evil is produced as a part or a function of the system and institutional conditions of the role that individuals have to adopt. Moral blindness is situated and become institutionalized in the system. When he heard about the abuses in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Zimbardo became aware of the striking similarities with the Stanford prison experiment: Young, normal, and ordinary people—in this case the US soldiers in the war prison—were suddenly in a situation where torture and humiliation of prisoners through sexual abuse became normalized. What occurred in Abu Ghraib was a type of compartmentalization of experience. Role identification and role-playing in the system contributed to the creation of evil and changed the personalities of the prison guards in the system. Individuals are exposed to the pressure of systems and therefore once they have identified with their roles they tend to conform even more to these roles. The organizational process implied in this “Lucifer effect,” where good and evil merge, combines system and situation, obedience to authority, group-think, dehumanization, and gradual escalation from little violations to a high level of abuse (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 355). In his analysis of the relation between person, situation, and system, Zimbardo ends by arguing for heroism (and maybe civil disobedience) as the only way to break with the abuses from within the system as long as the leaders of the system do not change the structures and chain of command. These forms of heroism are defined as acts that are voluntary, risk integrity and health, and serve community without personal gain, for example in cases of uncompromising criticism or whistle-blowing.

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The Banality of Evil as the Human Condition. ¨ Gunter Anders’ Reply to Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt’s first husband, who was also a philosopher, and who changed his name to Günther Anders can be seen to draw the consequences for conceptions of human beings of the concept of moral blindness in modernity, integrating the different concepts of moral blindness in a broader critical perspective on mass industrial society. In particular, Anders was interested in the problem of technology in industrial society related to moral responsibility. Anders published his correspondence with one of the pilots who was taking part in the action of the Hiroshima bombings. According to Anders, it is not only Eichmann but also all human beings who are responsible. Anders’s reflections on the banality of evil and technology can be found in his book Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (1956), which represents a critical reflection on technology and society. In industrial society, there is a close connection between technology, industry, science, and progress. Anders argues that human society is captured in a Prometheus Trap where our humanity is taken over by technology and our world of products and materials. The moral blindness for humanity leads to Prometheus shame where human beings are so oppressed by technology that they give up their individual freedom so that the world of things, objects, and machines dominate and human beings become “faulty constructions” in the perfect world of technology (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 24). In this sense, the subjects of human freedom have changed. Things and objects have become free and humans have become unfree. In this sense, there is the danger that human beings sabotage their own humanity with technology and with their close and intimate life with technology. In the technological age, there is kind of dehumanization of human beings with technology where the dependence of technology risks to change into human unfreedom in the sense that there is a metamorphose of the human individual with the physical dependence on technology in the search for the superhuman and superman. A climax of this dehumanization is the serial mass products of technological society, a kind of industrial Platonism, where human individuals are searching endless reproductions in photographs, pictures, and other series products in order to overcome the fear and angst for death (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 57). We see ourselves as faulty constructions that need endless reincarnation

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through the ionic pictures of television and the media industry. Humanity takes over the series production of themselves as mass products and therefore they become blind to themselves in the multiplication of themselves as a part of the mass production industry. Anders argues that the moral blindness in technological society means that we are blind to our wish for multiplicity and our urge to be absorbed by the perfect machines (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 59). This icomania and Prometheus shame implies that there is the danger that human beings give over their power to the machines. Anders explains that General MacArthur during the Korea War had to decide about whether he should use atomic bombs and start a third world war. However, he was denied the right to make this decision. Not that his superiors should make the decision, but rather that the decision was to be left over to an objective analysis by a computer or electrified brain (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 61). Here the responsible human being moves the foundations of decision-making from personal responsibility to objective calculation by the machine. Anders sees this as an example of the Prometheusian shame as an identification disturbance where human beings give away their responsibility to the objective authority of the machine. In this technocratic totalitarianism, the machine takes over the place of the self and all human activities, even sex is replaced by machines and devices. As an example of this, Anders mentions Jazz or we can add electronic music as an industrial Dyonosos-cult, a machine music. Humans are stripped of their subjectivity and enters with machines as an industrial symbiosis where self and machines are mixed and the self becomes a unity with the machine device as we experience today our lives with cell-phones, computers, televisions, etc. Anders analyzes moral blindness in the context of the atomic bomb. Humanity lives in an apocalyptic situation where we face our possible selfdestruction. However, we are marked by a peculiar blindness in relation to this fact since we cannot imagine the apocalypse. Anders argues that humanity is like titans, who have replaced God and nature as sources of absolute power since we are in the situation where we have the capacity to destroy ourselves. This infinite power makes humanity imagine itself in the place of superman, but it cannot imagine its own destruction in the apocalypse. As the titans who have lost their humanity, human beings unite with machines in the destructive effort to kill all human beings. It is like we cannot imagine that humanity can die.

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We have lost the understanding of the simple syllogism with the premises (1) All human beings are mortal. (2) All human beings can be killed. (3) Humanity can be killed (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 243). Our blindness consists in the fact that we cannot really imagine the death of humanity. Fewer people are alive in a dying world where human beings no longer assume responsibility with conscience, but only follow objective, technological calculations (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 247). Nevertheless, the bomb is not a means to an end. It has become an end in itself and that is the destructive force of technology. However, the paradox is that moral blindness consists in the fact that humanity has no phantasy to imagine the atomic explosion and destruction of the whole world by the bomb (Anders, 1980a [1956], p. 263). Paradoxically, human alienation and blindness combined with fascinations of machines mean that we live in a world where apocalyptic blindness means that we cannot feel apocalyptic angst (Anders, 1980b [1956]). Gunther Anders illustrates the points of the relations between alienation, blindness, responsibility, and moral conscience with his correspondence with the former Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly, Claude Eatherly was a reconnaissance pilot who in 1945 ordered the message to the plane carrying the atomic bomb to explode over Hiroshima. Later Eatherly had to fly over the atomic mushroom cloud after the bomb explosion in order to complete a mission to get scientific information and he became overexposed to radioactivity. When he came home, Eatherly was celebrated as a hero and got strong recognition by the military and the establishment. However, sometimes later, his wife had two abnormal children due to his atomic exposure and Eatherly eventually started to have psychological breakdowns and ended up in a special psychiatric home. Anders argues in his letters to Eatherly that it is not abnormal that he contrary to the establishment feels guilt and remorse for his actions. In a sense, Eatherly illustrates the moral blindness of the establishment to technology and totalitarianism and the self-destruction of humanity (Anders, 2008). However, contrary to the establishment and the public opinion Eatherly becomes aware of the dangers of self-destruction of humanity and the limits of moral consciousness. Accordingly, from Anders’ point of view Eatherly is rather a martyr and a moral hero than a crazy man, as suggested by the military and political establishment in the United States. According to Anders, the figure of Eatherly is the opposite of Eichmann. While Eichmann has no imaginary and capacity of moral reflection,

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Eatherly is the one who realizes his responsibility and the thoughtlessness of his actions. He understands the need to be responsible in the present for the future. As said by Anders, we need to become our present in our temporal relation (Anders, 2008). Nevertheless, Anders is not as severe to Eatherly as Arendt is in her critique of Eichmann’s lack of moral conscience. Because Anders argues that Eatherly is not the only responsible for his actions since he was acting as a part of a military-technological complex, submitted to the power of machines and technology and ruled by his superiors. In this perspective, Eatherly is coming to responsibility through his genuine remorse, but his experience also points to the fact, that the responsibility for his actions also includes other Americans and more broadly those human beings who were not able to stop the explosion of the atomic bomb, because they were blind to the destructive potentiality of apocalyptic technology. This means that Eatherly should not bear the responsibility alone, but his awakening should be extended to other American citizens who not in the first place able to understand the evil and destructive consequences of his actions.

6.9

Conclusion: Elements of Moral Blindness in Modern Society

These analyzes of the automatic sense of unlimited obedience have shown that the destructive moral blindness can be found in all kinds of people. There seems to be a potential Eichmann in all of us if we do not allow ourselves to perform deep ethical reflection and moral thinking. It makes us wonder if the medical and technological rationality of modern society has destructive potential? Or rather, does this rationality express a lack of moral sensibility? The problem is whether we can find elements of the unlimited obedience and mindless evil in modern democratic societies. In order to protect the human person with his or her autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability, we need to focus on moral blindness in modern societies, in particular its application in management and administration in different social institutions (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). However, it is quite difficult to demonstrate a connection between moral blindness and technical reason in a modern democracy. It seems too far-fetched and directly objectionable to argue for the “Holocaust industry,” where the Jews’ victimization (victimization) is simply used to

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obtain goods and power in society (Finkelstein, 2000, p. 32). Lawsuits against Swiss banks or compensation claims German companies that used forced labor can be good and useful. However, there is a great difference between the Holocaust and today’s treatment of the otherness of the other. In addition, while the Holocaust may be in danger of being used for ideological and political purposes, one cannot say that it is the same moral blindness as in Nazism. Nevertheless, there is the problem of blindness in the culture of management and administration where ethical principles and values are forgotten in a general cynical and violent background mentality (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). It can also be difficult to fit the evil in Hiroshima or Vietnam into the same category as the Holocaust, although the distant bombardment cannot be reminiscent of the Nazi technical sense. Our remembrance of the Holocaust is a necessity to respect the victims, but this must not go beyond threads. What is crucial is that, unlike an ideological Holocaust industry, we need a sober discussion of what features of the banality of evil can be said to hold true in modern society (Finkelstein, 2000, p. 150). Here it can be objected that neither Eichmann, the Nazis nor other authoritarian personalities can be considered typical of the general population of modern society. Eichmann found himself in a social structure that gave legitimacy to his actions, but which is radically different from those we find in modern societies. In addition, it could be argued that the conditions of Milgram’s trial are so special that they can hardly be generalized to include any form of obedience and moral blindness in modern society. An expression of moral blindness could be society’s technology obsession, where technology is rationally justified and values are perceived as expressions of subjective emotions. It is a pervasive feature of our moral life that we displace the problematic and unpleasant from our world of life. Moral blindness in the modern welfare society demonstrates the unwillingness to draw all the moral consequences of our actions. This seems to be what Arendt points out when she points out that banal evil consists in an inability to “think”? (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 49). Everything can go wrong if we do not “stop and think.” Today, this thoughtlessness could conceivably consist in an absence of self-reflection and moral awareness in the technological sense in organization and administration.

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We can also find features of an ideological racism in democratic societies. It follows from Arendt’s theory of Jewish hatred as a result of the collapse of the nation-states that racism is to that extent a modern product. It is modernity that has made racism possible (Bauman, 1991, p. 62). The xenophobia is a construct that is closely related to other features of the mass life of the mass community. Universal racism has become the natural reaction of society to the unknown and foreign. Like anti-Semitism, xenophobia is rooted in a rationalized racism in which the hatred of the “abstract other” helps to define the identity of the self and its interpretation of the world. Bauman calls the phenomenon “Heterophobia” (Bauman, 1991, p. 64). Nevertheless, even though racism exists, it does not mean that it is legitimately medical in the way it was tried by the Nazis. Today’s xenophobia may not be based on a constructed ideological order, and it is claimed that a certain category of people due to their biological characteristics cannot be incorporated into a given order. Racism is transformed into an “alienation strategy” which, as part of a technology of social engineering, contributes to isolating the selected minorities as others, strangers and aliens and thus forming the basis for the individual’s identity and self-understanding. Even in democratic societies it is difficult to completely renounce the totalitarian exclusion logic. It could be argued that the indifference to the weak in moral blindness also exists today. When the welfare state fights human vulnerability, it often has the unintended side effect of making many victims. In The Victim’s Century (Jensen, 1998), the Danish historian Henrik Jensen argues that victimization has become so widespread that people use the victim role as a survival strategy and thus provide the basis for a personal identity (Jensen, 1998, p. 27). The problem is that the individual sees itself as a vulnerable individual who is exposed to the state’s unfair abuse. We all have pictures of Vietnam, Rwanda, Kosovo, Ethiopia, Sudan and more recently Iraq and Syria, etc., on the retina of the eye. Pictures of people who are reduced to victims. These images are generalized to be essence descriptions of human nature. The “victims” of modern society struggle with each other in a reality characterized by narcissism and individualized self-preservation. The welfare states victimize and incapacitate their citizens who, instead of challenging the system, merely act on its terms and confirm to the social norms of a given society. Most can be classified under the requirements of the bureaucratic organizations. The individual is socialized to occupy his or her permanent

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place in the bureaucracy, where the moral blindness always consists in obeying (Bauman, 1991, p. 160). Technology is moralized and society is demoralized. It could also be argued that moral blindness can be demonstrated in the medical sciences of our time, for example in connection with the emergence of genetics (Caplan, 1992). Many medical experiments have been carried out on criminals, blacks, outcasts, etc., who were considered inferior and thus subject to the exclusion logic of moral blindness. Therefore, we need protection of human beings with basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen et al., 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). It can be feared that the ideology of inheritance hygiene controls today’s technology of reproduction, so that the technology is used to filter out undesirable individuals and reduce the concept of normality. We should avoid the technical sense and moral indifference becoming part of the institutions and organizations of society. The horror is the beautiful new world of manipulating, constructing, and sorting out a, b, and c people. There is a risk that society becomes the “therapeutic object of science” in a “health Sparta,” where the constructivist ideal of perfection and healthy normality becomes the goal of social technology. When using the human body for transplantation and other medical purposes, there is a danger of technological banalization and paralysis. Human genetics research should use the acquired knowledge to protect human autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability, rather than cynically cleansing the weakest genes. Another feature of the technical thinking of modernity is that it cannot recognize the existence of tragic moral dilemmas (Maclean, 1993). The right actions are in consequentialist utility maximization theory determined by the correct preference balancing of harm and benefit of an action. In the mindlessness and obedience there is not a tragic conflict of duty, but decision-making is only a question of calculating the quality of life in the most correct way. The notion of human dignity—its humanity—is thus irrelevant in the technical logic. It is a rejection of the existential-symbolic meaning of humanity in the formulation of the quality of life. The problem then becomes that formal utility thinking is meaningless because all preferences are set equal, whereby there is no longer an ethical discourse that has value in itself. Therefore, it cannot be objective moral considerations that should guide the given action. In order to avoid ending in an empty formalism, Arendt can say that the

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technical rationality must find a way to unite with common sense, moral thinking and judgment, which always underpins technology in a human view and common social practice. A thought-provoking example of the link between technical logic, moral blindness, and modernity is Edwin Black’s discussion of the information technology rationality of the Holocaust in the book IBM and the Holocaust. The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (2001). Black analyzes how IBM helped produce the punch card machines used by the Nazis to statistically categorize the peoples of Europe and differentiate between Jews and non-Jews. Statistics were considered an invaluable tool in identifying the Jews. With the help of hole maps, a lot of information about genealogy, gender, employment, religion, mother tongue, etc., could quickly be stored, and the population statistics could therefore be quite accurate in its identification of individual individuals (Black, 2001, p. 57). The Nazis worked quickly and effectively to categorize the entire population. It can therefore be argued that the Holocaust was possible not only because of the bureaucratic rationality of our time, but also based on the same information technology that conditions today’s information society. As Black puts it, “The dawn of the Information Age began at the twilight of human decency” (Black, 2001, p. 104). The case of IBM and the Holocaust demonstrates the importance of business ethics and moral thinking in business (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Characteristic of all the dimensions of moral blindness mentioned here is that, despite their substantive differences in a milder form, they reflect some of the structural features of the banality of evil in Nazism. Racism, the sacrifice, the exclusion of the weak, the medical ideology, the bureaucracy’s technical sense, ordinary people’s tendency to unlimited obedience cannot be completely excluded in modern democratic societies, but tend to arise when we least expect it. Here we must state that, contrary to the limited possibility of Nazism, we disagree with the regime and ask questions of power, in a democratic society can fortunately protest and demonstrate moral blindness. This was Arendt’s best protection against the banality of evil. She emphasizes the duty to revolt and her philosophy is a defense of a critical moral reflection that protects the potentially false morals of socialization. Arendt calls for the autonomy of reason and the individual’s duty to think for himself or herself.

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This is evident in the role that critical judgment plays in Arendt’s philosophy (Villa, 1999). Here, the common sense of the human being is opposed to the creation of ideology, falsehood, and fiction by the totalitarian society. Arendt fought for a political revolution and a new Republican constitution that, as an alternative to totalitarianism, should make possible respect for human equality, freedom, and plurality (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). A human being must be able to personally and responsibly make moral choices. The right attitude and the good deeds cannot be justified in the technical sense alone, but should always be tested through the individual’s moral sensibility and the critical sense of judgment (Arendt, 1989). We should follow Arendt through a constant and critical problematization of social conditions (Arendt, 1990 [1965]). This criticism should be grounded in a reflective judgment of respect for humanity and human dignity. It enables the banality of the evil to be fought and improves the promotion of political and social institutions aiming for the common good, peace, and justice.

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Rendtorff, J. D. (2015c). Integrity, concept of. In H. ten Have (Ed.), Encyclopedia of global bioethics (pp. 1–7). Cham: Springer Science+Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2. Rendtorff, J. D. (2016). Review of Le tournant de la théorie critique, Collection Solidarité et société, Éditions Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2015. Journal of Classical Sociology, 16(3), 305–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X1 6646468. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017a). Cosmopolitan business ethics: Towards a global ethos of management. Finance, Governance and Sustainability: Challenges to Theory and Practice Series. London: Routledge. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017b). Creating shared value as institutionalization of ethical responsibilities of the business corporation as a good corporate citizen in society. In J. Wieland (Ed.), Creating shared value: Concepts, experience, criticism (pp. 119–139). Ethical Economy, No. 52. s.l.: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017c). Perspectives on philosophy of management and business ethics: Including a special section on business and human rights. Ethical Economy, No. 51. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2017d). The Danish model of corporate citizenship: The Novo Group. In E. O’Higgins & L. Zsolnai (Eds.), Progressive business models: Creating sustainable and pro-social enterprise (pp. 221–240). Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business in Association with Future Earth. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31958804-9, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58804-9_10. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019a). Sustainable development goals and progressive business models for economic transformation. Local Economy, 34(6), 510–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269094219882270. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019b). The concept of business legitimacy: Corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship, corporate governance as essential elements of ethical business legitimacy. In D. Crowther, S. Seifi, & T. Wond (Eds.), Responsibility and governance: The twin pillars of sustainability (pp. 45–60). Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Cham, Switzerland: Springer VS. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019c). The honest businessperson: Cosmopolitan theory and cultural praxis (The example of Denmark and Scandinavia). In C. Lütge & C. Strosetzki (Eds.), The honorable merchant—Between modesty and risk-taking: intercultural and literary aspects (pp. 41–53). Ethical Economy, No. 56. Cham: Springer. Rendtorff, J. D. (2019d). Philosophy of management and sustainability: Rethinking business ethics and social responsibility in sustainable development. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing.

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Rendtorff, J. D., & Kemp, P. (2009). The Barcelona Declaration: Towards an integrated approach to basic ethical principles. Synthesis Philosophica, 23(2), 239–251. Rendtorff, J. D., & Mattsson, J. (2012). Ethics in the bank internet encounter: An explorative study. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 10(1), 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779961211210649. Sartre, J. P. (1964 [1946]). Réflexions sur la question juive. Paris: Gallimard. Villa, D. R. (1999). Politics, philosophy, terror, essays on the thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Werhane, P. H. (1998). Moral imagination and the search for ethical decisionmaking in management. London: The Ruffin Series of the Society for Business Ethics. Werhane, P. H., Pincus Hartman, L., Archer, C., Englehardt, E. E., & Pritchard, M. S. (2013). Obstacles to ethical decision-making: Mental models, Milgram and the problem of obedience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimbardo, P. G. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 21–50). New York: Guilford Press. Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer effect. How good people turn evil. Reading, MA: Ramdom House Group Company. Zimbardo, P. G., Maslach, C., & Haney, C. (2000). Reflections on the Stanford prison experiment: Genesis, transformations, consequences. In T. Blass (Ed.), Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm (pp. 193–237). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

CHAPTER 7

Moral Blindness in Administration, Business, and Surveillance Society

7.1

Introduction

Since the publication of Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and Eichmann in Jerusalem: Essay on the banality of evil (1964) there have been many debates in political philosophy about the concepts of moral blindness and evil as a means of understanding the violence and domination inherent in social and political conflicts such as war and acts of terror (Kateb, 1983; Villa, 1999; Vetlesen, 2005; Benhabib, 2010; Bercowitz et al., 2010). We have moved from totalitarianism to the problem of evil in war and terrorism as a burden of our times that ought to be explained. The focus of political philosophy has been to use the concepts of moral blindness and the banality of evil to explain the horrors of modernity, Auschwitz and the death camps, the Gulag, or the terror of September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the wars against Islamic State, and the civil war in Syria. More recently, the question has been extended to whether such notions can explain the continuous harm and violence of poverty, racism, and discrimination around the world. Traditionally such evil has been ascribed to willed demonic human actions and the recent literature on the problem of evil is extensive. Nevertheless, our concepts of evil remain somewhat insufficient in the face of the radical incomprehensibility of evil actions (Arendt, 1964). Rather than explaining terror and violence in terms of real evil based on direct conscious intentionality—as proposed by classical philosophy and some contemporary philosophy—the approach informed by Arendt and her © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_7

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followers considers the concept of moral blindness and the banality of evil as based on relations between structures, systems, and human individuals in unreflective roles. Despite the rich discussion of evil in political theory, this work has not been adequately extended to the notion of harm and wrongdoing in institutional contexts. The discussion of the banality of evil as proposed by Hannah Arendt is directly relevant to business ethics and to the ethics of organizations and corporations (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). Though not manifesting in the form of political violence, private organizations and corporations often commit actions with very violent consequences for human beings, societies, nature, etc. Moreover, many administrators are morally blind, in the sense that they do not really understand their own wrongdoing or culpability in decisions that can cause very severe pain to other people. This has been indicated by research on valuesdriven management and values in business and administration (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Since Arendt’s analysis is based on an exceptional historical event—the Holocaust—it is often argued that her work has little bearing on understanding present behavior and is irrelevant to contemporary private and public organizations. Although the Holocaust is arguably the most outrageous and extreme form of human activity encountered in Europe, I do not agree with this criticism that the doctrine of the banality of evil cannot teach us anything about modern organizations. It is the task of philosophy of management through philosophical reflection and moral thinking to think about moral blindness and evil in organization and administration (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). There are in fact many cases of evil, harm, and moral blindness in organizations for which Arendt’s analysis serves as an excellent illustrative metaphor or analogy. For example, we can mention corporate decisions that continuously damage the environment, pose security problems, or fail to address preventable workplace accidents. Furthermore, one could draw attention to the problem of lack of respect for human rights by many business organizations operating in developing countries. We can refer to a variety of harmful actions by organizations that exploit different stakeholders (e.g., consumers, suppliers, investors, and the local community), which are often ignored, even though these groups have genuine moral claims. We might also mention

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the exploitative profit taking and dehumanization inherent in the current financial and debt crisis (Sorkin, 2010). In addition, many businesspeople have a tendency to portray themselves as moral people in an amoral and morally blind environment (Bird, 1996, pp. 17–18). Therefore, basic ethical principles for protection of the human person in organization and administration are extremely important in complex bureaucratic institutional systems (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). Drawing on the copious preexisting literature in political theory and philosophy of management, I will endeavor to understand some contemporary iterations of more or less explicit violence and domination in organizations by exploring the problems of the banality of evil and moral blindness in business ethics. Furthermore, I will ask the critical question about how the banality of evil and moral blindness can be used to explain the lack of ethical insight and sensibility as well as the lack of ethical formulation competency in organizations, institutions, and administrations. Thus, this chapter is a development of my previous research in the field (Rendtorff, 2014c). The chapter contains the following major parts: (1) Arendt’s concept of moral blindness. (2) Definition of moral blindness in organizations and corporations. (3) Interpretations of moral blindness after Arendt. (4) Moral blindness as stupidity and incompetence compensation competence. (5) Moral blindness, moral muteness, and moral deafness. (6) Moral blindness and public administration: Unmasking administrative evil. (7) Moral blindness in business administration: Corporate psychopaths and unbalanced pursuit of goals. (8) Moral blindness and surveillance capitalism: From punch card technology to corporate power in the digital age. (9) Conclusion: Perspectives for research in moral blindness in organization and administration.

7.2 The Concept of Moral Blindness in Management Arendt considers the problem of evil as one of the most fundamental issues of postwar Europe (Bernstein, 1996a, 1996b, p. 12, 2002) and the Holocaust is at the center of her analysis of evil. As a journalist, Arendt covered Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in the beginning of 1960s and she expected to find a monster, but she

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only saw a very “ordinary” and rather uninteresting “little” man whose mental state, as Arendt ironically remarks, was characterized by a dozen psychiatrists as “normal” and even desirable. In Eichmann in Jerusalem (1964) Arendt proposes that the Holocaust is not a unique event or an abstract symbol of evil, but rather the result of the wrongdoing of ordinary people. Indeed, Arendt refers to Eichmann as “terrifyingly normal” (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 276). Rather than casting him as perverted or sadistic, Arendt portrays his actions as the result of his inability to think and to have moral sensibility and judgment. She finds the moment where Eichmann is on his way to the gallows to be expression of his banality where his last words are clichés from the Nazi ideology. Arendt uses the term banality of evil to characterize Eichmann’s existence: one that is devoid of moral thinking, where the terrible acts are committed by an ordinary man who has no profound understanding of what he has done and who lacks the ability to feel or understand that what he has done is wrong. Eichmann was a key figure responsible for the murder of nearly six million Jews during the Holocaust. As a bureaucrat and “organization man” he said that he had only done his job as a middle manager of the Nazi organization. By presenting Eichmann’s ordinariness, Arendt reveals the “fearsome, word-and thought-defying” banality of evil (Arendt, 1992 [1964], p. 252). According to Arendt, this banality of evil is a result of concrete social conditions and organizational and institutional structures. In particular, we find the origins of totalitarianism in imperialism. In fact, Arendt’s conception of moral blindness and the banality of evil centrally relies on understanding how administrative and bureaucratic instrumental rationality in organizational systems functions in combination with the technological and scientific ideology of imperialism and totalitarianism. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Arendt states that Nazism was no different from other totalitarian systems of modernity such as Stalinism and imperialism, which also contributed to a systematic destruction of humanity and dignity by technical means. Following Arendt, it would be wrong to consider imperialism and totalitarianism only as political factors that have nothing to do with economics. In fact, we can say that imperialism was an important basis for totalitarianism in the sense that totalitarianism has its roots in the idea of unlimited growth, a key principle of business speculation that was transferred from the realm of politics. In imperialism, economic prosperity legitimizes politics. In this sense, one could argue that the businessperson who aims for profit and

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unlimited growth without any concern for humanity or morality is actually an imperialist suffering from moral blindness. While sadistic criminal soldiers in totalitarian and imperialist systems are definitely horrifying, their actions are rationally understandable in the sense that they were ordinary criminals. The dutiful bureaucratic behavior of SS bureaucrats and administrators like Eichmann, on the other hand, is harder to comprehend. Arendt emphasizes that the totalitarian state destroys the space for reflective judgment, resulting in actions without moral sensibility or ethical imagination. This helps to explain how well-educated bureaucrats and administrators like Eichmann are able to commit evil actions by combining obedience to the system with lack of concern for human dignity. There is a close connection between making human beings superfluous and the thoughtlessness of the banality of evil, as Arendt outlined in the Origins of Totalitarianism. Indeed, one cannot describe the banality of evil without taking into account radical evil because even though Eichmann was banal his actions were monstrous in an absolute sense. Therefore, the administrators and executors of the Holocaust represent radically evil totalitarianism in the sense that their actions were characterized by thoughtlessness and because they were instrumental to realizing the ideological goals of Nazism. In addition to the thoughtlessness and lack of moral sensibility of the administrators of the Nazi system, Arendt points to another disturbing element of the banality of evil, namely the fact that the radical evil of the banality of evil was that it implied a forced collaboration between victims and perpetrators. The perpetrators made victims cooperate through the threat of further harm. The Jews selected themselves as the police in the ghettoes. The methodology of the Nazi criminals was that they used the victims to help to carry out their self-destruction (Arendt, 2007, p. 472). In Auschwitz, certain prisoners were elected to help in the killing process and in some cases they acted as guards. Moreover, even though they knew a little about the concentration camps, the people of the German population remained silent. This form of collaboration legitimized the actions in the camps, which were never publicly questioned. In some ways, the Nazi regime resembled the bureaucratic organization where duty and obedience ensure compliance. The ideological clichés of the Nazi system, including obedience to one’s superiors, created the conditions for its efficiency. The moral blindness was a result of this obedience to the norms and values of the system without question. Eichmann was characterized by the conscience of the obedient bureaucrat who

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did his duty. He was an element of an efficient bureaucratic system that worked according to objectified technical standards. According to the doctrine of the banality of evil, it is not possible to explain the Holocaust by criminalizing or pathologizing the Nazis. The Holocaust should rather be explained in terms of a complex interaction between technical rationality, lack of moral sensibility, and total obedience by people who can be considered as normal according to conventional psychological standards. Nevertheless, this is challenging to ethical reflection. Arendt emphasizes how the combination of cynical utility and technical precision in the Nazi concentration camps was completely incomprehensible (Arendt, 1950, p. 373). Yet it is this utility and precision that characterizes the radical nature of the banality of evil, which she considers as the foundation for moral blindness in administrations and organizations. The central characteristics of the bureaucrats and the administrators of the Holocaust were their complete lack of moral sensibility, ethical imagination, judgment, responsibility and sense of humanity. A the same time as they were average mediocre people and cogs in the system, they became monsters who were responsible for the horrifying evil of the Holocaust. It is an intriguing question whether Arendt’s analysis of the banality of evil and moral blindness also can be used to understand the 2008 financial crisis, the environmental crisis and the global climate crisis and other elements of moral blindness in business and corporations. Do the actions of the big financial firms represent the same arrogance and lack of selfawareness that characterized the Nazi bureaucrats? We can take up this question by examining the imperialism at the root of crisis in capitalism. The answer to this question may say something about the crisis of capitalist economic as a “new burden of our times” equivalent to the burden of totalitarianism at Arendt’s time. According to Arendt (1951), imperialism is the doctrine that economic and scientific thinking is superior to politics. We can say that the economic and financial crisis, as well as the global environmental crisis, is the result of a new kind of moral blindness where purely economic concerns have replaced ethical and political concerns. We might say that the modern age is one where world politics is characterized by a desire for limitless growth. Following Arendt’s conception, this limitless growth may be conceived as a new form of imperialism that emerged as a condition for totalitarianism. There is an erosion of the nation-state, where the economy has taken over the political realm

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for the purposes of exchange and exploitation (Arendt, 1951). This implies the transformation to an unlimited and aimless economy where businesspeople replace politicians and states are submitted to economic globalization. From the perspective of Arendt’s thought the financial crisis in 2008 and further crisis of capitalism, for example, related to climate change and environmental crisis can be seen as an illustration of how the global financial actors acted imperially by assuming the power of the nationstate. Aimless expansion of profits was the basis for the financial crisis, where the system diminished the power of human-centered values and ethics, resulting in humanity being reduced to consumers. Homo sapiens has, in the modern world, become equivalent with homo economicus . From Arendt’s perspective, capitalist rationalization implies dehumanization and the materialist values of profit and loss replace morality and spiritual values. Following this, we can argue that the role of many businesspeople in the financial crisis was also characterized by a kind of moral blindness where individual greed and self-interest replaced responsibility, moral thinking, and concern for other human beings.

