The Banality of Evil

The Counter-Image of God in Nazi Logic

Ana Rubio-Serrano, Robert E Anderson

• Publisher: Babelcube Inc.
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781071594841
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

The aim of this book is not only to show the historical Auschwitz but the Auschwitz that has taken root in human beings: first, the inability to distinguish between good and evil; second, the obsession for reaffirming one's own identity as uniquely human and third, the impossibility of thinking about otherness. Even today, Auschwitz persists as a legacy, of which our world is both executor and heir. Auschwitz is, therefore, the starting point, but not the endpoint. This book is a study that shows the model of the anti-human that is born of Nazi anthropology, contrary to the model of man revealed by Christian anthropology.
A humanistically oriented theological and philosophical examination of the "banality of evil" within the universe of the Nazi extermination camps. 

NOTES

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^[1] Explanation of the archive number. Example: IMT02-T001.

02: Volume 2.

T: Page of the text.

001: Page number in original book.

The parenthesis that follows the address of the web page indicates the date on which the document was consulted online. Example: NMT01-T037 (Nuremberg Military Tribunal, vol. 1, p. 37), https://phdn.org/archives/www.mazal.org/

^[2] Publication containing the 42 series of volumes covering the Nuremberg Trials of: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Robert Ley, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walter Funk, Hjalmar Schacht, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Martin Bormann, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Hans Fritsche. The trial took place between November 14, 1945 and October 1, 1946 and, as can be seen, only leaders of the Nazi regime were tried. This trial was conducted with judges and prosecutors from the United States, Great Britain, the Provisional Government of France, and the Republics of the Soviet Union. The whole process was carried out in four languages (English, French, Russian and German) with simultaneous translations. This series of volumes is known as the "Blue Series" and can be found online on the website of The Nizkor Project and The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.

^[3] Publication of the proceedings that took place between October 1946 and March 1949. It focused on many of the material perpetrators of war crimes. The judges and prosecutors were exclusively American. All documents were drawn up in English and German and the trial was conducted simultaneously in both languages. The fifteen books that make up this collection are known as "Green Series" and can be found online at the website of Mazal Library.

^[4] Collection of documents and guidance materials collected and prepared by teams of American and British prosecutors for submission to the Nuremberg International Tribunal. These documents consist mainly of official papers found in German government and Nazi party archives, diaries and letters from prominent Germans, and confiscated reports and orders. All of this shows a global vision of the Nazi world and can be found online at The Nizkor Project and The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.

Documents pertaining to the activities of Nazi organizations, particularly the SS and Security Police, can be found online under construction at the Mazal Library.

^[5] Documents pertaining to the activities of Nazi organizations, particularly the SS and Security Police, can be found online under construction at the Mazal Library

^[6] The term "Auschwitz" has two meanings: the first as an extermination camp, and the second as a symbol of all the barbarism perpetrated by the Nazis (the case at hand), which has given rise to famous expressions like this one: "Can you believe in God after Auschwitz?".

^[7] I take the meaning of the word "face" from Levinas. That is to say, the face is the way the other is presented, overcoming the idea of the other in me. Therefore, the other is not a question of knowledge and, as the result, not apprehensible either. In the words of Levinas, "the face is significance, and significance without context. I mean by this that the other, in the rectitude of his face, is not a character in a context. We are usually a character: you are a professor at the Sorbonne, the Vice President of the Council of State, the So-and-so, everything that is in your passport, the way you dress, the way you present yourself. And all meaning, in the usual sense of the term, is relative to such a context: the meaning of something depends, in your relationship, on something else. Here, on the contrary, the face is meaning, by itself. You are you" (E. Levinas, Ética del Infinito [Ethics of the Infinite], Madrid: Visor, 1991, p. 80).

^[8] I take "Kingdom" as meaning the German word Reich, as opposed to "Kingdom of God". This term also means "Empire" in German.

^[9] Birth breaks the continuity of time. To be born is a process — that develops from birth to death — through which man seeks to "become"; in which the born is pronounced as an identity through a chain of actions and novelties. As a consequence of this, and according to Joan-Carles Mèlich, "the genuine action, the authentic human acting, is thus possible only in a scenario of plurality, that is to say, of equality and distinction among men ... Because we can understand each other, we are their equals; and because we can be capable of action and discourse to understand each other, we are also different" (F. Bárcena — J.C. Mèlich, La educación como acontecimiento ético. Natalidad, narración y hospitalidad [Education as an Ethical Event. Childbearing, Storytelling and Hospitality], Barcelona: Paidós, 2000, p. 67). "Through action and speech," — Hannah Arendt says —, "men show who they are, reveal their unique and personal identity, and make their appearance in the human world." (H. Arendt, La condición humana [The Human Condition], Barcelona: Paidós, 1993, p. 203).

^[10] "The ethical self is subjectivity to the precise extent that it prostrates itself before the other, sacrificing its own freedom, the most primordial call of the other. For me, the freedom of the subject is not the first or highest value. The heteronomy of our response to the human other, or to God as the absolute other, precedes the autonomy of our subjective freedom. As soon as I recognize that, as "I", I am responsible, I accept that my freedom is preceded by an obligation to the other" (Levinas, Ética del Infinito, 211-212).

^[11] J. M. Coll, Filosofía de la relación interpersonal [Philosophy of Interpersonal Relationships], vol. I, Barcelona: PPU, 1999, p. 40.

^[12] "Means Used by the Nazi Conspirators in Gaining Control of the German State (Part 4 of 55)", Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, vol. I, c. VII, p. 191 (doc. 2771-PS; US State Department, National Socialism, published by US GPO, 1943. Vol V, p. 417), www.nizkor.org (11/25/2002).

^[13] B. Bettelheim, Le coeur conscient [The Conscious Heart], Paris: Laffont, 1972, p. 309. Quoted by T. Todorov, in Frente al límite [Facing the Limit], Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1991, p. 186.

^[14] Todorov, Frente al límite, 186.

^[15] G. Sereny, Au fond des ténèbres, de l'euthanasie à l'assassinat de masse: un examen de conscience [In the Depths of Darkness, From Euthanasia to Mass Murder: An Examination of Conscience], Paris: Denoël, 1975, p. 215.

^[16] D. Le Breton, "Le sacré: le visage et la shoah" [The Sacred: The Face and the Shoah], in Des visages, Essai d'antropologie [Faces, An Essay in Anthropology], Paris: Métailé, 1992, p. 283.

^[17] E. Levinas, Totalidad e infinito, ensayo sobre la exterioridad [Totality and Infinity, an Essay on Exteriority], Salamanca: Sígueme, 1977, pp. 207-214.

^[18] Ibíd, p. 227: "The very order of the human implies brotherhood and the idea of the human race. It is radically opposed to the conception of humanity united by similarity, of a multiplicity of families that came out of the stones thrown by Deucalion over his back and that, because of the struggle of selfishness, ended up in a human city".

^[19] The ethics of the face is an ethics that comes from Judaism — Go...

Table of contents

• Abbreviations
• Auschwitz: The Kingdom of the anti-creation man
• Depersonalization contrary to the "face"
• The suffering of the other as (un)useful
• The denial of life, the denial of death
• II.CRITICISM OF NAZI NEOPAGAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Evil, sin, reconciliation of victims / victimizers
• On the origin of evil: Christian theology of victims versus Nazi ontological dualism
• Personal sin and structural sin in the Nazi system
• Compassionate solidarity and victim-perpetrator reconciliation
• Man the "maker", a cosmo-logical "producer".
• The hiddenness of God, freedom of divine man-freedom.
• Bibliography
• Germany and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). Significant dates
• Notes