QuestionsMust we always obey the law?'I obeyed' is no excuse: Eichmann and responsibility
Must we always obey the law?Conscience first

'I obeyed' is no excuse: Eichmann and responsibility

The banality of evil

Hannah Arendt 1906 · 1975Political philosopher born in Germany, exiled to the United States: she covers the Eichmann trial and speaks of the 'banality of evil', born of a lack of thought.
See profile
What it claims

Saying 'I obeyed the law and the orders' does not relieve one of responsibility: each answers for what he does, even when the law orders it.

Why

Obeying a criminal power is supporting it: someone who could judge for himself cannot say he only obeyed.

The same idea through history
Immanuel Kant1788At the trial Eichmann said he had lived according to Kant's definition of duty. Arendt (ch. VIII) argues that he turned it into obedience to the law of the land, whereas for Kant morality requires one to judge for oneself. He said he had read the Critique of Practical Reason (1788).
Hannah Arendt1963Eichmann in Jerusalem: the version presented here. Arendt, a Jewish philosopher, covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) for the New Yorker.
In short

"'I obeyed' is no excuse: Eichmann and responsibility" is an argument by Hannah Arendt (Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), ch. VIII and Epilogue; 'Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship' (1964), 1963) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: conscience first). Its claim: Saying 'I obeyed the law and the orders' does not relieve one of responsibility: each answers for what he does, even when the law orders it. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), ch. VIII and Epilogue; 'Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship' (1964)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1961 in Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann is tried for organising the deportation of millions of Jews to their deaths. He answers that he only obeyed orders and the law of the Reich. Hannah Arendt, who follows the trial, finds him neither monstrous nor fanatical: she sees an ordinary man, unable to think for himself, who took the law for his conscience. Her thesis is not that obedience is always bad: it is that one cannot hide behind it. Arendt's texts are under copyright: we refer to the passages without quoting them. The P1 to P4 → C form is our reconstruction.

P1Eichmann obeyed a law that ordered the crime: under the Nazi regime the Führer's word had the force of law, and he saw himself as a law-abiding citizen.
P2In politics, obeying amounts to supporting: whoever carries out the orders of a criminal power contributes to its action, whatever his inner disposition.
P3 · implicit premiseEvery normal human being keeps the capacity to think and judge for himself, even under a regime that discourages it.
P4 · implicit premiseWhoever supports a crime while being able to judge for himself is responsible for it.
Therefore saying 'I obeyed the law and the orders' does not relieve one of responsibility: each answers for what he does, even when the law orders it.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3 and P4, the computer finds a case where someone obeys a criminal law and supports it without being responsible: for instance if he really had no means to judge or refuse. This is the question raised by Milgram and by the Nuremberg law.
The argument is valid. Eichmann obeyed a criminal law (P1); obeying is supporting (P2); he could think for himself (P3); whoever supports a crime while able to judge is responsible for it (P4). Its strength is that it does not suppose Eichmann a monster: it is enough that he is a man capable of thinking. Its weak point is P3: Milgram seems to show that under authority most people do not judge as they would like to.
Analogy. A night guard who was ordered to let thieves out of the warehouse. He tells the judge: 'I followed my instructions.' The judge asks: 'But you knew what you were doing, didn't you?' No one considers that the instruction alone erases the question.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

S
Stanley Milgram 1963 · attacks premise 3

In Milgram's experiment, ordinary adults are asked by an experimenter to give a stranger ever stronger electric shocks (in fact simulated). A clear majority, 26 out of 40 in the 1963 experiment, go up to the highest level. Milgram concludes that in a situation of authority most people obey even against their conscience: the capacity to judge for oneself does not reliably show itself.

Arendt replies
We have not yet found a direct reply by Arendt in the texts.
S
S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen D. Reicher 2012
Haslam and Reicher re-read Milgram's data and argue that obedience is not blind. Participants follow the experimenter mostly when they identify with his scientific project and believe he is right. This would be a chosen commitment rather than passive submission, which brings the case closer to Arendt's thesis on support.
The debate goes on (our summary) In his 1974 book Milgram himself cites Arendt, and his explanation ('the agentic state') goes along with the banality of evil. But he draws a different conclusion for responsibility: if the situation produces obedience, can we blame each person? Arendt's defenders answer that a third of participants refused, and that the law does not demand heroism but refusal of the obvious crime (our summary). The question of responsibility, shared between situation and person, stays open.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Milgram: under authority most people obey. Haslam and Reicher: they obey by identifying with the cause, not blindly. The basic disagreement remains: does a situation that produces obedience in the majority lessen each person's responsibility?
B
Bettina Stangneth 2011 · attacks premise 1

From documents dating from after the war (including recorded interviews in Argentina in the 1950s), Stangneth argues that Eichmann remained a convinced Nazi, proud of what he had done, and that at the trial he played the part of an obedient little official. The image of an ordinary man without ideology would therefore come from Eichmann's staging, which Arendt would have taken seriously.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 2011, after the author's death (1975).
R
Roger Berkowitz defender of the argument · 2013
Berkowitz argues that Arendt's thesis is not contradicted: the 'banality of evil' does not say that Eichmann had no ideas, but that he had given up thinking, replacing judgment with slogans and ideology. The new evidence of his antisemitism would confirm that absence of thought rather than refute it.
The debate goes on (our summary) Historians remain divided. For some, Arendt was wrong about the man but not about the general mechanism; for others, the formula has been over-generalised. In any case, the conclusion ('I obeyed' is no excuse) does not depend on Eichmann's personality: a convinced fanatic is responsible too (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Stangneth: Eichmann was a convinced Nazi playing a part. Berkowitz: this confirms the absence of thought. The basic disagreement remains: does evil come mainly from ideology or from the absence of judgment?
U
UN International Law Commission 1950 · attacks the conclusion

International law adopts the principle, but with a limit. Principle IV: the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him. Responsibility therefore depends on the real possibility of refusing.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Arendt in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) This limit opens the debate Arendt does not close: when is a moral choice 'possible'? Arendt answers, in her texts on personal responsibility, that some people refused to take part, which shows that refusal was possible. Her critics answer that this refusal carried an enormous cost (our summary, without quotation). The law decides case by case, according to circumstances.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Principle IV rules out the 'I obeyed' excuse unless a moral choice was not possible. Arendt argues the choice was possible for Eichmann. The basic disagreement remains: where is the line between required courage and heroism?
What today's voices say
Defend it
Jordan PetersonHe rejects the idea that ordinary people merely carried out the orders of thugs out of fear: the people and their leaders shaped each other, and the ordinary men who became murderers were not forced by their leadership.
Slavoj ŽižekHe does not cite Eichmann, but defends the same point: duty is no excuse, and we are never the mere instrument of a higher cause.