7.3

Interpretations of Moral Blindness After Arendt

We can advance business ethics research in relation to the origins of the financial crisis and the contemporary challenges to capitalism considerably by investigating the structural and functional dimensions of the organizations and institutions currently operating in accord with Arendt’s notions of moral blindness and the banality of evil. Indeed, we can begin by reviewing some of the research traditions that have emerged out of her work on the banality of evil. It is possible to distinguish between three general post-Arendt research paradigms (1) the functionalist approach to Holocaust studies, (2) sociological and social psychological studies of organizational behavior, and (3) studies of the political philosophy and ideology of evil in contemporary political discourse. More specifically with in the studies of administration and organizations we can distinguish between two important research paradigms: (1) studies of administrative evil in public organizations, and (2) studies of moral blindness in business corporations. Among the general paradigms, Holocaust research and Holocaust studies contributed to the development of the functionalist approach,

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which emphasizes the role of the system and social situation rather than the individual’s evil intention. Raul Hilberg (1961) described the social system of the Holocaust in his classic text The Destruction of the European Jews, which informed Hannah Arendt’s work. Lipton describes the ability of compartmentalization in The Nazi Doctors, showing how individuals suppressed their own personal stress and doubt considering the final solution in favor of a scientific and organizational higher objective that had to be reached even though it was terrible for the individual (Lifton, 1986). Ordinary people like the middle-class doctors were trained to see mass murder as an organizational duty and a problem to be solved. It was possible to compartmentalize their personality in the professional ideological role as and the personal private role as two separate personalities. In the camps, doctors were educated in coping and dealing with the mass murder by, for example, constructing a specific language and rationality of goal commitment to deal with the situation. By dehumanizing the Jews and suppressing personal feelings, the extermination was constructed as a legitimate organizational goal to be implemented without questions or personal doubt (Bernstein, 1996b). With his work Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), Zygmunt Bauman described the consequences of the Holocaust and their impacts on the sociology of modern organizations. The desire to understand individuals like Eichmann and the other Nazi criminals, who were characterized by their seemingly normal personalities, led to the famous research on obedience by the Yale social psychologist, Stanley Milgram. Milgram wanted to empirically test the propositions of Hilberg and Arendt; thus he defined experimental conditions for obedience and came to the conclusion that normal people under specific circumstances are likely to follow authorities beyond reasonable morality (Milgram, 1974). This research was further developed by his friend and colleague Philip Zimbardo who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, which had to be canceled because some participants became brutal, violent, and sexually sadistic after a few days (Zimbardo et al., 2000; Zimbardo, 2004, 2007). As we have seen, Bauman, Milgram, and Zimbardo generalized the concept of moral blindness to be applicable in all kinds of organizations. Since the Bush administration initiated the “war on terror” the debate about evil has received renewed attention in political philosophy. This has led to general discussions of evil in politics including the 2005 book by Richard Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11 (2005). In this text, Bernstein defends Arendt’s concept

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of the banality of evil against doctrines of the absolute intentions of evil implied in the war on terror (Bernstein, 2005). This approach moves political philosophy from the study of intentions to the study of systems, functions, roles, and situations as conditions for evil actions, which also renders it relevant to business ethics. Moreover, in relation to international law and public policy, David Luban has taken Milgram’s definition of the problem of moral blindness as a starting point to critically analyze integrity as the fusion of thought and action (Luban, 2003, p. 286). In Unmasking Administrative Evil (2009), Guy Adams and Danny Balfour extend the discussion into research on the ethics of public administration. The authors describe administrative evil as systematic evil by large powerful institutions, for example military or political bureaucracies (Adams & Balfour, 2009, p. xii). They propose a technical–rational analysis of public affairs in order to unmask the basis of systematic evil in administrations. Their argument is that the technical analytic mindset of the modern age implies a possible moral inversion where people involved in modern organizations, like Eichmann, can be dominated by technical and instrumental organizational goals without really being aware of it. Dimensions of this creation of evil are acting at a distance, masking evil with language and technology, and compartmentalizing and socializing people into compliance with the technical analytical mindset of the organization within the social dynamics of compliance in strong hierarchical orders. In business ethics and organizational ethics the work of Frederick Bird in The Muted Conscience: Moral Silence and the Practice of Ethics in Business (1996) deserves mention. Here we find a detailed analysis of the moral blindness that emerges in organizations with no sense of business ethics. Moreover, in Conscience and Corporate Culture (2007) Kenneth Goodpaster has proposed an analysis of moral blindness that is loosely inspired by Arendt. Goodpaster likens moral blindness to a camera that zooms without being able to see the objective by his concept of the stimulus problem “teleophathy” and “ambidexteriority” that creates a moral blindness. Goodpaster argues that we need some kind of ethical reflection or distance to see the problem that emerges from this narrow-minded focus on management by objective. Indeed, the work of Patricia Werhane on moral imagination, which is also inspired by Arendt, may be the solution to this kind of lack of ethical awareness in business ethics, because it emphasizes how moral vision and seeing can be created and make us overcome blindness (Werhane, 1998).

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So we see a number of approaches dealing with the banality of moral blindness in business and organizational ethics that all attempt to contemporize Arendt’s insight. The study of moral blindness is an important basis for the development of business ethics and organizational ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). None of these approaches extends this approach to a systematic analysis of the origins of the financial crisis or the present general crisis of business systems and administrative behavior. In order to do this we will now look deeper into the concept of moral blindness in sociology and social psychology. Indeed, it is the work of a theoretical sociology (Bauman) and social psychology (Milgram and Zimbardo) that provide us with the important basis for understanding the concept of moral blindness as it applies to contemporary business organizations.

7.4 Moral Blindness as Stupidity and Incompetence Compensation Competence The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler has proposed a concept of moral blindness following the idea of the administrator or bureaucrat as a person without capacity of moral thinking or reflection. He simply proposed the idea of stupidity as the concept that can be used to analyze lack of moral reflection in organizations. In the book État de choc: Bêtise et savoir au XXI siècle (2012) Stiegler presents the global crisis of governments, businesses, and universities in recent years as crisis of loss of autonomy and sovereignty (Stiegler, 2012). A concept for understanding the global crisis and the generalized crisis of capitalism is the idea of a generalization of stupidity, understood as increase in global inequality where a rich minority has power and privileges when a poor majority and proletariat have less and less resources and opportunities. At the same time, the emergence of the corporate university with focus on efficiency and profitable education means a crusade against humanistic and classical visions of the university and education (Stiegler, 2012). University education has become education to learn the technologies of the mind to manipulate the world and education is not longer aiming at general and classical education for life. This destruction of classical education has led to chock in education systems where technologies of power have replaced the human element of classical education.

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On this basis with reference to the dialectics of reason, suggested by Adorno and Horkheimer, Stiegler argues that instrumental and manipulative reason has become dominant in technological and industrial society. Stiegler writes that vulgarity and stupidity (Bêtise, basesse) have been generalized. It was this stupidity that Heidegger referred to when he talked about the “Grosse Dummheit.” Thus, Stiegler argues that stupidity as instrumental reason with lack of reflection has become dominating in modern society (Stiegler, 2012). Stiegler thinks that moral responsibility and moral thinking are necessary for the university to overcome this instrumental stupidity. The university has a special moral responsibility to deal with the problems of techno-science and the planetary crisis of hyper-industrial society. In this struggle to overcome moral blindness of reason, Stiegler refers to Jacques Derrida’s analysis of stupidity, animality, and sovereignty in Derrida’s seminars on the relations between animals and human beings and the animality of human beings. Derrida asks the question whether there is a possibility to combat stupidity? The emergence of stupidity in university and society is linked to proletarization of students and citizens. Nevertheless, technological rationality seems to have a double face. It is technical know-how necessary for civilization, but it is also instrumental reason that contributes to destroying a deep encounter with the world. However, Stiegler thinks that it is possible to fight stupidity (La bêtise), but at the same time stupidity is not just not to have knowledge. There is a link between knowledge and stupidity, as suggested by the content of instrumental reason. This kind of stupidity has also been called functional stupidity in organizations (Alvesson & Spicer, 2016). What is needed is to fight stupidity through classical education and here the responsibility of the university is important so the world will not be taken over by stupidity (Bêtise). There is a close connection between knowledge and stupidity (Stiegler, 2012). This is expressed by the classical figure of Epimetheus who only thinks on the basis of his or her stupidity. Stupidity is human and the lack of thinking links to blindness. The link between one-dimensional technological rationality and global stupidity is what must be overcome through the responsibility for moral thinking and wise reflection on foundations of actions in organizations and administrations. Such an interpretation of lack of moral thinking as stupidity can be further explained by using the concept compensation. The skeptical German philosopher Odo Marquard (1928–2015) has developed a so-called “philosophy of compensation” which is that in its existence

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humanity tries to compensate for the lack of the absolute by doing something else (Marquard, 1973). This is called the Philosophie des Stattdessen (Instead of philosophy or philosophy instead of or philosophy about what is instead). A human being is thus a “Homo compensator” who throughout his or her life has to compensate for the lack of absolute reason by doing something else, for example by seeking a replacement for lack of meaning (Marquard, 1973). Translated to the contradiction between “reason” and “passion” it can be said that passion is compensation for the lack of reason in the world. Thus, humanity tries to get beyond its powerlessness by compensating for its position in the world as a finite and deadly being. At the organizational level, this compensation also occurs when individuals attempt to occupy different positions in the organization as leader or superior, thus gaining a space where their professional role compensates for their existential deficiency. Organizations develop values, procedures, policies, and systems to control and discipline, and this offsets the fundamental meaninglessness and need for deeper meaning in the different systems of the organizations. In the same way, there is a need to compensate for the lack of moral thinking and deep reflection in organizations. Marquard considers it is important to relate this to the economic life and corporate governance that is the context for the link between power and learning in organizations (Marquard, 1973). It is in this context that the philosophy of compensation becomes directly relevant to understanding the interplay between power, management, and learning in organizations. Marquard does not think the philosophers should stay in their own world of thought, but rather go and analyze real-life situations. Marquard is skeptical of new-speak and the illusory “bull-shit” language in organizations where a lot of metaphorical statements are used to describe a mysterious reality that does not really exist (Marquard, 1973). Marquard ironically remarks that a manager is a human being, first becoming a baby, then teen-ager, and then Man-ager. Marquard continues the sarcasm by saying that the philosopher is like a manager or a business consultant who advises on things he is not an expert. Thus, philosophy is probably the best instrument to replace ignorance and a lack of learning, which in principle characterizes our existential reality in organizations. Nevertheless, it is worse: the philosopher is the expert stuntman of all, the one who is employed, when it comes to extra-dangerous expert statements.

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Marquard emphasizes that business economics disciplines, innovation, motivation, and communication make the company manager the expert in compensation, i.e., the one who has an exceptional ability to compensate. Compensation is a strong economic concept, which refers to wages, taxes, social policy, insurance, etc. The Economy Compensation Law is that all goods have a price and can therefore be compensated. Any misfortune can be compensated through happiness. Whoever has sorrows also has liqueur, as the poets say, according to Marquard (1973). Here Marquard then emphasizes that the leaders of the globalized society, with their progress, interdependence, and alignment, must increasingly use their ability to compensate for the need for individualization, regionalization, and pluralization. Marquard thus demonstrates the basic paradox of power and learning in organizations. Here, the experts and consultants come into the organizations as actors to compensate for the organization’s problems and lack of solutions. When philosophers also come in as experts to contribute to problem-solving, the paradox shows itself in its extreme dimension, namely that all experts in reality operate as ideologues who do not actually have the knowledge and competence, but merely act as compensation agents to obscure power and disciplinary mechanisms in the companies. It is in this context that Marquard has developed the concept of “incompetence compensation competence.” This term is defined in the article about compensation of incompetence from 1973 (Marquard, 1973). The article begins with an example of a man who has had his head cut off but still retains it and the one who chopped off his head asks if he cannot nod so his head can fall. Marquard is interested in what that head thinks before it drops. This is how he thinks the situation of philosophy is. The article is about the meaning of philosophy and how to do philosophy in post-metaphysical times. In this context search for compensation is a characteristic feature of reaction to the lack of knowledge and thinking of modernity. Even though the concept was introduced as an ironic concept of postmetaphysical philosophy, it can be generalized to be considered as a general feature of management and administration in contemporary society. In particular, politicians and business leaders are, by this definition, among those who practice such a sport of compensation for incompetency that is closely linked to corruption. It can be said that precisely the ability to compensate and the incompetence compensation system also prevails in knowledge environments, and in particular

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in connection with learning and power in organizations. The situation is that one constantly compensates for one’s incompetence to maintain one’s power and privileges in organizations. In addition, incompetence compensation competence is a key concept for understanding leaders’ fallacy in organizations. Most professionals are really competent in compensating for their incompetence. They have learned that, but they have not learned much more than that. This ability is evident in many organizations, where leaders will opportunistically maintain their power by trying to compensate for their incompetence by referring to matters that shift the focus from personal responsibility to other matters in the organization. Moreover, this is also the case, when employees from all over the world want to maintain pseudo-work to avoid being fired or to maintain privileged positions in the company. The problem is that such a leader is at the same time morally blind, dumb, and deaf to his incompetence and at the same time, most people are not at all aware of how they constantly try to compensate for their incompetence through their incompetence compensation competence. I believe that there are a number of dark dimensions of the role of compensation logic in modern society that characterizes our human existence and the way in which we act in society. In doing so, we can also see how the logic of compensation is related to ideological blindness and brainwashing of people in society. This is the problem of moral blindness where people try to overcome moral blindness and lack of moral thinking through different kinds of compensations. Thus, incompetence compensation competence can in combination with stupidity be determined as an account of moral blindness in organizations in private business and public institutions.

7.5 Moral Blindness, Moral Muteness, and Moral Deafness We have in previous chapters analyzed the concept of the banality of evil and moral blindness beginning with Hannah Arendt and continuing with Bauman, Milgram, and Zimbardo. Bauman theoretically developed Arendt’s concept by focusing on organizational bureaucracy in the modernity of totalitarianism and imperialism (Bauman, 1993). Milgram provided us with an analysis of individual obedience and the loyalty of employees in the organization (Gilbert, 1981). Zimbardo gave us a definition of the relation between moral blindness and role-playing in

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organizations. Although I know that there are many differences between Eichmann’s context during the Holocaust and the university-based experimental work of Milgram and Zimbardo, I would like to point to some structural and conceptual content of the concept of modern blindness that comes from my earlier research on the subject (Rendtorff, 2014c) that we can deduce from the previous analysis and apply to modern business organizations. The dimensions of the concept of moral blindness that are relevant to business ethics include: (1) The implication that the manager, business leader, or public administrator has no capacity of moral thinking. (2) The manager, business leader, or public administrator only follows orders and justifies his or her actions by reference to the technical goal rationality of the organizational system. (3) The manager, business leader, or public administrator is strongly influenced by the ideology, principles, or instrumental values of the organization. (4) This attachment includes an abstraction from concrete human needs and concerns in the business organization. (5) In many cases moral blindness strangely enough includes collaboration on the part of the victims of the harm. (6) The victims follow the rationality of the system and they identify with their roles, either motivated by pure obedience or by an attempt to minimize greater harm. (7) Moral blindness contains a dehumanization of the victims and other stakeholders implied in the process, rendering them as elements, things, or functions of the system. (8) Moral blindness relies on total obedience by the administrators of the system. (9) Technology and instrumental rationality is an essential element in the administration of the organization. (10) Each participant in the organization accomplishes a specific work function with a specific task but he or she has no general overview of the organizational system. (11) Top managers and leaders may behave opportunistically to follow their own interests with regard to the main goal of the instrumental system. (12) Top managers, administrators, and leaders may act irrationally beyond common human understandings of morality in order to serve the instrumental rationality of the organizational system. (13) The administrative obedience to realize the organizational aim becomes the central interest of the managers or administrators of the organization. (14) Obedience, role identification, and task commitment remain the central and ultimate virtues of the commitment of members of the organization to the organizational system. (15) Each member of the organizational system commits

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themselves to the values of the organizational goal of the system (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). These elements can be said to constitute the essential structural and functional elements of the concept of moral blindness, or rather what we can also call moral silence. However, we can also consider moral blindness from the point of view of a rather phenomenological or hermeneutical perspective. This is the approach that we find in Frederick Bruce Bird’s (1996) book The Muted Conscience: Moral Silence and the Practice of Ethics in Busines s. This book provides the most comprehensive recent attempt to define the application of the concept of moral blindness in business ethics. In fact, Bird extends the concept of moral blindness to include moral muteness and moral deafness. Moral muteness is defined as the inability of people to defend their ideas and ideals (Bird, 1996, p. 2). Moral deafness is the inability to listen to and hear moral concerns, and moral blindness can be said to complement and include moral muteness and moral deafness (Bird, 1996, p. 2). In his book, Bird claims that we may be able to understand the moral vacuum of business by reference to moral blindness, muteness, and deafness and this is what we can understand as an application of the idea of the banality of evil in the business organization today. However, Bird seems to include an important element of presupposed moral understanding in his concept of moral silence. The thesis of the book is that many people fail to voice their moral convictions due to moral silence, moral blindness, moral muteness, and deafness. This is defined as the opposite to hypocrisy where people speak about morality without doing anything. Here people have some feeling of morality, but they remain morally blind, mute, and deaf with regard to speaking up and taking action about the morality in the organization. We can say that in this approach the banality of evil follows St. Pauls’ famous self-indictment (Romans 7:19): “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.” Moral silence is defined as the situation where people fail to communicate their moral concerns with reference to common moral standards. In this general context of the business organization there is no communication about morality in the organization and there is no whistle-blowing about the wrongdoing that is occurring in the organization. Bird considers people to be morally mute when they fail to speak up (Bird, 1996, p. 35). In particular, this is the case when people do not

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contribute to whistle-blowing or voice concerns about problems they perceive in the organization. Even though there are many ways to blow the whistle, from internally creating awareness about the problem in the organization to public external statements, the morally mute may not say anything to anybody and remain silent due to fear, obedience, blindness, and so on. According to Bird, moral muteness may include the inability of managers or administrators to speak up about moral concerns. In the case of the banality of evil in organizational systems with immoral functionality, this would include the failure to speak up about the internal inhumanness of the organization. However, Bird also points to another general failure of managers, namely their inability to voice moral convictions in relation to the performance of employees in organizations. Moral silence with regard to the evaluation of activities of employees who may behave immorally in their treatment of customers or other stakeholders shows a lack of moral accountability of managers and leads to a system with no communication about morality. Bird says that people who are morally deaf “do not hear or respond to moral issues that have been raised by others” (Bird, 1996, p. 55). Moral deafness implies the inability to listen and to hear particular moral concerns. In general, moral deafness implies inattentiveness to moral messages and unwillingness or inability to listen to genuine moral convictions. Bird refers to the concern for the other as the foundation of moral hearing as proposed in the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas (Bird, 1996, p. 57). The ability to be attentive, to hear and to make sense of the moral claims of the other, is essential to the person who is able to listen to moral concerns. From this perspective to be attentive includes the ability to comprehend and to focus with sympathy on the moral issues of concern; thus, to be morally deaf is to be inattentive and unable to listen with sympathy. Moral deafness is one element of not being able to put oneself in the place of the other and have the ability for moral concern and moral thinking. Indeed, we can say that there is an element of apathy in moral deafness (Bird, 1996, p. 59). In particular, Bird emphasizes that morally deaf organizations ignore problems and bad news requiring moral decision-making. Famous examples he cites include the case of the Ford Pinto, the Nestlé infant formula scandal, or the 1987 boat disaster in Zeebrugge where 188 passengers died (Bird, 1996, pp. 63–65). Moral deafness implies the tendency to suppress moral concerns and to not see

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potential moral problems because of concern for the functional efficiency of the system. In Bird’s analysis, moral blindness is a sort of umbrella notion that includes the concepts of moral muteness and moral deafness. Bird defines moral blindness in the following way: “People are morally blind when they fail to see or recognize moral concerns and expectations that bear upon their activities and involvements” (Bird, 1996, p. 85). Moral deafness and muteness can be considered as forms of moral blindness. Bird defines moral blindness as something more than just seeing. It is a special ability to perceive, recognize, understand, and foresee. It is the ability to have moral vision and to put oneself in the place of the other and perceive, understand, and recognize the moral concerns that are relevant for the other person, group of persons, or organizations. Different ethical theories contribute to the development of the capacity to have moral sensibility. More recently Kristian Høyer Toft has developed this perspective following the work of Palazzo and colleagues (Høyer Toft 2019; Palazzo, Krings, & Hoffrage, 2012) have coined the concept of moral blindness as ethical blindness in business organizations. Høyer Toft defines ethical blindness as the inability of a person to make moral judgment or act morally. In organizations, ethical blindness emerges as a combination of sense-making and framing combined with external pressure from the social context that makes individuals incapable of seeing ethical problems in organizations. The reason for this blindness is defined as a rigid framing and sense-making within a specific rationality. With this we can experience the paradox that even good people in bad organizations can commit wrong actions because they adopt an ethically blind culture in the organization. Moreover, this can be combined with functional stupidity in unethical industries (Gjerris, 2015). Thus, the ability to perceive moral issues is closely linked to ethical formulation competency, wherein one’s understanding of ethical issues relies on knowledge of different ethical theories and arguments. Here, moral blindness must be overcome by ethical imagination and corporate social responsibility (Høyer Toft, 2019; Palazzoet al., 2012). Moral blindness implies a lack of ethical formulation competency and an exclusive focus on specific instrumental concerns of organizational efficiency. Bird combines moral blindness with moral shortsightedness, which can be considered as the inability to foresee moral factors in relation to organizational decision-making (Bird, 1996, p. 101). It is a kind of

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narrow-mindedness that is not capable of seeing morality as an important dimension of organizational activities. Let’s now see how this applies specifically in public administration and in private corporations.

7.6

Moral Blindness and Public Administration: Unmasking of Administrative Evil

In their book Unmasking Administrative Evil (2009) Guy Adams and Danny Balfour indicate the role of moral blindness in public administration. They take up the question at the beginning of this chapter, namely whether contemporary society is subject to the repetition of history, say whether the evil of the Holocaust is being integrated in contemporary society (Rubenstein, 1975). Adams and Balfour propose the concept of administrative evil as an interpretation of Arendt’s concept of moral blindness. From this perspective, moral blindness may be characterized by the narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day (1988). The butler Stevens is so interested in doing his job as well as possible that he forgets to question the legitimacy of what he is doing. He is serving his boss, Lord Darlington, who is complicit with Nazism (Ishiguro, 1993). Stevens never questions what he is doing and he thinks that he has done everything right. Stevens is a figure very similar to Eichmann, one characterized by loyalty to his job, who further considers his professional identity as the most important thing in the world. Figures like Eichmann and Stevens may be said to incarnate the moral blindness in organizations and institutions. According to Adams and Balfour, moral blindness becomes worse and subtler in cases of moral inversion, where something evil is suddenly defined as good (Adams & Balfour, 2009, p. 4). The moral inversion emerges because no one really knows they are doing evil since evil is presented to them as a part of their job in a technological rational system. This moral inversion is what Adams and Balfour calls the “mask of evil.” Adams and Balfour argue that the scientific analytic mindset of the technical–rational approach to social and political problems creates a new kind of administrative evil, which is masked. As a consequence, ordinary people find they are doing evil although they hadn’t intended to. This combination of administrative masking in addition to our own blindness might be considered to be a form of double-blindness. Sometimes even ethical codes and other rules of

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conduct may be inefficient at dealing with this double-blindness because the technological analytical mindset of the administration is so powerful that the members of the administration do not see that they participate in processes that lead to greater harm. The instrumental scientific approach to public policy problem-solving may be in danger of creating more problems than it solves. Technical problem-solving may contribute with solutions to social problems that forget the human dimension. This is the case when, for example, public administrators use metaphors of disease in their approach to welfare and health policy issues. The same may be the case when they deal with migration policies by applying metaphors of surplus population or racism. Indeed, some administrators cannot see that they do evil because they think they are doing well. The concept of moral blindness in administrative evil may follow the Platonic idea that one cannot knowingly do evil or harm. Distance to the victims and moral disengagement are essential tools for creating a mask of evil. Moreover, rhetorical language modification, with special terms like the “final solution,” conceals the real content of the activity and is an element of masking evil. We can also mention dehumanization and destruction of human values and dignity in the analytic mindset and technical instrumental approach to social and political problems where sometimes human beings are considered as numbers in a system rather than individuals. Also compartmentalizing knowledge and creating very narrow professional identities contributes to the masking of evil (Adams & Balfour, 2009, p. 30). Through ordinariness, compliance, and masking evil, technical bureaucratic organizations become capable of horrible impacts. Adams and Balfour discuss the Challenger space shuttle disaster as a way of connecting the Holocaust and the modern world. They note that Nazis scientists, who had utilized slave labor in the production of V2 rockets, found employment in the US space program after the war. In the Nazi production facility, 20,000 had died out of 60,000 prisoners who worked as slave laborers. Von Braun, who was a leading German scientist, later became a director at the NASA space shuttle program, where he was responsible for creating an authoritarian organizational culture. This culture, which was characterized by bad communication between employees, management, and politicians, led to the explosion of the Columbia space shuttle only a few minutes after departure. Indeed, this presence of Nazism in a modern administrative system in a democratic

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society is ironic because democracy is supposed to be a society of free and autonomous people (Adams & Balfour, 2009, p. 81). Even though there may not have been strong, direct evil intentions involved, Adams and Balfour argue that the organizational culture was marked by elements of moral negligence, denial, and cover-up that created an atmosphere of potential risk of evil actions (Adams & Balfour, 2009, p. 87). The problem was that the culture did not face the risk of a disaster when politicians pressured for the launch of the space shuttle with the first civilian on board. Von Braun’s leadership was characterized by anxious, defensive control, which led to unnecessary risk-taking, coverups, and a philosophy of instrumental ends justifying the means. In this sense, these results of his leadership directly contributed to the Challenger disaster and were the result of an evil turn in management.

7.7 Moral Blindness in Business Administration: Unbalanced Pursuit of Goals and Corporate Psychopaths In business organizations, the focus on profit and greed has been considered as a kind of moral blindness. In fact, in business organizations both direct moral blindness and double-blindness are evident. Bird mentions Milton Friedman’s idea that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” as an example of a kind of narrow-mindedness (Bird, 1996, p. 102) where the economic concern for profit and efficiency becomes a kind of stereotype that blocks other understandings of the moral concerns implied in the activity of the organization. Moreover, we can say that moral blindness, in its direct form in business administration, includes lacking vision, moral engagement, and moral imagination about the possible consequences of actions. Indeed, moral blindness includes the inability to have any fixed moral focus in organizational actions. I have chosen to consider Bird’s analysis of moral blindness, muteness, and deafness as a kind of phenomenological and hermeneutical application of Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil in the business world, but also as an explanation of moral blindness in public administration. The essential harm of the concept of moral blindness is manifest in the inability of the business manager to think morally, which is similar in kind to the moral blindness of the social engineers of totalitarian systems and found in its extreme form in the administrators of the Nazi bureaucracy.

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We can see Kenneth Goodpaster’s concept of teleopathy in Conscience and Corporate Culture from 2007 as a theoretical interpretation of moral blindness (Goodpaster, 2007). Goodpaster defines teleopathy as the unbalanced pursuit of instrumental goals and purposes by an individual or an organized group (Goodpaster, 2007). Goodpaster emphasizes loyalty to a role function and narrow focus on a particular goal as elements of this teleopathy, which can be understood as a camera objective that zooms in on particular things without a broader view on things. This narrow mindset can be linked to the concept of organizational culture which limits the concepts of goals and actions in the company. This involves rationalization of certain goals which can lead to pathology of the organization. This is, for example, the case in fanatical behavior of terrorists, but the same kind of fanatic behavior can be found in obsessive behavior of corporate executives in case of corporate scandals of Enron or Arthur Andersen or in the case of the culture that the led to the explosion of the Nasa challenger space shuttle (Goodpaster, 2007, p. 3). In this context, there is the danger of making certain objectives, like making profit or producing certain things into idols and obstacles to ethical decision-making. Such a pathology of organizational objectives and decision-making can be found in the mindset and corporate culture of the organization, which is reflected in the general conscience or mindset of the business corporation. Goodpaster talks about an unbalanced pursuit of objectives of the organization which leads to moral blindness and thoughtlessness in the competitive environments of business corporations (Goodpaster, 2007, p. 9). The unbalanced pursuit of goals and objectives of an organization can be seen as institutionalization of pathologies in the organizational culture. This is, for example, the case when organizations in a kind of organizational moral schizophrenia have unbalanced cultures without integrity (Goodpaster, 2007, p. 25). The symptoms of this kind of pathology in organizations are fixation on a particular objective, rationalization of activity, and detachment from lifeworld morality as indication of the schizophrenia of moral blindness in the organization. Thus Goodpaster emphasizes that unbalanced pursuit of purpose, rationalization, and moral detachment are implemented in the mindset or organizations that are morally blind (Goodpaster, 2007, p. 28). There are a focus and fixation on goals and purposes without balance or moderation. With teleopathy in organizations, corporations lose balance in decisionmaking and this leads to immoral behavior where unbalanced focus on goals as fixed idols becomes an integrated mindset of the organization.

