汉娜·阿伦特

想看此片已是许久，对于汉娜·阿伦特，一直有着深厚的兴趣。从极权主义的起源一书的出版到平庸之恶观点的提出，汉娜·阿伦特总是给予我敏锐深刻和强硬不妥协的印象。正好深圳有个德国电影展，恰好有此片，于是毫不犹豫地订票观看。

整个影片应该说是拍得比较闷，而且字幕的翻译也有些问题。如果事前对于汉娜·阿伦特缺乏了解，对于艾希曼审判缺乏了解的话，在观影过程中会显得比较吃力。现场观众的反应也说明了此点，大部分观众在大部分时间里都有些昏昏欲睡的感觉，只是到了最后阿伦特在课堂中的激情演说，才调动起部分观众的情绪，甚至伴随着课堂上的掌声，也有观众鼓起掌来。

客观而言，此片还是较为准确地还原了阿伦特当时的生活。作为一部德国影片，既有着德国影片硬与闷，也具有德国影片的明晰与冷峻。该片注重观点的交锋，而对趣味性重视不够。影片对于汉娜·阿伦特，只聚焦于其一生中很短一个时期，即以色列对于纳粹艾希曼审判，她发表文章为艾希曼辩护，从而引起轩然大波。影片只是通过几个闪回，将其一生的思想与行为进行了回顾。导演并不关注阿伦特个人的生活，甚至对于她与其老师海德格尔的关系，也只是在镜头前一闪而过。而是花了相当的笔墨，突出展现了汉娜·阿伦特喜欢思考与毫不妥协的性格。

艾希曼是个恶名昭彰的纳粹罪犯，负责屠杀犹太人的最终方案，被称为“死刑执行者”。很多犹太人对其恨之入骨，在耶路撒冷审判之时，为防被杀，他的前面装着防弹玻璃，也就是阿伦特所称的玻璃盒子。其实对于整个的纳粹德国来说，艾希曼绝对只是一个小人物。在审判之中，他也不承认自己所犯之罪，他认为他的一切行为只是在执行命令。他真诚地信奉着纳粹的思想，坚定地相信领袖所做的一切都是正确的。因此在执行命令时，也是不假思索毫不犹豫地执行。在他的心目中，并未将犹太人当作人，而只是杀人机器所需要吞噬的原料。在他执行任务之时，他已非正常之人，他失去了思考的能力，失去了正常人的情感，而是异化成为一台机器。

汉娜·阿伦特正是据此而为他辩护。艾希曼所犯下的当然是滔天大罪，毕竟六百万犹太人或多或少因他而死去，即使直接死于他手下的也不少。但阿伦特并不认为他应该承担被指控的责任，将其带至法庭上审判也并不公正。这样并不符合对于法庭来说最为重要的正义原则。艾希曼杀人，并非是他与所杀之人有着直接的利益关系，也非他仇视这些他所杀之人，他与这些被杀的犹太人素昧平生。他杀他们是因为要执行命令，他相信元首的话，觉得杀死这些犹太人有利于纳粹事业，有利于德国的生存与发展。

在执行命令之时，他不会去思考自己所行之事是否正义，更不会去质疑元首的命令是否有问题，而且由于没有思考，也没有了正常人内心中固有的善恶判断。艾希曼只是一个杀人机器，他按照体制或者制度的指令，机械而无情地杀死犹太人。只要这种制度不改，将谁放到那个位置上，都会执行杀人的命令，只是程度的不同而已。因此艾希曼所犯下的罪愆，并非个人的罪愆，而是制度之罪，是纳粹那种邪恶的思想或者主义带来的罪愆。

由此，阿伦特提出了她的著名观点，认为艾希曼所犯下的罪行，并非极端之恶，而是平庸的恶，是在邪恶体制之下，每个小人物都可能犯下的恶。艾希曼并非大奸大恶之人，从其法庭上的表现来看，他也是一个彬彬有礼之人。他也不愚蠢，喜欢康德的哲学，并自称以康德哲学来作为自己行事准则。他为人夫为人父，恪守着自己应尽的责任，在家人的眼里完全可能是个完美的儿子、丈夫或者父亲。如果将他放到一个正常的社会，他会是个守法的好公民，也许还会是社会的中坚。不幸的是，他生于乱世，生于一种极其邪恶的制度之下，他没有成为好公民，而是成为了杀人的艾希曼。而这，正是当时整个德国人的缩影，每个德国人都可能成为艾希曼。

艾希曼这种小人物何以会有着平庸之恶？汉娜·阿伦特指出，这是因为他们彻底放弃了思考的权利，以制度之思想代替了自己的思考。他们完全将自己当成了所服膺制度中的一颗螺丝钉，自己存在的目的，就是与这个制度步调一致，就是让这个制度完美地运转，从不去思考这个制度本身是否有问题，思考这个制度的合理性。在电影中，汉娜·阿伦特重复了她老师海德格尔的话，思考并不能给我们带来知识，而只是让我们能够判断善恶与美丑。最后，她提出，思考能带来力量。德国之所以会出现那种浩劫，恰恰是当时所有的德国人都不思考的结果。如果只是追究艾希曼个人的责任，而不去追究制度的罪恶，不去理解这种平庸的恶，那么犹太人的悲剧还会在世界重演。

其实，这种重演一直都在进行中。从纳粹德国，到红色苏联，这都是汉娜·阿伦特所经历过或者所耳闻过。当然，还有一些更平庸的恶，仍充斥于很多地方，包括我们脚下的这片土地。在这里，直到二十一世纪的今天，我们仍然拒绝思考，仍然只有一种思想，一种制度的思想，占据着我们每个人的头脑。我们天然地相信，现存的一切都是合理的，都是理所当然的，并自觉地充当着这架机器上的螺丝钉，维持着这个制度的运转。我们不也是如艾希曼那样，犯下了平庸之恶吗？虽然我们没有如艾希曼那样冷静而疯狂地杀人，但我们仍然会像他一样，坚定不移地去执行制度指派于我们的任何任务。我们没有杀人，并非我们厌恶杀人，只是我们没有被历史推到那样一个位置上。

