The banality of evil?
Not a bit of it. He was undeniably charismatic. The sort of man you’d have noticed no matter what he was wearing, with or without the patriarchal beard. A devout Muslim (not a good one), he never claimed to be a prophet, but to us he seemed to play the part, and he definitely looked it. No one doubted his sincerity or claimed that his monstrous zeal, hateful as it was, disguised a shabbier vice. There was nothing shabby about him. He was grand, mysterious; not pure evil, perhaps, but pure and evil at the same time.
Now that he’s dead, Al Qaeda appears to be what it was all along: just another terrorist organization, distinguished only by the scale of its success, not by the unique nature of its motivations. Its grievances are no more metaphysical, and no less historical, than those of the IRA (for example). Osama bin Laden’s death robs his movement of its satanic glamour. So long as we had his face to look at, we could imagine, as his followers did, that the conflict was between innocence and absolute evil. For them, it was martyrs versus decadent kafirs; for us, tolerant, life-affirming moderns versus primitive, self-loathing nihilists. Now we’re back where we started, left with politics and the failure of politics, our desire for security and peace (in that order) and their desperate rage. There can be no excuse for what they’ve done, or what they’re still trying to do. But terrorists are no exception to the rule: everyone has his reasons. Knowing that Al Qaeda’s reasons must be bad ones because of their effects is no substitute for knowing what they are.
The IRA do have the metaphysical glamor of the Fenian dead, which they systematically exploited, even tossing in Catholic iconography and a dash of up-to-date liberation theology as well. Osama may just now be entering on his phase of metaphysical glamor as a Martry.
“we could imagine, as his followers did, that the conflict was between innocence and absolute evil. For them, decadent kafirs versus martyrs; for us, tolerant, life-affirming moderns versus primitive, self-loathing nihilists. Now we’re back where we started, left with politics and the failure of politics, our desire for security and peace (in that order) and their desperate rage. There can be no excuse for what they’ve done, or what they’re still trying to do. But terrorists are no exception to the rule: everyone has his reasons. Knowing the reasons must be bad ones because of their effects is no substitute for knowing what they are.”
You come close to recognizing that several of these sentences can apply to Bush and Blair too. “There can be no excuse for what they’ve done… Their reasons must have been bad ones because of their effects.”
Interesting, in light of the post title, to ponder Arendt’s approval of Eichmann’s execution: “We find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.”
Here is the problem with the preemptive justice. It is not the presumption of innocence or the trial by peers, but depriving him of his right to confront his accusers. That is when we might have learned his reasons. Perhaps by his behavior rather than his declarations, though lawyers often limit both. Straw men, confusions, delusions, irrationality and madness would abound, but there might at least have been a chance to find whatever truth there was in what motivated him.
I guess that was not as important as eliminating the threat, but it is still our loss.
We have also committed mass murder and torture and as long as we refuse to acknowledge that as evil then we too are as blinded by ideology and part of the benality of evil that he and his terrorist organiztion is.That when we blow the arms and legs off of countless men women and children is somehow less evil if we use the phrase democracy or freedom when we do it then when he uses his self justifying words is also an aspect of the banality of evil. That his system of belief is less just then ours speaks to a disordered or misguided thinking but his acts of murder in defense of that belief system are in themselves no more evil then our acts of murder in the defense of our beliefs.
“We have also committed mass murder and torture and as long as we refuse to acknowledge that as evil then we too are as blinded by ideology and part of the benality of evil that he and his terrorist organiztion is.”
This is moral equivalence of the worst sort.
For those calling for Mr. Bin Laden to be tried, the values you are upholding presume that HE shares them. He did not. He rejected the very values you are trying to enforce; this is the point of the Arendt line to me: your actions have exhibited such a fundamental rejection of the basis of civilized community that you must be excluded. I think Catholic moral theology allows for this view.
Mr. Landry,
That is not the point of the Arendt line. Eichmann was executed after a trial. Arendt was not arguing that he should have been shot on the spot where he was captured rather than tried.