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Thus the logic of the culture and mindset of an organization determines the moral blindness of teleopathy. This implies that there is a gap between thinking and doing and that the members of organizations act without moral thinking and conscience which is what Arendt described as “thoughtlessness” (Goodpaster, 2007, p. 51). To help to understand this kind of organizational telepathy as moral schizophrenia as the “burden of our times,” we can turn to the example a fictional movie character, Gordon Gekko, who appears in two movies about Wall Street from 1987 and 2010. Gekko illustrates the function of moral blindness among investment managers and epitomizes the general mentality that led to the financial crisis. Gekko’s statement that “greed is good” became the motto of capitalism without anybody questioning the moral soundness of the doctrine. The two versions of the movie relate to the idea that on Wall Street greed is considered to be the core of the organizational motivation for action. In the first movie, the Gekko character has eliminated every moral concern of both deontological respect for humanity and for the virtues of integrity, moral compassion, openness, and concern for the other. Instead, Gekko only worships a belief in the utilitarian, functional, and organizational dimensions of greed. He conceives profit and the endless search for more money as the foundation of the capitalist system. Gekko can be said to illustrate the moral blindness of the capitalist manager in the same sense that Eichmann illustrates the moral blindness of the administrative bureaucrat in the work of Hannah Arendt. Although there are considerable differences between the two figures their shared commonality is that they are morally blind for other things than their total commitment to the functionality of the organizational system. In the second movie where Gekko reappears, the character is more reflective although still very cynical with regard to his understanding of the capitalist system. But in the second movie he shows a concern for his family and human values that places him at the limit of the doctrine of moral blindness. In this sense, the second movie represents openness toward overcoming moral blindness, muteness, and deafness. However, in both movies there is the fundamental message that it is an amoral logic of self-interest and greed that is the basis of the modern business system. It is this mentality of egoism, hedonism, and narcissism that characterizes postindustrial capitalism. Although there are considerable differences between the grey organization man of the bureaucratic corporation or organization who works in total obedience without questioning

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the organization and the charismatic investment manager—with his hedonist search for power—they are both characterized by fundamental moral blindness. As such, they represent what Arendt understood as the banality of evil, namely the inability to think morally, have compassion, and put oneself in the place of the other. In order to give a clarification of the institutional dimension of moral blindness the Canadian Law professor Joel Bakan can with his provocative book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profits and Power from 2004 helps to give us some elements of the understanding of the institutional dimensions of moral blindness. This book discusses the theses of the personality of the corporation that is considered as a legal person according to the law. The argument is that the personhood of the corporation with its characteristics based on the doctrines of limited liability and cost–benefit profit maximization does not act like a moral person, but rather as a kind of personality that the psychologist would describe as a psychopath. What Bakan means is that the corporation has no sense of morality and that we do not immediately recognize the psychopathic aspects of its actions even though it appears to be an “ordinary” legal entity with a “normal” legal personhood. In fact, with these characteristics we can argue that Bakan is in fact describing the corporation as a kind of institutional analogy to the human personality of Eichmann. The corporation is as an institution with organizational identity described as irresponsible and manipulative since its goal is profit maximization. It is grandiose since it follows its own goals and it ignores its responsibility for its actions and it cannot feel remorse and it is also very superficial since it never relates to other persons in a deep and profound way. With this description we can see that Bakan is close to describe the conditions of moral blindness at the institutional level and it can be argued that the legal structure of the corporation is as such defined in a way that the corporation only has a focus on the bottom-line and profit maximization. The underlying argument is that even though individuals would like to be moral as a result of personal consciousness they are subordinated to the rules and norms of the organization in kind of pact with evil where they cannot be responsible or altruistic but must follow the maximization of shareholder value of the corporation. This implies a description of the corporate culture of investment capitalism with neo-Darwinian metaphors such as “every day is a battle—you will have to kill the enemy” and their integration in the daily understanding of work. Accordingly, such

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an analysis would combine system and individual in a phenomenological/hermeneutical approach to moral blindness in the self-understanding of the involved actors.

7.8 Moral Blindness and Surveillance Capitalism: From Punch Card Technology to Corporate Power in the Digital Age Another interesting connection between the business world and the doctrine of the banality of evil is as already mentioned provided by Edwin Black’s controversial discussion of the role of IBM in the Holocaust in his book IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between NaziGermany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (2001). This case illustrates an ethical crisis of a corporation based on moral blindness and moral muteness. The book can be understood as a discussion of the reach of corporate responsibilities in relation to society and about the requirement of society for corporations to be good citizens. Black analyzes the relation between a lack of responsibility, ethical and moral blindness, and the importance of information technology for Hitler’s Holocaust. It can be argued that the Holocaust not only presupposed bureaucratic rationality but implied modern information technology. Black states: “The Dawn of the information age began at the sunset of human decency” (Black, 2001, p. 104). Black investigates how IBM helped Nazi Germany to produce and update the Hollerith punch card technology that was an important enabling technology for Hitler’s step-by-step identification and cataloging of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s (Black, 2001, pp. 427–488). Black argues that it would have been much more difficult for Nazi Germany to accomplish the Holocaust if the IBM punch card technology had not been available. All the difficult work of confiscation of property, ghettoization, and deportation was an organizational challenge that needed the IBM punch card. This technology, which was produced by a firm partly owned by IBM operating in Nazi Germany was an important statistical instrument to identify Jews. With this technology it was possible to efficiently store information about race, family, gender, occupation, religion, maternal language, and so forth. Consequently, the population statistics became much more easy to use as a means of identifying Jews among the population. Because of the immensity of the task, automatization was essential for the efficiency of the activity, and this process was

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facilitated by IBM technology. According to Black, IBM’s role was not limited to selling and producing the punch card machines, but also to lease the machines for high fees (IBM was the most important contributor with punch card technology to Nazi Germany). Hitler gave IBM founder and director Thomas Watson a medal for his sales of punch card technology to the Germans. The sales were done by the German part of IBM, though ninety percent of the shares were owned by IBM in the United States. We can say that Shoshana Zuboff’s theory of corporate power in the digital age follows up on Black’s analysis of punch card technology. Zuboff can be said to present a theory of moral blindness and surveillance capitalism in the perspective of Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism and Orwell’s concept of totalitarian surveillance as the basis for dictatorship in 1984. Zuboff also follows up on the movement from disciplinary society to control society from Foucault to Deleuze. Thus, surveillance society combines Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism with Deleuze’s theory of control society. In the beginning of her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the Frontier of Power Zuboff gives the following elaborate definition of surveillance capitalism. She emphasizes that surveillance capitalism is a new economic order of contemporary society where human experience has become the basis for the economic markets. This means that internet technology companies lead by Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook retrieve all kind of very personal information about people that they use for developing new products and sell to other companies. This implies that business markets are now subordinated to a parasitic economic logic where the retrieval of information about consumers becomes the basis for developing new products that respond to the behavior of consumers. Zuboff regards this as fundamental transformation of industrial capitalism over information capitalism to surveillance capitalism, which is based on registration of human behavior. Moreover, this change is accompanied by increasing inequality in society where internet capitalist companies have more increasing knowledge wealth and power in society. This may even imply a powershift from public power to private business companies. This change from industrial capitalism based on exploitation of the natural has moved to exploitation of people through technologies of surveillance as the driving force of capitalism. Zuboff considers this a movement toward a new kind of society based on new power structures

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between state, market, and civil society. This totalitarianism challenges democracy and people’s rights and sovereignty, since private internet technology capitalists get much more power in surveillance society (Zuboff, 2019, p. VII). Surveillance capitalism is based on the movement of economic sales and markets from the natural to the digital world. The dominance of information and communication technologies were a part of the digital dream of a more democratic society. However, Zuboff’s talks about the darkening of the digital dream where surveillance capitalism takes over democratic politics (Zuboff, 2019, p. 7). Surveillance capitalism uses human beings as the basis for capitalist exploitation where the surveillance and nudging of human behavior makes it much easier to make money on human individuals (Zuboff, 2019, p. 7). This means that surveillance becomes the new dynamics of economic markets and business makes money on instrumental use of knowledge and data about behavior of consumers. Zuboff argues that the improvement of means of production for further exploitation in the competition logic of capitalism with surveillance capitalism has become the effort to improve methods of “instrumentation” of human behavior (Zuboff, 2019, p. 9). This means that surveillance capitalism no longer only lives on exploitation of human labor, but instead also includes the field of human personal and private experience, which is the basis for capitalist exploitation. Google leads this surveillance approach to capitalism, but Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are among the giant technology companies that contribute to the advancement of capitalist exploitation into the realm of private experience. The dynamics of surveillance capitalism is based on the prediction of customer’s future behavior that contributes to the organized exploitation of people since the companies will know everything about consumers (Zuboff, 2019, p. 11). Surveillance capitalism intensifies domination through knowledge about consumer behavior and improves capacity of instrumental predictions of patterns of behavior. Zuboff calls this the Age of Surveillance Capitalism where surveillance capitalism increases the totalitarian dominance over citizens and consumers through knowledge and power. Giant internet companies are the new rulers both in opposition but also in collaboration with states. Companies in surveillance capitalism have used the internet technology to increase “instrumentarian” power over society and individuals through prediction, surveillance, and control of behavior. Zuboff calls this new surveillance society a society, which

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is controlled by the “Big other” which is described as a “networked, computional infrastructure.” In comparing totalitarism and this new market dominance Zuboff argues that the new market certainty provided by the capacity of prediction of behavior has led to a “transformation of the market to a project of total certainty” (Zuboff, 2019, p. 20). This instrumentarian market is the new totalitarian dominance of the market by the internet technology companies, where they dominate society through possession and instrumental use of data and total surveillance of consumers and citizens in society. In “Post-scriptum on the society of control” Deleuze proposes a theory of control society that can help to determine the theoretical dimensions of surveillance society (Deleuze, 2003, p. 240). Deleuze describes a movement from disciplinary society to control society, which is happening in capitalist business organizations, where people are reduced to human resources and capital for the labor market. Control society is a new development of Foucault’s disciplinary society, which was a description totalitarian society’s domination of individuals in the family, at work, in the factory, in the hospital, and in prison as the ultimate model of discipline. According to Deleuze, control society develops the totalitarian elements of disciplinary society by imposing models of discipline that are not based on physical dominance, but on self-control in different systems of control (Deleuze, 2003, p. 242). What is characteristic of surveillance capitalism in the perspective of this concept of control society is that control society in contrast to disciplinary society is not only based on oppression of the masses, but focuses on the individual’s self-control. In surveillance and control society, everything is capitalized as a part of this increased self-control, which is internationalization of social control. In this combination of control and surveillance, information technologies and internet technologies are essential for building capitalism’s system of technological control. Thus, surveillance capitalism can be considered as a new development of the totalitarianism of disciplinary society and control society.

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7.9 Conclusion: Perspectives for Research in Moral Blindness in Organization and Administration The findings of the philosophy and sociology of the banality of evil in contemporary social theory relating to evil and moral blindness are very important for our understanding of business ethics. There is a wide research perspective that opens from this kind of analysis. The idea is to make the same kind of hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of moral blindness like the one that Arendt makes of Eichmann. This kind of analysis looks at the actions of a person or persons in relation to their existential self-understanding and values. This analysis can then be accomplished with a social interaction analysis based on the kinds of the implicit rationalities in social theory and empirical analysis. We need to analyze role-playing and structures of obedience and power. Nevertheless, both empirical and theoretical perspectives are important to understand the choices and actions of individuals leading to moral blindness. This can be applied to all kinds of case studies and the combination of existentialist understanding and analysis of social roles in systems and structures will provide valuable insight. The theoretical concepts that we have developed in this chapter can be useful in order to understand for example business scandals, catastrophes, business crisis or accidents like the BP and Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the Volkswagen Diesel Gate, because it would look at individuals, and their responsibilities and selfunderstandings in relation to general social roles and structures, which would indeed clarify the series of events that led to the catastrophe. However, the critical reader would still argue that it has not really been shown how the moral blindness of Eichmann and of totalitarianism is the same as the moral blindness that we find in the business world or contemporary public administration so it is therefore not appropriate to use the framework for the analysis of moral blindness today. This critical reader would argue that Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann’s evil is factually wrong looking closer to his experience as a Nazi criminal. The argument is that Eichmann since he entered into the SS was convinced anti-Semite and therefore did not commit evil as an ordinary bureaucrat, but rather as a convinced mass-murderer who was totally aware of what he was doing. The argument was that Eichmann as well as the soldiers who actually killed the Jews could not be blind since they perfectly knew what they were doing. Thus, with this the critical reader would argue that this

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kind of evil cannot be applied to contemporary moral blindness. Thus, this reader might insist that the times of the Holocaust were so extreme and different from our times that it is impossible to compare the two kinds of organization and that the authoritarian personality of Eichmann does not really fit with the service-minded stakeholder-oriented flexible project worker and project manager of our times. Moreover, the critical reader could argue that the follow-up on Arendt’s analysis in contemporary social theory cannot really be applied to the institutional context of a modern business corporation that is very different from a bureaucratic, military style public organization. To this criticism, I would say that it is correct that the world is very different and that someone raised in Nazi bureaucracy is very different from a modern businessperson. However, at a deeper metaphorical level I would still defend the possible application of Arendt’s and contemporary social theory’s structural and institutional analysis on the mentality and role-play in modern business corporations. The moral blindness of Eichmann is indeed present when one takes into consideration that he was convinced of the SS ideology. This is exactly what constitute his blindness and deep ethical responsibility, because he was not capable to stop and think about what he was doing. He was simply incapable of putting himself in the place of the other. He was not capable of moral thinking did not evaluate his ideology, actions, and anti-Semitism from the outside. Together with Bird’s analysis of moral deafness, moral muteness, and moral blindness the characteristics of moral blindness and the banality of evil that we have found in contemporary social theory can easily be applied to today’s organizations and business managers who are submitted to the instrumental rationality of the organization without any ability to do moral thinking. We see many cases where managers are so dependent on the rationality of the organization that they are not able to take into account the genuine moral interests of their stakeholders. Moreover, there are many examples of how technology and instrumental rationality contributes to dehumanization and oppression of stakeholders. In addition, the irrationality of the actions of top leaders in organizational systems may make different kinds of stakeholders very vulnerable. At the structural and institutional level of organizational systems, as well, many similarities exist where it would be fruitful to apply the idea of moral blindness to an analysis of organizational behavior. The consequences of moral blindness and lack of moral thinking in organizations are enormous. The present analysis of moral blindness and the banality of

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evil aims at providing a critical framework for understanding moral crisis and ethical problems in organizations without attributing these actions to particular evil persons who intentionally wanted to do evil. Rather, as the analysis above makes clear, evil in organizations is also due to moral blindness where no one in the organization has the necessary ability to govern all parts of the organization or the ability to control the aim of the organization with focus on general ethical concerns. What we see is rather a kind of incomprehensible autonomous logic of the system where no one can take responsibility for what is happening. In order to prevent the chaos of moral blindness we have to increase the competency for ethical formulation among people in organizations and give them the capacity of critical moral thinking and framing of moral problems. In contrast to the limited possibility for disagreement and voicing concerns about moral issues under the Nazi dictatorship, people in corporations in democratic societies luckily have more opportunities to protest and speak up against moral blindness, muteness, or deafness. The obligation to speak up was, for Hannah Arendt, very important for preventing banality. She emphasizes the duty to detect moral blindness and the need for critical moral thinking based on the autonomy of reason and the role of critical judgment (Arendt, 1989). Good common sense opposes the ideology, lies, and ignorance of moral problems in organizations. Arendt emphasizes the political dimension of human action and it is a part of her republican political philosophy that human beings at all levels of their existence must be personally responsible and morally sensible according to critical judgment (Arendt, 1989 [1958], 1990 [1965]). This is necessary in order to protect humanity and human dignity in organizations and their environments.

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PART III

Toward a Management Philosophy of Judgment and Ethical Formulation Competency

CHAPTER 8

Totalitarianism, Practical Reason, and Judgment: Philosophical Foundations for Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management

8.1

Introduction

Hannah Arendt’s 1951 main work Origins of Totalitarianism on the background and development of totalitarian power is not only a masterpiece of social theory, but Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism in imperialism, Nazism, and communism provides an important backdrop to her entire political philosophy. This social theory has been the basis for the previous analysis of moral blindness of management in business and public administration (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). The aim of this chapter is thus to place the analysis of moral blindness in organizations and institutions in the broader context of Arendt’s political philosophy, which is developed in extension and in concert with her analyzes of totalitarian society. This also links the work of totalitarianism to Arendt’s analysis of the authoritarian personality in Nazism, which she provocatively developed when, as a journalist in 1964 for the American weekly The New Yorker, she covered the case against Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she described Eichmann as the typical obedient bureaucrat in the totalitarian system of domination and oppression. Here it is important to understand that both totalitarianism and absolute evil are contingent on mediocrity and thoughtlessness, which emerges © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_8

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as the negation of the humanitarian thinking expressed in Arendt’s political philosophy. Totalitarianism is the destruction of the humanity of the human person and ethical reflection is necessary to protect the human person. (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). The meditations on totalitarianism as the destruction of the human and civilized world are an integral part of her project to formulate the preconditions for a stable, sustained political space that develops a legitimate political authority based on respect for plurality and difference. Thus, this is the foundation of a political philosophy of ethical decision-making, judgment, and moral responsibility. The core of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy is to show how Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant’s pragmatic anthropology, legal philosophy, and theory of judgment can help understand the foundations of political community and a practical reason that can counteract the radical evil of totalitarianism. In this chapter, I will therefore describe Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy as the normative foundation for her theory of moral blindness and thoughtlessness in business, bureaucracy, and public administration. This is a proposal for philosophical foundations of business ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). Thus in this way, Arendt’s political philosophy and social theory can also be proposed as the foundation of philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). Indeed, this chapter develops my earlier research on Arendt’s political philosophy in relation to philosophy of management (Arendt, 2019). Thus, this chapter focuses on the following dimensions of Arendt’s political philosophy, which formulate an alternative to the totalitarian society: (1) Arendt’s political phenomenology. (2) The politicalphilosophical anthropology. (3) Political community as communicative practice and vita activa. (4) Practical reason and judgment. (5) Vita activa in modern society. (6) Judgment and totalitarianism.

8.2

Arendt’s Political Phenomenology

Arendt describes totalitarianism as a radical new regime between despotism and tyranny. The dark side of totalitarianism plays a major role in Arendt’s personal life. She came from a Jewish background. She was persecuted as a Jew and she was therefore aware of political and social

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oppression. Therefore, Arendt maintained the political idea that “if one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend ones-self as a Jew,” meaning that you cannot escape from your oppressors, but the only way to overcome their violence and destruction is to fight back. Arendt’s main work on totalitarianism also comes from her experience with World War II and Nazism in Germany. She studied philosophy and theology in Berlin, Marburg, Heidelberg, and Freiburg, but later had to flee from Nazism in 1933 first to France and later to the United States. Totalitarian society destroys and uniforms human beings. Later in the analyses of the banality of evil, SS officer Adolf Eichmann’s authoritarian and mediocre personality emerges as the absolute negation of authentic and legitimate political practice (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). Faced with the radical evil of totalitarianism and the destruction of every kind of humanity, Arendt, with her philosophical–political anthropology, searches to reconstruct the conditions of possibility to create a nontotalitarian universe. If total domination is about destroying and dehumanizing human beings, political anthropology must identify the vulnerable features of the human condition. It examines how it is possible to create stability and establish good and legitimate political practice. Therefore, as political phenomenology, Hannah Arendt’s philosophy is based on a “hermeneutics of action,” in which the structures of action are analyzed in the light of human bodily incarnation in a human life world. In contrast to a nihilistic ideology where everything is possible and everything becomes contingent, Arendt in the later 1958 work The Human Condition maps the persistent structures of human practice as an alternative to her analyses of totalitarian society (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). It is about providing a phenomenological description of human actions in the historical-social situation that may open to a political space where power and action are not dominated by destructive violence. This policy of democracy contributes to the formation of a human world that fosters citizens‘ dependence on nature and creates stable, sustained, and equitable political institutions. The goal of political philosophy and social theory is to understand the possibilities of free and authentic human action in a common language horizon that creates the basis for legitimate authority in an authentic political community. Political anthropology is about how mortal and finite people who can think of eternity, but who are aware that they are not immortal, through a common political project in a historical course, can help to make themselves and the human world eternal. The political project, in Arendt’s

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opinion, becomes a public space of a joint action in an event of political creation of a good community, based on open discussion in respect for plurality between free and different people. Arendt talks about how individual actions are coordinated in a space of common discussion, deliberation, and communication that contributes to creating free action for a common dignified political purpose or social end. She also describes how plurality, where humans are both different and equal, is an essential feature of the human political community (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Thus, the community is not preceded by experience in a metaphysical totality or as some unshakable universal principles, but it appears as an event in a common human space of action, plurality, and conversation. This action hermeneutics runs counter to the political philosophy of, for example, Plato and Aristotle, who, according to Arendt, have forgotten the importance of concrete political practice. This criticism of traditional political philosophy is particularly evident in Hannah Arendt’s cultural-critical works and in her analyses of political authority (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Not least in her discussion of democracy, where she is critical of Plato’s political philosophy. Many philosophers have idealized and rationalized the political. They have tended to ignore the genuinely experiential and existential dimensions of human political action. In continuation of Plato’s idealistic picture, it can be said that traditional political philosophy has sought the world of ideas, and therefore the world of phenomena has not been taken seriously. Throughout her philosophy, Arendt is extremely negative toward Greek political philosophy, which she believes is worldwide (Arendt, 1989 [1958]. This thinking has looked down on practice because the goal of human life was considered to be theoretical-contemplative existence. Hannah Arendt describes the human condition as language dialogue, deliberation and communication, plurality, difference, open communication, and sociality. The truth is essentially dialogic and justified on the basis of community communication and practice. She develops a performative concept of truth based on the common action, plurality, discourses, and linguistic communication of the people (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). At the same time, Arendt limits the rationale of practice to the human political community and excludes any reference to a biological or metaphysical nature as a determinant of political reason. Rationality and reason are rooted in a common human political practice, which is the fundamental body of the community. People reach agreement on action through political dialogue. The work of action is the result of fruitful

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dialogue, and the truth arises through this common space of mutual action. According to Arendt, thinking and philosophical reflection is essentially dialogic and takes place in common plurality with other people. Hence the importance of the public and of the public space of communication. She adheres to Kant’s ideal of enlightenment in a free dialogue with the other human beings. It is the references to Immanuel Kant in Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, posthumously published in 1982, that clearly shows how Arendt should be placed in an Enlightenment Philosophy tradition of political philosophy (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). You have to be able to think for yourself. Nevertheless, to think is to always to put oneself in the place of the other. Furthermore, one must always be consistent with oneself. Finally, there is always a public use of reason, where shared reflection and mutual communication is constitutive for thought and development of political visions and ideas for common action in community. Deliberation is an essential feature of the dialogue, in which citizens reach an agreement on future political action. The performative actions of language are characterized by their ability to convince. Political reasoning contains a strong rhetorical element, in that it has to convince the other in order to reach a common goal. Deliberation on a future political practice expresses an element of an initial understanding openness to the other human being because a common consensus is sought to be achieved and because the goal of deliberation is a common action and practice. Arendt’s conception of practice and political action is therefore close to Habermas’ idea of communicative action, with the goal of communication being a common consensus on political action (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Moreover, one is close to claiming that Habermas finds the whole basis of his philosophy in Arendt’s concept of communication. However, Arendt also differs from Habermas in emphasizing the supremacy of action in relation to communication, and she would certainly reject any idealization of the dominance-free communication situation that could establish an ahistorical truth about the political community. Political truth is therefore grounded in communication and democratic dialogue. It is not a matter of metaphysics or a calculating, natural science. The political deliberation does not have the same criteria of rationality as the scientific explanation, because practice is based on moving and unstable things in the world of life that do not have the same eternal, fixed character as theoretical truths. This is reflected in the fact that the concept of practice applies to specific ethical and political goals that depend on

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the opinions and attitudes of citizens, while the natural sciences apply to universal truths that cannot be changed by human politics (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The goal of practice is realized in the common communication, which Habermas aptly termed “deliberative politics” and communicative dialogue following the force of the better argument. The policy is determined on the basis of agreement between equal parties in the public discussion rather than depending on the scientific reason. However, one also finds a possibility for reflection to transcend the truth of practice in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. In it she examines the abilities of the spirit in the late work Life of the Mind. Willing, Thinking, Judging, published posthumously in 1978, highlighting the role of thinking, willing, and the judgment as elements of the human mind. Arendt points out that there are such awareness skills that extend beyond the communicative truth of the practice of political life (Arendt, 1978). The ability to think transcends public opinion by asking basic metaphysical questions. The metaphysical wonder of thinking involves withdrawing from the performative truth of the political. Thus, Arendt changes the perspective of Life of the Mind in relation to political thinking by showing how the ability of thinking of the spirit goes beyond the political existence of man. Thinking is on the verge of political communication. Metaphysical speculation tends to isolate itself in relation to political society. Therefore, thinking should also be made part of political practice. Thinking connects to the world of appearance, although it is defined as a withdrawal from the world of appearance (Arendt, 1978). The relation between thinking and action is not completely resolved by Arendt’s philosophy of practice, because speculation transcends the phenomena of appearance. Political practice must also be seen in relation to man’s other abilities for action and cognition (Arendt, 1978). The abilities of the soul are different in relation to their use: Thinking, willing, and the judgment are divided in relation to the three parts of the soul, as described by Kant; practical reason, theoretical reason, and judgment (Arendt, 1978). Arendt’s view of humanity is thus largely inspired by Kant’s division of the faculties of the mind, and it becomes even clearer that Hannah Arendt must be considered “a modern Kantian” philosopher who follows the Kantian framework in her social and political philosophy. The metaphysical background of Arendt’s political philosophy can also be found in the Life of the Mind, which emphasizes the Socratic nature of thinking (Arendt, 1978). The reflection is here more inquiring than

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systematic. It is searching for the conditions for the possibility of a political space that can stand against the fragility of human conditions, which manifest itself in radical evil. The reflection on “What is political?” aims to understand the foundations of stable institutions. One can read all of Arendt’s work from this viewpoint of isolating the specific political and social dimension of life in human existence (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). She has thus gained a central place in a Republican tradition of political philosophy, which is based on a Kantian philosophy of liberty that revolts against totalitarian society. Arendt emphasizes the peculiarity of human practice, which at one time differs from metaphysical contemplation and from belonging to the necessity of nature (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The discovery of the political space of authentic practice is based on an understanding of the fragile institutions that emerge as a result of coordinated actions between citizens in a historical public space. This is the exact opposite of totalitarianism. The result of this process is the political community that expresses man’s earthly immortality, the essence of humanity, realized in the free community, and state-oriented toward the common good in a historical process.