纳粹将犹太人定义为非人类，因此艾希曼们就会不加思索地执行着命令，从肉体上去消灭这个民族。有些制度则是蔑视着人类普遍认知，仇视着既有的人类文化创造与思想成果，去追求所谓的放之四海而皆准理论，全民不也如上世纪三四十年代的德国人一样，不加思索地疯狂地去摧毁着一切。文革比之纳粹德国，其造成的严重后果，亦是不遑多让的。

当然，汉娜·阿伦特所提出的平庸的恶，并非就是为艾希曼之类的人脱罪。每个身处历史之中的人，都必须对自己的行为负责，都必须承担自己的责任。有个流传很久的故事，不论其真假，倒是可以从中体会出在恶的制度下，个人责任如何界定的问题。柏林墙倒之后，德国法庭审判开枪杀死越境者的军人，这些东德的边防军人称自己是在执行任务。法官反问他们，难道你就不能将枪口抬高一寸吗？如果边防军人抬高自己的枪，说明了他已经有了独立而深入的思考，拒绝将自己作为制度机器的一部分，从而导致人性的复苏，对于善恶也有了自己的判断。而你放弃思考，让制度的思想取代自己的思想，必然会丧失自己的良知，必然导致平庸之恶，众多的平庸之恶，必然会导致整个社会灾难的发生。

阿伦特其实并未止步于此。她在《耶路撒冷的艾希曼》一文中，不光指出了大屠杀中施害者一边的责任，同时也谈及了被害者一方的责任，这才是当时引起轩然大波、激起整个犹太社会愤怒的主要因素。她认为，之所以会发生六百万犹太人被屠杀的事件，当时犹太社区的领袖与纳粹的合作，也是因素之一。同时，整个犹太社会对于这种骇人听闻的屠杀，保持着一种沉默，而未有勇气去反抗，也应对屠杀肩负一定的责任。对于恶的容忍，对于无人性之事的不反抗，实际上也是一种平庸之恶。这种平庸之恶的泛滥，会让极端之恶越演越烈，导致灾难性的后果。

这当然是正处于痛苦之中的犹太人所不能接受的，他们认为这是向死难者亲属伤口上撒盐。在当时情形之下，也确实如此。从此也可看出汉娜的绝不妥协的态度。她本人是犹太人，正如她本人所声称的那样，她并不将自己当成犹太人，尽管她当时也差点进入纳粹集中营。然而，我们认真思考，汉娜·阿伦特的话，也并非没有道理。对于残暴制度的恐惧，只能助长这种残暴的蔓延，从大屠杀直到今天的事例，无不说明这一点。天助自助者，面对制度的极端之恶，我们还需要勇气。

勇气从何而来？汉娜·阿伦特说，思考可以带来力量。当然，思考也会带来勇气。深入而独立的思考，必然会让我们坚信正义，坚信人类普遍的价值，坚信人类的良知终将战胜邪恶，自然就会有了反抗的勇气。只有放弃思考的民族，才是最可悲的。

Hold on&Humble

这部电影的姿态很特别（话说我喜欢法国版的海报，主题多明确！）

政治社会学题目上，却没有做那种大师级「我高贵冷艳思想高深你们这些凡人不能懂」的冷感，一开始就是两个中年妇女聊家常「我的老公是极品」，后面Hannah同丈夫之间打情骂俏，同朋友之间的嘻笑互动，是有烟火气有肉血感要把观众拉近的节奏。但是另一方面又故意不完备背景信息——从标题开始就极简。除了海德格尔大街一喊一嗓子大家都知道之外，Hannah Arendt是谁，她去以色列听审的被告是谁，犯了什么罪……这些关键信息都是一句话就带过去。

即是说，虽然电影的总体风格是亲切家常的，故事梗概也在一般文艺片的范畴内，但是观众应对其中所涉及的人物事件及思想有大概的认知才不至于落拍。电影和观众的双向选择过程中，本片不挑剔入场观众对电影语言的解读能力——所要传达的信息多数由台词传递，却对知识层面有所要求，可以说是从标题到海报都有「屏蔽信息不足者」的功能。这就很难说是具有「娱乐大众」属性了。以「学习思考」为目的的电影而言，对历史背景的轻掠而过，意味着其最终的诉求乃是——请思考。

思考的主体，是自备一定信息量又有兴趣愿意花时间看这部电影的人。而思考的主题内容是——思考本身。

听到了不等于就听懂了，听懂了不等于就听明白了。地球人并不像瓦肯人那样拥有心电感应的能力，只能依赖符号交流。符号在传达信息时会失真。

Hannah说英语带有很重的德国口音（以至于我要借助字幕才能听懂她在说什么）。她周遭的德国小群体急眼了就用母语唇枪舌战，美国同事们在一旁干瞪眼。这个「语言障碍」的梗在电影中被一再使用，最具象地表现了个体与个体、个体与人群、人群与人群之间「听到」、「听懂」和「听明白」之间的分歧差异：犹太人与非犹太人，二战幸存下来的犹太人和他们年轻理想化的后代，Hannah和她的读者们，她的支持者与反对者们……在各自表达、聆听和理解之间都存在这种「障碍」。

最简单绕过障碍的做法——依赖第三方解读。在耶路撒冷庭审之前有一场很长的争论戏，听不懂德语的Mary先是求助于懂德语的学生，被告知「这么快的语速我听力不行」后暗搓搓想找Hannah的小秘书Lotte口译，后者的回答是「听Hannah自己跟你说不更好」——不愧是跟「大家」混的。

第三方解读为原有信号添加了噪音，最坏的情况会加大理解分歧。比如在Hannah的文章出版后，那些根本没有看过文章或者没有看完的人，也纷纷打电话写信去谩骂，就是听从了第三方、甚至第四方的解读，根本不去听作者本人的陈述，就自以为「听懂了」。

如果想要听明白Hannah跟Hans在吵什么，应该听Hannah本人用英语陈述。这正是影片前半段要跟观众达成的共识。

艾希曼的庭审基本使用了资料片段。每一个片段结束后，都切到认真听审的Hannah。这一段观众和主角是同步的——等于我们也在观看庭审纪录（虽非全部）。在观看这段纪录的时候，我们做了什么样的思考？下了什么样的判断？庭审结束后，又有一段争论戏让Hannah表白自己的观点。到此为止，事件人物（艾希曼）和核心人物（汉娜）的陈述结束。

