Fall Seminar on "The Banality of Evil"
Please join me at Literary Arts in downtown Portland for a seminar on Hannah Arendt's important post-WWII work: Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil.
Sundays, September 17-October 8, 2017
5:30-7:30 p.m. (four meetings) Tuition: $140
In 1961, Jewish political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt traveled to Jerusalem to report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the mass deportation and extermination of Jews in World War II. Commissioned by The New Yorker, Arendt’s report was originally published in the magazine in three parts. Highly controversial at the time, her writing on the trial challenged the world to wrestle with the concept of evil and the possibility that evil is far more banal than we would like to think. In this seminar, we’ll read the subsequently published book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. In rich story-telling journalism, Arendt will guide us through an exploration of human psychology to ponder the inevitability, or probability, of violence–sometimes in the form of bureaucrats who believe they are doing nothing more than following orders. Like Orwell’s fictional work, Arendt’s non-fiction and philosophy is currently experiencing renewed collective curiosity and interest.
Reading List: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt (1963, Penguin Classics)