Responsibility and Judgment

Abstract

Responsibility and judgment is an essential work to understand Arendt's conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling issues of our time. The core of this book is a profound ethical investigation: "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy"; In it, Arendt addresses the inadequacy of traditional moral 'truths' as standards for judging what we are capable of doing, and examines our ability to distinguish right from wrong in a new light. Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published during her lifetime was a unique piece that continues to foster new reflections and interpretations. Responsibility and Judgment brings together a series of unpublished writings corresponding to the last decade of Arendt's life, when she was striving to explain the meaning of one of her most important works: Eichmann in Jerusalem, the account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she used for the term "banality of evil" for the first time.