听懂了。但是有没有听明白呢？

英语并非Hannah的母语，所以这番陈述中可能还是有用词不当、发音错误、语法不严的地方，仍然存在表达与理解之间的间隙，这个间隙的填补，一是需要陈述者自己去弥补（比如Hannah请Mary纠正自己的发音，交由编辑部梳理自己的语法等等），二是聆听者需要「理性」地理解「话语本身」与思考「事实本身」。
这也就是影片后半段的内容。片中《纽约客》的主编在审稿时要求Hannah不要加入「主观解读」，Hannah回答说「这是事实」，主编默认，就是这样的一个「填补过程」：根据内容提问、根据事实回答、理解回答的内容并思考事实是否真如其所说。这个问题的关键在Hannah是否对于二战时的犹太领袖们的动机有否「臆测」。

所谓「臆测」典型的例子是Hannah的作品出版后，其同事断语「以她的聪明，不可能会想不到这篇文章带来的（负面）轰动效应」——在毫无事实根据没有对质的情况下主观对他人的私生活、思维活动、情绪体验等等进行「肯定/否定推论」。电影以细节否认了这种「臆测」又故意突显这句台词，直接就表现了「臆测」的核心特征和社会性危害。非常聪明。

「臆测」是一种群众喜闻乐见使用起来亦得心应手的「理解」方式。
这一方式的应用手法在影片的后半段，通过路人、读者、同事、朋友各个群体，得到了全方面多层次的展现。通过台词有点有面地展示了时人对Hannah「反犹」、「藐视本民族」、「过于理性而忽略人类的感情」这些主要指责，又通过她去耶路撒冷看望故友、努力想挽回Hans的友谊、跟海德格尔之间纠结的感情牵扯而一一予以否定。只有排除这些「臆测」的干扰，才能冷静地听明白。

近几年，在讨论（或者我更喜欢使用「吵架」这种更有情调的词）过程，我也会高频地使用「请不要臆测」却很少收到效果，最后常常就是我耐性崩盘。所以关于那句引发口水仗的「（二战时的）犹太领袖们或有意或无意地（在事实上）配合了纳粹。否则遇害人数当大大下降」这句话，我完全无法理解当时美国人与犹太人的反应，就不知道到底是因为我生在红旗下长在新中国的背景，还是本身所谓的「反社会」（「高贵冷艳」、「傲慢无礼」、「没有感情」etc）属性所致。
在我来看，如果要反驳Hannah，应当以这句话的内容是否属实（1. 当时的犹太群体多有「领袖」 2. 「领袖」们是否在事实上配合了纳粹的种族灭绝行动 3. 这种「配合」是否导致了更多的遇难者）；如果要深入，应当以Hannah从此种现象得出「庸恶」的「论据」-->「论点」路径是否清晰严谨。诸如「伤害了xx人民的感情」的呻吟，或者「你是五毛」vs「你是美分」之类的无聊，既不能对事实有所证明，也不能对理论有所帮助，完全是浪费时间和精力，根本没有必要。

Hannah在影片后半段所遭遇的人身攻击，与影片前半段众人围绕艾希曼一案的争论，恰恰证明了她所谓「庸恶」的观点：翘着脚使用第三方解读是思维的懒惰（有别人已经嚼过看起来好像也嚼烂的东西就不需要自己消化了），「臆测」是思维的怯懦（直接用十字架指着「说话的人」大喊「丫被魔鬼附体了」就不需要与对方的观点直接对峙）。纳粹，与那些寄恐吓信给Hannah的人，在「行为」上虽有不同，在「本质」上都是根源于集体思维的懒惰与怯懦。

至此，电影已经完成论证过程，并用Hannah铿锵激昂的演讲（暨自我辩白）结论。但是为什么？在片中时不时露脸的海德格尔留下这个问题是没有回答的：为什么一个天生的thinker仍会「庸恶」的时候？为什么Mary会很自然地请Lotte翻译，在Lotte拒绝前观众也会很自然地认为这是合理的要求？
可能牛顿第一运动定律其实在思考这一运动上也成立：假如没有外力影响，我们总是在同一思维轨迹上前进。这样比较节省能量（精力and时间），并且与社会大部分保持一致也会比较安全。由此造成了很多思维上的「惯性」，绝大多数个体具备同样惯性时就形成了一个密闭空间，逃离这个惯性的个体思维就成为社会「禁忌」。
这些「惯性」和「禁忌」不允许你问「为什么」或者「目的何在」或者「应不应该」，只要求你「顺从不要越界」。比如「你是犹太人就应该爱以色列」（可以扩展到各个民族与国家的对应关系），这一种立令对方放弃思考的要求其实无处不在且在某种社会环境下被视为「美德」（在帝国时期也有「你是雅利安人就应该恨犹太人」的「惯性」）。
一方面越是在社会生活中沉浮得久越是习从这种惯性很难立突摆脱（做网站的都很熟悉这套理论了，facebook的很多功能正是根据「花越多时间在上面就越难抛弃」的行为模式设计的），再者为保持所处空间的稳定性社会群体会尽力阻止个体突围。托勒密系统上的球越加越多、计算越来越复杂，断不会止有哥白尼一个人觉得不妥，但是一旦突破这个体系，就意味着前一千年的思维方式作废，所有习惯于这个思维方式的人都要转轨道，而且万一新轨还不对头，就会造成chaos——社会动物最害怕的情况。

诸如「犹太人必须爱以色列」、「纳粹都是变态杀人狂」之类的观点就是当时托勒密系统上的小球，一旦提出「这个球的位置不对」必然要重新计算甚至更新一套新的理论体系。所以那些听Hannah演讲的年轻学生们因受的惯性约束小，又有更多的时间和精力，是以更容易吸收接纳她的解说，而年长的教授们则更顽固己见不愿意去毁坏自己的「思维内部生态平衡」（一如当年的海德格尔），这并不意味着这些年轻学子，或者我们任何一个人，能免除「庸恶」的制约与诱惑。

