QUESTION: Is obedience the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose? Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem says “There is no such thing as obedience in political and moral matters.” – Biju Thomas

ANSWER: Jacob Parappally MSFS

Obedience can be liberating or enslaving. When one glorifies the virtue of obedience, a question must be raised, “What type of obedience are you talking about?” Is it the genuine virtue of obedience that flows from the right decision of a well-informed person or an enslaving obedience that is rooted in the fear of consequences if one does not obey the command of a superior authority, whether human or ideological? The obedience in following any command that is not morally right according to universal norms of morality or the political or ideological system that demands blind obedience and does not brook any dissent is not obedience at all. It is a mechanical following of someone who has the power to control the destiny of those who are ordered to follow without questioning about the reason for doing what they are doing. In such a situation a large majority of those who are commanded to follow the order comply with it due to their instinct for survival. It is a slavish obedience.
It is true that Hannah Arendt (1906 -1975) made this statement in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil that “There is no such thing as obedience in political and moral matters”. Arendt was a German Jewish philosopher and political thinker who fled to Paris to escape from Nazi Germany. At the outbreak of World War II, she was taken to a detention camp but escaped to the United States in 1941. In her book, Action: Humanity as Zoon Politikon which was written before ‘Eichman in Jerusalem’ she tried to show the relationship between politics and freedom. According to her politics and exercise of freedom-as-action are one and the same. She says: “…freedom…is actually the reason that men live together in political organizations at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action.” One can raise a question about the basis of this exercise of freedom-as-action. In her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem she answers this question by shifting her emphasis from the nature of political action to the faculties that underpin it, namely, thinking and judging.
Necessity of Sound Thinking and Judgment
Arendt interprets the participation of Eichmann who was a member of the Nazi regime and the chief architect and executioner of Hitler’s “final solution” or the extermination of the Jews as not flowing from any psychological hatred towards the Jews or from a malevolent will to do evil. It cannot be from the pleasure one gets from murdering defenseless people. Eichmann’s participation in the genocide, according to Arendt, is due to a failure or absence of the faculties of sound judgment and thinking. “He operated unthinkingly, following orders, efficiently carrying them out, with no consideration of their effects upon those he targeted. The human dimension of these activities was not entertained, so the extermination of the Jews became indistinguishable from any other bureaucratically assigned and discharged responsibility for Eichmann and his cohorts.” One acted mechanically or without any thought of the pain, suffering and finally the cruel death of other humans such bureaucratically conducted assignments would bring. In the eyes of Eichmann and his team the Jews and all who opposed Nazism were not humans like them. They could be subjected to various scientific experiments, hard labour and they could be thrown into gas chambers without any thought that they were humans like them. Arendt stresses the incapability of Eichmann to judge the reality of the sufferings of the victims of Nazi atrocities. “It was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him. Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking, of having an internal dialogue with himself, which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds. This amounted to a failure to use self-reflection as a basis for judgment.” During the trial Eichmann gave a definition of an idealist as someone who is “prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody” In his own eyes, he was an idealist of this type. A terribly wrong judgment about himself and about an idealist!
What is this failure of sound thinking and judging? For my thinking, judging and acting there needs to be a criterion that makes me aware that my thinking and judging are morally right, reasonably defensible and universally recognized as a human value. Arendt follows the distinction made by German philosopher Immanuel Kant between knowing or understanding and thinking or reasoning. One’s understanding leads to positive knowledge but one’s thinking or reasoning goes beyond positive knowledge raising further questions which cannot be answered from the standpoint of knowledge. It goes on raising questions. Such questions from reasoning may lead to actions taken without right judgment. Blind support to certain political ideology, probably, originates from such reasoning and questioning as well as one’s failure to be open and committed to one’s understanding and knowledge of the truth about oneself and other humans as oneself.
Obedience that does not flow from authentic freedom is not obedience at all. Authentic freedom presupposes self-awareness and self-knowledge. When there is no right understanding of oneself and others as humans with inalienable right to be human, there cannot be true exercise of freedom and obedience that flows from it. Slavish acceptance of a political ideology and willingness to commit even immoral actions do not flow from true freedom but from a false sense of self-identity. Disobedience is a virtue when one refuses to do immoral acts even if it is commanded by a higher authority whom one is normally expected to obey. That is why “there is no such thing as obedience in political and moral matters.”