I’m not presuming to know what values he shared or didn’t share with civilized people.I know he was a mass murderer.I know we too [our military] have committed mass murder and torture.You beg the question when you claim that because it is a given that we are civilized then our acts of mass murder are not equivelent to his.The self serving rhetoric-we good ,he bad- to distance ourselves from our acts of torture and mass murder and begging the question concerning him; he’s bad [his values are not ours] therefore his acts of mass murder impune him, are a way to legitimize torture and mass murder when we do it and deligitimize it when done to us.We may in fact be civilized and he may in fact be uncivilized but regardless ,when we are murdering and torturing people the fact that we come from a place of civilized values does not and cannot take away from the fact that we are mass murderers and torturers.If Osama’s values are uncivilized that too is not relevant to the fact that he is a mass murderer.He comes from where he comes from value wise and we come from where we come value wise but if we’re both committing mass murder and tortures then we are morally equivelent in those actions.We need more moral equivelency when we talk about all the arms and legs blown off of men ,women and children by people who call themselves “civilized”and under cover of being civilized and in juxtaposition to our claim that his values are uncivilized and because his values are uncivilized ,we escape acountability and deserve to escape accountability for being mass murderers and torturers.That is the 21st centruy banality of evil.
“He comes from where he comes from value wise and we come from where we come value wise but if we’re both committing mass murder and tortures then we are morally equivelent in those actions.We need more moral equivelency when we talk about all the arms and legs blown off of men ,women and children by people who call themselves “civilized”and under cover of being civilized and in juxtaposition to our claim that his values are uncivilized and because his values are uncivilized ,we escape acountability and deserve to escape accountability for being mass murderers and torturers.That is the 21st centruy banality of evil.”
No, unfortunately what this is the worst kind of moral relativism that I’ve read in some time. I’m pretty willing to stand by the proposition that there is a QUALITATIVE difference between the misguided American foreign policy initiatives of the past and cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent people on a fall day in midtown Manhattan. I think such would be obvious, to quote Ross Perot, “to the brain dead”.
And i take the point of the Eichman quote NOT to be about the trial, but that some human actors, by their actions, reject, fundamentally, the very core of what it means to be a civilized society.
Interesting post.
I have seen interviews with those who briefly met Osama bin Laden in his earlier years. One was his sister-in-law and another an acquaintance. The first question that is asked of them is “What was Osama like”? And the answer first given in a split second, right away is “Very religious”. Clearly, that is what he exuded. When they say that, I think what they mean is not that he practiced all the rituals, they mean that he had a power and presence that was immediately recognizable. These kinds of people are actually rare but you know them when you see them. He was one. At the same time, he was very cruel. His son told some pretty awful stories of how he trained them in camps. He became so consumed with hate and rage that he lost his way and damaged a lot of people.
We think we live in a rational, secular age but the true religious person is immediately recognizable and they have a power all their own given by God. It is almost like we have a sixth sense about it. Yet, they all have human rationality and human reason and how they use this grace is ultimately how they will be judged.
For religiously inclined people, that is the lesson to take away from this.
I am as critical as many of the Vatican but I really appreciate their moral leadership when they said that this is a time to reflect and pray.
Paul had it right. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
No, unfortunately what this is the worst kind of moral relativism that I’ve read in some time. I’m pretty willing to stand by the proposition that there is a QUALITATIVE difference between the misguided American foreign policy initiatives of the past and cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent people on a fall day in midtown Manhattan
If our misguided foreign policy initiative was to invade a country,Iraq, that had no connection to the act that we were avenging with the calling card of “shock and awe”, the QUALITATIVE difference was probably lost on the witnesses of that assault. Bin Laden’s goal was to startle us out of our complacency to the knowledge that thre are real world consquences to our foreign policies. Our goal was to reassert our belief that there are not. Your assertion of a QUALITATIVE difference seems like the chauvinistic standard that has been used throughout history to justify OUR moral superiority over THEM no matter who they or we are.
“Bin Laden’s goal was to startle us out of our complacency to the knowledge that thre are real world consquences to our foreign policies.”
So according to your tortured moral analysis, we should owe Mr. Bin Laden a debt of gratitude rather than justice for his actions?
So according to your tortured moral analysis, we should owe Mr. Bin Laden a debt of gratitude rather than justice for his actions?