在本片的案例中，Hannah最后能够抗住压力，除了她以及共同工作的人（丈夫、主编、Mary、学生们）hold on之外，还需要humble（我称之为「与狼共舞」）。在针对Hannah的诸多指责中，唯有「傲慢」这一项被微妙地认同：Mary纠正Hannah的发音后周围友人纷纷低声「她不喜欢这样」，Mary说「是她自己要求我纠正她」之后更是友人惊诧。这亦体现在恶意指责甚嚣尘上时，Hannah依然拒绝向公众解释，意下「反正他们不看就瞎嚷嚷或者根本就看不懂，那都是他们的事」。
但是一种突破禁忌的观点，必然需要进入到集体的轨道中去，然后才能使出那一把「改变速度（的标量或/及矢量）」的外力。Hannah不但站到了讲台上，还正确地发出了chips这个词。要双方面共同的努力——陈述者更耐心细致地解释，聆听者更理性主动地思考，才可能跨越「理解」的障碍。

影片的姿态是H&H具在，剩下就看观众们的了。

Arendt & Eichmann: The New Truth
Mark Lilla
Hannah Arendt
a film by Margarethe von Trotta
Hannah Arendt: Ihr Denken veränderte die Welt [Hannah Arendt: Her Thought Changed the World]
edited by Martin Wiebel, with a foreword by Franziska Augstein
Munich: Piper, 252 pp., €9.99 (paper)
1.

In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi’s final book on his experiences at Auschwitz, he makes a wise remark about the difficulty of rendering judgment on history. The historian is pulled in two directions. He is obliged to gather and take into account all relevant material and perspectives; but he is also obliged to render the mass of material into a coherent object of thought and judgment:

    Without a profound simplification the world around us would be an infinite, undefined tangle that would defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions…. We are compelled to reduce the knowable to a schema.

lilla_1-112113-250.jpg Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust
Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, Sicily, 1971

Satisfying both imperatives is difficult under any circumstances, and with certain events may seem impossible. The Holocaust is one of those. Every advance in research that adds a new complication to our understanding of what happened on the Nazi side, or on the victims’, can potentially threaten our moral clarity about why it happened, obscuring the reality and fundamental inexplicability of anti-Semitic eliminationism. This is why Holocaust studies seems to swing back and forth with steady regularity, now trying to render justice to particulars (German soldiers as “ordinary men”), now trying to restore moral coherence (Hitler’s “willing executioners”).

Among Primo Levi’s virtues as a writer on the Holocaust was his skill at finding the point of historical and moral equipoise, most remarkably in his famous chapter “The Gray Zone” in The Drowned and the Saved. It is not easy reading. Besides recounting the horrifying dilemmas and unspeakable cruelties imposed by the Nazis on their victims, he also gives an unvarnished account of the cruelties that privileged prisoners visited on weaker ones, and the compromises, large and small, some made to maintain those privileges and their lives. He describes how the struggle for prestige and recognition, inevitable in any human grouping, manifested itself even in the camps, producing “obscene or pathetic figures…whom it is indispensable to know if we want to know the human species.”

Levi tells the story of Chaim Rumkowski, the vain, dictatorial Jewish elder of the Łódź ghetto who printed stamps with his portrait on them, commissioned hymns celebrating his greatness, and surveyed his domain from a horse-drawn carriage. Stories like these that others have told and others still have wished to bury are unwelcome complications. But Levi tells them without ever letting the reader lose sight of the clear, simple moral reality in which they took place. Yes, “we are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit.” But “I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer.”

Two recent films by major European directors show just how difficult this point of equipoise is to find and maintain when dealing with the Final Solution. Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt is a well-acted biopic on the controversy surrounding Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and its place in her intellectual and personal life. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust is a documentary about Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish elder of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, who was considered a traitor and Nazi collaborator by many of the camp’s inmates, and was the only elder in the entire system to have survived the war. The directors have very different styles and ambitions, which they have realized with very different degrees of success. But neither has managed to replicate Levi’s achievement.
2.

Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was published fifty years ago, first as a series of articles in The New Yorker and then, a few months later, as a book. It’s hard to think of another work capable of setting off ferocious polemics a half-century after its publication. Research into the Nazi regime, its place in the history of anti-Semitism, the gestation of the Final Solution, and the functioning of the extermination machine has advanced well beyond Arendt, providing better answers to the questions she was among the first to address.

In any normal field of historical research one would expect an early seminal work to receive recognition and a fair assessment, even if it now seems misguided. Yet that is only now starting to happen within the history profession, in works like Deborah Lipstadt’s judicious, accessible survey The Eichmann Trial (2011). As the strong reactions to von Trotta’s film indicate, though, the Arendt–Eichmann psychodrama continues in the wider world. Now as then critics focus on two arguments Arendt made, and on the fact that she made them in the same book.

The first, and better known, was that although Adolf Eichmann was taken by many at the time to be the mastermind of the Final Solution, the trial revealed a weak, clueless, cliché-spewing bureaucrat who, according to Arendt, “never realized what he was doing,” an everyman caught up in an evolving bureaucratic program that began with forced emigration and only later ended with extermination as its goal. That one “cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann” did not, in her eyes, reduce his culpability. From the start Arendt defended his capture, trial, and execution, which were not universally applauded then, even by some prominent Jews and Jewish organizations.1 This her critics forget, or choose to forget. What they remember is that she portrayed Eichmann as a risible clown, not radically evil, and shifted attention from anti-Semitism to the faceless system in which he worked.

Had Arendt written a book on what she called “the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil” in modern bureaucratic society, it would have been read as a supplement, and partial revision, of what she said about “radical evil” in The Origins of Totalitarianism. No one would have been offended. But in Eichmann she made the unwise choice of hanging her thesis on the logistical “genius” of the Holocaust, whose character she tried to infer from court documents and a few glimpses of him in the bullet-proof glass docket in Jerusalem.

To make matters worse, in the same book Arendt raised the sensitive issue of the part that Jewish leaders played in the humiliation and eventual extermination of their own people. These included the heads of the urban Jewish community organizations that facilitated forced emigration, expropriations, arrests, and deportations; and the heads of the Jewish councils the Nazis formed in the ghettos and camps to keep the inmate population in line. These men were understandably feared and resented even if they carried out their duties nobly, while those who abused their power, like Rumkowski, were loathed by survivors, who circulated disturbing stories about them after the war.