Blind Obedience of Party-Workers and Govt. Officials
History is replete with incidents of genocide, ethnic cleansing, killings in the name of political ideology, fanatic religious beliefs etc. Even in our times we hear everyday news about political killings, lynching of innocent people that are organized and supported by political parties either to secure political power or in the name of some religious ideology for political purposes. The hate speeches that triggered the outbreak of Delhi riots in the recent past as well those made by some politicians and religious leaders recently in view of securing votes in the election evoke blind obedience in the mind of their followers. The terrible consequences of such hate-mongering are unjustifiable and cruel. Innocent people are lynched, houses and shops looted or burned down and other atrocities are committed against the most vulnerable sections of the society, namely, the poor, women, children and the dominated castes and groups. The minds of those who lived in harmony and peace as neighbours are stirred in such a way by wily political and religious leaders supported by some fanatical groups working in media. Fake news is manufactured and spread to create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust among the people of various religions and sometimes among the castes and groupings of the same religion.
Do the people who belong to political parties or the adherents of those divisive and fanatic religious ideologies exercise their true freedom in obeying the unjustifiable and immoral commands or exhortation? Certainly, not! But why do they follow the political or religious diktats of their leaders without questioning? It is due to the indoctrinated prejudices, inability to judge what is humanizing and what is dehumanizing, what is good and what is evil. They may not have the right education that enables them to distinguish what is essential to humans as humans and what is non-essential for humans as well as their lack of right education that opens their minds and hearts to relate with others as brothers and sisters. They abandon their capacity for understanding and thinking and let their emotions and passions take complete control of them and follow the exhortations of their leaders to kill or maim men as well as rape and disowner women who are labelled as their enemies by those who persuade them to do such atrocities. This is not obedience but a blind following of the unscrupulous leaders without any thought of the harm they do to others and to themselves as they dehumanize themselves as slaves of others or some pernicious ideology.
Some officials of any government would be willing to commit any crime whether it is related to various forms of corruption or even eliminating those perceived enemies of the government. They have no lack of education to understand the consequences of their actions and how they would affect people whom they have pledged to serve because of the public office they hold. However, there are many cases of such abuse of power and position mostly by following blindly the orders of their political masters. They know for certain the consequences of their actions but they refuse to eschew from them because of their selfish interests. Here too they cannot claim that they were following the orders. Their self-understanding as humans and their self-respect would have prevented them from following any illegal, immoral and cruel orders. To stand for truth and freedom, justice and morality is costly!
Liberating and Humanizing Obedience
Authentic obedience is liberating, humanizing and ennobling. It cannot be used as a means to coerce someone to submission even if such means is used by any higher authority, political or religious. When it is done so, it is de-humanizing and enslaving. Therefore, when a person who is commanded to obey is forced to suspend his or her understanding or knowledge, thinking or judgment to act according to the dictates of the higher authority it is not an exercise of obedience. Even when a morally justifiable, liberating and humanizing command is given obedience to it can still be dehumanizing and enslaving if the person who obeys it does not accept it in true freedom and executes it as the complete and free subject of that particular action.
Any slavery is dehumanizing as it takes away the freedom to act. But no one can take away “the last freedom” according to Viktor Frankl. He was speaking about such freedom from the point of view of a victim of the evil Nazi regime’s atrocities. So too the perpetrators of such a terrible crime of murdering millions of innocent people like Eichmann had also such “last freedom”. But they did not use it but blindly followed the orders of Hitler. Their following of the orders was not and never will be authentic obedience but enslaving submission to orders which dehumanized them and destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people. The same happens even today when both young and old follow unscrupulous, power-hungry and egoistic political leaders who have no qualms of conscience to use them and use any means to secure power. There also blind and unenlightened religious leaders who do not assist the believers to become authentically free and joyfully committed to the cause of justice, equality and self-emptying love. Blind obedience enslaves, true obedience liberates!