The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil

The clash between the political and the unpolitical drives the narrative of Hannah Arendt’s influential report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Determined to make visible the justice that was (and was not) done in Jerusalem, Arendt concludes her Epilogue to Eichmann in Jerusalem by providing her readers with an alternative formulation of the verdict handed down by the judges. The point of this exercise is twofold: to reveal the political “ground” of (and motivation for) the trial and the verdict it produced; and to alert her readers to the unpolitical (or extra-political) expression of justice that remains to be realized. According to Arendt, the provisional character of the justice that was done in Jerusalem may yet inspire her best readers to develop a more fully civilized practice of jurisprudence