Hannah Arendt: on judgment and responsibility

Abstract

This article considers the relevance of Hannah Arendt’s writing on responsibility and judgment for legal academics. It begins by providing a summary of Arendt’s report on the Eichmann trial, focusing in particular on the gradual shift in her thinking from theorising evil as radical to something that is banal. Following this, I connect Arendt’s thinking on judgment with her writing on plurality and what it means to keep company with oneself. I contend that Arendt’s most important contribution to moral thinking was the disenchantment of evil from its religious legacy. Finally, I consider the continued relevance of Arendt’s warning about the risks mass technological society poses for the capacity of human beings to think and make reflective judgments. These uniquely human characteristics need to be protected, if we are to guard against the rise of inverted totalitarianism and the reduction of human beings to homo oeconomicus.