There was little public awareness of these figures, though, until the Kasztner affair broke in the mid-1950s. Rudolph Kasztner was at that time an Israeli official, but during the war he had worked for a group in Budapest that helped European Jews get to Hungary, which was then unoccupied, and then tried to get them out after the German invasion in 1944. As thousands of Jews were being shipped daily to the gas chambers, Kasztner and his group entered into negotiations with the Nazis to see if some could be saved. After various plans to save large numbers failed, Kasztner persuaded Eichmann to accept a cash ransom and allow 1,600 Hungarian Jews to leave for Switzerland, many of them wealthy people who paid their way and others from his hometown and family.

In 1953 a muckraking Israeli journalist claimed that Kasztner had secretly promised the Nazis not to tell other Jews about Auschwitz, trading a few lives for hundreds of thousands. Kastzner sued for libel but lost his case when it was revealed that he had written exculpatory letters to war tribunals for Nazis he had worked with in Hungary. Before his appeal could be heard Kastzner was assassinated in front of his Tel Aviv home, in circumstances that remain obscure to this day. He was posthumously acquitted.

The cooperation of Jewish leaders and organizations with the Nazi hierarchy became more widely known through the Eichmann trial and the publication in 1961 of Raoul Hilberg’s monumental study, The Destruction of the European Jews, which Arendt relied on heavily without adequate attribution. Though Hilberg’s book is widely revered today, he was just as widely attacked after its publication by Jewish organizations and publications for emphasizing the leaders’ cooperation and the rarity of active resistance, which he attributed to habits of appeasement developed over centuries of persecution, an argument Bruno Bettelheim echoed a year later in his controversial article “Freedom From Ghetto Thinking.”

So Hannah Arendt was not betraying any secrets when she discussed these issues in a scant dozen pages of her book; she was reporting on what came up at the trial and found herself in the middle of an ongoing, and very sensitive, polemic. But exercising her gift for the offending phrase, she also portrayed the Jewish leaders as self-deceived functionaries who “enjoyed their new power,” and she termed their actions “undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”

Perhaps by “dark” all she meant was especially awful and a sign of “the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused…not only among the persecutors but also among the victims.” But pulled out of context her phrases made it appear that she was equating doomed Jewish leaders with the “thoughtless” Eichmann, or even judging them more severely. In any case, the whole discussion, a small fraction of the book, was psychologically obtuse and made her monstrous in the eyes of many.

And the response was ferocious, in Europe and the United States. Her now former friend Gershom Scholem sent Arendt a public letter complaining, rightly, about her “flippancy” and lack of moral imagination when discussing the Jewish leaders, and declared her to be lacking in “love of the Jewish people.” Siegfried Moses, a former friend and recently retired Israeli official, sent a letter “declaring war” on her and got the Council of Jews in Germany to publish a condemnation even before serialization of her book in The New Yorker was complete. (He then flew to Switzerland to try to persuade her to abandon the book project altogether.) The American Anti-Defamation League sent out a pamphlet titled Arendt Nonsense to book reviewers and rabbis across the country, urging them to condemn her and the New Yorker articles for giving succor to anti-Semites.

And in the New York intellectual circles that had become her adoptive home, she became the focus of angry attention from friends who once admired her. At the controversy’s peak Dissent magazine organized a forum to discuss the work and invited Arendt (she declined), Hilberg, and their critics. Hundreds showed up and the evening quickly descended into a series of denunciations of Arendt, who was defended briefly only by Alfred Kazin, Daniel Bell, and a few others. Only when President Kennedy was assassinated in November did she finally escape the spotlight.
3.

This messy episode is the surprising focus of Margarethe von Trotta’s much-discussed new film. As von Trotta tells it, her original intention was to trace the arc of Arendt’s life as a whole, much as she did with Rosa Luxemburg in her award-winning biopic Rosa Luxemburg (1986), but found the material too unwieldy. And so she choose to limit herself to Arendt’s life in New York. As she says in the short German book on the film edited by Martin Wiebel, what interested her was not the ins and outs of the Eichmann case but rather Hannah and her friends. This seems an odd choice for a movie but makes sense in view of von Trotta’s other work. Her specialty is didactic feminist buddy movies—in fact, one might say that she’s been making the same film throughout her career. The story usually involves two women, either friends or sisters, one of them a visionary or pillar of strength, the other a jejune admirer, and follows the evolution of their relationship against a political backdrop.

In her first solo directed work, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978), a woman holds up a bank to save the child care center she works at, then gets help from a soldier’s wife who becomes her lover and goes into hiding with her. They end up in a rural Portuguese cooperative getting their consciousness raised, are expelled for lesbianism, and have other adventures before it all ends badly. Marianne and Juliane (1981) uses as its model the life of Gudrun Ensslin, a founding member of the Baader-Meinhof gang who committed suicide in her cell in 1977; the story follows the Gudrun character and her sister as their relationship develops from alienation to reconciliation, and ends in a display of sisterly solidarity that reaches beyond the grave.
lilla_2-112113.jpg Bettmann/Corbis
Adolf Eichmann with Israeli police at his trial in Jerusalem, May 1962

Von Trotta’s Vision (1991), which treats the life of the medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen, is the most transparent example of the type. It portrays a courageous, enlightened woman prone to epiphanies who stays true to her visions and resists the church’s attempts to silence her. Along the way she develops a deep if unequal friendship with another nun, then another, provoking jealousy and misunderstanding, though it all works out in the end. She dies revered by those around her, though not by the powers that be.

And this, more or less, is the story of Hannah Arendt. The film opens with a jovial Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) in conversation with her best friend Mary McCarthy (Janet McTeer), who in the movie is reduced to a hyperactive sidekick. They discuss men, they discuss love, they have a cocktail party with Arendt’s devoted if wayward husband Heinrich Blücher (Axel Milberg) and fellow New York intellectuals. Then they get news of Eichmann’s capture and the imminent trial. More drinks, more discussion, and then Arendt is off to Jerusalem, where she witnesses the trial mainly from the press room (where she could smoke) and visits an old Zionist friend.

Von Trotta deftly intersperses clips from the actual trial into her film and shows Arendt watching them on closed-circuit television in the press room. This device allows her to stage a conversion scene. As the camera slowly zooms in on Arendt watching Eichmann testify, we see on her face the dawning realization that he was not a clever, bloodthirsty monster but an empty-headed fool caught up in an evil machine. She leaves Jerusalem, writes her articles, and all hell breaks loose in New York.

