Arendt traced totalitarian susceptibility to fragmentation in modern lives

Evidence

Heidegger’s former lover and student Hannah Arendt would argue, in her 1951 study The Origins of Totalitarianism, that totalitarian movements thrived at least partly because of this fragmentation in modern lives, which made people more vulnerable to being swept away by demagogues. Elsewhere, she coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to describe the most extreme failures of personal moral awareness. The phrase attracted criticism, mainly because she applied it to the actively genocidal Adolf Eichmann, organiser of the Holocaust, who was guilty of a lot more than a failure to take responsibility. Yet she stuck by her analysis: for Arendt, if you do not respond adequately when the times demand it, you show a lack of imagination and attention that is as dangerous as deliberately committing an abuse. It amounts to disobeying the one command she had absorbed from Heidegger in those Marburg days: Think! — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 261

Categorization

• DEFINE: Competent orientation to Arendt’s banality of evil and the controversy over applying it to Eichmann.
• XREF: Bridges existentialist attention to moral responsibility debates; could connect to the reader’s interest in 20th-century totalitarianism. — connects to: Totalitarianism is inherently, not just contingently, connected to modernity — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 401; Fragmented modern lives make people vulnerable to totalitarian demagoguery. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 261; Totalitarian susceptibility persisted from technological and economic developments — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2029 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Fragmented modern lives make people vulnerable to totalitarian demagoguery. #expands (1.00) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 261
• Totalitarianism is inherently, not just contingently, connected to modernity #corroborates (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 401
• Totalitarian susceptibility persisted from technological and economic developments #expands (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2029
• Social fragmentation precedes and causes psychic fragmentation, not inner nature #qualifies (0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 793