8.3 Political Anthropology: Humanity Between Thinking and Action In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt discusses philosophical anthropology in the light of philosophy of action. Her vision of human practice is justified by ancient and classical Greece’s conception of human language and action (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). In this view, the human view of ancient times has been given a central place in the formulation of the basis of practice (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Arendt uses concepts from classical Greece to develop her political anthropology. In Life of the Mind, she discusses anthropology on the basis of the soul’s spirituality and the faculties of the mind, thinking, willing, and judgment (Arendt, 1978). Her project can be briefly described as an existential phenomenology inspired by Aristotle and Kant. Political anthropology is first and foremost an analysis of the relationship between individual and community. Arendt shows how the subject is in a personal action relationship with the other person. The Human Condition is especially inspired by the ideas of practice and of action (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The perspective changes in the Life of the Mind, which is about the abilities of the soul, the powers of reflection, and the

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subjectivity of the subject. Here, it is possible to find the basic determinants of the subject’s life of the mind, which constitute the conditions of possibility for human community and for history. First, we can mention the idea of birth and the new beginning, which is a completely different interpretation of Heidegger’s concept of historicity (Arendt, 1978). Heidegger’s philosophy, which can be called a phenomenology of death, is criticized. Arendt argues against Heidegger’s focus on death and finitude as the ultimate horizon of life. She says instead that life is never finished and we always begin with the hope of something new. Arendt’s philosophy illustrates an acceptance and affirmation of the world that contrasts with Heidegger’s pessimistic rejection of the world, that we take part of. Arendt thus emphasizes the difference between the common sense of the political person and the abstract methodological doubt of philosophers. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, human freedom is understood as a new beginning. Each individual begins anew (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Human beings must be understood as a living appearance between birth and death that can always begin again with the hope of something new. In this context, Arendt discusses the problem of the new beginning and develops her concept of the basic meaning of natality (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Arendt breaks with a philosophical anthropology based on finality and mortality (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). She instead emphasizes the desire of human life to exist, which expresses birth and relates to the ideas of creation and eternity. This ability to relate to the infinite transcends the mortality of the individual. As a concrete existing temporal being, man expresses himself as “not yet,” where it is not only being-to-death, but also an existing being that affirms life through individual and collective creation of a meaningful world. Nevertheless, at the same time, the notion of self-creation through action contrasts with and conflicts with thinking and contemplation. As “not yet,” every individual human being from its birth takes an active part in the world of appearance and is no longer withdrawn from the world. This is described in The Life of the Mind, Volume 1, as the out-of-reach presence of man as extended between past, present, and future (Arendt, 1978). This active presence in the world is a “knot” between past and future, in which man lives between birth and death as appearance and as a new beginning. Arendt criticizes the idea that the cogito, René Descartes’ idea of a firm methodological foundation of “I think, therefore I am,” should be at a distance from the world. Humanity is not an abstract consciousness, but is determined by a bodily dependence

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on the world. This bodily incarnation of the world can be defined with inspiration from philosopher Merleau-Ponty and poet Valéry, who interpret the cogito in this way: “Tantôt je pense, tantôt je suis” (sometimes I think, and sometimes I exist). Such a reference to the existence of the subject’s being-in-the-world as a bodily incarnate being implies that Arendt relates distantly to materialism. Man’s bodily dependence on the world is of great importance, and each individual lets his or her identity be defined and determined through language as a medium of existence (Arendt, 1978). That is, a human being realizes him or herself in language. In reality, it cannot exist without language. A person who cannot realize himself in language is alienated. The experience of thinking is determined by the world of appearance, and language develops through creative and innovative metaphors. The metaphor expresses the historicity of language and is at the same time important for metaphysical reflection. Freedom is an essential feature of human historicity. In the political community, the individual is realized in the community politics of the city-state. The ability to freely act and jointly decide the goal of actions that expresses the paradigm of freedom for deliberative politics. In Life of the Mind, the phenomenological analysis of the will is made on the basis of understanding the individual’s freedom (Arendt, 1978). Here, Arendt puts freedom and will in close connection with her analysis of the bodily existence of man in the world of appearance. The individual’s existence project is possible by virtue of its freedom and will. This depends on the contingency of life and manifest humanity’s opportunity to realize itself in the world. Unlike Heidegger, we find in Arendt’s philosophy of will a basic affirmation of the world. It is not a matter of thinking about negativity, but of a philosophy of affirmation. This is because the will incarnates and manifests itself in the world of appearance (Arendt, 1978). A final determination of the spiritual life of the subject is, as already mentioned, particularly the judgment, which is the basis for the subject’s participation in political life (Arendt, 1978). The ability to make universal judgments for the common good and for the love of the world places the subject in the political–judicial community. The work of judgment unites and mediates between will and thinking and enables concrete and reflected action (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The descriptions of the cognitive faculties in The Life of the Mind are the prerequisite for understanding human action. These abilities of consciousness establish the understanding of man as a moral agent in

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common practice of plurality. The semantics of action show that one never acts alone, but practice is the result of human interaction (Arendt, 1978). Personal identity is formed through action in a community. Personal happiness and good life are established in interaction with the other human being, thereby integrating the individual into the social community. Arendt points out that the human world is objective, commonly human and historically shared by a particular political community. Private and subjective reality should be transcended for the benefit of community in public space of action for the common good. The public space is the place where language and action show up. It is the world of human freedom. According to the ancient Greek conception of practice, the free people of the Greek city-state meet the public space of political community in order to consider their future practice through political deliberation. It is referred to as vita activa (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The free space for political discussion was what separated the Greeks from the barbarians and the tyrannical communities. The humanness or humanity of society shows itself to the extent that society develops a public space for common action. It is in this context that you see how important Hannah Arendt’s philosophy has been to a modern political thinking by, for example, Jürgen Habermas and Paul Ricœur, who have largely been inspired by her thinking in their development of a political philosophy (Habermas, 1981, 1992; Ricœur, 1989, 1990, 1995, 2000). Arendt emphasizes that vita activa as the active common political life is an expression of happiness in life and politics (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Here, responsible citizens in the community make themselves immortal. The distinction between the public political space and the private domain was of great importance in the ancient world. The subjective world and the economic and social sphere of the home are not considered the real human space. The home is the place for women, workers, and slaves. Arendt is very negative about defending the intimacy of the home and the economic dimensions of the private domain. The actions and lives of human beings in the public world are manifested in the temporality and historicity of this world. The story of a collective political community as a narrative of a political vision is realized through events created by human action. It is fundamentally different from the biological temporality that merely involves objective physiological processes. Arendt thus highlights the narrative of the story of personal identity and collective life (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The temporality of

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humanity is different from the temporality of nature, because the individual can tell a story of his or her life, fit it into a narrative course as a series of events with a beginning and an end. Biological life first makes sense as a configuration of meaning that makes a temporal life story. Fate is described in a narrative historicity that shows itself as a story of the community’s endeavor to realize a lasting meaningful world in enduring and stable institutions. Citizens realize immortality by ensuring the stability of society as organized memory in common institutions that go beyond individual temporality (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). However, the state as a political community is fragile because it depends on human actions and the common will to secure stability. Philosophers, who believe that they can determine the actions of humanity as one anticipates the events of nature, have often forgotten this fragility. The social engineer and the economic expert believe that they can give an objective determination of the social reality. This view of human action stands in contrast to Arendt’s emphasis on practice as the creation of sustained and just institutions that realize human freedom and humanity. The search for the just community becomes a historical process based on deliberative politics and judicial democracy. The goal of history is realized in the common act as human creations of stable political and social institutions. There is no automatic interaction with nature. The action is not technique. It is also not an activity that can be forced by the power of a dictator or a tyrant. Rather, the act should be compared to an artistic work of art that transcends economic and natural necessity and creates a human world. In this philosophy of action and of creativity, one sees how Arendt is inspired by humanism in European thinking, which is opposed to the philosophers of instrumentalism and technique. Such an enduring human world of action and civilization is created in a historical process of vita activa.

8.4

Vita Activa, Power, and Politics

This ideal of vita activa is Hannah Arendt’s political utopia. It is about finding the criteria for the stability of politics and society (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Vita activa is defined by the terms labor, work, and action. Labor is the pure interaction with the necessity of nature. This is a vital economic activity. The world of action is more human (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). It lifts man out of the economic-social conditions toward the best political regime. It is grounded in a consciously responsible human context of

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love for the world. Thus, it is the condition of the democratic political community. The activity of work forms an enduring world that expresses something other than nature and mortality. It manifests an eternal world. The work contrasts with labor, utility, and consumption. As a work of art, human works transcend the metabolism and the time-limited utility and necessity of industrial production (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The work expresses the most noble in man. That is the essence of vita activa. In vita activa, people do not work for necessity and random consumption. The work realizes the realm of freedom, while the consumer goods bind man to the necessities of nature. Arendt’s definition of the best political regime encompasses the entire community. Here, a political space is created that creates authority and stability that saves man from futility and oblivion. Vita activa expresses the essence of democracy (Arendt 1989 [1958]). All citizens participate freely in the political debate and contribute to creating the common works. No reference to a metaphysical system or natural law can provide an absolute justification for politics. At the same time, the community’s deliberative policy in vita activa determines the basis of society. Therefore, it is a very fragile political institution. The good community can perish at any time. Arendt points out the necessity of plurality (diversity) as the basis of political community. Plurality implies respect for the individual as inviolable and unique. This means at once talk of equality and diversity. Thus, vita activa entails a criticism of Rousseau’s notion of “volonté générale” (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Democracy is only possible as a respect for difference, plurality, and it is based on a concern for the uniqueness of the life of every individual as radically unique with inviolable dignity and vulnerability. Democracy is at once very fragile and very strong, because it does not stem from a totalitarian power, but depends on the common agreement of free citizens on practice. Democracy cannot eradicate those who do not agree with political practice because this would be the dissolution of society. It is based on respect for the individual’s right to plurality, differences and free opinions. On the other hand, according to Arendt’s view of the political regimes, totalitarian tyranny is characterized by the absence of common action, the absence of a public space, and the force of violence to compel the citizens to obey the tyrant (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Tyranny is the society that has forgotten the notion of politics as deliberation and mutual consideration. Tyranny is not a human society, but a society of necessity, based

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on violence and the animal bestiality of the executioners. Arendt also criticizes the aristocracy for being a society based on an unsustainable difference between “governing” and the “governed.” This regime does not respect the equality of citizens because the governed are not free as they do not take part in the common political practice. Equality, plurality, and community characterize democracy in contrast to the aristocratic and tyrannical regimes that are deeply hierarchical and authoritarian. Arendt places herself among the supporters of participatory democracy and of (representative) republican democracy. Vita activa expresses confidence in people’s ability to jointly discuss and deliberate about political aims and visions of politics. This is done in mutual freedom and in trust in communication without destroying the political dialogue. Justice is defined by common communication in plurality rather than by Aristotelian concept of practical reason (phronesis) (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Here the plurality stands in tension with the possibility of reaching a common agreement. Therefore, politics is an art. Politics is about acting in “concert,” and creating great works for humanity. Politics is not understood as a science, but as an art of fabricating works that unite individuals into a whole. Therefore, it is not about individual interests but about doing something together in common action. The work of art and human activity takes precedence over selfish considerations, although the community of course, must respect the individual’s humanity as an end in itself. The purpose is happiness of individual and community, which in a historical process is realized in the immortality and civilization of the work in the good state. How should power be defined in vita activa? Arendt introduces the distinction between power and violence in the famous essay On Violence from 1970. Power is the communication horizon of deliberation and exists only in the common act, while violence transcends this. The violence uses physical means that go beyond the language (Arendt, 1970). The political subject, whose identity is defined in the communicative relationship, respects the power and the power of conviction that resides in political discourse. Vita activa can be described as a discursive conflict universe, a struggle of conviction where deliberative democracy is underpinned by a linguistic dominance struggle. This is different from pure violence. Violence, which is particularly evident in totalitarianism, involves the total physical domination that also eliminates any traditional democratic authority (Arendt, 1970). The violence expresses terror and is without language, utilizing the raw physical force. Violence involves an

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oblivion of the political subject and understands the other as outside the political space of dialogic communication. Violence is an instrumental terror without language. Arendt distinguishes between authority and domination in her understanding of the relationship between power and violence. Domination is a misinterpretation of power. Violence expresses a form of government that does not enable vita activa. Max Weber’s description of various forms of domination manifests to Arendt some forms of violence that do not include the understanding of power that is evident in her analysis of “vita activa.” It is similarly an anonymous form of power. This appears in the rationalized decision-making processes of modern bureaucracy. Political democracy expresses various forms of authority that contrast with this common dominance of the state. This is especially true in Hannah Arendt’s thesis on the relationship between violence and power, in which she argues for a clear and precise distinction between the two forms of action, where violence is instrumental, which is not always the case with power. In contrast, power is determined by coordinated action in the political community. This communication-based view of power, based on the distinction between power and violence, is extremely important for understanding the specifics of political communication. Politics is defined in the middle way between the absolute struggle and the total resolution of the conflict. Politics becomes the belief that leads to common action despite plurality and conflict. Nevertheless, even though there may be major conflicts of belief, the citizens of the state of vita activa agree on some basic matters of community. They accept the persuasive and powerful power of language, but they will not let politics dissolve into pure violence. The political community is based on the mutual willingness to understand and communicate despite conflict, difference, and disagreement. The only guarantor for this is the successful political communication and action. One must insist on the fragile nature of action. It is Arendt’s merit to emphasize that the preconditions for the political are that a diversity of opinions can be united in a common power. This is the condition of a critical democratic public where politics is based on difference, plurality, communication, and action in concert for the common goal and love for the world. Only through real plurality can one safeguard against the dissolution of democracy in the totalitarian society and a dictatorship and

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avoid turning authority and communication into destruction of humanity, tyranny, mediocrity, and demagoguery (Arendt, 1989 [1958]).

8.5

Community and Judgment

In this regard, Hannah Arendt conceptualizes the rationality of the political by drawing on Kant’s conception of the judgment, which was developed in her critique of judgment. However, Arendt died just before she began the third part of Life of the Mind, entitled Judging. So her theory of judgment must be reconstructed from her other works, notably Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, published posthumously in 1982, which focuses on the political aspects of judging (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The third and final volume should develop this problem of judgment as a basis for political reason. However, Arendt never managed to write this volume because she died just when she was about to begin the book. Fortunately, however, her lectures on Kant’s political philosophy gives us the possibility to reconstruct her theory of ethical and political judgment. The judgment can be seen both from the perspective of theory of life of the mind and from political anthropology. It is a self-awareness that stands between the spontaneous beginning of the will and the withdrawn contemplation of thought. It reflects on human action and political activities. Judgment is a feature of political life, but at the same time expresses the distance of contemplation. In her early writings on the crisis of culture and the truth of politics, Arendt places judgment in respect of difference and plurality as well as coordinated action in a public space (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Judgment is a quality of humanity’s political being. In later works, judgment is examined as a part of man’s ability to withdraw from political life and to relate critically, reflected, and impartial to historical action. In both cases, judgment is based on the common communication between the citizens of political community. The critical activity of judgment aims to assess whether human political activities are fair and contribute to creating a more humane society. It is about the relationship between universal and particular, historical progress and autonomy of the individual, and realization of human freedom and dignity in historical development. With an impartial distance, the ethical and political judgment is as world citizen with a universal aspiration able to uncover the political in its concrete and historical appearance. This opens the judgment to the critical reflection on the universal validity of the action(Arendt, 1989 [1982]).

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Arendt chooses Kant’s third critique because it contains an analysis of common universal opinion based on taste and common sense. The rationality is determined by the subjects’ desire, and it is about defining the objectivity and universality of the taste and opinion about specific cases, dilemmas, and problems for decision-making (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The right meaning and taste are defined by the sensus communis, i.e. community’s sense of the beautiful and the ugly, the right and the wrong, and conceptions of justice. Thus, the judgment of politics and aesthetics is based on respect for human dignity, which, with an expression from Rousseau, can be termed as sense of humanity (“sentiment de l’humanité”) (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Judgment takes a stand on human action in the light of the efforts of consciousness to grasp the eternal and to make sense to the world, and the judgment of taste is made according to action and feeling of the universal faculties of mind. In doing so, immortality is realized as part of culture and civilization in a sustained progress toward a beautiful and stable world. Judgment contributes to understanding the goals of society in the light of vita activa. The political community can be seen in analogy with aesthetic subjectivity, because it is a rationality, which, as in aesthetics, is based on common unity (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The task of politics is to arrive at a common sense and agreement about community’s practical activities. This is a common agreement on the organization of politics. Politics cannot be described by theoretical reason, and it is not about eternal ahistorical–philosophical principles. Nor are they principles of individual morality. Immanuel Kant’s and Arendt’s political project revolves around the societal consensus that justifies the laws of the community and contributes to the historic realization of freedom. The project in Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of judgment) was not only to think about aesthetics or the purpose of nature and God’s place in the world, but also to create unity in the system using judgment and common sense and thus imagine a vision of the future just political community. The judgment judges humanity’s possible progress toward eternal peace (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Kant was really enthusiastic about the progress of mankind in the French Revolution. The impartiality of judgment describes humanity in its social development. Kant discussed the sensus communis and sought to formulate a vision of the common life of society based on taste and common sense as the basis for a communicative politics (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). It is the task of judgment to find the universality of meaning and thus to determine the objectivity of the

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taste based on the universality of humanity and the good sense of taste in the community, the common sense of unity. In this project, the starting point is the relationship of human beings to one another, which justifies the unity of action, based on political justice and equality. Judgments about society, formulated by the reflective judgment, apply to the future of the community. Such hope of eternal peace and the formulation of a future society justify this policy, based on the sense of community. Communication, plurality, and the ability to be part of the social are the criteria for this political judgment (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Man judges as a member of the human species, as part of humanity that will fight the common dignity of historical development. “Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht,” world history is world judgment, as Hegel expressed it (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Arendt highlights Homer, Cicero, and Kant as the precursors for a theory of political judgment. The judge, who considers history, presents himself as a “Weltbetrachter,” a world spectator and world citizen who, with his and her reflective judgment, is to determine humanity’s progress in history and the possibility of a vita activa in a future state of eternal peace (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Being a spectator of the development of society and culture opens the door to determine, through the taste of common sense, the universal validity of politics. The impartiality of judgment is based on an impartial distance that determines whether society is making progress toward respect for human dignity. Political judgment is determined by the imagination of consciousness as a faculty of the creative mind. We live in the hope of realizing political ideals. Humanity is about the ideal of a better creative community that fulfills our dreams. One should work with a principle of universality in the practical judgment that applies to every possible human being (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The political actions can be universalized into something that is universal and just for everyone, and every human being is respected as a purpose in itself. It is important to let the taste judgments, which are about the connection between the private and the universal, serve as a background for thinking about the common good for the community. It is about realizing the common good in a private society, based on the common taste criteria (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Such a democracy of judgment is at the same time the good and the beautiful society. The taste criterion also expresses a criterion of moral goodness and aesthetic beauty. The taste is formed by the universality of common sense and ability to put oneself in the place of the other and see things from this point of view. This empathy with other people helps to determine if a society or state of

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society can be assessed as good or bad. The common sense of universal taste can be communicated and formulated in the society’s vita activa. One may wonder if the aesthetic judgment can really have this central place as a political judgment? A key issue is whether Arendt forgets the place of judgment in Immanuel Kant’s political system, where he would just separate practical and aesthetic judgment (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Instead, one should think of politics on the basis of practical reason and not on the basis of judgment. Furthermore, the question is how to ensure that impartial judgment is also engaged? It can be argued that an unsustainable distinction is created between judgment and committed action if one does not point out the political responsibility of the spectator. Nevertheless, Arendt is aware of the connection between responsibility and judgment. It can be said that the one who judges must presume that the judgment is to be valid eternally. Arendt emphasizes that taste rationality is not only about aesthetics but also about the unity of the community. It expresses the universality of meaning formation as the backdrop for legitimate actions. Public opinion is at the core of the interpretation of judgment, rather than the aesthetic principle. Such a taste universality constitutes the common will as the basis for the formation of the state (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). As she bases politics on judgment and the performative truth of action, Arendt can avoid politics ending in the bad rhetoric and demagogy of totalitarianism. She assumes universal competence of moral thinking and political reason on the part of the people who take part in the political community. The formation of meaning must be linked to universality and the Enlightenment era’s idea of “critical self-thinking.” A condition for the universality of opinion formation is the overcoming of demagoguery expressed in the principle of empathic embeddedness in the human condition (Arendt, 1989 [1982]).

8.6

Vita Activa in Modern Society

In the 1963 book On Revolution, Arendt describes the political transitions in relation to the philosophical anthropology of The Human Condition. The revolution is considered as being a characteristically modern phenomenon (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). In her analyzes of totalitarianism, Arendt had already examined the totalitarian phenomena of the twentieth century. The Origins of Totalitarianism have in truth been termed a major work in the research of totalitarianism (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Arendt

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can be said to put forward the negative preconditions for her political philosophy. The totalitarian phenomena are anti-Semitism, imperialism, and tyranny. Arendt gives her own judgment on the historical progress. This is done by analyzing how vita activa breaks down with industrialization of societies in modernity and is replaced by mass society, violence, and total domination of totalitarianism (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Mass society has led to the mass culture’s existential cultural crisis, which is also the crisis of judgment, because it is a crisis of good taste. Therefore, most people have lost their ability to judge. The consumer society and the entertainment community have contributed to forming the culture’s moral rules. The emergence of mass society has led to the crisis of judgment. Modernity is characterized by the mute domination of violence, politics, which disappears and sees its dissolution in the anonymity of mass society (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Nevertheless, despite this critical anti-modernism, vita activa continues to be a utopian opportunity in modernity that can help to overcome totalitarianism. Kant’s vision of progress in history and eternal peace is central to Arendt’s thinking. Modernity manifests the possibility of vita activa because the dialectic of Enlightenment in Hannah Arendt’s perspective also implies the emergence of a universalistic humanism. This despite the fact that the intensification of violence is also a fact of modernity. Hannah Arendt’s historical and philosophical social theory thus expresses an attempt to understand subjectivity from the beautiful time of antiquity to the destruction of the social structures of modernity. Man no longer lives with the other in a happy community, but everything has been degraded to animal necessity: what the Greeks termed “outside the world” (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). In modernity, labor of the lower and middle classes of the totalitarian dominion society has taken the place of work, and technological science is taking the place of practice. Tyranny and violence take the place of democracy, private space destroys the public world. Humanity can no longer be realized in the vita activa’s social space, but instead in the intimate sphere of the family. The public space has become a “wild place” that one tries to avoid (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Private intimacy has taken over the public political space as the place of happiness and self-realization. There is no longer a unit in the community with well-defined common goals. The destruction of the public has led modern man to exist in a subjective world, and each individual lives according to his or her perception of the political and moral truth.

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In other words, it is difficult to talk about a joint action anymore, and the political community has been reduced to the selfish, rational, and strategic actions of the individual. In modernity, subjectivity, and not the common political act, has become the truth. The mass man only thinks about earning money to survive (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). The perception of work has changed in modernity. In ancient Greece, labor was regarded as degrading. It was considered an inhumane activity that accrued to slaves, while today we have forgotten the significance of work and similarly glorify labor as the most useful human activity. Labor aims to manufacture consumer goods so that society can live according to its biological necessity. It expresses man’s animal being and testifies to its metabolism with nature (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Labor is a vital activity that serves necessity and utility. In the industrial society, this is an instrumental accumulation of benefits. The tragedy of the modern world is that it has forgotten to conceive its products as works constructed from the stable, lasting and eternal creation of an enduring human civilization that help to enhance human life in vita activa. Life in the modern world has become a slave life. Man no longer finds meaning in the creation of the eternal work. Happiness has become the immediate consumption of labor products. The mass community is based on consumption and labor. Modern human beings have become animal laborans who continue to be a prisoner of nature and necessity. It is a production machine based on hedonistic consumption (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Industrial man ignores the eternal dimension of human life and the greatness of the individual. Life has become one-dimensional and banal and expresses the satisfaction of animal life. Arendt argues that the emergence of labor has taken over all activities of the state activities, and its dominance has not been contradicted. Any activity that is not associated with labor becomes a waste of time because it does not contribute to getting food in your mouth (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). It is undeniable that Arendt grasps an important aspect of the modern society’s grant of necessity and benefit of privileged status. Because the acceptable values are the values of necessity, leisure becomes meaningless and useless. From the standpoint of necessity, only labor is important. Instead of being a liberation, the utopia of the unemployed community becomes a nightmare. However, animal laborans are not the only figure characteristic of modern society. The hero of our time is Homo Faber, the ruler of nature

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and of the other people. It is the man of science and reason who dominates and controls all that is. At the same time, however, Homo Faber is too often downgraded to the machinery of an animal laborans, where there is almost no humanity left (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). Man becomes the object of all things—a man who manipulates and uses the world and thus destroys the world. The technique, positivism and utilitarian ideology constitute Homo Faber’s nihilism. Homo Faber considers everything that exists as a means of use and utility. Homo Faber therefore becomes a tyrannical and dominant human being. Although Arendt thus has a very pessimistic view of the totalitarian society of modernity, we can in On Revolution find an attempt to rethink vita activa in a modern perspective (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). It is about reintroducing an authentic political space (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). This manifests a willingness to break with the old political structure and begin again by introducing a new form of vita activa as the basis for the best political regime based on the common judgment of citizens. Arendt highlights the American Revolution that led to the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). This revolution, which is essentially a political revolution, was fundamentally different from the French revolution, which can be described as an economic and social revolution. The political revolution is a new beginning, with the population breaking with historical continuity and trying to create a good and just society. The revolutionary dreams of utopia differ from the totalitarian society in wanting to institute a democracy and thus a new opportunity for vita activa (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). The constitution of political community in the Roman Republic and American Revolution reveals the true terms of political ontology (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). The goal of the revolution is a constitution of freedom; to ground a new society in the act of freedom—and thus political freedom. The political freedom revolution is a revolt against the tyranny of meaningless violence. Formation of power through a political revolution, based on plurality and communication, expresses the actual condition for realizing the best political community. The overcoming of the fragility of the community is the basis for the establishment of legitimate political authority. The power must not turn into violence, but it must ensure stable and lasting institutions. It is about empowering the historic initiative by seizing “the empty space of power” and creating a legitimate republic that does not fall back into violence and terror (Arendt, 1990 [1963]). This can contribute to the establishment of humanity and freedom in a

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stable political regime based on a Republican constitution that protects basic freedoms. Arendt’s work on revolution contributes to an inverted dialectic of enlightenment, a double dialectic of modernity that, on the one hand, expresses the loss of the humanist ideal of vita activa and, on the other, a sustained opportunity to reinvent this ideal as an important counterpart to the totalitarian dominion in modern society.

8.7

Judgment and Totalitarianism

The analyzes of revolution, vita activa and modernity can be read in close connection with Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, but also in connection with her analyzes of the banality of evil with Adolf Eichmann in the famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem—A Report on the Banality of Evil (Arendt, 1992 [1964]; Arendt, 1979 [1951]). These works, which focus on the description of the flawed and negative politics, are characterized by the dual dialectic of modernity. They describe the totalitarian systems and mass people of the mob as the negation of the vision of human life in vita active (Arendt, 1992 [1964]; Arendt, 1979 [1951]). The totalitarian regime wants to create new human beings through totalitarian terror. The blind spot in totalitarianism is the limits of thinking. The collapse of the class system and the rise of the modern mass society constitute both its cause and effect. Totalitarianism has emerged as an alliance between the elite and the mob of working and lower middle-class people. The population is seduced by the intellectuals of totalitarianism, and it is disciplined as the amorphous and atomized mass of isolated individuals. The totalitarian system is based on a fiction that is fortified by propaganda and terror. It is the fiction of total submission under the law of nature (in Nazism) or the law of history (in Stalinism). The blind spot in totalitarianism is the meeting between false fiction of ideology and the strict discipline of the organization (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). As mentioned, in the totalitarian organization that is governed by the fiction of the totalitarian leader, Hitler as the Führer or Stalin as the head of the party, everything is allowed and everything is possible. This total power of the disciplinary organization can be illustrated by the concentration camps whose possibility is completely incomprehensible to ordinary critical rationality (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Totalitarianism is the radical evil that destroys every stability, eternity, and duration, which characterizes successful politics. At the same time, the judgment of totalitarianism and

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tyranny is challenged. Arendt emphasizes that totalitarianism is incomprehensible to the common sense of humanity based on judgment, universality, and community. The radical evil of totalitarianism leads to the crisis of judgment because we cannot make sense of the radical evil. It seems impossible to align with normal judgment, and faced with the disaster of violent dictatorship, our criteria for judgment no longer seem to apply. Our moral rules break down and the contradiction between thinking and acting becomes invincible, since everybody acts according to blind obedience of totalitarian ideology. Hannah Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann as an example of the evils of totalitarianism is also marked by this problem. Eichmann is the executioner for the realization of the radical evil of totalitarianism, incomprehensible to the critical philosophical rationality (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). Eichmann lacks both thought, language, and judgment and is therefore completely inhumane, since he has suspended all his human qualities of moral thinking. Eichmann, as a bureaucrat, can be regarded as an example of the animal laborans and the disciplined follower of the ideology of his society. It is an official who, in his tremendous banality, performs the total and absolute evil (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). It is central to Hannah Arendt’s detection of Eichmann’s inhumanity that the Holocaust was characterized by a devilish lack of judgment. No one dared to say “no,” and the Jews therefore contributed to their own destruction. It seemed that it was immediately rational for the victims to cooperate so that they could avoid the least evil. Nevertheless, they forgot that the Nazis were not rational at all, but had only one goal, namely the total extermination of the Jews. It was a negation of the ideals of political humanity in the nihilistic terror of totalitarianism (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). The Jews were also disciplined by the terrorist organizations. In the ghettos, Jewish leaders helped to decide who should be selected for concentration camps. Eichmann had a good relationship with the Jewish leaders, with whom he worked to improve the transport of Jews to the concentration camps and to streamline the final solution (“Die Endlösung”). Eichmann is a good example of the uniformization of the anonymous mass man by totalitarianism. His personality was in fact the same as “an ordinary postman.” He had made every effort to carry out the final solution, not out of hatred for the Jews, but out of duty to Hitler. Eichmann was even on Hitler’s side against Henrich Himmler as he would stop the Jewish persecution. He saw Hitler’s words as the force of the law, and he admired the Führer boundlessly. According to Hannah Arendt,

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Eichman expresses the perfect bureaucrat in a totalitarian state, where the official acts purely instrumental and follows orders without any human judgment or individual political responsibility (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). Therefore, Eichmann’s actions also pose a radical challenge to political rationality. In totalitarianism, all public deliberation, common sense, and concern for other human beings are broken. It was no longer certain that humanity has a critical ability to independently and spontaneously begin anew, independent of public opinion. The mass man and the authoritarian personality can no longer distinguish between good and evil and are characterized by thoughtlessness and loss of the ability for critical reflection. The notion that everything is possible in the totalitarian state, combined with the normalcy and ordinary routine of everyday life, is the essence of Arendt’s conception of the evils of totalitarianism. She understands the concentration camps as the radical evil that just becomes even more cruel when we observe the immense banality of the Nazis (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). The concentration camps were created in a war in which the Germans were infected with ideology. Although much attention is focused on the killing of the Jews, Arendt in her discussion of the radical evil of totalitarianism has realized that both Hitler and Stalin contributed to crimes against humanity (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). Arendt formulates the problem of the origin of totalitarianism as the question of “how could this happen?, and this should never have happened.” Totalitarianism is understood as a new political phenomenon that, as a combination of rational and technical bureaucracy with irrational ideology, is almost incomprehensible. Totalitarian society is about abolishing human freedom and transforming people and society to be instruments of the party rulers through systematic terror and abuse of power by secret police. In the totalitarian society, corrupt and opportunistic leaders take over the power by controlling the masses effectively with soldiers and politics aligning the masses through ideology and total power to the leaders and their followers (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Arendt emphasizes that the totalitarian societies of the twentieth century became possible on the basis of complex historical events in the nineteenth century, when the imperialist colonial powers, based on racism and oppression of the colonies, moved toward collapse. At the same time, European societies were characterized by Jewish hatred and anti-Semitism because of the central role of Jews in society. On the whole, the fear of the different, diverse, and wild otherness was part of the breeding ground for totalitarianism that deprived Jews and

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other minorities of fundamental rights in society (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Arendt thus highlights how totalitarianism seeks to destroy the common political world by depriving certain groups of their place in society and making them superfluous by canceling all their rights in society. Totalitarianism aligns the masses under the system by destroying the common world and replace political judgment by orders and unlimited obedience.

8.8 Conclusion: Toward Ethical Judgment in Management Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism describes with great acuity the total oblivion of the humanist ideals and vita activa of the totalitarian society. This can in a negative way be said to teach us the necessity of upholding democracy’s noble ideals of conversation, plurality, authentic practice, enlightened self-thinking, judgment, and political community. Therefore, Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism is also extremely relevant to the twenty-first-century political debate. Thus Arendt’s approach provides an important foundation for moral thinking, ethics and philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). Here, we can interpret vita active as the basis for deliberative rationality in management in the sense that management decisions and leadership ideally should follow the vision of vita active in order to be ethical and efficient (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Moreover, Arendt vision of the humanity of the human person based on human dignity in vita active can be proposed as a basis for basic ethical principles (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen et al., 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). Accordingly, Hannah Arendt’s concepts of moral thinking and judgment can be proposed as the foundation for business ethics and ethical reflections in business as a way to overcome totalitarianism and moral blindness (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c).

