Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1964 lecture, published 2003
- Form
- Essay
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 30 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendResponsibility and JudgmentSchocken Books, 2003Jerome Kohn's collection of Arendt's late essays on moral questions, where this lecture is printed.
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A lecture Arendt gave in 1964 in the wake of the controversy over her book on the Eichmann trial. She rejects the idea of collective guilt, insisting that guilt is personal while responsibility can be political, and asks how ordinary people under Nazi rule could have refused to participate. The cog in the machine defence fails, she argues, because courts try persons, not systems. Those who did not go along were not the most educated or moral but those who asked themselves whether they could live with what they had done.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