It is not true, as some reviewers have charged, that the film portrays Arendt as flawless. Throughout she hears complaints about her tone, from friends like McCarthy and her New Yorker editor William Shawn. She is also challenged repeatedly by her close friend the philosopher Hans Jonas (Ulrich Noethen), who is given some of the best lines in the movie (some drawn from Scholem’s letter). Jonas rejected the very idea of “thoughtless” murder and criticized her for lacking psychological sympathy for fellow Jews trapped in the most horrifying circumstances imaginable. Still, by and large, her critics are portrayed as irrational, defensive Jews who, unlike Arendt, refuse to think about the uncomfortable complexities of the Nazi experience, whether out of shame or omertà.

But although Arendt defends herself and the task of “thinking” deftly throughout the film, particularly in a fine public speech at the end, we don’t see her arriving at her position through thinking. Film can portray inner psychological states through speech and action and image, but lacks resources for conveying the dynamic process of weighing evidence, interpreting it, and considering alternatives. Barbara Sukowa smokes and rifles through documents and stares into space like a silent picture star, but we get no sense of the play of a mind. And so we are left with the impression that she, like Hildegard, has had a vision.

And perhaps this is how von Trotta sees Arendt. She admits in the book by Wiebel that she, like many on the German left in the 1960s and 1970s, turned their noses up at Arendt for comparing communism and Nazism as instances of totalitarianism and refused to read her books. But later she came upon Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s biography and discovered a strong figure, a female philosopher engaged in political debate whose personal life was also rich in friends and lovers. This woman she could admire and celebrate. The problem is that von Trotta has chosen an episode in Arendt’s life where the stakes were so high, intellectually and morally, that they cannot in good taste be treated as the backdrop of a human interest story. Though the battle may be lost, it can never be emphasized enough that the Holocaust is not an acceptable occasion for sentimental journeys. But here it’s made into one, which produces weird, cringe-inducing moments for the viewer.

In one shot we are watching Eichmann testify or Arendt arguing about the nature of evil; in the next her husband is patting her behind as they cook dinner. When Blücher tries to leave one morning without kissing her, since “one should never disturb a great philosopher when they’re thinking,” she replies, “but they can’t think without kisses!” As for the short, incongruous scenes about her youthful affair with Martin Heidegger, the less said the better.

The deepest problem with the film, though, is not tastelessness. It is truth. At first glance the movie appears to be about nothing but the truth, which Arendt defends against her blinkered, mainly male adversaries. But its real subject is remaining true to yourself, not to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In her director’s statement on the film von Trotta says that “Arendt was a shining example of someone who remained true to her unique perspective on the world.” One can understand von Trotta’s reluctance to get into the details of the Eichmann case, let alone foreshadow what we know about it now, which would have violated the film’s integrity. But something else seems violated when a story celebrates a thinker’s courage in defending a position we now know to be utterly indefensible—as Arendt, were she alive, would have to concede.

Since the Eichmann trial, and especially over the past fifteen years, a great body of evidence has accumulated about Eichmann’s intimate involvement in and influence over the Nazis’ strategy for expelling, then herding, and then exterminating Europe’s Jews. More damning still, we now have the original tapes that a Dutch Nazi sympathizer, Willem Sassen, made with Eichmann in Argentina in the 1950s, in which Eichmann delivers rambling monologues about his experience and his commitment to the extermination project. These have recently been collated and analyzed by the German scholar Bettina Stangneth, and the passages she quotes in her new book are chilling:

    The cautious bureaucrat, yeah, that was me…. But joined to this cautious bureaucrat was a fanatical fighter for the freedom of the Blut I descend from…. What’s good for my Volk is for me a holy command and holy law…. I must honestly tell you that had we…killed 10.3 million Jews I would be satisfied and would say, good, we’ve exterminated the enemy…. We would have completed the task for our Blut and our Volk and the freedom of nations had we exterminated the most cunning people in the world…. I’m also to blame that…the idea of a real, total elimination could not be fulfilled…. I was an inadequate man put in a position where, really, I could have and should have done more.2

In the end, Hannah Arendt has little to do with the Holocaust or even with Adolf Eichmann. It is a stilted, and very German, morality play about conformism and independence. Von Trotta’s generation (she was born in 1942) suffered the shock of learning in school about the Nazi experience and confronting their evasive parents at home, and in a sense they never recovered from it. (She convincingly dramatizes one of these angry dinner table confrontations in Marianne and Juliane.) Even today this generation has trouble seeing German society in any categories other than those of potential criminals, resisters, and silent bystanders.

When left-wing radicalism was at its violent peak in the 1970s the following false syllogism became common wisdom: Nazi crimes were made possible by blind obedience to orders and social convention; therefore, anyone who still obeys rules and follows convention is complicit with Nazism, while anyone who rebels against them strikes a retrospective blow against Hitler. For the left in that period the Holocaust was not fundamentally about the Jews and hatred of Jews (in fact, anti-Semitism was common on the radical left). It was, narcissistically, about Germans’ relation to themselves and their unwillingness, in the extreme case, to think for themselves. Von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt shares that outlook.

And so, in part, did Eichmann in Jerusalem. Reading the book afresh fifty years on, one begins to notice two different impulses at work in it. One is to do justice to all the factors and elements that contributed to the Final Solution and understand how they might have affected its functionaries and victims, in surprising and disturbing ways. In this Arendt was a pioneer; and, as Bettina Stangneth notes in her contribution to Martin Wiebel’s book, many of the things she was attacked for have become the scholarly consensus.

But the other impulse, to find a schema that would render the horror comprehensible and make judgment possible, in the end led her astray. Arendt was not alone in being taken in by Eichmann and his many masks, but she was taken in. She judged him in light of her own intellectual preoccupations, inherited from Heidegger, with “authenticity,” the faceless crowd, society as a machine, and the importance of a kind of “thinking” that modern philosophy had abolished. Hers was, you might say, an overly complicated simplification. Closer to the truth was the simplification of Artur Sammler in his monologue on Hannah Arendt in Saul Bellow’s 1970 novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet:

    Politically, psychologically, the Germans had an idea of genius. The banality was only camouflage. What better way to get the curse out of murder than to make it look ordinary, boring, or trite?… There was a conspiracy against the sacredness of life. Banality is the adopted disguise of a very powerful will to abolish conscience. Is such a project trivial?

