The Path To The Banality Of Evil Summary

Project Narrative This project will focus on two primary texts of Hannah Arendt; "The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man" and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, while comparing their core theories to main ideologies of Chinese philosophy. In The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man," Arendt discusses the situation of stateless people after World War I. She presents how the Minority Treaties signed by The League of Nations illustrate that human rights are tied with nationality and citizenship, thus there are no longer inalienable rights for human beings (Origins of Totalitarianism, page). According to Arendt, this situation arose from totalitarian governments, which differ from other domination and oppression forms by surpassing vast populations and not merely political opponents. She argued that during the World War II, totalitarianism in Germany was not only focused of on eradicating Jews, but it focused on systematic
He starts with the first aspect that in modern society humans are expected to meet certain requirements in order to be part of the society, and if they do not meet those requirement they need to be removed. This notion "has provided legitimacy to such acts of violence or evil as genocide" (Feng, 1). Second, he uses a metaphor of a machine to describe modern politics, as in order to operate it creates thoughtlessness workers who become indispensable part of the machine itself. His third aspect is that "political issues become technical or administrative issues that require no need for public debates, thus, an independent, critical public has morphed into a mass under manipulation, hence, collapse yet another barrier against the fire of the banality of evil on its way" (Feng, 1). Feng supports Arendt's argument that evil became banal by structural forms of the modern society and