NUREMBERG, THE BANALITY OF EVIL AND METAPHYSICAL GUILT: The Karl Jaspers/Hannah Arendt Dialogue (Hard Cover0

Karl Jaspers and Hannah Arendt were a strange pair indeed! Jaspers, the cool psychiatrist/philosopher and Arendt, the hot-headed polemicist who preferred to call herself a political theorist despite her extensive philosophical training. Jaspers was practically monolingual though he could read English with a dictionary. Arendt was fluent in many languages. Both valued original thought and they were somewhat contemptuous towards the imitative. What seemed to unite them, aside from emotional factors, was their concern for humankind, their sheer intellectual prowess and curiosity, and their willingness to dialogue.
The correspondence between the two goes far beyond the question regarding Nazi war criminals. Though my thesis centers upon the concepts of banality of evil and metaphysical guilt, it also involves the Jewish question and Zionism, something that may invoke a great deal of controversy nowadays. This was necessitated by the Jewish reaction to Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and by her response to it. The book also deals with my own country, the U.S.A. and some unfortunate recent events.