Claude Lanzmann’s recent film The Last of the Unjust leaves no doubt about the answer to that question. At the center of it is a remarkable interview he conducted in 1975 with Benjamin Murmelstein, the Jewish elder of Theresienstadt who survived the war. Murmelstein worked closely with Eichmann for seven years and saw through his camouflaging techniques; he even witnessed Eichmann helping to destroy a Viennese synagogue on Kristallnacht. Yet Murmelstein was also a master of the gray zone, a survivor among survivors whose reputation was anything but pristine. Lanzmann’s film plunges us into that zone and reveals more than perhaps even he realizes.

—This is the first of two articles.

        美国政治学者汉娜•阿伦特是20世纪最重要的思想家之一。一部关于哲学家的电影怎么拍呢？要知道哲学家大部分时候就是坐着思考，本片导演玛格雷特·冯·特洛塔，也是德国新电影运动的资深导演，还真的把它拍成了一部关于思考的传记电影。
        1924年，18岁的汉娜•阿伦特成为35岁的年轻编外讲师海德格尔的学生和情人，这段地下情维持了四年，直到1928年海德格尔决定让阿伦特离去。一般学者大师的婚外恋情、政治经历，传记电影中都是一笔带过，点到为止。可她的初恋海德格尔偏是后来比她还名满天下有哲学王之称的存在主义大家，参与的那一下政治，又偏偏搅进后来万劫不复的纳粹暴政。注定她与海德格尔这段纠葛无法忽略。个人感情的痛苦成为她扩大自己存在疆界的一个源泉，在1930年之前，阿伦特的思想活动局限于哲学领域，甚至还瞧不上政治，然而她目睹了这个她深爱的才华横溢的教授卷入国家社会主义兴起的狂潮中附逆纳粹，并且天真地为这场运动提供一种存在主义的哲学解释。 再往后，阿伦特看到他回避世界，重新退缩到沉思的孤独中，对他认为混乱而败坏的公共领域投以蔑视。一个哲学家沉浸于个体性的自足，而缺乏返回公共领域的能力，阿伦特痛心海德格尔的选择，开始强调知识分子的行动性。
        影片在这样的背景下以1961年对纳粹军官艾希曼审判为切入点，以阿伦特报道此事件写出的《耶路撒冷的艾希曼——一份关于恶的平庸性的报告》发表引起巨大争论结束。
        1960年《纽约时报》上的一篇报道引起了汉娜•阿伦特和朋友们的注意：以色列间谍在阿根廷发现了纳粹时期杀害犹太人的纳粹军官艾希曼的踪迹，并于5月将其劫持到以色列，并坚持在本国审判艾希曼。臭名昭著的艾希曼官阶并不高，只是党卫队中校，但是他曾经担任过德国第三帝国保安总部第四局B-4科的科长，是犹太种族大清洗的前线指挥官，负责一车皮一车皮地组织运送整个欧洲的犹太人，在他的监督下，奥斯维辛集中营的屠杀生产线到二战结束，共有五百八十万犹太人因“最后方案”而丧生。
        于是阿伦特向《纽约客》总编提出，她愿意作为记者，去耶路撒冷报道审判的有关情况。此时的她已完成《极权主义起源》《人的条件》等大作，在学界德高望重，有这样的名人担任特派记者，总编自然乐不可支欣然接受。她在变更1961年日程推迟接受洛克菲勒基金会资助的信上写道，“您一定理解我，为什么去耶路撒冷，因为我曾错过了报道纽伦堡的审判，这次，我不能再次失去目睹对战争罪犯审判的机会了。”她原是德籍犹太人，纳粹兴起逃离德国，流亡巴黎，在法国集中营所幸戏剧性地出逃前往美国，后入美籍。作为犹太人所遭受的苦难也指引着阿伦特的思考，这些外部事件为什么会发生？她把此行视为一次历史使命。
        《耶路撒冷的艾希曼——一份关于恶的平庸性的报告》由《纽约客》5次连载。这份报告包括三部分：第一部分是对罪犯艾希曼本人的分析。她根据艾希曼在法庭上表现及对有关卷宗的阅读，发现艾希曼并不像想象中是一个本性邪恶的魔鬼，平时热爱家庭、热爱音乐、热爱自然，人格也不扭曲病态，精神病学家鉴定“他的精神状态比做完他的精神鉴定之后的我还要正常。”“不仅是个正常人而且还非常讨人喜欢。” 就像恐怖分子寻常得可能轻易成为我们的邻居或飞机上的邻座。由此，阿伦特提出了“平庸之恶”这一个观点，艾希曼之所以犯下如此罪行，完全是由于“思考的缺乏”以及由此而来的不做判断。这类通过执行国家命令，透过行政程序，从事集体屠杀政策的人，被称为“案牍谋杀者”，他们严谨干练的良好素质加上无思的顺从效忠，正是暴政与专政的天然基础。第二部分是对犹太组织的评价。她甚至批评当时犹太组织领导人，指责他们未能领导犹太人对当初的迫害进行有效的抵抗，反而一定程度上与纳粹形成了同谋。最后一部分是关于艾希曼审判的政治目的。
        文章一刊出，在美国乃至欧洲引起强烈反响。就阿伦特本身运思历程看，艾希曼审判事件的报道是非常重要的思想转折点，这个事件的争议带动阿伦特从思考实践活动意义走进探索思考与判断的哲学课题。
        导演玛格雷特·冯·特洛塔凭借此片获得了2013年德国电影奖最佳导演提名，她说“我只是拍我喜欢或者感兴趣的人。但如果说这部电影有什么理念的话，那就是你应保持自我反思和独立判断能力，不要追随某种观念或者时尚。汉娜说这是‘不用扶手的思考'。”

漢娜出場時，已身在一個舒適的客廳，屬於新大陸，薄暮時分。在觀眾的視野裡，中景鏡頭平行拉動，紀錄著她和美國朋友的風趣對話。漢娜被朋友嗔怪，當然只是佯嗔，說怎麼站到了我前夫那邊，幫他說話？而口角的前因後果隱藏在敘事之外。漢娜，她的德腔英語總是那麼厲而溫，回答得不假思索：我怎麼會幫他說話？别忘了我是通過你才認識他的，你是我的朋友。

