The views expressed in this piece are the personal views of the author, a professor at Northeastern, and do not reflect those of her department or the institution.
As students navigate a political landscape where complex moral questions arise daily — from debates about free speech and campus safety to questions about AI ethics, climate responsibility and economic inequality — the insights of Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish philosopher who wrote during the mid-20th century, can provide intellectual resources to navigate the political turbulence.
In March, when the College of Social Sciences and Humanities organized an event to discuss how various academic fields can help us understand this period of tremendous change in our political system, I reflected on what Arendt’s work reveals about our present moment.
Arendt is most well-known for her discussion about why ordinary people follow orders and rules they know to be immoral. She coined the idea of the “banality of evil,” which she used to describe Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi Party Schutzstaffel, or SS, officer who was single-handedly responsible for sending tens of thousands of people to die in Auschwitz.
What stood out for Arendt when examining Eichmann was that he was not a monster, nor was he full of hatred or malice — he was not the kind of person you would expect to do something like this. In fact, his most notable characteristic was that he was extraordinarily shallow and had, in Arendt’s words, “an authentic inability to think.”
She did not mean that Eichmann had, as we would call them today, executive functioning issues; he was perfectly capable of making plans and carrying out orders. Instead, Arendt arrived at the conclusion that Eichmann was unable to think. This is what led Arendt to one of her most famous claims: that evil was banal — you can commit evil on a gigantic scale without any kind of evil motivation, but simply because of a refusal to think.
Thinking, as Arendt defines it, is a habit of reflecting on experience and the world. It is a search for meaning and understanding that does not necessarily result in gaining “knowledge” or making an “impact” on the world. In fact, Arendt would not be offended if you called thinking “useless.”
But if you did call thinking useless, she would say that you do not understand the singular importance that thinking has in human life — especially as an inoculation from the banality of evil. For Arendt, thinking is a prerequisite for being able to judge right from wrong. It is an internal dialogue with ourselves and is precisely what Eichmann proved incapable of.
Because Eichmann couldn’t think, he readily accepted one set of rules for another when he was told to. He was willing to substitute the German-Christian morality that he was raised with for Nazi morality and all the evil it contained — “thou shalt not kill” became “thou shalt kill.” Eichmann refused to think about what this change actually meant, to judge whether he should make this change in the first place or to ethically consider his actions.
I found myself thinking about a similar change in this current moment, one having to do with the concept of empathy. The day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Bishop Mariann Budde spoke at a service where he was in attendance. She asked the president to have empathy for immigrants, transgender people and other marginalized groups. This led to swift backlash — not just against Budde, which was not surprising, but against the concept of empathy itself. Christian leaders told their followers to be sure to avoid the “sin of empathy.” Elon Musk instructed his followers to remember that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
There will no doubt be people who, like Eichmann, will nod and accept this new morality. They will suppress empathy when they see fear in people’s eyes and continue to ignore the suffering of those who are immigrants or transgender. Even if the people suffering include their friends and neighbors, they will not question this rule change or exercise their own judgement.
As students, you may encounter similar pressures to accept changing moral frameworks without question. In a time when influential figures are declaring empathy a “weakness” and independent thought a “sin,” it becomes more crucial than ever to engage in Arendt’s internal dialogue.
For Arendt, the antidote to this is thinking, a habit that has no practical purpose except to prepare us for moments like this.
Moving forward, what can we, as members of this university community, do? Arendt would encourage us to create spaces for genuine thinking — not just academic analysis, but reflective judgment. This also means three things: engaging openly with people who hold different perspectives, even those with whom you disagree; examining your own views and understanding why you hold them; and reflecting on world events even when you feel powerless to change them.
Most importantly, we must recognize that the habit of thinking, while seemingly “useless” in practical terms, is our strongest defense against the kind of moral substitution that enables cruelty and indifference to masquerade as duty and pragmatism — or even as virtue.
Serena Parekh is a distinguished professor of philosophy and an associate dean of faculty affairs. She can be reached at [email protected].
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