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CHAPTER 9

Perspectives for Responsibility, Moral Thinking, and Imagination in Management and Public Administration

9.1

Introduction

Arendt emphasizes the political dimension of human action and it is a part of her republican political philosophy that human beings at all levels of their existence must be personally responsible and morally sensible according to critical judgment (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). This is necessary in order to protect humanity and human dignity in organizations, bureaucracies, and their environments. In this chapter, we will discuss the relation between responsibilities, judgment, moral thinking and imagination in management and public administration (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). This chapter presents moral thinking and imagination as a necessary response to the failures of business administrators and public leaders and administrators in the context of decision-making in organizations and bureaucracies. The chapter aims at determining the relation between morality and banality of evil. This involves questions like: How can leaders who improve their practice of not doing letting evil happen? What are the practical advice with regard to judging this? In addition, how can the leader make a good and sound decision in this context? What is the difference between the private and public sector with regard to the question of the banality of evil? This is a very serious question when it comes to decision-making in organizations. Are all employees and decision-makers equally “evil,” since all organizations are potential for committing banal © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_9

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evil? Such problems and issues lead to a discussion of ethical formulation competency as judgment and moral thinking. In this context, Hannah Arendt emphasizes the importance of the capacity of moral thinking and moral imagination in relation to political action and administration. The concepts of judgment, ethical principles, and recognition are elements of ethics of administration that could overcome moral blindness. Thus, the chapter begins by discussion of the concept of moral responsibility of leaders and managers in organizations. This is later related to conceptions of moral thinking and imagination and the consequences for ethical decision-making in organizations. Thus, this chapter contains the following main sections (1) Responsibility of managers and leaders in organizations (2) Moral thinking and ethical reflection in organizations (3) Moral thinking as imagination and moral decision-making in organizations (4) Conclusion.

9.2 Responsibility of Managers and Leaders in Organizations Hannah Arendt’s social theory is based on analysis of totalitarianism and totalitarian bureaucratic political organizations in the twentieth century(Arendt, 1979 [1951]). Her philosophy is concentrated on critical analysis of organizational decision-making and responsibility of administrators, managers, and leaders in organizations. Indeed, the totalitarian obedience in institutions is an important problem of management and organization in contemporary society. Arendt’s approach combines critical social theory with foundation of development of moral thinking of individuals in organizations. We say that Arendt’s philosophy provides an “incentive to think for one self” (Kohn, 2003, p. xi). The experience of the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany and of the Holocaust made Arendt focus on the art of thinking and the life of the mind as essential for understanding ethical and moral responsibility in organizations in order to improve human decision-making and judgment. Here, Arendt’s approach has been very important for new developments in ethics and philosophy of law (Habermas, 1981, 1992; Ricœur, 1989, 1990, 1995, 2000). It is therefore that the book on Eichmann in Jerusalem. An Essay on the Banality of Evil represents the basis for developing an ethics and social theory of organizational decision-making (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). Arendt’s description of the lack of moral thinking of Eichmann and of

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the diabolic system of compliance of the Jewish leaders with the orders of the Nazi regimes where they participated in the selection of the victims to be sent to the concentration camps made her propose moral personal responsibility as essential for decision-making and action in organizations and bureaucracies. Arendt formulated this in the article “Personal responsibility under dictatorship” (1964) where she follows up on the reflections of the banality of evil of Eichmann. In her discussion of personal responsibility, Arendt defines a close relation between morality, responsibility, and capacity of moral thinking and reflection. Arendt maintained that Eichmann as the paradigmatic case of “organization man” was a person who only followed orders and who never thought about the moral dimension of his actions. This thoughtless of a person who work in organizations or bureaucracies was the basis for the need to develop a moral philosophy of personal responsibility in organizations and institutions. At the same time, the figure of Eichmann who did not appear as an evil monster, but as an ordinary human being was very shocking for Arendt. This was why she talked about the banality of evil. Arendt had not imagined or dreamed of anything like Eichmann when she followed the court case against him in Jerusalem (Kohn, 2003, p. xv). Arendt realized that the banality of evil was “thought-defying” because it was committed by an ordinary, normal man, who was even somewhat ridiculous like a “Buffon” (Kohn, 2003, p. xv), and who was without initiative or spontaneity. Arendt was surprised that Eichmann could say that he had followed the Kantian principles of categorical imperative as the ultimate rule of duty. Eichmann’s defense was that he had followed the laws of Nazi Germany by replacing the Kantian categorical imperative by the imperative to follow the orders of Hitler, as the Führer of the Nazi party. According to Arendt, it was thought-defying that Eichmann could understand the categorical imperative in this way so that the categorical imperative became the law of following the order to kill the Jews of the Nazi regime. According to Arendt, the inability to think of the bureaucrat and administrator who was just following orders and the laws of the regime indicated Eichmann’s lack of responsibility and judgment. However, this also implied the possibility of overcoming the banality of evil through philosophical thinking, judgment, and ethical reflection. In her analysis of the personality of the obedient administrator, Arendt realized that human freedom and critical reflection was the key to ethical administration and politics. Arendt realized that there was a close relation between moral thinking, philosophical reflection and human freedom and responsibility.

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Therefore, she based her political and social philosophy of thinking, responsibility, and judgment. Arendt also wrote an article on “Auschwitz on trail” on the trail on Auschwitz concentration camp in Frankfurt just after the book on Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 227). This trail against most of the 2000 former SS soldiers in Auschwitz is a good indication of the contrast between the figure of Eichmann and the “smaller fish” that had not been convicted immediately after the war. Arendt summarizes the defense as based on the idea that “the small fish are caught while the big fish continue their careers” (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 236). In fact, the military ranks of the SS soldiers serving in Auschwitz were not very high, since the highest rank was a middle-level commander, equivalent to a captain (Hauptsturmführer). Moreover, Arendt emphasizes that among the captains most of them came from the lower middle class and the rest from the working class with little school education. Only very few were from the higher middle classes. Thus, the arguments for their defense was that they were “little men” in the system. This was supported by the argument that they were forced to do the killings in Auschwitz and that they sometimes saved prisoners when they selected the “able-bodied” to work instead of going directly to the gas chambers. However, Arendt argues that this contradictory since the defendants are here accredited for obeying the same orders, which were proposed as an argument for a less severe punishment. In the Auschwitz trail “the little man theory” was put forward, proposing that only the small cogs were left while the people who gave the orders “who sat at their desks and telephoned” were gone or dead (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 238). The big fish of the Nazi commanders who like Eichmann were responsible for planning the “Final solution to the Jewish question” were said to have left “the little men” for the trail while they by their death had escaped the trail. In this context, it is important to point to the fact that the SS soldiers of Auschwitz became more and more violent and sadistic, committing arbitrary atrocities far beyond what they had been ordered to do. The mentality of the perpetrators among the SS soldiers in Auschwitz turned into an arbitrary, sexual sadism, performed by ordinary, otherwise normal people who became unpredictable and performed incredible brutal acts on violence, based on their sadistic moods (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 252). Arendt reminds us of the paradoxical horror of Auschwitz where death was “the supreme ruler” (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 255) while the sadistic

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SS soldier due to contingent moods now and then saved some one percent of the inmates from death in the gas chambers. Some of the acts of atrocities also involved sadistic sexual pleasure. The sadistic actions of the SS soldiers were characterized by the “most outrageous, arbitrary haphazardness” incorporated in the changing moods of death’s servants (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 255). Arendt argues that the truth of the concentration camps did not lie in general accounts, but rather in the individual testimonies of atrocities showing how “everything is possible” changed into “everything is permitted” (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 255). This lack of responsibility at all levels of organizations leading to the senseless killing is the horror of the destruction of every morality in organizations. Thus, Arendt emphasizes the personal responsibility of the little men who like Eichmann expressed obedience to the law of Hitler. The wrongdoers of Auschwitz had not only the responsibility as the desk murderer of Eichmann, but they were charged and convicted both for mass murder and for individual personal murder and for “complicity in mass murder” (Arendt, 2003 [1966], p. 246). Thus, in the article about “Personal Responsibility under dictatorship” Arendt gives us the foundation for understanding the individual and personal responsibility of managers, administrators, or decision-makers. Arendt reflects on the relation between personal and collective personality on the basis of her work on Eichmann. She reminds us about the fact that her Report on the Banality of Evil was shocking because it did not coincide with our conceptions of evil as monstrous and conducted by a particular malicious and intelligent evil person. Instead, Eichmann as a normal human being among the Germans raised the questions of collective omissions of action versus individual intentional actions. The general lack of personal judgment and responsibility, which became generalized in organizations and institutions of the Nazi regime raised the question of whether it would be possible to interpret the evil actions of killing and destruction in Nazi Germany as based on collective norms and values, which after all were isolated from individual actions. This is, however, not possible, according to Arendt who emphasized: “There is no such thing as collective guilt or collective innocence: Guilt and innocence makes sense only applied to individuals” (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 29). From this point of view, it is not possible to say that the obedient administrator or manager is only a “wheel in the system,” according to the so-called “cog-theory of Eichmann” as a part of the

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bureaucratic system. The cog-theory of the administrator and managers argues that they do not have responsibility or judgment because they follow the machineries of political, administrative, or corporate systems, where they take part of an integrated and interconnected system where they do not act as responsible individuals, but as cogs or wheels in the functionality of the system. This is, for example, the case with military forces where individuals have to obey the system (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 29). In such a system, individuals are only parts of the system that can be changed without that it has any impact on the general system. With Arendt, we can argue that this idea of the administrator or manager as a cog or wheel in the system is a general characteristics of bureaucratic, corporate, or military systems. However, the key question is whether it is possible to argue that a person who acts as a “cog” or a wheel in the system cannot be held personally responsible since this person was only accomplishing a role in the system and can easily be replaced by another person. Arendt asks the question whether this situation means that in the end, nobody can be held personally responsible (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 29). Arendt thinks that the Eichmann trail in Jerusalem raised this question as the essential question of the trail. In fact, putting Eichmann and his actions into the context of the trail made it clear that it was impossible to escape personal responsibility by referring to the role of being a cog in the system by the individual. Arendt emphasizes that Eichmann was “the biggest cog ever” (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 30) and she pointed to the fact that in criminal organizations like the Mafia, the “small cogs” are often those who commit the most violent crimes. With this, Arendt considers the Eichmann trail as a test case of the responsibility of all the Germans and others who are members of criminal states, institutions, or organizations. Eichmann defended himself by saying that he did not do the criminal actions as an individual person, but only as a cog in the system, that was expendable. He argued that he did not have the will or power to act on his own and that he was very dependent on the system. In his defense, Eichmann insisted that everyone could have done what he did and that he was a bureaucrat behind the desk that followed the law that should not be held personally responsible for his actions. In reply to this, Arendt writes that the trail transformed Eichmann from being a cog in the system to a human being with personal moral responsibility. The trail showed that it is impossible to separate personal

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responsibility from professional responsibility and that participation in the system as a cog does not free the individual from personal responsibility and that even the cog administrator, manager, or bureaucrat is morally responsible for his or her professional actions as part of the system. However, in this context, it can be suggested that under certain circumstances it is more responsible to continue with the job in the system because this would lead to “the lesser evil” (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 37). This argument is linked to the belief that others will replace those in the system and may commit even more evil. However, this approach implied that the people should accept the will of the Hitler and the laws of the Nazi regime (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 43). Moreover, such an acceptance of the laws of totalitarian society implied in the idea of continuing to participate in organizations, corporations, and institutions of totalitarian society would lead to a general irresponsibility of the majority in relation to minority of those fighting against the regime. Arendt is therefore very skeptical of all kinds of obedience in totalitarian structures. Here, she argues for the importance of analyzing the role and function of the cog and obedience to superiors in the different forms of hierarchical and totalitarian systems (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 47). Even though we may excuse people without power who really can do nothing, Arendt emphasizes the personal responsibility for obedience or non-obedience of all members of bureaucracy, organizations, or institutions in society to be critical and irresponsible toward their roles as cogs in the system when required (Arendt, 2003 [1964], p. 47). However, this does not mean that Arendt denies the existence of collective responsibility. In the article on “Collective responsibility” she insists that you can be responsible for things that you have not done (Arendt, 2003 [1968], p. 147). Nevertheless, Arendt argues that there is a distinction between responsibility and guilt and that you can be responsible, but not guilty for an action. Thus, you can be responsible for something that you have not done or been participating in, but you cannot be guilty in this. Guilt is personal, but responsibility can be collective and involve something you have not done (Arendt, 2003 [1968], p. 147). Even though we can feel guilty for the sins of others, we are strictly speaking not guilty of this. As Arendt rightly points out, if we were all guilty it would lead to a strange kind of solidarity with the wrongdoers (Arendt, 2003 [1968], p. 148). Moreover, collective responsibility is rather an ethical responsibility than a legal responsibility. In order to be collectively responsible Arendt mentions two conditions that she thinks

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are necessary. It involves responsibility for something one has not done and it involves membership of a group or collective that one cannot leave voluntarily (Arendt, 2003 [1968], p. 149). Therefore, collective responsibility is basically political responsibility. In politics we guilty of these acts. However, people who leave the political community are not responsible, for example refugees and stateless people. Those people are rather marked by collective non-responsibility. Nevertheless, nonparticipants in wrongdoing may also be collectively responsible, since they do not really regard their nonparticipation as a political act. Thus, members of organizations and institutions may be held responsible, if they do not really oppose the actions of the leaders of those organizations and institutions. In fact, seen from this perspective it is not obedience, but rather support of the norms of practices in the bureaucracy, organization, and institutions, which characterizes those who do not practice civil disobedience and revolt against the systems, and structures of totalitarian society. Thus, personal responsibility in organizations, institutions, and bureaucracies implies moral thinking critical disobedience and irresponsibility toward immoral orders of those who take part in such organizations and institutions.

9.3 Moral Thinking and Ethical Reflection in Organizations Arendt addresses this need for moral thinking in her lectures on “Some questions of Moral philosophy” and “Moral Thinking” (Arendt, 2003). Here, we find the necessary reflections on ethics and moral philosophy following her reflections on Eichmann in the Report on the Banality of Evil. Arendt mentions Winston Churchill as a representative of moral integrity, based on nobility, dignity, and steadfastness (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 50). The virtues of Churchill make us aware of the original significance of morality and ethics referring to habits, customs, virtues, and norms of a society. The problem of morality in Nazi Germany was that all traditional morality was forgotten. This was indeed the question of organizations and institutions where morality was replaced by moral blindness and Nazi ideology. Arendt asks the question how this was possible and what kind of morality and ethics that is needed to avoid this in politics and organizations. She does not accept Nietzsche’s proposal of new values based on life itself making life the highest good, since this is begging the question of morality, which is exactly the problem of what is

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really good. Thus, Nietzsche’s search for new values cannot really help us in a situation like the case of Nazi Germay where society experienced the total collapse of morality in public and private life. Even though the Soviet Union with Stalin’s regime experienced a similar collapse, hypocritical communism did not want to destroy every morality as it was the case of Nazi ideology (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 52). The totalitarian collapse of morality leads to the death factories of the concentration camps with a large part of the population involved in the extermination of the Jews. Arendt asks the question how it was possible that people who were not evil or villain out of conviction nevertheless with Hitler and Stalin as their leaders participated in this evil moving from the usual morality toward subversion of morality with the imperatives of “Thou shalt kill” and “Thou shalt lie” (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 54). The moral collapse was supported by the activities of ordinary people in society not by the activities of criminals. The problem for social theory and study of moral blindness in management and administration is here how this collapse was not only the collapse of the moral order, but the collapse of the morality of ordinary people, which was somehow concealed behind the general horror of the evil in Nazi totalitarianism. Indeed, this problem became even more puzzling since many officers, managers, and administrators from the totalitarian Nazi regime were employed in different private and public jobs in the German state and society after the war (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 55). Arendt points to the fact that our speechless horror facing evil of the death camps makes it difficult to understand how ordinary people who were supposed to have normal moral judgment could support and be involved in those events. In many cases, the excuse remains the consideration of such people as cogs in the system and elements of a totalitarian structure with no individual responsibility. However, learning from the trail against Eichmann, it is an important feature of the courts and the legal systems that the judiciary takes into account individual responsibility and guilt of individual human beings. Arendt emphasizes that human beings here are no longer considered as elements in the bureaucratic or organizational machinery, but at the moment of the trail responsibility is individualized and the question is no longer “how did the system function?”, but “why did the defendant become a functionary in this organization” (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 58). This was in contrast to Hitler’s vision of a “perfect bureaucracy” where all human beings act as functions in the system and as cogs in the

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system. Arendt focuses instead on the bureaucrats, managers, and administrators, not only as ordinary criminals, not as sadists and perverts who like the crimes, but as obedient functionaries who committed the crimes “simply because they have been told to” (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 59). Here, Arendt described these people who silently played their role in the system, as a kind of Eichmann personality that is in everybody. The intriguing topic for reflection is how these people can be held responsible and how we can give such people the capacity of moral reflection. This is indeed the core question for business ethics and philosophy of management that want to overcome moral blindness and provide a theoretical foundation for moral thinking in management and administration (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). Arendt’s response to this search for a philosophy of moral thinking in management can be found in her discussion of Socrates’ philosophy and Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy. With Socrates Arendt found the basis for moral thinking since Socrates considers philosophical reflection as the basis for the good and noble human life. Arendt emphasizes that Immanuel Kant argued that morality and ethics is based on the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative means that moral statements and actions should be universally valid for all human beings. This defines good and bad, just and unjust actions. According to Kant the human capacity of reason, of reflection, knowledge, and thinking provided the capacity of moral reflection to everyone (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 62). Kant based his moral philosophy on the human capacity of moral reasoning, based on human freedom and the desire of the will to do good. Kant’s philosophical anthropology considers human beings between the rational world of morality, the freedom of the will, and the natural world of the senses, temptations, and inclinations. Kant saw human beings as “unsociably social” living between temptations and inclinations of the senses on the one hand and the rationality and freedom of the mind and the will on the other hand (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Humanity is moral beings who can reason morally and follow the moral law. However, they are also natural beings who inclinations and temptations which are the basis for a will turning against the moral law in order to commit radical evil (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 62). Nevertheless, Kant also thinks that radical evil is incomprehensible since it is not really possible to will evil for its own sake without being in moral contradiction with oneself. This would be a

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moral absurdity and irrational according to the moral law, as explained by Arendt (2003 [1965–1966], p. 62). Socrates also relates to this fundamental problem of moral philosophy: “Do the gods love goodness because it is good or do we call it good because the gods love it” (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 66). Thus, Arendt emphasizes that Kant gives a very radical answer to Socrates’ question, when he argues that the moral laws are not based on God’s commandments, but they are divine commands because of the human dimension of the moral law, based on human rationality and knowledge (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 66). The Kantian categorical imperatives of the golden rule of love for yourself and others and the famous statement that group of intelligent devils can organize a just state indicates this universality of the moral law, based on the categorical and hypothetical imperatives of Kant’s system of ethics. Arendt’s use of Socrates’ and Kant’s philosophy to function as the basis of ethics gives of the solution to the problem of overcoming the culture of moral blindness in management and administration (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). It is here that Arendt emphasizes the idea of personal responsibility of the moral self. She reminds us that the radical evil person, as the fallen angel of Lucifer always is characterized by inwards feelings in the self of envy and despair. Moreover, for Socrates, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche morality is linked to the self-relation of the human self. For them the horror of the self is a self that hates and despites itself. And Kierkegaard makes a close link between radical evil and a self that has lost its relation to itself and thus lives in the misery of existential despair. Moreover, when Socrates says that it is better to suffer evil than to commit evil, he reminds of the tragedy of responding to evil with evil. In addition, Christianity’s insight that fighting against evil may lead to implication in evil challenges human despair and guilt. Arendt concludes these reflections by pointing to the idea of personal conscience as a core dimension of the moral self that can live with itself and overcome despair. Thus, the link between the self, conscience, and morality is the key to overcome moral blindness and the banality of evil. When Kierkegaard talks about the self as a relation that relates to oneself, he understands the role of moral conscience in the constitution of the self. Kant placed the moral law in the center of this self-reflection or moral thinking. The moral

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conscience of the self is the capacity to relate the problems of the categorical imperative to the actions and thoughts of the self. The lack of this conscience and moral reflection of the self is the key to understand the moral collapse of the Nazi regime and in a wider perspective the collapse of moral thinking in business, management, and public administration. According to Arendt issues like the argument for the lesser evil, loyalty to an organization, state or community, fear of consequences of noncompliance can be seen as elements of moral blindness. However, people with high integrity considered the immoral actions of bureaucracies, organizations, and states directly from the point of view of moral conscience with a prompt application of the moral saying “‘this I can’t do’, rather than this I ought not to do” (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 78). Thus, this reaction indicates that the moral law has become a self-evident element of high personal integrity of these people. Arendt argues that for people with high integrity moral propositions are self-evident and they simply see that somethings are deeply wrong to do. Such a person of high integrity is a person who is capable of overcoming moral blindness and ignorance and human weakness and inclination and temptation toward morally wrong actions (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 79). Arendt gives a wonderful example of a story about Kant who on his daily walking tour used to bring money to beggars. However, this made him so popular among the poor that he had to change the course of his walk not to be followed by too many beggars. This is an example of someone who is not consistent with the categorical imperative and is captured by the inclination to give too much leading to a somewhat inconsistent and untenable categorical imperative of “Give to everybody, who asks you” (Arendt 2003 [1965–1966], p. 79). Thus, following Machiavelli, there is also a problem for the leader who will do too much good. Again, it is essential to morality to follow moral reason and not to leave things to temptations and inclinations. As Kant suggests, the will is fundamentally a will to do good. To have a will that consistently follows the temptation and inclination for evil would be a moral absurdity. Arendt reminds us that Socrates also was arguing in similar lines when he said that it is better to suffer than to do evil, better to be punished than not to be punished, and that the tyrant always would be unhappy. For both Socrates and Kant and also to some extent Machiavelli, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche morality and rationality are constitutive of the human person and the self. Moral integrity is based on moral conscience and consciousness that define specific character of the human being.

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Moral character is based on the unity of the self who gives meaning to morality not only as a divine law but also as a voice of conscience speaking to the self. Values and morality constitute the self as the one who I am or with Nietzsche’s words the effort to become the one who you are. Following Kant, to be the one who you are cannot be based on the moral absurdum of the inclination to do evil. From this point of view, Arendt argues that there is a close link between conscience, morality, and thinking. The moral capacity of the self is based on the activities of thought, memory, and judgment. Moral thinking is essential to avoid evil. Arendt emphasizes that there exist evildoers and villains who do evil out of despair, and indeed with a certain demonic nobility of dark reflection as suggested by Kierkegaard. Nevertheless, looking at Eichmann those evildoers are not as cursed as those who have no moral thinking or capacity of memory. The capacity of moral thinking implies the continuous reflection on our actions in order not to be swept away by the Zeitgeist, as Arendt says (2003 [1965–1966], p. 95). Moreover, Arendt emphasized that morality is so integrated in our concepts of the self that the concept of “moral personality” is a redundancy, since our self is always already moral selves who relate to others in moral reflections. In order to prove this point of moral cultivation and thinking as essential for the self, Arendt points to the fact that the evildoers of Nazism, including Eichmann had very limited poetic and creative capacities (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 97). The capacity of self-reflection and moral thinking is in sharp contrast to the moral blindness of the Nazi criminals who were arguing that they obeyed orders in the system as cogs in the structure without personal involvement. In the Nuremberg trail Nazi criminals and later Eichmann in Jerusalem said that they did not have good or bad intentions in terms of morality, but that they only acted as members of the system and accomplished their roles as parts of the organizational bureaucracy and military (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966], p. 111). The paradoxical result is that nobody is responsible for the greatest evil, since nobody takes the responsibility for his or her actions (Arendt, 2003 [1964]). The close integration of morality with the self and its conscience is a part of the dialogue of the self with itself in thinking and remembrance (Arendt, 1978). The self in despair is captured by boredom, solitude, and loneliness while the self needs to make a moral decision in accordance with itself. Arendt says: “it is better to be at odds with the whole world than being the one to be at odds with myself” and she points to

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the importance of the idiomatic “stop and think” (Arendt, 2003 [1965– 1966], p. 105). This is the moral law within the self. In this sense, the moral self is always a “two-in-one” where we continuously as in conflicts of conscience stop up and think and deliberate about our actions and experiences. In this moral thinking the self follows the good will and makes the good will the master of the self that in the thinking process stops the self from following inclinations and temptations saying that it must not do evil actions. Arendt develops this point in her article “Thinking and Moral Considerations” where she mobilizes the Kantian concept of the moral dimension of thinking together with the metaphysical insights from the Greek philosophical tradition from Socrates and Plato. Resuming Eichmann’s banality of evil, Arendt emphasizes that Eichmann as evildoer was neither monstrous or demonic, but not characterized by stupidity either. Instead, he expressed “a curious, quite authentic inability to think” (Arendt, 2003 [1971], p. 159). This was expressed in Eichmann’ use of language, his clichés and inability of deeper reflection, his grotesque use of standard codes of expression, and move from Nazi duty to see it as crime as mere adoption of new set of language rules. Eichmann was an example of a perpetrator who committed evil without particular deepness in his motives or reflections about his actions. With her reflections on the necessity of moral thinking, Arendt investigates the link between moral thinking and metaphysics. Kant provided the important distinction between thinking and knowing, which is essential for Arendt’s concept of moral thinking. Since there is a close relation between morality and thinking, it is important that thinking is for everybody. If thinking is only for the few it creates a problem since not everybody will have access to morality. Therefore, Kant and Arendt insisted that the capacity of thinking must be cultivated in everyone. Arendt cites Kant for saying that “stupidity is caused by a wicked heart” (Arendt, 2003 [1971], p. 164). Although, this may not be true, it was Arendt’s realization of the study of Eichmann and the other Nazi criminals, but also of the small fish and “little men” among the SS soldiers of the Nazi camps that thoughtlessness somewhat between stupidity and wickedness was the basis for the horrifying evil of Nazi Germany (Arendt, 2003 [1971], p. 164). Therefore, Arendt follows Kant and argues that in reality only philosophy, reason, the capacity of thinking can really help us to prevent evil. According to Arendt thinking is the ability to stop up and reflect over things, to be absent, and move away from a given reality. This

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is what is meant by Valéry’s statement “Tantôt je pense, tantôt je suis” indicating the ability to think as the basis for human existence and action (Arendt, 2003 [1971], p. 164). Arendt links moral thinking closely to the capacity of moral judgment. Eichmann’s lack of moral thinking was closely connected to his incapacity of judging. Eichmann’s stupidity showed itself in his inability to judge. Judgment is the capacity to relate general principles to particular situations. Judgment is related to the community of common sense and Arendt argues that judgment is an activity which supposes the relation to others in common sense. Here, thinking and imagination are linked to judgment. Moral reason is linked to common sense in judgment where the self as a citizen of the world judges from the perspective of reason combined with the experience of the world with the perspective of the five senses (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Thus, Arendt argues that the faculty of thinking is universal and valid for everyone. At the same time, thinking is not dogmatic with pre-given commandments and rules. Thinking is a critical activity that examines the foundations of norms and rules. In this sense, thinking moves us beyond the reality of the world and deal with the imaginary and the invisible. As with Kant thinking refers to critical investigation of human reason and rationality. Moreover, with Socrates it is also based on method of midwifery and the critical examination of human existence, reason and rationality, as when Socrates says, “an unexamined life is not worth living” (Arendt, 2003 [1971], p. 179). Therefore, with this Arendt argues that everybody wants to do good and nobody wants to do evil. From the point of view of thinking, it seems impossible to justify evil. For the thinking self, reality is never simple, but full of paradoxes, contractions, challenges, and obstacles. Therefore, thinking includes critical self-examination (Arendt, 2003 [1971], p. 188). Of course, literature and art are full of reference to evildoers and villains who follow the negative inclinations and temptations, but this demonic activity stands in contrast to the rationality of the activity of thinking that together with the faculty of judgment can work to prevent evil coming from wickedness, stupidity, and thoughtlessness.

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9.4 Moral Thinking as Imagination and Moral Decision-Making in Organizations Hannah Arendt’s discussion of moral responsibility and moral thinking can be considered as a proposal for the capacity of moral thinking as essential for avoiding moral blindness in organizations. Eichmann is in this perspective a case of a manager or administrator who lacks incentives to think for oneself and consider his professional actions from the point of view of ethics and morality. Moreover, the little men and small cogs in the system with their lack of moral responsibility for their actions can be considered as agents in the system without capacity of moral thought. In their actions and activities as Nazi soldiers they were totally deprived of morality and instead of the faculty of thought they were characterized by the total inability of moral reflection on their actions. Patricia Werhane’s concept of moral imagination and decision-making in management provides the link of Arendt’s reflections on moral thinking and moral responsibility with contemporary business ethics and management (Werhane, 1999). Moral thinking and responsibility are essential dimensions of judgment in business ethics (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). Werhane discusses the concept of moral imagination and its implications for ethics and morality in management decision-making. Werhane’s concept of moral imagination can be analyzed as an interpretation of the concept of moral thinking applied to management decision-making in the contemporary world. The concept of moral imagination is inspired by the social linguist Mark Johnsson’s analysis of the role of imagination in thought (Werhane, 1999). Moral imagination is linked to moral thinking because the faculty of imagination helps to develop moral reflection about decision-making. Werhane can be said to apply Arendt’s political concept of moral thinking to the relation between ethics and economics. Werhane defines moral imagination as a necessary ingredient in ethical management decision-making (Werhane, 1999, p. 7). She links moral imagination with narrative ethics as the capacity to analyzes ethical dimensions of different cases of ethical and moral problems in business corporations. Inspired by Arendt we can say that Werhane applies the narrative approach of Arendt based on the case study of Eichmann to different business ethics dilemmas of international corporations. Werhane discusses the case of the chemical company Union Carbide in 1980s and a killing explosion of a factory in India where more than 3000 people were killed.