類似的話語曾遙相呼應於十八世紀中國的經典小說《紅樓夢》。故事主人公寶玉的小女友黛玉一度吃醋，迫使寶玉主動自清、說他對另一個表姊妹寶釵絕無非分之想：「你這個明白人，怎麼連『親不間疏，先不僭後』也不知道？……他是才來的，豈有個為他疏你的？」寶玉說的，是中國人自古人際關係和社會建構的基本原則。類似的倫理教言廣泛存在于儒家文化圈。其顯然易見的缺點是不講是非，流於鄉愿。孔夫子說過，益友的首要條件是正直。之所以有此一說，正因為這種人太過稀少。更為例常的是物以類聚，個性相投而無所用心；把大家的相似點當成道德。至於親族間互相包庇而抵抗公權力的偵查，甚至就直接被認作體現了正直本身。沒有空間也沒必要讓哲學橫生思辨。更古老的生物本能已經這樣在人類身上運作了十萬年，寶玉和漢娜不過是最近的兩個例子。

漢娜在紐約猶太老友的祝福和質疑中，獨自飛去以色列旁聽艾希曼的公開審判；----同時訪舊。世界電影的新世代觀眾可能會驚訝於片中猶太人都以德語交談，必須掃除歷史塵封才能認識到老輩猶太人可以看作是一群被納粹賤民化而離散的（一度）德國子民，正如那些曾經被共和國清洗除去的地主和知識份子。

審判開始了。被漢娜日後形容成猥瑣平庸的艾希曼，在鏡頭的取舍下更像個看透一切的（史學）老教授，重複說著「你們不懂那個時代」，而永遠帶著一句潛台詞「你們太無聊」。當起訴官終於被激怒而厲聲喝問：你說你只是執行命令，那麼如果上級命令你殺你父親，你也執行嗎？這時，艾希曼答道：「如果他被領袖證明是有罪的，我當然會執行。」

如果是浸潤中國文化很深的觀眾，此時該會感到強烈的憎惡和恐懼；而不只是在智性層次予以輕蔑的評語，像是漢娜加之於艾希曼的那些形容詞，例如極度愚蠢之類。弒親屬於中國古代刑罰典律中最深重的罪惡，僅次於弒君。但是弒君這個詞偶然還能見諸學者的議論文字，因為史鑒太多，而弒親則幾乎被放逐於言說之外，很難啟齒討論。在一個將父子互相隱庇而抵抗國家權力奉為典則的國度裏，如果出現一個人，竟公開辯稱父亦可殺，弒親無罪，公眾怎麼能說他只是平庸愚蠢？怎麼能不說他已被惡魔附體？

很難輕易對紀錄片剪輯出來的艾希曼投予一個「不思考」的定論。有沒有可能艾希曼正是通過了思考（不管它多麼錯誤或被動），比如，要破除一切所謂封建陋習和個體本能而締造強大民族國家，才選擇了投身納粹體制，也同時被納粹體制選擇，而坐上了那個位置？相反的，有沒有可能，在艾希曼眼裡，那種分别朋友新舊遠近而左右袒的言談、那種朋友之間不責善的信念、相信大家終將言歸於好的信心，才是真正平庸而拒絕思考的生物本能（和屬於東方的愚昧），而它一樣可能在任何時間地點，對任何異類和弱者犯下罪惡，只是它的罪惡更為庸常，甚至日常？

一切留給觀眾思考。本片真是後勁十足。

首先，汉娜作为一个待过集中营的犹太人，能够抛开自己的身份和经历去“理解”阿道夫·艾希曼，实在不是常人能做到的（当然，她自己也说了理解不等同于宽恕）。我们在对待任何人事物的时候，都基于自己的立场，要抛弃自我的偏见是非常困难的事。从这一点，就可以说她是伟大的。
第二，汉娜对”阿道夫·艾希曼“的评判。她认为，他会犯下这样的行为，是因为失去了作为人的基本能力——思考。他只是像做一件普通工作那样”高效、准确“的完成。当党卫军在首长的指导下，完成第三帝国的伟大理想时。他们都躲在这个庞大体系背后，机械地活着。这个”伟大的目标，民族的崛起“就是保护个人丑陋和邪恶的最好屏障。当众人犯罪时，个人就不会觉得那是犯罪。当有一个高尚的理由撑腰时，屠杀和犯罪都成了”战斗“。纳粹不是一个人，把犹太人送进毒气室的也不会是一个人。我们是整个体系中微不足道的一点，但是就是这每一点的不作为、不反思而造就了整个纳粹。每个人都有罪，当然你也可以说每个人都没有罪，因为他们只是执行而已，并不是出于自己的意愿。所以，纳粹是邪恶的，是反人类的。而参与其中的每一个人，都要为
第三，如果说希特勒利用民族主义和复仇情绪煽动了整个民众，那么战后犹太人的仇恨心理何尝不是民族情绪的膨胀。你是犹太人，就不应该为纳粹说话；你是犹太人，就应该仇恨纳粹；你是犹太人就应该爱以色列。如果，你对以上问题提出疑义，那无疑你就是叛徒。其实这些看似很有道理的话，其实根本就没有必然的关系。

生活是有惯性的，思维也有是一个固定模式。社会根据我们的出身给了我们身份，然后我们就要做符合这个身份的事情。对人、对事分类，有利于我们遵循固有的应对方法来应对人事。只有大家都按照统一的规则去生活的时候，这个社会才是平衡的（不是和平），整个国家机器才能正常的运作下去。任何试图打破的人，都将遭到攻击和打压。所以，汉斯是从情感上和思维惯性上都是不能接受汉娜的思想。舆论也是很难接受这种观点的，这和他们对纳粹的固有定义相差太远了。不符合他们的民族情感。

所以，说到邪恶。你可以认为，人人都有邪恶的一面，只是看有没有一个面具可以躲在后面，合理、高尚地施恶。同时，我们都有善良的一面，这个世界上没有纯粹的好人和坏人。善恶是相对的，好坏也是相对的，你站在不同的立场，依据不同的标准，评判同一件事时，是会有不同的结论。