Similarities Between Arendt And Foucault

Theorists Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault present their views on the power/knowledge affiliation in works such as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil and Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. While reading the pair, it becomes almost impossible not to relate or apply their visions onto the contemporary society. One may even argue that they resonate with current systems of government. Eichmann in Jerusalem, albeit a collection of articles for the New Yorker, was published as a book in 1963 and it follows Arendt travelling to Israel to cover Adolf Eichmann’s trial for which he was discovered guilty of war crimes. As one of the organizers of the Holocaust, Eichmann’s job was to deport Jews to concentration camps.
Throughout the lengthy trial, Eichmann never alternated his defense or reasoning, he had no malicious intent towards Jews nor motives, to him, he was simply doing his duty and following the Fuhrer’s law. Arendt states that Eichmann completely abandoned his ability to think critically and logically and instead blindly followed orders. He not only obeyed the law but he did it with devotion, which to him meant to be moral. There existed a language of morality within him but it was misdirected. Arendt examines then that it was Eichmann’s conscience that motivated him to continue deporting Jews and ignore Himmler’s order, that to him, was illegal. This leads right to Arendt’s point, the rise of totalitarian power created a moral inversion in society. It is difficult to see right from wrong or experience guilt when a complete shift in the way of thinking occurs. “And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ even though man’s natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler’s land demanded that the voice of