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Preparing for the NEH summer seminar for schoolteachers on the political theory of Hannah Arendt, I urge the summer scholars who will soon be in residence at UC-Davis to read Eichmann in Jerusalem<\/em> in advance. Although this book is more easily accessible than many other of Arendt\u2019s writing, its argument is nonetheless complex.<\/p>\n Eichmann in Jerusalem<\/em> is also among the most controversial of Arendt\u2019s works, not least because of the way she portrayed the character at the center of the trial. \u201cDespite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a \u2018monster, \u2018 but it was difficult indeed not to suspect he was a clown.\u201d (p. 54) What she saw in Eichmann was something she termed \u201cthe lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil<\/em>.\u201d (p. 252) And this banality was not limited to Eichmann but had become pervasive: \u201cThe trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.\u201d (p. 276) That the level of evil represented in genocide, a crime against the human condition itself, could become \u201cnormalized\u201d or banal, Arendt took to be the most horrifying conclusion one could drawn from the Holocaust.<\/p>\n The \u201cbanality of evil,\u201d this most frequently misunderstood of concepts, will be at the center of our discussion of Eichmann in Jerusalem.<\/em> Recently, the Israeli filmmaker, Ada Ushpiz, has made it the narrative anchor in her new documentary on Hannah Arendt: Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt.<\/em> The film can be seen in New York City at Film Forum, and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle\u2019s Monica. If you are in either area, I encourage you to see it. Check the schedule<\/a>; it might be playing nearer to you.<\/p>\n