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The intriguing question is how the corporate director Warren Anderson who was known for being a religious person with high integrity could not see the dangers of the factory in India. Moreover, Werhane discusses the scandal of the infant formula of Nestlé in the 1970s, West Africa. Nestlé was convinced that the infant formula of baby milk was fit for West African countries and therefore initiated a marketing campaign that was very damaging for many women with babies since they could not afford to by the products and could not give milk anymore to their children if they stopped breastfeeding to use the infant formula. Werhane also discusses the Ford Pinto scandal in the 1970s where Ford Corporation had launched the Ford Pinto on the car market. However, this car had problems with the gas tank, which would risk exploding in case of collisions. The Ford Pinto Corporation did know about this, but nevertheless decided to keep the car on the market with great risk of human lives. In addition, Werhane presents the Challenger accident in 1986 where the first space shuttle with civilian human beings in space exploded shortly after takeoff. The problem was that engineer’s worries about takeoff in cold weather had been ignored by management and politicians. All the cases are according to Werhane very good examples of problems of lack of moral imagination in management decision-making. In her presentation of moral imagination, Werhane analyzes some cases as narratives and stories that illustrate the context of moral imagination and morality in the context of decision-making. Werhane emphasizes that “management decision-making must be contextual, imaginative, and rational” (Werhane, 1999, p. 14). The challenge of morality in business is according to Werhane the interpretation of corporate self-interest, which may be performed without proper moral education. Compared to the figure of Eichmann who followed orders in the bureaucratic system following the norms of that system, the focus on corporate self-interest may be described as a focus on the instrumental rationality of the business system, based on the logics of money and profits. The logic of management is the focus on the economic rationality of strategic decision-making in management. The challenge of moral thinking is how to combine instrumental management decision-making with moral thinking, moral imagination, and moral leadership. Werhane asks the question of why ordinary decent managers who work in companies get into troubles with business ethics and scandals of the company. This is somewhat similar to Arendt’s discussion of Eichmann. Only with the difference that we all consider the Nazi organizations as

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criminal in the historical perspective. However, from the point of view of moral thinking, the fatal error of Eichmann was that he was not able to see the ethical and moral problems of the deadly rationality of the Nazi bureaucracy. Similarly, in Werhane’s analysis managers are not able to understand that the companies which they think are acceptable can perform scandalous and even criminal actions. They think that those companies are doing what they are required to do as they are acting according to Adam Smith’s virtues of selfishness and the invisible hand of acting according to self-interest as the rationality of the market system. According to Werhane, managers and employees in those business companies, like Eichmann in the Nazi bureaucracy, are simply adopting the dominant social role morality, as described by social psychologist Milgram and Zimbardo (Werhane, 1999). The problem is that managers just follow the rationality of the system of business without being able to reflect morally about their actions. They accept their role morality without personal responsibility and judgment. The results are great moral scandals of business corporations. To avoid this Werhane suggests construction of moral development or managers and leaders and extensive education in moral reasoning in order to provide ability to interpret moral experience (Werhane, 1999, p. 41). The capacity of moral thinking and reflection is from this perspective a capacity of moral reflection over moral experience. Werhane conceptualizes the systemic limits of rationality in terms of the idea of a conceptual scheme, which structures the conceptual basis for actions and interpretations in businesses and corporations. The idea of a conceptual scheme can be used to analyze the failures of the companies described in the classic business ethics cases of Nestlés infant formula, The Ford Pinto lack of model recall scandal, Union Carbide explosion in India, and the Challenger air shuttle explosion. The idea is that we “perceive, frame and interpret” (Werhane, 1999, p. 47) the world through conceptual schemes and that these schemes determine moral blindness and lack of capacity for action. Werhane analyzes the case of the Challenger Flight shuttle in this perspective as a confrontation between different conceptual schemes and corporate cultures in NASA and subcontractors. The engineering team had reported to the vice president of engineering that in temperature below 30 °F there would be serious risks of the shuttle. The launch happened with a temperature around 50 °F and the shuttle exploded. Werhane argues that the chief engineer was forced to change conceptual

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schemes from the one of engineering to management evaluation of costs and benefits and that he was not able to combine the perspectives or to go beyond the specific conceptual schemes (Werhane, 1999, p. 49). When he was pressured to accept the launch, chief management said to him “take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat” (Werhane, 1999, p. 49). Thus, Werhane considers this as a case of how the conceptual scheme shapes actions in systems. The different professional perspectives of management, engineering, administration, or others function as culture frames and mental models in which actors are socialized. Looking at the Challenger case, we can see the interaction between different conceptual schemes and mental models as the conceptual clash that lead to the disaster (Werhane, 1999, p. 50). In this context, there is a close relation between the concept of worldview and Werhane’s idea of the conceptual scheme. Werhane defines the conceptual scheme on the basis of Kant and Donald Davidson as the way we organize our concepts, sensations, and visions of the world (Werhane, 1999, p. 50). A conceptual scheme is a frame of perceptions that constitute our experiences in a unity. On the level of sense-making as analyzed by Karl Weick, mental models are the outcome of these conceptualizations. Here, sense-making is a process of interpretation and clarification that frame experiences and interpret them. The analysis of the cases of Nestlé, Ford Pinto, Union Carbide, and Challenger air shuttle can be considered as such a process of retrospective sense-making. Moral blindness and thoughtlessness imply that managers during the events of the wrongdoing, like Eichmann cannot see how they fail. In the case of the Ford Pinto, for example, corporate culture, strategy, and practice of evaluation imply the incapacity of managers to understand their wrongdoings. The same was the case of the people in Nestlé who simply could not understand what was wrong with the infant formula. Moreover, in the challenger case the shift from the engineer language of safety to management language of risk and performance destroyed the possibility of balanced decision-making. The dominance of certain mental models leads to conceptual blindness and limits the dominant conceptual schemes of specific systems of meanings in corporations, institutions, and organizations. Werhane illustrates the different conceptual schemes and mental models with reference to the Japanese movie Rashomon from 1950. In this movie, the story of a raped woman and her killed husband is presented from different perspectives with different narratives. Werhane

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argues that the events are seen from different perspectives and implies different interpretations based on different narrative accounts of the events by different people (Werhane, 1999, p. 69). The different perspectives and different narratives illustrate different perspectives on the truth. Thus, looking at the scandals of business ethics of Nestlé, Union Carbide, Ford, and Challenger we see a battle between different narratives that present different versions of the truth of the story. Based on this interpretative model of conceptual schemes and mental models Werhane argues for the need of moral imagination to overcome moral blindness and thoughtlessness in business management and leadership in public and private organizations. Werhane gives a wonderful example of the US pharmaceutical company Merck that during several years made research in order to develop a medicine for river blindness, a disease caused by a parasite intruding on human beings in certain African countries. Merck tried to make several countries and foundations support the project, but nobody had the money so the company continued on its own and eventually it succeeded in developing the drug mectizan. Since nobody wants to finance the project and the poor people in Africa with river blindness had no money, it seemed impossible to make a business of this drug. However, Merck still decided to produce the drug and established a 12 years program to heal the people with river blindness and preventing children from getting the disease (Werhane, 1999, p. 90). In her interpretation of this case, Werhane argues that Merck’s decision to continue to produce the drug and establish a program for free treatment with the drug is an illustrative example of the power of moral imagination (Werhane, 1999, p. 90). Merck’s performance of moral imagination was the fact that the company understood that people were more important than profits and that it therefore was the right decision to make a program for free treatment with the drug (Werhane, 1999, p. 93). Werhane uses her interpretation of the case of Merck as the basis for giving some general definition of moral imagination. In contrast to reason, imagination is defined as an imagination of possible worlds. With imagination, we can imagine new possible scenarios and events. Moral imagination is based on sympathy and care for other people. It is a moral creativity, which searches for moral solutions and actions in relation to particular problems. Moral imagination is thus the ability to see new possibilities of action in particular situations that go beyond established conceptual schemes or mental models. Moral imagination in management, leadership, and administration is the capacity to go beyond established norms and social roles and

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have a new awareness of possible economic, ethical, and political solutions to specific challenges of the organizations that are both economic and moral (Werhane, 1999, p. 93). In her definition of moral imagination. Werhane is inspired by Kant’s concepts of imagination and judgment and by Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy. Smith argued that morality is determined by a fellow feeling of sympathy and care for the other. The moral judgment involves an impartial and ideal spectator who is marked by universal moral judgment and a sense of duty (Werhane, 1999, p. 95). In this context following Kant’s critique of judgment imagination organizes impressions and experiences and as free production of ideas and images, it moves beyond the given reality to imagine new and other solutions relating to visions of the good and of the beautiful. Kant makes a close link between moral imagination and the categorical imperative, since moral imagination searches for the good for humanity. Werhane says that moral imagination implies a transformative rationality that is not free play or phantasy, but a reflection about what ought to be the case. In the context of management and organization, this means that moral imagination evaluates situations and actions from the point of view of good and evil. According to Werhane, in her interpretation of Kant’s concept of productive interpretation as moral imagination, moral imagination combines awareness of the situation and role relationships with understanding of possible moral conflicts and dilemmas that are present in the situation (Werhane, 1999, p. 103). Moral imagination is a creative thinking that moves beyond established conceptual schemes and mental models and integrates imagination with moral deliberation and judgment in order to provide better moral solutions in decision-making (Werhane, 1999, p. 108). Thus, Werhane provides a moral for moral imagination as an essential component of moral reasoning in order to overcome thoughtlessness and moral blindness due to conceptual schemes and mental models. Moral imagination is conceived as essential for contextual and role-given decision-making. According to Werhane, this model of decision-making is based on an impartial and universal point of view, where moral reasoning based on moral imagination includes narratives and metaphors in decision-making. In the free process of imaginative evaluation of decision-making, self-reflection moves beyond the context in order to be morally imaginative. This means that moral imagination is accompanied by reason and rationality in decision-making processes. From the point of view of a constructive judgment, it is important to emphasize that moral

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imagination seeks universality of the impartial spectator, good moral reasons, and evaluations in terms of universal moral standards. Nevertheless, moral imagination is also contextual, linking evaluations to historical and contextual narratives, embedded in specific contexts of decisionmaking. However, there is also an element of an imaginative, reasonable, impartial spectator in moral imagination (Werhane, 1999, p. 120). This means that moral imagination works in the interplay between situation, tradition, norms, and culture on the one hand and rationality, reason, universality, universal moral standards, and norms on the other hand.

9.5 Conclusion: Moral Imagination as Ethical Formulation Competency In conclusion, this chapter has discussed the relation between moral blindness, the banality of evil, and moral thinking and imagination. Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann’s thoughtlessness and lack of moral thinking showed that this was fatal for his inability to judge. In a more general perspective, this is the basis for evil and lack of ethical decisionmaking in organizations. Arendt provides us with a critical social theory, which is an incentive to think for oneself. Eichmann was thought-defying since he had no responsibility and judgment. He was the prototype of the obedient administrator who with unlimited obedience and cog-mentality was an obedient administrator who had no moral understanding. Nevertheless, small men of the system were showing the same lack of moral responsibility and they said that they were only following orders, even if they were also rather sadistic in the concentration camps. Thus, Arendt maintains that their lack of moral thinking and of the ability to “stop and think” was behind individual obedience and lack of personal judgment. Both collective and individual responsibility with focus on moral thinking is needed to deal with moral blindness and thoughtlessness in institutions and organizations. This is necessary for ethics of protection of human dignity (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018, Jørgensen et al., 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). In the perspective of Arendt’s social theory, moral thinking follows the categorical imperative and capacity of moral thinking, where people “stop and think” and this contributes to high integrity and human dignity moving beyond thoughtless obedience and cog-mentality (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff,

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2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Patricia Werhane contributed with a clarification of Arendt’s concept of moral thinking in relation to moral imagination and decision-making in organizations. With the analysis of cases of international corporations like Nestlé, Union Carbide, Ford Pinto, and the Challenger Explosion, she helped to provide some dimensions of the moral imagination as the capacity to move beyond fixed conceptual schemes and mental models (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). Moral imagination can in combination with moral thinking contribute to move beyond moral blindness and thoughtlessness. This is essential for philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). Thus, moral thinking includes moral imagination and judgment with the impartial focus on universality and the good in decision-making in particular situations in organizations, businesses, and public administration.

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CHAPTER 10

Political Philosophy of Responsibility for Democratic Societies. Judgment in Politics, Management, and Administration

10.1

Introduction

Arendt emphasizes the political dimension of human action and it is a part of her republican political philosophy that human beings at all levels of their existence must be personally responsible and morally sensible according to critical judgment (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). This is necessary in order to protect humanity and human dignity in organizations, bureaucracies, and their environments. Professional judgment is central to ethical judgment in economics, politics, and justice. This applies to legislative, executive, and judicial, but also to economic powers of society. In this perspective, I will now discuss the concept of ethical and political judgment in democracy and the justice system, inspired by Kant’s theory of ethics, politics, and justice. In this context, the notion of political and ethical judgment (as interpreted by Hannah Arendt) is of central importance. The necessity of a Kantian-inspired theory of professional judgment based on justice is particularly present in a complex late-modern society characterized by governance problems and the loss of political judgment. In many of the sub-spheres of society, the need for practical judgment as wisdom and reason in complex decisions has been forgotten. Many problems may arise in society with regard to the legislative, executive and judicial power, parliament, administration and courts. A possible solution is to reintroduce a Kantian-inspired theory of professional judgment and

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justice that gives political and ethical judgment as a professional judgment a central importance to social development (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). In the following, I will therefore clarify the ethical, political, and historical idea of the judgment, its crisis and possible rehabilitation in politics, administration and the judicial system.

10.2 Arendt’s Concept of Judgment: Toward Critical Judgment in Politics and Organization Hannah Arendt develops a theory of the rationality of politics, which is based on Kant’s conception of judgment that was developed in Kritik der Urteilskraft. However, she died just before she began the third part of Life of the Mind, entitled “Judging,” where she was going to lay out her theory of judgment. So her theory of judgment must be reconstructed from her other works, especially the posthumously published Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, which focuses on the political aspects of judging (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Thus, judgment can be viewed both from the perspective of conscious life of the mind and from the perspective of political anthropology. Judgment is a self-awareness that stands between the spontaneous beginnings of the will (natality of new beginnings) and the withdrawn contemplation of thought and moral thinking of the life of the mind. Judgment reflects on human action and decisionmaking in ethics and politics, but also in private and public institutions and organizations. Judgment is at once a feature of political life, but at the same time expresses the distance of contemplation and pure reflection. In her early writings on the crisis of culture and the truth of politics, Arendt places judgment with respect to difference and plurality as well as to coordinated action in a public space (Arendt, 2006 [1954]). Judgment is a quality of the political being of human beings. In Arendt’s later works, judgment is examined as part of a human being’s ability to withdraw from political life and to relate critically, reflectedly, and impartially to decision-making and historical action (Arendt, 1989 [1958]). In these cases, judgment is based on the common deliberation and communication between citizens and members of the political community. The critical deliberative activity of judgment aims to assess whether human political activities are fair and contribute to creating a more humane society. It is about the relationship between the universal and the particular, historical progress

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and the autonomy of the individual, and realization of human freedom and dignity in historical development. Arendt chooses Immanuel Kant’s third critique because it contains an analysis of the good practical sense in common affairs, based on taste, deliberation, and common sense. Rationality is determined by the subject’s judgment of taste that has an intersubjective dimension, and it is about defining the objectivity and universality of the tastes (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The right meaning and taste are defined by the sense of community (sensus communis), the community’s practical sense of the beautiful and the ugly, the right and the wrong, the just and the unjust. Thus, verdict and decision-making are based on universal respect for human dignity, which with a phrase from Rousseau can be termed “sentiment de l’humanité.” Judgment takes the position of the human being’s action in the light of the individual’s efforts to grasp practical truth and to make sense of progress and just decision-making for the future of the world (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Judgment helps to justify the political community and to understand the goals of society in the light of vita activa. This is also the meaning of judgment as the basis for organizational rationality and deliberative decision-making in organizations, corporations, and public administration. Political intersubjectivity can be analyzed in analogy with aesthetic subjectivity because it is a rationality that, as in aesthetics, is based on universal unity of agreement. The task of the policy is to reach a good practical sense of common affairs and practical goals of the future of political community. This is an intersubjective agreement on the organization of politics, and decision-making in private business and public administration. Politics and moral thinking in management and administration cannot be described by theoretical rationality, and it is not about eternal nonhistorical philosophical principles (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Nor does it apply principles in relation to individual morality. Kant’s and Arendt’s political project revolves around the societal consensus that justifies the laws of the community. The aim of Kritik der Urteilskraft was not only to think about aesthetics or natural theology, but Kant’s project was to create unity in his system by using the judgment and thus formulating the vision of the successful and good political community (Kant, 1990 [1790]). Judgment judges humanity’s possible progress toward the just and enlightened

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society in eternal peace. The impartiality of judgment describes humanity in its social and historical development. Kant discusses the practical rationality of sense of community (sensus communis). Moreover, Kant formulates a vision of the common life in society based on taste and common sense as the basis for a communicative and deliberative policy for the future of kingdom of ends (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). It is the task of the judgment of the judiciary, but also in politics and in organizational decision-making to find the universality of meaning and in this way determine the objectivity of the taste judgments. This is based on a sense of common humanity and the good taste of the intersubjective and universal community, based on common sense (sensus communis), which is the foundation for decision-making in organization and administration (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Judgments about society formulated in the common deliberative process (sensus communis) apply to the future of society. It is about action and hope of creating a future society. In this project, the starting point is human belonging to vita active as a unit of political action, based on plurality and diversity and willingness to act together to form a mutual political community. Thus, the figure of vita active can be considered as the basis for decision-making and action in organizations and institutions. Such hope of eternal peace and for the formulation of a future society justify this policy based on the common sense of deliberative rationality (sensus communis). Communication and sociability are the criteria for this political judgment. A human being judges as a member of a political community. Humanity judges as a member of human nature, and also of the collective group of individuals with dignity and integrity who in respect for mutual plurality form universal humanity. The judge who considers history presents himself as a “Weltbetrachter,” a world spectator who, with his or her reflective judgment, must determine humanity’s progress in history and the possibility of a vita activa for a future state and political community. The creative moral imagination and political judgment are determined by the hope of formulating political ideals and acting for the idea of a better world based on vita activa that corresponds to the desires of humanity. This means that we should work with a principle of universality in the practical judgment and moral thinking that applies to every possible human being (Arendt, 1978). The actions can be universalized and every human being respected as an end in itself. Therefore, Arendt defines practical judgment and moral thinking based on Kant’s theory of

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judgment. It is important to let the taste judgments that apply to the connection between the private and the universal serve as a background for thinking about the common good for the community. Judgment is about finding the common good of a civil society, based on the common taste criteria that defines the basis for decision-making, which is basis for practical decision-making in organizations and institutions. The universal taste of human beings in relation to a private society is the backdrop of the formulation of the good life of this society. The taste community is at the same time the good and the beautiful community. The taste criterion also expresses a criterion of moral goodness and aesthetic beauty. Taste is formed by the common sense of deliberative community (sensus communis). The concept of “sentiment de l’humanité,” feeling of mutual and universal humanity helps to assess whether a particular society or state of society can be assessed as good or bad. The joint taste of community can be communicated and formulated in society’s vita activa of a common deliberative community. Political judgment thus expresses such a provision in which citizens, without individual interests, take an interest in what is good for the future society and intersubjective action. It is this universal development toward a better and fairer society that disregards individual interests. Judgment can be guided by impartiality, and in this way, one can determine the particular case according to the universal case of the meaning of community. Political and ethical judgment describes the universal from the point of view of the deliberative rationality and mutual communication about decision-making in politics and organization. The question is whether the aesthetic judgment can really have this central place as a political judgment. A key issue is whether Arendt forgets the place of judgment in Immanuel Kant’s political system, where he would just separate practical and aesthetic judgment. One may wonder whether one should rethink the political and moral decision-making on the basis of practical reason and not on the basis of judgment. Arendt has realized the advantage of the judgment in her description of the political, because judgment is based on the common sense of moral deliberation, which revolves around sociality as a practical reason. Taste rationality is not only about aesthetics, but also about community’s ethical formation. In this way, opinion formation is central to the universality of politics and decision-making in vita activa. That is, judgment expresses the universality of deliberation in relation to the specific action in the context of plurality and democracy. For Arendt, formation

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of meaning and opinion rather than the aesthetic principle is the basis of the interpretation of judgment as the foundation of decision-making. Such a taste universality constitutes good practical sense of common affairs as the basis for the formation of the state. As she bases political rationality in judgment, Arendt can thus escape the problems of bad rhetoric and demagoguery. This is the point of mutual deliberation of practical reasoning. It seems that Arendt overcomes this problem by grounding the political rationality in judgment and deliberative truth. She assumes moral and political competence to be present in the mind of the people who take part in the political community. The formation of meaning must be linked to universality and the age of the Enlightenment, based on critical moral thinking. A condition for the universality of opinion formation is the overcoming of demagoguery following the principle of “sentiment de l’humanité” in the kingdom of ends.

10.3 Judgment in the Political System: Politics, Law, and Democracy Hannah Arendt’s theory of judgement in politics and organization can be seen as the foundation of political systems in republican political philosophy, which can be used as the basis for a theory of democratic foundations of decision-making in organizations and institutions. In Two Treatises on Government, the English philosopher John Locke gives a contract-theoretical foundation for democracy (Locke, 2014 [1689]). The fact that all people in a state of nature are free and equal means that it is not possible to force man to submit to a political power against his will. The social contract is based on the fact that citizens want to unite under free and equal conditions to avoid everyone’s struggle against everyone in the state of nature. The state protects the fundamental freedoms of the citizen, including the right of ownership and the right to decide over one’s body. The people in a democracy are sovereign and in power. Modern democracy can be said to depend on similar ideas. The state is legitimized on the basis of public will and protection of fundamental rights. Majority democracy with regard to practical issues must be grounded in a previous consensus. This is evident in the relationship between the Constitution and majority decisions in the parliament, where majority decisions must not contravene the Constitution, which guarantees the basic freedoms of the citizen.

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The French philosopher Montesquieu develops in the L’esprit des Lois a similar rational justification for the legal organization of a democratic rule of law. Humanity is by nature asocial, but at the same time, it can be socialized through good laws. Social organization is the realization of human natural freedom exercised in the best regime of legal institutions to ensure political stability, where the laws incarnate “the nature of the case.” Montesquieu introduces the idea of division of powers to solve the problem of the best political regime. There must be mutual control of power in relation to executive, legislative, and judicial power. This idea is also of great importance today. Unlike a totalitarian society, as argued by Arendt, that gives the sovereign a total and unlimited power, there is in democracy a sharp separation between the powers of the people, the administration, and the courts. Against this background, we can with Arendt emphasize that Immanuel Kant can be said to formulate an ideal of people sovereignty and the rule of law, which has gained central importance as the basis for a modern republican democracy (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). In his late philosophy of political judgment, Kant develops a theory of a historical process of enlightenment and civilization, a political anthropology, and a determination of politics that argues that the natural state of man can be civilized through the teleology of history toward a rational and moral policy. The basis of Kant’s theory of a democratic rule of law is a determination of human nature as Ungesellige Geselligkeit, insociable sociability, where a human being is both selfish and destined for social life. By virtue of its reason, it can be civilized through a historical process (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). To come to live in a state of just laws is the goal of the historical process toward perpetual peace. Here in the course of history, we experience a perfection of humanity’s capacity of organizing good and just societies. The point is that although one should not expect individual people in history of civilizations to improve morally, the laws of society as such can be civilized in a cultivation process. Kant says that even a people of devils (Ein Volk von Teufeln) who are willing to live under common laws can create a democratic rule of law. More boldly, this can be expressed with the slogan “Public Virtues, Private Vices.” Submitting to legal rules is based on insight into the rationality of morality. This is the basis for moral thinking and moral judgment in the perspective of Arendt’s interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Human dignity consists in being an end in itself. The human person has negative freedom and a good will to choose to

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be moral in life and decision-making. Kant justifies in his moral philosophy the categorical imperative on the basis of these assumptions. This means: (1) An act is moral if it can apply as a universal law to everyone else in the same situation. (2) A human being must not only be treated as a means, but also always be treated as goals in his or her own right. (3) The ideal of human moral being is a political community of the kingdom of ends. This is a society of free and rational citizens living according to a republican ideal of just institutions. They apply democratic principles to decision-making and judgment in democratic organizations and institutions (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Political judgment is of great importance in developing a society that is moving toward the kingdom of ends. This is a purposeful judgment for better moral decisions in society. In a historical judicial process, judgment aims at the ideal future, i.e., “how the future should be” in ethical and political terms of a just society. Kant develops this theory of judgment in Kritik der Urteilskraft, where he presents judgment as a unifying capacity between human beings and nature in the teleological process of the course of history. Humans are sentient beings who make judgments about the beautiful and sublime. The theory of judgment does not only apply to aesthetics and natural theology, but deals with conditions of general validity in communicative judgments of deliberation (in Kritik der Urteilskraft § 40). Kant distinguishes between reflective and determinate judgment. The ruling judge applies a general law or principle to a new specific case. The reflective judgment, on the other hand, must find a new general law for an already given case. The task is to determine the validity of judgments of meaning and taste. These are based on communication and human sensus communis, including human ability to judge the individual case in the normative ideal of the just, good and beautiful society. Kant understands judgment as an enlightened self-reflection, an intersubjective use of reason, where one considers things from the perspective of the other in matters of good practical sense in order to secure universally valid judgments that is not based on prejudice and false ideologies. This is why interpretation and critique are integrated in ethical judgment. Kant’s theory of judgment is therefore extremely important for securing a Republican legal order. Consensus in a rule of law contributes to the refinement of democratic principles. This is done, for example, by the differentiation of the power division, which ensures impartiality, freedom, and equality as Republican ideals (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The citizen commits to the ideals of the Republic, which are enshrined in the

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Constitution as a social contract. Although Kant is skeptical of democracy, which may lead to mob rule, his last great work, Metaphysik der Sitten, can be called a theory of a democratic rule of law. The Republican principle of law is precisely the division of power into legislative, executive, and judicial power. At the same time, fundamental legal principles are developed. They consist of (1) Respect for private autonomy and freedom between citizens. (2) Right of citizens to participate in political decisions by social and political rights. (3) That the laws of society follow the categorical imperative and an ideal of universality that determines basic procedural matters such as impartiality and fair treatment of legal subjects (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). This idea of a democratic rule of law is realized through the historical teleology of judgment. It is a matter of refining good opinions by virtue of common sense of the public and the historical process of formation of judgments according to autopoetic historical development. At the global level, it is a matter of universalizing the republican rule of law in an interstate alliance. In international law, this implies a respect for democratic rights and Republican sovereignty. In the longer term, it is about securing eternal peace in an international legal order, as suggested by Kant with his concept of eternal peace. The modern rule of law that is essential for decision-making and judgment in political and administrative systems can following Hannah Arendt’s perspective on political philosophy, ethics, and social theory be analyzed to have its ideological roots in the philosophy and social theory of Locke, Montesquieu, and Kant. Montesquieu developed the principle of separation of power (Montesquieu, 1995 [1758]). In order to avoid abuse of power, the division of power is a basic principle of most constitutions in the Western world. The human rights of the French Revolution are surely following the ideals of Locke and Montesquieu. These are the fundamental rights of citizens and the rule of law must protect these rights by giving citizens basic political and social freedoms. At the same time, the legal principles of a Republican rule of law are fundamental to many Western democracies and they can be seen as essential normative frames of compliance in legal and administrative systems in organizations and institutions. The idea of the division of power is thus a basic principle of the US Constitution. “The Founding Fathers” introduced “Checks and Balances,” limiting power and controlling power between legislative, executive and judicial power. This is evident in the US political system

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with an independent Supreme Court and a federalist structure in which the President, Senate, and House of Representatives mutually hold each other in checks and balances. In France, there has also been a mutual distribution of power and control of power between the president and parliament. In the constitution of West Germany from 1949, the division of power also plays a crucial role. It is an independent constitutional court, a federalist structure, and a constitution that protects right of citizens. The tripartite power system is also important in the Scandinavian more pragmatic legal systems like in Danish constitution from 1848, although this constitution does not express the same defense of human rights as the constitutions of the United States, France, and Germany. However, this division of power is sometimes exposed to a threat of dissolution in modern parliamentary systems. In a majority democracy, the parliamentary system is largely monistic. The government takes over the executive power and the administration takes over the functions of the legislative power. At the same time, there is the risk that executive powers become self-legislative. Thus, despite a pronounced functional differentiation, there is no longer a strict separation between the three powers of modern democracy. Instead, a strong institutional dependence between government and administration and between courts and administration is evident. Here, the administration follows its own legal rules and norms of governance. In addition, courts are given a judicial function in modern society where they contribute with their own decision-making and judgment. In addition, administrations are required to follow specific legal norms and principles of ethical decision-making. The administration in public organizations and institutions follow professional ethical and legal norms of decisions that conform to both ethical and legal standards. These changes, where there is a strong separation of power one the one hand and on the other hand the introduction of a power monism, has in some cases resulted in a crisis for Republican democracy, for example in the contemporary US debates about the robustness and future of the separation of powers in the US constitution. In addition to this collapse of a traditional doctrine of the division of power following Hannah Arendt’s critique of politics there has been an oblivion of judgment within both legislative, executive, and judicial power. This can be fatal to the future of democracy in many countries. In contemporary European politics with experience of the UK with a referendum of Brexit and disagreement about the future of the UK, this crisis has manifested itself as a crisis of decision and legitimacy. There has

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been the danger that democracy has become a pure majority government, with the strong majority passing its views without regard for the minority. The result of the British EU referendums, where more than one half were in favor of Brexit and the almost other half of the electorate were against Brexit, testifies to a political system trying to get decisions passed at all costs without formulating the policy for a consensus that also respects the minority. This is also the case in a number of other political areas, such as environmental and justice policy or climate change policies were strong but small majorities seem to dominate over large minorities. There is a danger that the majority will suppress the minority when a policy of power politics and struggle for goods is exercised. If the majority is constantly pushing a minority in terms of basic interests, the majority will run the risk of becoming a tyrant. This problem is about the relationship between legality and legitimacy. According to a positivist legal theory, it is enough that a decision follows the law, in this case the majority rule, for it to be legal. If only 51% vote in favor, a decision is legal. In this perspective, it can thus be said that it was legal when Hitler was elected by a majority vote in 1933. There are no standards other than the majority’s opinion that determine whether a decision is legal. In this perspective, the majority is no longer a party, but it becomes identical to the state. Nevertheless, as a legalistic principle, a majority democracy cannot ensure that the right decisions are taken. This was illustrated by famous legal philosopher Hans Kelsen with a striking example from the Bible. When asked who should be pardoned, Jesus or Barabbas, the Jews, as you know, decided by a majority vote that Barabbas should be chosen instead of Jesus. There are probably many who would think this was not a wise, just, fair and good decision. The limitations of majority democracy can in particular be illustrated by society’s destruction of the environment and nature as well as restricting life opportunities for animals and future generations. This is indeed the case of the debates about climate change and the search for a sustainable future for humanity. Future generations are on the verge of falling out of our contemporary social contract. They have no chance of influencing today’s political decisions, even if they ruin their life opportunities. This begs the question whether current generations by majority vote have the right to destroy the climate or to use up all the resources of the earth without regard for future generations. These problems show how important it is to resist the temptation to make a pragmatic reduction of legitimacy to legality. The challenges demonstrate the need for

