Modesty and Arrogance in Judgment

Sharpe examines Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem as a case study of Arendt's theoretical work on judgment. In addition, he seeks to illustrate two dimensions of judgment: modesty-who am I to judge? and arrogance-how dare you judge me? He demonstrates the extent to which modesty and arrogance are linked with distance. The claims who am I to judge? and how dare you judge me? become questions of how much distance-in time, space, and imagination-is necessary or appropriate for judgment. Sharpe sees Eichmann as an unintentionally ironic demonstration of this feature of human interaction.
Through his careful examination of Arendt's portrait of Adolf Eichmann and the Jewish Central Councils as well as by considering Eichmann in the context of Arendt's other work, Sharpe gives us a book that will be of great interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with contemporary political theory and Holocaust Studies.

Barry Sharpe

"Readers unfamiliar with Arendt will find in this commentary an admirable and useful introduction to the powerful argument she makes in "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and to the controversy still surrounding the argument...[Sharpe] updates and clarifies some of Arendt's ideas in view of more recent scholarship on the Nazis and the Holocaust. He has some very interesting and important things to say about the role and responsibility of the Judenrate."-American Political Science Review