Baumann and Arendt's Exploration and Reflections on the Holocaust

In Liu Qing's Lecture Notes on Western Modern Thought, some of the views of Sigismund Baumann and Hannah Arendt are introduced, and because of their short length and the focus of attention is basically the same, they are included in the same article, and their views are more consistent: emphasizing the preservation of human nature as a human being, in order to avoid being used and committed evil.

Bowman: Never forget that the person in front of you is a person

Entering the third part of the book, although the author Liu Qing calls it "the third chapter", it is more appropriate to call it a part for the sake of narrative convenience. This part has penetrated into the realistic thinking of the 20th century, the first of which is the emergence of Germany before World War II, and the Holocaust of the Nazis, which is undeniable that this is also a particularly large event in human history.

When modern intellectual circles discuss the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, the mainstream has two views, one is accidentality, and the other is to meet abnormal people. They have a common feature in that they isolate the massacre of Jews in Nazi Germany from modern society and modern civilization. These thoughts are not unfamiliar to us, just like when encountering some problems, they will be attributed to a certain person, which is conducive to quickly resolving disputes and reaching consensus.

But this approach is not conducive to summarizing lessons learned and making it more difficult to find the truth. The British sociologist and thinker Sigismund Baumann has a more profound discussion of the Holocaust, and in the "Lecture Notes on Western Modern Thought" of Liu Qing, "Is the Holocaust Because of Madness" an in-depth and simple exposition.

Bauman believes that it is the modern society that can cause the Holocaust. His argument is like Berlin and other thinkers in the book, the rational thinking and bureaucracy of modern society prevail all over the world, turning people into machines, and many people have unconsciously become a "screw" in society, losing humanity without knowing it.

Under the operation of the huge modern machine, everyone involved in the Massacre did not consider themselves executioners, some thought that they "only filled out twenty forms today," and some people felt that they had only handed out a few bullets. The behemoth of the strict division of labor made the people involved in the killings not realize that they were the murderers, and in this way, 6 million people were killed.

Massacres of this scale make the murderer unaware that they are killing, and the person who is killed unaware that he is about to die, which can only be done in a modern society where science and technology are highly developed and rationality prevails. However, although the car will suffer much more casualties than the horse-drawn carriage in case of an accident, few people will choose to travel in the carriage. For how to prevent the emergence of similar modern tragedies, Bauman gave a prescription: modern people should adhere to an uncompromising, unconditional sense of morality, and maintain a moral perception of others. Put simply: Never forget that the person in front of you is a person.

Arendt: Robots that have lost the ability to think independently contribute to the holocaust

After Baumann, Liu Qing next introduced the thinker Hannah Arendt, who was a bit special, who was a witness to the atrocities of Nazi Germany, and after fleeing to the United States, he did a deep study and reflection on this phenomenon, and she had a word that is very popular now: the evil of mediocrity.

But the word was mistranslated, or inaccurate. Liu Qing believes that it should be called "the mediocrity of evil." Arendt proposed two key words to describe nazi atrocities, one is "extreme evil" and the other is "evil banality." ”

The Nazi motives for the massacre of Jews were completely different from those of previous eras, and could be said to be almost unselfish and exclusively harmful. Simply put, the Nazis did not treat Jews as "people" and excluded them from the category of "people.". This is the extreme evil of the initiator.

There are only plotters, no executors, and the Holocaust cannot happen, and during the interrogation of Eichmann, a senior Nazi official after World War II, Arendt discovered from his bland justification another kind of evil, the mistranslation of the evil of mediocrity, that is, the mediocrity of evil.

To say that it is mediocre, because it is everywhere in modern society, it can be said that it is the alienation of science and reason to a certain extent, and modern society turns man into the screws of huge machines, and the screws play their role, and the killing machine turns.

How to avoid becoming a screw yourself, not to be unconscious in the killing? Liu Qing believes that people should maintain the ability to think independently. Liu Qing's words are easy to say, but it is difficult to do, it requires many prerequisites and certain knowledge, and very few can be done. (xvii)

3. Persist in independent judgment

Liu Qing's second introduction to Arendt is "How not to become a bad guy," or it begins with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, starting with the trial of Adolf Eichmann by the International Tribunal, who was the top brass of Nazi Germany and the main person in charge of the implementation of the "final plan" in the Holocaust.

At his trial, Eichmann used his eruditional strengths to defend himself, citing some of Kant's famous quotes as arguments, which were personable and heartbreaking. Arendt was not fooled by Eichmann's superficiality, pointing out that he was a "man who had lost the ability to think," like a machine, that created extreme evil.

Eichmann's justification was that he obeyed the Fuehrer's orders, obeyed the laws of the day, and was in line with Kant's philosophy. In short, full of empty words and clichés, the use of gorgeous appearance packaging, this kind of person is not uncommon in daily life, memorizing the clichés to the fullest, speaking to the beat, but without their own deeply thought-out independent judgment. This is what Arendt is saying about his loss of the ability to think.

The bureaucracy of modern society turned people into screws, nazi Germany stole the common sense of "can not kill" into a new moral law of "as long as it is for the sake of racial interests, you can kill", a series of plans were pushed aside, people were involved in it, lost the ability to think, and lost the ability to judge independently, and the Holocaust became a matter of course, must be done, and was related to the rise and fall of the world.

In the article on how to avoid becoming a bad person to think and explore, in the tide of modern society, to maintain the ability of personal independent judgment is very difficult, Liu Qing in the text proposed to maintain "get along with themselves, talk to their own tendencies," which may be often said to be the three provinces of my body, do not lose your nature. Coupled with the blessing of moral integrity, the ethic of "preferring to be wronged oneself rather than doing injustice" can avoid becoming a bad person or an accomplice to the murderer. (xviii)