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judgment and deliberative rationality in democratic politics and administration. A minority defending the interests of future generations can be said to represent a group of possible future citizens of society. Moreover, a minority of voting on political sovereignty can be said to rely on compliance with the Constitution and respect for citizens’ liberties as the basic prerequisite for political organization. This leads to the question of the minority’s right to civil disobedience. In a strictly legalistic and positivist perspective, civil disobedience cannot be justified. A protest against a special law or other resolution introduced by a parliamentary legal decision is unlawful here and should be punished. This attitude is prevalent in today’s society. Nevertheless, the question is whether this does not conflict with the basic principles of democracy. In terms of democracy, deliberation, and judgment, the need for moral thinking and moral imagination may justify civil disobedience in democracy, politics, and administrative systems and institutions. The crisis of democracy and the need for judgment can also be demonstrated in relation to the executive power and of the political governance of society. Today, the administration no longer has the autonomy and independence recommended by Montesquieu. Lawyers, administrators, and other trustees today make far more direct political decisions than before. Cases of abuse of power in democratic government are the best example of this lack of autonomy. In such cases, governmental employees, administrators, and officials are often in a dilemma. Shall they follow the minister, their own conscience or the law? The administration’s crisis in such cases shows that ministerial officials cannot just follow the law, but that they need moral imagination, moral thinking, and judgment so that they are able to analyze and evaluate ethical dilemmas of specific cases of administration and decision-making. German sociologist Max Weber has described the lack of judgment in modern bureaucracy. A modern administration has been rationalized (Weber, 1986 [1922]), following specific legal rules and systemic rationalities. Here, a trustee or official must obey his superior and process a case according to the objective laws and regulations of the system. There is no need for moral imagination, moral thinking and reflective ethical and political judgment, but the administrative system functions as a machine with mathematical certainty. In this situation, the professional manager solves the case based on the norms constituted by the administrative system. The manager is included as an element in a larger game with

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some predefined rules. At the same time, the development of management as a rational and technocratic system means that the manager’s ethical dilemmas are becoming more and more intrusive. It is no longer possible simply to obey orders or to apply to published rules in relation to new cases without having to judge the ethical dimensions of the case. Every administrator or manager must ask whether a decision complies with the law and whether there is a proper law to use to judge the individual case. He must judge the superior’s command and decide whether these are now also fair. The administrator or manager may contradict the management of which he is a part because he has a specific attitude to a case for personal, professional, or ethical reasons. This ethical dilemma can also be found when that the manager as a citizen and responsible member of civil society disagrees with a decision. Blind management without political judgment is extremely dangerous. This can be illustrated by Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the case of Eichmann (Arendt, 1992 [1964]; Bauman, 1991; Larsen, 1996). Eichmann, who in the Nazi regime helped to organize the final solution and send the Jews to Auschwitz, is an example of a trustee without a moral gaze. He said in this 1961 trial in Jerusalem to his defense that he had just acted on orders. Eichmann expresses the banality of evil. He did his job with the utmost precision (Arendt, 1992 [1964]). He did his duty as a bureaucrat and followed the law of Nazism that Jews were inferior people. Nevertheless, even though he did his duty, one must say, in a broader perspective, that the action can hardly be justified. Eichmann was a rationally educated bureaucrat, and he had no capacity of judgment and ethical formulation competency. In today’s society, many people forget that there are norms of right and wrong that lie outside the definitions of government. The laws, circulars and regulations of municipalities, counties and the state administration may even be unfair. This is what the manager must be aware of. In a Republican democracy, it is important that the executive has a critical relationship with the regulations that come from the legislative power. Like the administration, the courts of modern society have been rationalized. Today, the use of justice in the positivist tradition is not thought of as an appeal to justice, but as the correct application of the rule. While Montesquieu conceived the law as an expression of “the nature of the case” and believed that the judge as the law’s mouth should find the correct understanding of the individual case in light of the nature of the law, the positivist and realistic philosopher Alf Ross perceives the law as

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a kind of social technology to govern a society (Ross, 1953). There is no higher justice that can determine whether a law is right or wrong. Rather, the law is a matter of social mastery and the balancing of power relations. At the same time, there is an ever-growing clash of courts and administration. The case of the High court or constitutional court of Denmark is an example of the courts not acting autonomously but defending the interests of the executive (in this case the interests of the police). The courts should be impartial, neutral, and objective. Instead, they just enforced the interests of the rulers. A number of paradoxes and ethical dilemmas mean that there is a need to reinstall a professional judgment in connection with a theory of legal ethics. Here is a contradiction between the judge’s sense of justice, his or her ideology of judging and the actual application of the rule. When weighing a rule in relation to a situation, a judge cannot avoid letting his or her own sense of justice play a role (Høilund, 1992). Often, the judge forgets the particularity of the situation in favor of rule application. The judicial system will just be lawabiding and not law-making because of a risk of arbitrariness. In reality, however, the courts cannot avoid being law-abiding in the complex differentiated society. Therefore, it is important to recognize that litigation is not just mathematical deduction but requires professionally reflective judgment. Finally, one can mention a contradiction between the defendant and the legal apparatus, where the defendant is often dissolved in this apparatus and its pre-established rules.

10.4 Judgment, Administration, and Management in Modern Democracy From this diagnosis of the crisis of democracy within both legislative, executive, and judicial power, it is important to be aware of the function of the judgment in modern democracy. In her political philosophy, Hannah Arendt advocates a concept of practice, moral thinking, and judgment that can be used as the basis for judgment in administration and management in modern society. Arendt proposes in Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy to revive Kant’s ideas of public reason and of a democracy of judgment. Here, politics, law, and administration are based on a consideration of the public good and the protection of human rights and freedom in society (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Openness, publicity, transparency, and communication are such authentic practices of political democracy that are necessary to ensure political deliberation

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(Arendt, 1989 [1982]). It involves a community of free and equal individuals who must judge the social and political future of society, state, and the community. Arendt uses the concept of vita active to determine this dimension of the future of political democracy. The people, motivated by self-government, constitute a legitimate sovereignty in society where each individual as a social and political being contributes to the future of the political community. From Arendt’s perspective, a true democracy involves deliberation and action together based on respect for diversity and pluralism. Here, sensus communis, moral thinking as critical selfreflection and judgment play a major role in finding the common good for free and equal people in democracy with its organizations and institutions (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, inspired by Hannah Arendt, has developed the concept of deliberative politics in Faktizität und Geltung, inspired by Hannah Arendt (Habermas, 1981). Deliberative politics is grounded in common deliberation, consultation, and discussion of the important political issues (Habermas, 1992). The political processes in deliberative politics are formed with encounters of citizens with different values and conceptions of the good life. Habermas can be said to come up with a formal theory of the common good in a value pluralistic society. He speaks of constitutional patriotism as the foundation of a democratic rule of law. This means that citizens are obliged by the democratic values of the constitution rather than that they only follow different personal views of life. With regard to the question of the division of power, the American legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin gives a good indication of how it is possible to ensure the moral integrity of the judicial system (Dworkin, 1977, 1986). He speaks of impartiality and fairness as basic virtues of the justice system. The politician, the administrative official, and the judge must not only adhere to given rules, but must be guided by universal principles of law with an ethical content. Dworkin believes in Laws Empire that administration and the courts are law-abiding, and therefore it is important to secure a Political Morality as the basis for maintaining the balance of power in the legal justice system (Dworkin, 1977, 1986). In light of this notion of deliberative politics, some features of political judgment and moral thinking in politics, bureaucracies, and political administration can be formulated. First and foremost, it is important not to constantly challenge the different minorities of society. In a democracy,

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it is important to secure basic freedoms for religious, cultural and political minorities. At the same time, the majority is responsible for making decisions that aim at a common good and do not marginalize any minorities. Political work must be done for social inclusion and not for social exclusion. This implies that the triple division of power is understood as fundamental to minority protection. This formulation of deliberative politics applies to a form of governance and government that aims at the common good without interfering with the fundamental rights of the citizen. This view of democracy implies a decentralization of political decisions. Italian game theorist Sartorini argues that decisions taken by a few people on behalf of a larger group involve far greater risk than if more people are involved in the decision-making process. In this perspective, a committee system with, for example, medical committees or other types of citizen representations can better help to protect minorities and the interests of those involved. Decentralized democracy is an alternative to a monistic view of democracy. All stakeholders are involved in the decisionmaking process, where there is a differentiation and decentralization of sentencing. In this perspective, it is the task of society to recognize that the majority rule cannot stand alone but is justified by judgment. The majority rule is nothing more than a pragmatic aid in an effort to reach a deeper consensus. Collective decisions are justified on the basis of common sense and respect for individual civil rights. It is not possible to technocratize the decision-making process by a series of majority decisions that are not instrumentalized, but based on a basic consensus. In the face of the constant confrontation between the disinterested majority and an active minority with massive preferences, it is important that the rulers do not always exclude structural minorities, such as children, future generations, or specific social groups. Improving the legitimacy and judgment of a deliberative democracy can be done in this regard by: (1) developing federal decision-making structures taking into account deliberative and communicative approaches to politics. (2) The introduction of subsidiarity so that decisions are taken as closely to citizens as possible. (3) That a number of different groups and local representatives help to make decisions. (4) That, in important cases concerning, for example, the environment, biotechnology, climate change, etc., which intervenes in the basis of human life, try as much as possible to make decisions based on consensus between the citizens. (5)

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This involves an opening of the social contract in which ethical obligations to animals, plants, and future generations are taken into account, based on the sensitivity of the judgment to the other and the other where judgment is closely linked to responsibility for the other (Kohn, 2003). These elements of deliberative democracy are essential for application of Arendt’s idea of moral thinking and Immanuel Kant’s theory of judgment in politics and administration. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that a democratic society respects the citizens’ right to civil disobedience. An unlawful act made by a citizen may be justified in a future reflective perspective from the perspective of universal justice and of the common good. Here, the individual can be said to contribute with essential moral reflection and moral judgment that shapes the future ethical unity of society. John Rawls defines civil disobedience as political action that is justified by moral principles that determine a perception of civil society and public good (Rawls, 1971). The legislature must have a look for the signals that appear in civil disobedience from political minorities. This is a basis for tolerance and respect for the need of protection of the weakest groups in society. In management and managerial decision-making in organizations and corporations, it is important to ensure the manager’s ethical training and ability to use his judgment (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012). Institutional opportunities must be created for the manager to be responsible for his decisions and to assess the situation from an ethical perspective. Here, business ethics, ethics programs, and ethics training with access to independent hotlines for protection of individuals and public communication of messages of whistle-blowers are very important (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d). From a critical Kantian point of view, it can be said that the manager and leader of organizations and administrations must revise the problems in a universal perspective. Here, the manager’s freedom of expression is of central importance (Larsen, 1996). At the same time, a manager needs critical judgment. This consists of being responsible for the consequences of the action (Arendt, 2003 [1965–1966]). They must be assessed on the basis of practical sense of good judgment (sensus communis), information, and critical sense in a broader societal perspective. Here you can refer to Kant’s principle

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of publicity, common sense, moral thinking, and the concept of deliberative politics. Important is public administration as part of the test of the universal validity of the decision in organization and administration (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). This implies the moral integrity of the administrator and manager, who is replaced by the blind obedience and moral blindness in organizations. One could say that the manager and administrator develop an ethical formulation competence. In the legal system, we need to rediscover ethical judgment as a legal concept. This common sense of justice is not just purely subjective, but it involves the ideals of judgment and publicity and communication. As a basis for the application of justice, reflective judgment, with maxims of moral thinking, critical self-reflection, and critical positioning in the other’s place, aims at integration, social peace, and social equilibrium. In the longer term, it will promote justice in the kingdom of ends. In the legal system, what is important for ethical judgment is putting yourself in the other’s place. With Karl Jaspers, the relationship between the accused and the prosecutor can be described as a “guilt dialogue,” where the accused is given more opportunity to understand his own situation. In the use of judgment, the judicial system can also take into account its moral presuppositions and appeal to the common sense. This also involves publicity in relation to judicial decisions. The decisions of the courts are not subjective but appeal to the common sense of justice in a broader societal context. The justice system is not completely self-organizing, but opens up to the surrounding community. Thus, judicial decisions through professional judgment are not just an automatic application of rules, but they are guided by legal principles of ethical nature such as impartiality, fairness and respect for personal dignity and integrity. This is the legal system’s reaction toward moral blindness and lack of moral thinking in legal systems. In this case, the judge retains his integrity and political morality in his decisions so that society does not lose confidence in the judicial system. Judgment must ensure the moral integrity of the judicial system. That is what Ronald Dworkin understands by Law as Integrity (Dworkin, 1977, 1986). Accordingly, judgment is essential for just law and politics. In addition to our discussion of the need for moral thinking in political systems and in business corporations as well as on economic markets, it is important to focus on moral thinking in law and legal systems in order to ensure the social and moral legitimacy of legal systems. Well-known philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, John Rawls, and

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Ronald Dworkin all discuss the question of the basis of democracy from a philosophical perspective with some kind of integration of democratic judgment with moral thinking. Among the many interesting theoretical positions within philosophy of law, we will in the following highlight a theory that sees judgment as the central body of the judicial system. This theory is inspired by Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt, and not least the French philosopher Paul Ricœur’s development of Arendt’s political philosophy in Le Juste (1995), which deals with moral thinking, justice, and judgment as a follow-up on Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of judgment. Here is a proposal for the relationship between ethics and law based on a theory of the ideal and the actual functioning of judgment (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c). In this perspective, the long-term ideal of judicial regulation is social justice, while a more short-term ideal is social peace and resolution of conflict situations. As a beginning, we can define law and a judicial system by virtue of the notion of the triple division of powers between legislative, executive, and judicial power. Thus, a legal system involves some procedures for legislation (adoption of rules), administration (rule application), and courts (judicial decisions). In addition, judicial regulation is grounded in society’s unwritten laws and norms of social behavior. These include institutions with adopted judgments, and procedures for determining socially acceptable behaviors aimed at protecting and developing a society with a just political and social structure. In this context, one can speak of the judicial power as a contributor to ethical creation and social integration of norms as mediation of judicial conflicts. It must be emphasized that the negative premise of the legal system is a threat to violence and destruction of the social order. Thus, judicial sanctions aim to maintain the social order by building a legal system that sanctions and protects a number of social norms. The judicial sense replaces crude violence and physical aggression, as Ricœur argues in Le Juste. The judicial system is characterized by a rational discourse on justice, whereby a minimum of respect even for the guilty person replaces the sheer violence of lawlessness (Ricœur, 1995). The judicial system’s rational discourse on justice in relation to both legislation, administration and case law can be thought of by using the legal philosophies of Aristotle and Kant. The practical reason of the categorical imperative ensures respect for the moral norm and basic procedural rules of society. Nevertheless, because of the possible limitations

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of the rules and the peculiarities of the situation, practical wisdom and judgment are necessary in addition to practical reason. Practical wisdom stands alone in exceptional situations with severe tragic dilemmas where specific legal rules are difficult to apply. Thus, it is necessary to mediate between principles and situation, between society’s ideal of the good life and as respect for justice principles, and a political and judicial judgment is required (Ricœur, 1995). Here, reference can be made to Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790) in her posthumously published lectures on Kant’s political philosophy, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1982). Here, Arendt tries to make Kant’s analysis of the judgment the basis of a political philosophy (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). As we know, Kant distinguishes between reflective and determinate judgment. Determinate judgment applies a predetermined rule to a particular situation. The reflective judge or administrator is looking for a new general rule in a situation where no predetermined rules are given. Therefore, judgment is not just unconscious rule application, but also creative thinking. Despite the fact that Kant in Kritik der Urteilskraft defines reflective judgment in relation to aesthetics and natural theology, one must not forget its importance for political rationality and judgment. There is thus a logical and structural analogy between aesthetic, political, and legal judgment (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). The key is that Kant develops a theory of communicative rationality and deliberation based on judgments of opinion and taste, demanding universal and intersubjective validity. Judgment mediates between the private and the universal in relation to an intersubjective and public deliberation (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Judgment has a universality as the mediation of the community’s opinions and tastes in relation to the individual case. It is based on a general understanding of value and validity. The hallmark of opinion and taste is that it is communicable and therefore requires intersubjective validity. Thus, as a basis for shaping politics and justice, sentencing can be understood as an ability to judge specific cases on the basis of the community’s common sense (sensus communis) and universal principles. This can be transferred to understand the social role of the justice system. Here one must emphasize the creative function of judgment. Because of an intersubjective public debate, the judiciary, through judgment, has a teleological function of mediating conflict and contributing to social peace in the face of the regulatory idea of progress in history

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and the perfection of humanity’s insociable sociability (Ungesellige Geselligkeit) (Arendt, 1989 [1982]). Given legal rules and principles cannot be applied directly in all situations, but must be interpreted through reflective judgments in relation to new situations. The diverse aspects of social conflict make the application of universal moral principles and the revival of the court’s hidden narratives a matter of dynamic interpretations, where new situations without precedent challenge predetermined legal standards and require imaginative and original solutions that are at the boundary of traditional solutions. The verdict must be understood as the end of a deliberation proceeding that goes from a judicial hearing to a final decision and judgment in a social conflict (Ricœur, 1995). This is also the case for judgments in administration and in decision-making in management and in corporations. It is the final point and thus the realization of the power of the law as a mediation between conflict and violence through reason and discourse. Thus, the legal process can be described as a codified mediation of social conflicts. Against a critical discussion and exchange of opinion, sentencing is the final step that closes the case by leading to a public realization of decisions, thus expressing the state’s monopoly of power. The procedural structure of legal practice ensures the formal equality of citizens based on the basic principles of the rule of law. Legal reasoning can be described as a communicative activity that, on the basis of a mutual understanding, sees a notion of justice as the regulatory idea of a legal practice. Argumentation and decision-making can be seen here as a movement between concrete situations and abstract justifications, between a common understanding and a critical rationality (Ricœur, 1995). Although justice as such remains a transcending quasimythological idea, which is best uncovered through the understanding that something is unfair, it must be maintained that it is the legitimate idea for a concrete legal practice and argument. In the judicial system, this discussion of justice involves a relationship between arguments tested against facts, rules, and beliefs. However, the rhetorical features of legal discourse also manifest the fragility of language between violence and communication. Therefore, judicial decisions and verdicts cannot be reduced to mere judicial positivism, but are guided by a teleological vision of social peace and a conception of what is good for the individual and society. Ricœur describes this notion of judgment as a “fair distance,” the right place

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between the parts of the conflict, the right distance from the actual situation made possible through the court’s formalized rules of sentencing to assess the specific situation (Ricœur, 1995). The ultimate goal of judgment is the mutual recognition of the actual judgment of the parties involved, which in this way allows an understanding of the case to be built on the basis of judgment and moral thinking, despite its painful and tragic experiences. One must emphasize the distributive nature of judgment as a peaceful way of resolving property disputes and other conflicts. Judgment can ensure fair distribution of goods between individuals as part of an exchange system based on distributive justice and equality. Thus, judgment helps to delineate between the spheres of society. As a contributor to social justice, judgment requires the idea of society as a cooperative entity, so that the communitarian idea of society as a fragile and vulnerable context of the “vouloir vivre ensemble” lies behind judgment’s attempt to create social peace and justice. Nevertheless, conflicts about the distribution of good in different spheres of justice can also often transcend the “common understanding” (Ricœur, 1995). Some common understanding of good suddenly turns out to be incoherent and must therefore be confronted with universal standards and individual preferences. At the same time, disagreement with state policy can lead to civil disobedience in the name of individual ethical principles based on a personal conception of divine law outside the legal system, and the corresponding “Hard Cases” which, according to Dworkin in Taking Rights Seriously, constitute an appeal to rights and principles must be seen as the basis and reform to ensure judicial coherence. This conception of judgment focuses on the concrete conflicts in society to ensure the proper relationship between common understanding and legal universality as opposed to random power interests. Here, we can refer to Dworkin’s hermeneutic narrative understanding of law as Integrity (Dworkin, 1986) which deals with respect for the principles of political morality and sees the court as a progressive development based on the principles of “equality, fairness and impartiality,” based on a permanent reinterpretation of the constitutional basis and emerging legal practice. Therefore, we cannot give a formal justification for judicial decisions and rules: the universal rules must be related to community contexts, where the common sense (sensus communis) and common understanding always determine the specific case law and legislative

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process between subjective life worlds and reflexive ethical justification of decision-making. This turn toward a Kantian understanding of judgment and moral thinking seems to be a promising way to overcome an overly strict contradiction between a universalist and a communitarian approach to the philosophy of law (Ricœur, 1995). Thus, we see that professional judgment in law, politics, and administration is extremely important for ensuring good and just decisions. Such an idea of the hermeneutic circle of practical judgment can be used to understand the interaction between ethics, law, and politics in democratic societies and institutions where legislative processes are not abstract constructions, but concrete realizations of a modern humanist tension between a common understanding, universal principles, collective experiences and democratic traditions (Ricœur, 1989, 1990, 1995).

10.5 Conclusion: Judgment in Politics, Management, and Administration This chapter has discussed the concept of judgment in politics, democracy, management, and administration as a response to the need to overcome moral blindness and thoughtlessness. In order to deal with the problem of moral blindness we need moral thinking and philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). The background for this emphasis on judgment is an alternative to the radical evil of totalitarianism, which is characterized by the total lack of judgment. Here, it seems impossible to align with normal judgment, and we are faced with the disaster of dictatorship, and our criteria for judgment no longer seem to apply. Our moral rules break down and the link between moral thinking and acting no longer exists. In totalitarian systems, bureaucratic desk murderers marked by cog-mentality replace politicians, judges, and administrators with moral thinking and integrity (Arendt, 1979 [1951]). The obedient bureaucrat and the authoritarian personality can no longer distinguish between good and evil and are characterized by thoughtlessness and loss of the ability for critical reflection. With Hannah Arendt we say that judgment is based on common sense (sensus communis) and moral thinking, which combines judgment and practical reason in ethical decision-making in political and legal systems,

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but also in administration and management. The rationality of judgment is based on deliberative rationality and opinion formation following the ethical universality of vita activa. In this sense, judgment expresses universal application of general principles in particular situations in order to ensure ethical action for protection of the common good as well as for the promotion of human rights and dignity (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009). Thus, Arendt defines concepts of judgment on the basis of deliberative and communicative rationality, based on moral thinking. This deliberative rationality of judgment is applied in political democracy with focus on decisions that respect not only a small majority, but also counts for large minorities in order to find legitimate decisions that are acceptable for everyone. In administration legal systems and bureaucracies as well in the management of private business and institutions, the rationality of judgment combines ethics with professional rationality in particular professional systems and bureaucracies. Therefore, judgment is essential for ethical decision-making and formulation competency in democratic societies, based on justice and fairness.

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CHAPTER 11

Conclusion: Toward Moral Thinking Unlimited

This book has consisted of the presentation of my reflections on moral blindness and banality of evil in private business and public administration. The book was the result of many years research on bioethics and ethical principles, (Jørgensen & Rendtorff, 2018; Jørgensen, Rendtorff, & Holen, 2018; Rendtorff, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2014a, 2015c; Rendtorff & Kemp, 2009), management and values (Mattsson & Rendtorff, 2006; Pedersen & Rendtorff, 2004; Rendtorff, 2015b, 2016, 2017b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Rendtorff & Mattsson, 2012), business ethics and ethics of administration (Rendtorff, 2009, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2012, 2014c, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, 2017d), and philosophy of management (Rendtorff, 2010a, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2014b, 2015a, 2017c, 2019d). The main topic of the book has been the problem of how to teach managers, bureaucrats, and administrators “how to think” and have the capacity of moral thinking in the context of their professional life and work. In the book, we demonstrated how judgment and moral thinking must replace moral blindness and banality of evil in organization and administration. We have also seen how Arendt had a sharp and critical analysis of the banality of evil. Sometimes, irony and arrogant laughter to the banality of the clownery figure of Eichmann’s ordinary banality accompanied Arendt’s philosophical analysis. This attitude had led to much criticism and hostile reaction of many victims who argued that Arendt was an enemy of the Jewish people and the victims. Arendt replied that her ironic style and her recourse to the sovereignty of © The Author(s) 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_11

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laughter of course did not exclude empathy, but rather expressed a coping strategy for dealing with the most radical evil of the twentieth century. In addition, she thought that exaggerated pathos of sincerity of belief in the deep demonic character of criminal perpetrators may close for the real of understanding of banality of evil Moreover, also Arendt’s political and historical judgment on specific political events, for example her essay on the race conflicts in the United States in 1960s were criticized for theoretical blindness in the understanding of the case. The problem was that Arendt failed to recognize the violence and racism in the United States when she argued that there has not been imperialism and genocide in the United States in the same way as Nazism was based on European colonialism and racism (Howell & Richter-Montpetit 2020). Moreover, critics argue that Arendt remained a classical philosopher who based her political theory on traditional politics of the Greek city state of Athens combined with Kant’s enlightenment philosophy of practical reason and judgment. As a response to these criticisms of the blind spots of Arendt’s political theory, it could be argued that she herself would be open to revisions from the point of view of ethical judgment. However, this raises the question whether there is moral blindness of Arendt’s philosophy? More generally how can we deal with moral blindness of philosophy and theory? The answer is that also thinking needs self-reflection. In addition, the theoretical reflection about moral blindness in business and administration can be characterized by a certain blindness of the reflection itself where there is the problem that you cannot see the blind spots of your own perspective and horizon of your point of view. Therefore, it is important to remind ourselves about the need for critical self-reflection. There can also be blindness and blind spots in thinking and philosophical reflection. This means that ethical judgment can be limited and it may be necessary to revise judgment. Sometimes, even Arendt made wrong judgments and there were blind spots in her thinking that needed to be revised. This is also the case with the reflection on the moral blindness and banality and evil in management and bureaucracy. Sometimes we may need to revise our judgments of ethics. Thus thinking itself must be aware of its limits and through self-reflection focus on the blind spots of theory and scientific practice in order to protect the dignity and humanity of persons. This challenge to thinking is present in the contemporary debate about Martin Heidegger and his relation to Nazism. Thus, French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy argues that the banality of Heidegger was exactly that he

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was a convinced Nazi and that this marked his whole philosophy of being with the idea of a new beginning (Nancy, 2015). Even though Heidegger was an established philosopher, he was also member of the Nazi party and his recently published Black notebooks contain anti-Semitic remarks. Moreover, Heidegger’s silence about Nazism and his lack of apologize or reflections on his own political opinions can be seen as an expression of moral blindness. Here, there is a clear resemblance between the ordinariness of Heidegger and Eichmann. Both the bureaucrat and the philosopher were captured by the ideology of Nazism and incapable of moral thinking. Thus, the case of Heidegger demonstrates the need for moral self-reflection of theory and it shows that the challenge of moral thinking and judgment is essential for all dimensions of society. In addition, during the finalization of the manuscript for the book, the corona-virus outbreak as a pandemic in the world in 2020 gave a new perspective on the discussion of banality of evil and moral blindness. The famous Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben proposed a critical perspective on state of exception in Italy, which shows the actuality of the political and social ethics, but also raises the question, whether there can be a specific moral blindness of philosophy and theory in the discussion of moral blindness in business and public administration (Agamben, 2020). Inspired by Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics in his work on discipline and punishment, Agamben argued in a short essay during the coronacrisis that the crisis demonstrated totalitarian elements in the biopolitical defense of pure life in contemporary society. At the same time, Agamben is inspired by Arendt in his philosophy of the “Homo sacer,” bare life, where he argues that the evil of Nazi bureaucracy was to strip human beings of every quality so that they ended as bare life, as “sans papiers” or refugees without papers who have no humanity left. In reflections about developments of the pandemic of COVID-19, in an essay from 26 February 2020, Agamben found many resemblances between the coronavirus and the plague in the seventeenth century that was described by Foucault who argued that the fight against the plague gave the state much more power through the disciplinary fight against the disorder of the disease. Agamben argued that the corona-epidemic was not worse than the flu and that this was an example of the intensification of state power over the individual. According to Roger Berkowitz this is a good example of the moral blindness of theory since Agamben dismisses the human suffering in the corona-epidemic and only focuses on the biopolitical dimensions of the disease (Berkowitz, 2020). In addition,

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Agamben argued that the response from authorities to the coronavirus used the situation to create a state of exception that reinforced the power of the state and created this situation as a normal situation for public safety. Thus, the coronavirus was used to restrict human democratic freedoms in society with the closure of schools and kindergarten, universities and schools, but also of cultural and other democratic institutions in society. For Agamben, the disproportionate reaction illustrates how society will do everything to protect bare life in a state of exception which leads to a perverse vicious circle between increasing state power to protect human life and restricting individual freedoms with more human insecurity as the result. However, the paradox is that Agamben’s theory also risks to disregard the horror of the virus killing thousands of vulnerable human beings. Thus, deeper moral thinking is needed to understand the complexities of actions in business, administration, and bureaucracies. Arendt introduces her late work Life of the Mind. Thinking and Willing as directly related to her analysis of Eichmann in Jerusalem. She had thought that Eichmann was like the fallen angel Lucifer, an evil demonic person who with personal wickedness and evil intentions would be the roots of all evil. Nevertheless, even though his actions were monstrous, Eichmann was an ordinary person who followed the Nazi ideology without personal deep convictions or evil motives (Arendt, 1978, p. 4). He was rather a cliché, a clown in a joke and caricature of a trail and characterized by a kind of thoughtlessness that made it impossible for him to “stop and think.” Therefore, Arendt announces the need to study the phenomenon of thinking. What we can learn from the analysis of the banality of evil and moral blindness is that we need to “stop and think” in management and leadership. From this point of view, it is important to emphasize that “virtue can be taught” and that morality and ethics is related to our capacity of thinking and to our conscience (Arendt, 1978, p. 5). Arendt is convinced that the activity of thinking can make human stop doing evil. This means that managers, leaders, bureaucrats, and administrators can overcome their moral blindness through the activity and practice of moral thinking and judgment. Thus, thinking is not only contemplative as argued in the philosophical tradition from Plato to Descartes. Thinking requires a link to common sense and morality. Thinking must go beyond instrumental rationality, understanding, and knowledge. Thinking is also different from traditional metaphysics, as Arendt suggests when she emphasizes that highly intelligent people can be morally stupid and blind,

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since they are not able of putting themselves in the place of the other. In addition, the moral thinking that we need requires a combination between practical and theoretical reason, which is closely related to the capacity of judging, which implies ability to relate to common sense and see the deeper moral meaning of the situation. Thus, what we need in philosophy of management is “thinking unlimited,” which is the ability of managers and bureaucrat to “stop and think” and to see their actions and decisions from the impartial perspective of putting oneself in the place of the other.