We owe Bin Laden nothing. He is a mass murderer after all. A moral people can find contrition through the marketplace of ideas and honest introspection. The political forum will adjust our policies one way or the other over time. Yet we should never simply elevate ourselves as the superior culture without doing a careful and sincere analysis of ourselves and the other. Our instincts always tell us that the familiar is correct but the other culture did not rise full blown without their own progression of ideas. The presumed superiority of one and primitivism of another does not justify mass murder or torture on either side. We are responsible for our own actions. When Jesus judges each of us individually , we will not be graded on a curve.
“The presumed superiority of one and primitivism of another does not justify mass murder or torture on either side.”
These are words YOU are using, or at least attempting to put into the mouths of others. I have seen no one saying America is superior to other “primitive” cultures. I have seen people saying what OBL did was a great evil (I assume as a Christian its ok if I use the word evil?).
it’s inherent in the word “qualitative”that we are morally superior and therefore when we commit mass murder and torture our actions are not evil wheras because he is morally inferior when he commits mass murder or torture his actions are evil.
“it’s inherent in the word “qualitative”that we are morally superior and therefore when we commit mass murder and torture our actions are not evil wheras because he is morally inferior when he commits mass murder or torture his actions are evil.”
But you’re lumping in a host of actions, policies, judgments without making any necessary distinctions, which are the hallmark of moral analysis. When I use the word qualitative, I use in reference to a particular set of actions: OBL’s acts towards us, and our acts toward him. You seem to lump them all together, as if our acts to him were basically the same as his planned mass murder. That is moral equivalence of the worst kind.
Moreover, it is basic Catholic moral theology that some acts are so evil as to be qualitatively different in nature from others. So to suggest that we cannot make any such distinctions is, to my ears, a rejection of this basic moral tenent.
When I use the word qualitative, I use in reference to a particular set of actions: OBL’s acts towards us, and our acts toward him. You seem to lump them all together, as if our acts to him were basically the same as his planned mass murder. That is moral equivalence of the worst kind.
I am not any more a Muslim than you are and I do not pretend to know the full evolution of his thinking, but what I do know is that Osama Bin Laden went to his death believing that he was not the one who started this. Eichman may have been purely evil because his atrocities were intended for the furtherance and enhancement of his master race without regard for the humanity of any other. Even if OBL appeared to approach that level, he came to his position as a reaction to centuries of colonial overlords followed by the substitution of local-strong-man-tyrants who were put in their position by outside forces in order to enhance the interest of those outside, Western, interests. At its core Al Qaeda and OBL believed that they were the leaders of an independence movement. We put the Shah of Iran back on his thown after his father was overthrown by a nationalist revolutionary who was not allied with our interests. We supported Sadam Hussein before we turned against him. When he gassed his own people, he was still our friend and we squashed the moral outrage that the world wanted to bring against him at that time. It was not in our interest yet but we regenerated the ourage when it served us later. We can hide behind the fact that many of the atrocities done by our agents were not directly our fault. We can excuse ourselves from the word “evil”. Yet we should not claim our higher moral ground so proudly when we willingly set ourselves up as facilitators Yes, you may, as a Christian, use the word “evil” but don’t be surprised when someone thinks that you are advocating a new crusade against Islam and cites your word as a provocation. When you are told that they hate us because of our freedoms, think about the fact that the compound where OBL was living was growing marijuana along with their potatoes and cabbages.
Hey there Rose-Ellen,
I’ve been following your comments and I think I’ve understood your perspective (and there are aspects of it with which I’m sympathetic), but you lost me with the last bit about pot and cabbages. Can you connect the dots on that for me? Thanks and Cheers.
but you lost me with the last bit about pot and cabbages. Can you connect the dots on that for me? Thanks and Cheers.
We have been told that they hate us for our freedoms and that this is the only reason that they attacked us on that beutiful and sunny morning while we were minding our own business. They don’t hate us for our freedoms. They hate us for our intrusion on their world, culture, and holy places. We put bases in Saudi Arabia so that we can oversee our interests in their oil and politics. The fact that OBL was growing marijuana in the compound does not affirm that they are anti-freedom but suggests that they enjoy their leisure. A little relaxation, perhaps, after a hard day of terror[as our own mass murdering soldiers and torturers might be want to do]. What is freedom, after all, than the lack of fear?