The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons. Within the conceptual framework of these considerations we could say that wrongdoers who refuse to think by themselves what they are doing and who also refuse in retrospect to think about it, that is, go back and remember what they did (which is teshuvah or repentance), have actually failed to constitute themselves into somebodies. By stubbornly remaining nobodies they prove themselves unfit for intercourse with others who, good, bad, or indifferent, are at the very least persons.
- Lecture read in 1965 and 1966, in Responsibility and Judgment, 2003, ISBN 0-8052-4212-0, pages 111-112
Thomas Merton: "Adolf Eichmann, Sanity and Normality"
Hannah Arendt
Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt
The essence of totalitarianism is total depersonalization.
Murder is not murder.
Murder is vermin extermination.
Hannah Arendt's quotes about evil.
No comments:
Post a Comment