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Index

A Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, 146 Adams, Guy, 171, 181 Adams, John, 18, 40 Administration, 1–7, 10, 75, 84, 87, 92, 94–96, 104, 119, 127, 129, 145, 152, 153, 164, 165, 168–171, 173, 175, 177, 182, 183, 191, 234, 235, 241–243, 251, 252, 261–264, 267, 270, 272–275, 277–279, 281, 283, 284, 289, 290, 292 Administrative evil, 165, 169, 171, 181, 182 Administrators, 2, 3, 7, 50, 76, 94–96, 119, 127, 164, 167, 168, 177, 179, 182, 183, 233, 234, 237, 241, 242, 272, 289, 292 Adolf, Eichmann, 1, 4, 5, 59, 83, 106, 165, 205, 224 Adorno, Theodor W., 95, 173 Afghanistan, 70, 71, 163 Agamben, Giorgio, 72, 291 al-Assad, 70

Albert, Camus, 22 Al Qaeda, 70 Amazon, 188, 189 Ambidexteriority, 171 American revolution, 18, 40, 223 Anders, Günther, 21, 149, 151 Anderson, Warren, 249 Animal Laborans, 32, 222, 223, 225 Anti-semitism, 23, 24, 26, 32, 60, 63, 64, 67, 106, 126, 128, 130, 138, 154, 192, 221, 226 Apple, 188, 189 Arendt, Hannah, 1, 4–6, 8, 9, 17, 20, 21, 46–48, 50, 57, 59, 60, 65, 83, 103–105, 109, 112, 113, 118, 125, 149, 163, 164, 170, 176, 183, 185, 193, 203–206, 208, 209, 212, 213, 216, 217, 221, 225, 227, 234, 248, 261, 262, 266, 269, 270, 273–275, 279, 280, 283 Argentina, 85, 107 Aristotle, 206, 209, 279 Arrogant, 9, 92, 289

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. D. Rendtorff, Moral Blindness in Business, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4

297

298

INDEX

Atomic bomb, 150–152 Augustine, 21, 41 Auschwitz, 22, 34–37, 58, 60, 67, 69, 71, 77, 83, 84, 86–88, 95, 105, 128, 130, 134, 136, 137, 140, 163, 167, 236, 237, 273 Authoritarian personality, 6, 91, 139, 192, 203, 226, 283 Authority, 30, 31, 126, 142–148, 150, 205, 214–217 Autonomy, 42, 96, 104, 111, 120, 125, 126, 146, 152, 155, 156, 172, 193, 217, 263, 269, 272 B Baeck, Leo, 37 Bakan, Joel, 186 Balance of power, 275 Balfour, Danny, 171, 181 Banality of Evil, 1, 3–9, 18–21, 25, 37–40, 44, 48, 50, 57–61, 64, 65, 70, 71, 74, 76, 83, 89, 92, 93, 96, 97, 103, 107–109, 112, 118, 120, 125–128, 132, 139, 141, 149, 153, 156, 163–169, 171, 176, 178, 179, 183, 186, 187, 191–193, 205, 224, 233, 235, 243, 246, 254, 273, 289–292 Barabbas, 271 Barbie, Klaus, 70 Basic ethical principles, 4, 49, 104, 120, 126, 155, 165, 227 Baudrillard, Jean, 5, 48, 49, 103, 113, 115–117 Bauman, Zygmunt, 137, 170 Begin, 6, 29, 70, 127, 169, 175, 210, 217, 223, 234 Begin anew, 43, 66, 91, 210, 226 Beiner, Ronald, 47 Benjamin, Walter, 22 Bernstein, Richard, 170

Best political regime, 213, 214, 223, 267 Bioethics, 4, 49, 76, 289 Biolaw, 49, 76 Biopolitical, 291 Biopolitical nomos, 72 Bird, Frederick, 171 Black, Edwin, 156, 187 Blücher, Heinrich, 22 Borges, Louis, 66 Bosnia, 59, 71, 75, 125 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, 191 Braun, Von, 182, 183 Brexit, 270, 271 Bultmann, Rudolf, 21 Bureaucracy, 1, 17, 18, 26, 31, 60, 86, 91, 95, 127, 137–139, 141, 155, 156, 176, 192, 204, 216, 226, 239–241, 245, 250, 272, 290, 291 Bush, George, 105, 170 Business ethics, 4–6, 18, 49, 50, 57, 76, 77, 84, 96, 120, 126, 156, 164, 165, 169, 171, 172, 177, 191, 204, 227, 242, 248–250, 252, 277 C Cambodia, 71 Canovan, Margaret, 18, 24, 46–48 Capitalism/capitalist, 95, 111, 117, 135, 168, 169, 172, 185, 186, 188–190 Capital punishment, 74, 75 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 46 Categorical imperative, 88, 235, 242–244, 253, 254, 268, 269, 279 Challenger, 182–184, 249–252, 255 Checks and balances, 269, 270 Christianity, 104, 243 Christian moral tradition, 85

INDEX

Churchill, Winston, 240 Cicero, 45, 219 Citizen, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28, 30, 42, 86, 109, 133, 137, 138, 152, 154, 173, 187, 189, 190, 205, 207–209, 212–217, 223, 247, 262, 265, 266, 268–270, 272, 273, 275–277, 281 Classical Greece, 209 clichés, 1, 35, 62, 63, 85, 89, 96, 129, 132, 166, 167, 246, 292 Cog in the system, 62, 88, 126, 238 Cold War, 68, 117, 125 Collective memory, 57, 64, 65, 67 Collective responsibility, 239, 240 Common sense, 18, 24, 32, 40, 42, 44, 45, 85, 91, 156, 157, 193, 210, 218, 219, 225, 226, 247, 263–265, 269, 276, 278, 280, 282, 283, 292, 293 Communication, 29, 30, 41, 48, 73, 91, 116, 175, 178, 179, 182, 189, 206–208, 215–217, 219, 223, 262, 264, 265, 268, 274, 277, 278, 281 Communicative action, 48 Concentration camps, 20, 22–27, 33–37, 42, 46, 49, 58, 62, 63, 68, 70, 72, 73, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 105–107, 116, 127, 129, 130, 134–136, 140, 167, 168, 224–226, 235–237, 241, 254 Conceptual scheme, 250–253, 255 Conrad, Joseph, 26 Constitution, 40, 41, 109, 223, 243, 266, 269, 270, 272, 275 Corona-virus, 291 corporate psychopathy, 6 Crimes against humanity, 5, 58, 64, 74, 89, 125, 226 Critical judgment, 7, 10, 97, 157, 193, 233, 261, 277

299

Cybernetics, 61, 144 D Davidson, Donald, 251 Dehumanization, 2, 94, 128, 129, 139, 140, 148, 149, 165, 169, 177, 182, 192 Deleuze, G., 188, 190 Deliberation, 24, 30, 41, 44, 48, 73, 92, 206, 207, 212, 214, 215, 226, 253, 262, 263, 265, 266, 268, 272, 274, 275, 280, 281 Demagogy, 47, 220 Democracy, 7, 23, 29, 30, 46, 48, 61, 64, 65, 73, 92, 109, 114, 117, 152, 183, 189, 205, 206, 213–216, 219, 221, 223, 227, 261, 265–267, 269–277, 279, 283, 284 Democratic dialogue, 207 demon, 9, 90, 108, 118 Demonic, 39, 89, 91, 92, 103, 105, 107, 108, 118, 128, 163, 245–247, 290, 292 Derrida, Jacques, 173, 278 Descartes, René, 210, 292 Desk killer, 74, 141 Determinate judgment, 268, 280 Devilish personality, 107 Dictatorship, 24, 25, 46, 65, 114, 125, 188, 193, 216, 225, 235, 237, 283 Dignity, 17, 18, 25–27, 45, 66, 69, 73, 74, 92, 96, 104, 109, 111, 112, 120, 125–127, 152, 155, 166, 182, 214, 217, 219, 240, 263, 278, 284, 290 Displaced Persons, 67 Divine, 39, 108, 111, 243, 245, 282 Domination, 1, 24, 26, 31, 41, 46, 97, 117, 138, 163, 165, 189, 190, 203, 205, 221

300

INDEX

Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 113 Dworkin, Ronald, 275, 278, 279 E Eatherly, Claude, 151 Eichmann as clown, 9, 39, 91 Eichmann controversy, 9, 35, 36 Eichmann in Jerusalem, 36, 37, 39, 106, 203, 236, 245, 292 Eichmann trail, 9, 238 Elite/elites, 24, 26, 106, 130, 138, 224 Empathy, 219, 290 Enlightenment, 42, 65, 105, 116, 117, 204, 207, 220, 221, 224, 266, 267 Epimetheus, 173 Ethical blindness, 180 Ethical dilemma, 93, 272–274 Ethical formulation competency, 3, 6, 7, 97, 165, 180, 234, 273 Ethical principles, 10, 49, 76, 84, 96, 153, 234 ethics of administration, 5, 8, 10, 84, 234, 289 Ethiopia, 154 ethnic cleansing, 58, 71 Euthanasia actions, 133, 136 Evil, 103–120 Exclusion logic, 132, 154, 155 Existentialist philosophy/existentialism, 49, 109, 110 Exploitation, 34, 88, 129, 169, 188, 189 F Facebook, 188, 189 Feminism/feminist, 47 Final solution (die Endlösung), 62, 225

Financial crisis, 95, 168, 169, 172, 185 Finkelkraut, Alain, 111 Fischer, Eugen, 134, 135 Forced sterilizations, 133 Ford Pinto, 179, 249–251, 255 Forgiveness, 74, 75, 92 Foucault, Michel, 188, 190, 291 France, 22, 26, 105, 205, 270 Frank, Anne, 69 Frank, Hans, 88 Freedom, 5, 18, 22–24, 26, 28, 29, 40–43, 92, 103, 104, 109–114, 130, 149, 157, 210–215, 217, 218, 223, 224, 226, 235, 242, 263, 266–269, 274, 276, 277, 292 French revolution, 40, 45, 218, 223, 269 Functionalism/Functionalist, 61, 169 G Gekko, Gordon, 185 Genetics, 135, 155 Genocide, 19, 58, 59, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74–76, 125, 128, 129, 137, 140 Glucksmann, André, 5, 103, 113, 118 God, 21, 37, 39, 60, 63, 68, 87, 103–105, 108–114, 118, 136, 150, 218, 243 Goldhagen, Daniel, 19, 64, 66, 125, 137 Good, 7, 26, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 48–50, 63, 75, 86–92, 103–105, 107–111, 114–120, 131, 148, 153, 157, 175, 178, 180, 181, 187, 193, 205, 206, 209, 211, 212, 214, 215, 219, 221–223, 225, 226, 233, 236, 240–242, 244–247, 249, 253–255, 263–269, 271, 274–277, 280–284, 291

INDEX

Goodness, 110, 140, 219, 243, 265 Goodpaster, Kenneth, 171, 184 Google, 188, 189 Göring, Hermann, 39, 107, 108, 134 Götz, 109, 110, 113, 119 Greek city-state, 28, 212 guilt, 64, 66, 68, 75, 84, 92, 96, 116, 151, 237, 239, 241, 243 Gulag, 163 Gurion, Ben, 33 Gutman, Israel, 33 Gypsies, 130, 133, 134, 136

H Habermas, Jürgen, 48, 212, 275, 278 Halbwach, Maurice, 67 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 18, 45, 109, 219 Heidegger, Martin, 21, 43, 173, 210, 211, 290, 291 Hermeneutics, 48, 49, 206 Heydrich, Reinhard, 39, 134 Hierarchical, 50, 109, 142–145, 171, 215, 239 Hilberg, Raul, 19, 33, 34, 170 Himmler, Heinrich, 87 Hiroshima, 68, 149, 151, 153 Historical memory, 5, 57 Historicity, 210–213 Historikerstreit , 64, 66 History of the Holocaust, 67 Hitler, Adolf, 19, 22, 39, 59, 61, 68, 70, 86–90, 106–108, 112, 134, 136, 137, 145, 187, 188, 224–226, 235, 237, 239, 241, 271 Holocaust Industry, 71, 125, 152, 153 Holocaust Memorial Museum, 71 Holocaust remembrance, 61, 68, 71 Holocaust Survivor, 59, 67

301

Homer, 45, 219 Homo compensator, 174 Homo economicus , 169 Homo Sacer, 291 Homo sapiens, 112, 169 Horkheimer, Max, 173 Höss, Rudolf, 35, 87, 128 Human condition, 4, 19, 21, 27–29, 205, 206, 209, 220 Human dignity, 7, 10, 27, 28, 32, 42, 43, 45, 77, 84, 97, 108, 112, 136, 155, 157, 167, 193, 218, 219, 233, 254, 261, 263, 267 Humanistic management, 10 Humanity, 7, 10, 17–19, 25–31, 35, 38, 39, 41–43, 45–47, 65–67, 73, 74, 77, 84, 88, 91, 92, 97, 108, 110–113, 125, 127–130, 136, 138, 140, 149–151, 155, 157, 166–169, 174, 185, 193, 204, 205, 208–213, 215, 217–219, 221, 223, 225–227, 233, 242, 253, 261, 263–265, 267, 271, 281, 290, 291 Hussein, Saddam, 70, 106 Hyper-industrial society, 173 I IBM, 156, 187, 188 Ideology, 2, 6, 19, 24, 32, 33, 35, 37, 46, 61, 64, 65, 86, 91, 93, 105, 106, 114, 126, 128, 132, 136, 138, 140, 146, 155–157, 166, 169, 177, 192, 193, 205, 223–226, 240, 274, 291 Imagination, 6, 7, 25, 65, 146, 167, 168, 180, 219, 233, 234, 247, 253, 254 Imperialism, 23, 26, 32, 125, 166, 168, 176, 203, 220 Inability to think, 61, 91, 125, 166, 186, 235, 246

302

INDEX

Incompetence compensation competence, 6, 165, 172, 175, 176 Information Age, 156, 187 inhumanity, 60, 85, 89, 225 insociable sociability, 281 Institution, 1, 2, 4, 6, 30, 50, 51, 75, 76, 90, 95, 126, 139, 147, 148, 152, 155, 157, 165, 169, 171, 176, 181, 186, 203, 205, 209, 213, 214, 223, 234, 235, 237–240, 251, 254, 262, 264–270, 272, 275, 279, 283, 284, 292 Instrumental rationality, 2, 94, 120, 140, 166, 177, 192, 249, 292 Integrity, 96, 104, 120, 125, 126, 148, 152, 155, 171, 184, 185, 240, 244, 249, 254, 275, 278, 282, 283 International community, 65 Irony, 92, 108, 289 Ishiguro, Kazuo, 181 Islamic State, 106, 107, 114, 116, 117, 125, 163 Israeli court, 83 J Jaspers, Karl, 21, 36, 39, 48, 278 Jefferson, Thomas, 18, 40 Jensen, Henrik, 154 Jesus, 128, 271 Jewish Council, 36, 37, 69 Jewish identity, 21, 130 Jewish organizations, 34 The Jewish question, 20, 134 Jew, Jewish, 9, 17, 18, 20–23, 33–38, 47, 58, 59, 61–63, 67, 69, 86–89, 105, 112, 130–133, 135, 138, 140, 154, 204, 205, 225, 226, 235, 236, 289 Jonas, Hans, 21, 36, 105

K Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, 133–135 Kaltenbrunner, Ernst, 87 Kant’s political philosophy, 44, 47, 207, 217, 262, 274, 280 Kant, Immanuel, 7, 8, 44, 88, 89, 105, 204, 207, 218, 220, 242, 263, 265, 267, 277, 279 Katz, Steven, 59 Kelsen, Hans, 271 Kierkegaard, 243–245 Kingdom of ends, 264, 266, 268 Kojève, 22 Korea War, 150 Kosovo, 49, 71, 75, 116, 125, 154 L Labor, 22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 77, 129, 139, 153, 182, 189, 190, 213, 214, 221, 222 Laden, Osama bin, 70, 105–107 Lago, 128 Language, 7, 8, 27, 28, 30, 31, 35, 44, 48, 59, 62, 73, 85, 87, 89, 119, 170, 171, 174, 182, 187, 205–207, 209, 211, 212, 215, 216, 225, 246, 251, 281 Lanzmann, Claude, 58 Law, 7–9, 26, 30, 42, 51, 66, 84, 87, 88, 90, 133, 171, 175, 186, 214, 224, 225, 235, 237, 238, 242–246, 267–269, 271–275, 278, 279, 281–283 Law making, 274 Leaders, 3, 7, 20, 22, 24, 34, 35, 37, 63, 67, 69, 87, 88, 93, 94, 96, 106, 119, 134, 144, 148, 174–177, 192, 224–226, 233–235, 240, 241, 244, 250, 277, 292 Leadership, 4, 19, 33, 76, 92, 135, 146, 183, 227, 249, 252, 292

INDEX

Lebensraum, 26 Lefort, Claude, 46 Legal personhood, 186 Levi, Primo, 73, 74, 140 Libya, 49, 59, 71, 106, 116, 125 Life of the mind, 41, 42, 208–211, 217, 234, 262, 292 Lifton, Robert J., 135, 170 Lipstadt, Deborah, 61 Living dead, 73 Locke, John, 266 Lonely crowd, 24 Love of the world, 17, 47, 211 Luban, David, 171 Lucifer, 243, 292 Lucifer effect, 148 Luxemburg, Rosa, 20 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 62 M MacArthur, Douglas, 150 Machiavelli, 244 Majority, 172, 239, 266, 270, 271, 276, 284 Management, 4–7, 49, 50, 57, 75, 76, 85, 92, 93, 96, 141, 145, 146, 152, 153, 164, 165, 171, 174, 175, 182, 183, 203, 227, 234, 241, 243, 244, 248, 249, 251–253, 263, 273, 274, 277, 281, 283, 284, 290, 292 Marquard, Odo, 173–175 Marxism, 28 Marx, Karl, 18, 48, 109 Masses, 18, 24, 42, 61, 130, 138, 190, 226, 227 Mass murder, 35, 67, 128, 135, 170, 237 Medical eugenics, 6 Medical science, 76, 133, 135, 155 Mediocrity, 5, 30, 59, 83, 91, 108, 131, 203, 216

303

Memory, 30, 60–63, 65–67, 70, 91, 213, 245 Mengele, Josef, 70, 134 Mental models, 146, 251–253, 255 Merleau-Ponty, 211 Metaphor, 68, 95, 164, 182, 186, 211, 253 Microsoft, 188, 189 Milgram experiments, 146 Milgram, Stanley, 126, 141–146, 153, 170–172, 176, 177, 250 Minority, 23, 34, 72, 172, 239, 271, 272, 276 Modernity, 2, 31, 32, 40, 57, 76, 113, 115, 116, 119, 126, 137, 140, 149, 154–156, 163, 166, 175, 176, 221–224 Monster, 84, 118–120, 165, 168, 235 Montesquieu, 267, 269, 272, 273 Moral blindness, 1–8, 10, 21, 50, 60, 61, 80, 85, 92–97, 125–130, 132, 133, 137, 141, 142, 145, 148–156, 163–173, 176–178, 180–188, 191–193, 203, 204, 234, 240–245, 248, 250–255, 278, 283, 289–292 Moral conscience, 39, 76, 151, 152, 243, 244 Moral deafness, 3, 6, 165, 178–180, 192 Moral imagination, 10, 107, 171, 183, 234, 248, 249, 252, 253, 255, 264, 272 Moral muteness, 3, 6, 165, 178–180, 187, 192 Moral sensibility, 97, 129, 152, 157, 166–168, 180 Moral silence, 178, 179 Moral thinking, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 42, 49, 60, 61, 63, 77, 84, 91–93, 96, 97, 114, 126, 127, 136, 152, 156, 164, 166,

304

INDEX

169, 172–174, 176, 177, 179, 185, 192, 193, 220, 225, 227, 233–235, 240, 242–250, 254, 255, 262–264, 266, 267, 272, 274, 275, 277–279, 282–284, 289, 291–293 Moral vision, 171, 180 Morgenthau, Hans, 36 Müller-Hill, Benno, 133, 136 Mysticism, 60 N Naked life, 73 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 290 Narcissism, 63, 154, 185 NASA, 182, 250 Natality, 66, 210, 262 Nazi doctors, 135, 136 Nazi-Germany, 187 Nazism, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 32, 40, 45–48, 61, 63, 64, 67, 86, 106, 125, 135–138, 153, 156, 166, 167, 181, 182, 203, 205, 224, 245, 273, 290, 291 Neo-darwinian/neo-darwinism, 95, 186 Nestlé, 179, 249–252, 255 The New Yorker, 32, 83, 106, 203 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 18, 65, 240, 241, 243–245 Nihilism/nihilistic, 5, 25, 88, 103, 113–115, 117–120, 205, 223, 225 Nolte, Ernst, 64 Nuremberg trails, 85, 245 O Obedience, 2, 3, 6, 19, 60, 61, 88, 90, 93–95, 120, 127, 129, 136, 141–148, 152, 153, 155, 156, 167, 170, 176, 177, 179, 185,

191, 225, 227, 234, 237, 239, 240, 254, 278 Organization, 1–3, 5–8, 10, 19, 33, 34, 36, 50, 51, 75–77, 83–85, 88, 90, 92–97, 103, 104, 118–120, 126, 129, 137–139, 141–147, 153–155, 164–186, 190–193, 203, 218, 224, 225, 233–235, 237–240, 244, 248, 249, 251–255, 261–270, 272, 275, 277, 278, 289 Othello, 128 P Paine, Thomas, 18, 40 Palazzo, 180 Paradox, 62, 74, 90, 128, 132, 135, 151, 175, 180, 247, 274, 292 Pariah, 20, 21, 35, 59, 130–132 Personal responsibility, 9, 32, 38, 39, 75, 97, 150, 176, 235, 237–240, 243, 250 Phenomenological/phenomenology, 29, 48, 49, 178, 179, 183, 187, 191, 204, 205, 209–211 Philosophical anthropology, 28, 204, 209, 210, 220, 242 Philosophy of Management, 1, 4–7, 18, 19, 49, 50, 57, 76, 84, 96, 103, 104, 119, 126, 127, 164, 165, 204, 227, 242, 255, 283, 293 Pilate, Pontius, 87 Pity killings, 35, 87, 133 Plato, 18, 28, 30, 109, 206, 246, 292 Plurality, 4, 29–31, 38, 41–45, 75, 77, 92, 140, 157, 204, 206, 214–217, 219, 223, 227, 262, 264, 265 Poland, 71, 87, 134 Political anthropology, 4, 205, 209, 217, 262, 267

INDEX

Political authority, 204, 206, 223 Political ideology, 65, 105 Political practice, 7, 30, 42, 49, 205–208, 214, 215 Political thought, 8, 18 Postmodernism/Postmodernity, 115, 117, 119 Pot, Pol, 70, 71 Practical reason, 6, 204, 208, 215, 220, 265, 279, 280, 283 Prisoner’s dilemma, 139 Professional judgment, 7, 261, 262, 274, 278, 283 Prometheus Trap, 149 Psychoanalytical/psychoanalysis, 36, 135 Public administration, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 18, 165, 171, 181, 183, 191, 203, 204, 233, 244, 255, 263, 278, 289, 291 Public space, 28, 71, 206, 207, 209, 212, 214, 217, 221, 262 R Race ideology, 135 Racism, 23, 24, 26, 106, 130–132, 154, 156, 163, 182, 226 Radical evil, 1, 4, 5, 24–27, 37–41, 49, 50, 84, 85, 89–92, 105–108, 116, 118, 120, 127–129, 167, 204, 205, 209, 224–226, 242, 243, 283, 290 Raskolkov, 113 Rational choice, 139 Rationality, 2, 32, 44, 65, 72, 73, 84, 89, 91, 93–96, 113, 114, 117, 118, 126, 132, 137, 140, 152, 156, 170, 173, 177, 180, 187, 206, 207, 217, 218, 220, 224–227, 242–244, 247, 249, 250, 253, 262–267, 272, 280, 281, 284

305

Rawls, John, 277, 278 Reagan, Ronald, 70 Red Cross, 85 Reflective judgment, 8, 44, 157, 167, 219, 264, 268, 274, 278, 280, 281 Refugees, 17, 72, 105, 240, 291 Republic, 40, 223, 268 Republican, 7, 9, 17–19, 23, 40, 41, 45, 48, 72, 74, 193, 209, 215, 233, 261, 266–270, 273 Republican constitution, 157, 224 Respect for human person, 4 Revolution, 22, 29, 40, 41, 46, 109, 157, 220, 223, 224 Ricœur, Paul, 48, 212, 279 Richard III, 118, 119, 128 Rights, 22, 26, 43, 72, 96, 129, 132, 133, 144, 164, 189, 227, 269, 270, 274, 276, 282, 284 The right to have rights, 4 Robinson, Jacob, 37 Roman culture, 18, 109 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 214, 218, 263 Rwanda, 49, 59, 70, 71, 75, 116, 125, 154

S Sadat, Anwar, 70 Sadism, 38, 46, 140, 236 SA officers, 25 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 5, 103, 109, 113, 130 Schindler’s List, 77 Schindler, Oskar, 77 Scholem, Gerschom, 38 Self-awareness, 43, 168, 217, 262 Self-thinking, 42, 47, 92, 220, 227 Sense-making, 180, 251

306

INDEX

Sensus communis, 44, 45, 218, 263–265, 268, 275, 277, 280, 282, 283 Sentiment de l’humanité, 265, 266 September 11, 70, 105, 114, 117, 118, 163 Shakespeare, William, 118, 119, 128 Six Day War, 70 Smith, Adam, 250, 253 Socrates, 28, 242–244, 246, 247 Sonderkommando, 73 Sovjetunion /USSR, 64, 68 Spielberg, Steven, 58, 77 Spontaneity, 26, 38, 235 SS ideology, 192 SS-officers, 25, 129 Stakeholders, 93, 94, 96, 164, 177, 179, 192, 276 Stalinism, 23, 26, 32, 46, 125, 166, 224 Stalin, Joseph, 66, 106, 112, 224, 226, 241 Stanford prison experiment, 146, 148, 170 Stern, Günther, 21 Stiegler, Bernard, 172 “Stop and think”, 119, 246, 254, 292, 293 St. Paul, 178 Stupidity, 165, 172, 173, 176, 180, 246, 247 Sudan, 154 Sukowa, Barbara, 9 Superfluous, 25, 27, 38, 42, 106, 107, 128, 167, 227 Surveillance capitalism, 6, 165, 188–190 Sympathy, 119, 179, 252, 253 Syria, 49, 59, 70, 71, 75, 106, 114, 116, 154, 163 System, 1–3, 6, 9, 19, 21, 25, 26, 38, 59, 61, 85, 88, 89, 93–96,

107–109, 115–117, 119, 127, 129, 136, 139, 142–148, 154, 167–170, 175, 177–182, 185, 187, 190, 193, 203, 214, 218, 220, 224, 227, 235, 236, 238, 239, 241, 242, 245, 248–250, 254, 263, 270–276, 278–282

T Taste, 44, 47, 86, 217–221, 263–266, 268, 280 Technical rationality, 6, 23, 24, 106, 127, 129, 145, 168 Technology, 94, 117, 149, 151–156, 165, 171, 177, 187–190, 192, 274 Teleophathy, 171 Terrorism, 26, 71, 106, 117, 125, 163 Thales, 21 Theodicy, 5, 103–105, 113 Theoretical blindness, 290 Theresienstadt, 37 Thinking unlimited, 293 Thought-defying, 166, 235, 254 Thoughtlessness, 5, 7, 19, 25, 31, 33, 38, 41, 60, 89, 91, 92, 107, 108, 120, 128, 139, 152, 153, 167, 184, 185, 203, 204, 226, 246, 247, 251–255, 283, 292 Toft, Kristian Høyer, 180 Top managers, 2, 94, 177 Totalitarian bureaucracy, 6, 7 Totalitarian society, 6, 9, 27, 30, 60, 69, 157, 190, 203–205, 209, 216, 223, 226, 227, 239, 240, 267 Transparency, 5, 26, 103, 114, 274 Transparency of evil, 48 Tyranny, 23, 30, 106, 204, 214, 217, 221, 223, 225

INDEX

U Union Carbide, 248, 250–252, 255 USA, 23, 61, 67, 68, 95, 105, 109, 114, 151, 188, 205, 270, 290 Utilitarianism, 27 V Valéry, 211, 247 Vatican, 85 Verhagen, Rahel, 21 Victimization, 152, 154 Victims, 2, 9, 19, 24, 34–37, 58–60, 62, 64, 66–69, 71, 73–75, 77, 88, 93, 94, 107, 128, 129, 132, 133, 139, 140, 143, 145, 147, 153, 154, 167, 177, 182, 225, 235, 289 Vietnam, 46, 71, 153, 154 Violence, 2, 21, 26, 30, 31, 41, 97, 103, 109–114, 116, 118, 132, 139, 163–165, 205, 214–216, 221, 223, 236, 279, 281 Vita activa, 28–32, 40, 44, 47, 48, 72, 75, 204, 212–216, 218–224, 227, 263–265, 284 Vita contemplativa, 42 Volkswagen Diesel Gate, 191 von Trotta, Margarethe, 9 von Verschuer, Freiherr, 134 Vulnerability, 66, 96, 104, 120, 126, 152, 154, 155, 214 W Waldheim, Kurt, 70 Wall Street, 185 Wannsee conference, 31, 34, 62, 87, 134

307

Weber, Max, 216, 272 Weick, Karl, 251 Werhane, Patricia, 146, 171, 248–253, 255 Whistle-blowing, 148, 178, 179 Wickedness, 5, 25, 59, 66, 91, 92, 107, 108, 125, 246, 247, 292 Wiesel, Elie, 59 Work, 2, 4, 17, 19–21, 23, 25, 27–29, 31, 32, 35, 39–41, 44, 45, 47, 48, 57, 59, 62, 63, 65, 69, 77, 83, 86–88, 90, 94, 96, 104, 107, 112, 115, 129, 136–138, 141, 144, 164, 169–172, 177, 180, 185–187, 190, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, 213–215, 219–222, 224, 235–237, 247, 249, 264, 269, 276, 289, 291, 292 World citizen, 217, 219 World spectator, 65, 219, 264 World War II, 57, 59, 68, 133, 134, 205 X Xenophobia, 154 Y Yemen, 116 Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, 47 Z Zimbardo, Philip, 146–148, 170, 172, 176, 177, 250 Zionism, 21 Zuboff, Shoshana, 188