汉娜·阿伦特

汉娜的朋友汉斯在演讲后批评她以精英的视角傲慢、自以为是地批评犹太人。

她这种居高临下的态度是使很多人感到不快的原因。

汉斯这一批评是我认为对于汉娜的一个最大挑战，尽管她自己到结尾也没有意识到。

“人们不思考”。

这个指控太精英主义、自以为是了。

放到现在，发表这种言论的人估计被归类为该挨骂的公知。

我虽然也欣赏精英对自身的高要求，但对于划定精英与平民界限这一做法抱怀疑态度。

书如其人。

她《human condition》的argument透露着相同的精英主义气质。

讽刺的是，不思考的平民的反面---哲学家海德格尔---也不可避免地被卷入了纳粹的阴谋。

思考或不思考，受害与施害，两者都是无能为力的。

对此，阿伦特会如何回应呢？

感觉并不会欺诈，判断却会。

Thinkers向人们分析和解释这个世界，和在其上发生的一切。

为的是不让人们的思想走上歧途，进而让这些事情不再发生，或一再发生。

一生中，我们要与太多事作斗争，不间断地、不减量地、很多时候不情愿地。

（看看阿伦特在电影中说了什么，再看看我在开头说的）The manifestation of the wind of thoughts is not knowledge, but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope, that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments, when the chips are down.Sometimes, something is more important than someone.===========================结尾阿伦特在思索并自我验证：恶不可能既平凡又深刻。

恶总是extreme，而不可能是radical，只有善良可以同时又deep又radical。

翻译的不见得准确，所以也无法仔细去理解她的意思。

如果不善不恶是一种中间态，不假思索的行善和作恶各为+1，那么有意识的善举和恶行，它们的难易程度是有差异的。

作恶需要躲避他人的审视、内心的纠结、道德的评判，还可能有来自法律和习俗的惩罚，一进一出，善与恶的使力比为0:2。

也就是说，达到同样程度的善与恶，后者要比前者投入更多的力气，这里当然实际操作的力气和思考所花费的心力。

如果善是一种绿色气体，而恶是红色气体，注入同样的硬质透明容器，红色的颜色要比绿色更深。

而如果红色的浓度和绿色一样，则代表着量的减少，也就是说思考的不够。

换句话说，如果恶的结果没能配得上为它付出的思考，那么也就没有值得的恶。

从另一个角度来说，难道恶都是来自于人们轻浮的想象？

或是一种便于描述的归类？

比如恶魔，比如撒旦，但没有这样的东西啊。

如果善的极致是∞，那么从上面的推论，恶的极致就应该是∞+2，但没有这样的东西啊。

因此，才是banality of evil，而不是evilness of banality. 所以，几乎一切的恶都是降了智的、思考不足的产物。

============================对于全人类，阿伦特这样的思想者太重要。

而对于她个人来说，这样的思考深度非常不划算。

人们达成共识的条件要求异常苛刻，却对煽动和情绪极为热衷。

比如说起中医，是不是众说纷纭？

即便是吸烟，想要达成一致也不太容易。

那么对于放射暴露呢？

漢娜出場時，已身在一個舒適的客廳，屬於新大陸，薄暮時分。

在觀眾的視野裡，中景鏡頭平行拉動，紀錄著她和美國朋友的風趣對話。

漢娜被朋友嗔怪，當然只是佯嗔，說怎麼站到了我前夫那邊，幫他說話？

而口角的前因後果隱藏在敘事之外。

漢娜，她的德腔英語總是那麼厲而溫，回答得不假思索：我怎麼會幫他說話？

别忘了我是通過你才認識他的，你是我的朋友。

類似的話語曾遙相呼應於十八世紀中國的經典小說《紅樓夢》。

故事主人公寶玉的小女友黛玉一度吃醋，迫使寶玉主動自清、說他對另一個表姊妹寶釵絕無非分之想：「你這個明白人，怎麼連『親不間疏，先不僭後』也不知道？

……他是才來的，豈有個為他疏你的？

」寶玉說的，是中國人自古人際關係和社會建構的基本原則。

類似的倫理教言廣泛存在于儒家文化圈。

其顯然易見的缺點是不講是非，流於鄉愿。

孔夫子說過，益友的首要條件是正直。

之所以有此一說，正因為這種人太過稀少。

更為例常的是物以類聚，個性相投而無所用心；把大家的相似點當成道德。

至於親族間互相包庇而抵抗公權力的偵查，甚至就直接被認作體現了正直本身。

沒有空間也沒必要讓哲學橫生思辨。

更古老的生物本能已經這樣在人類身上運作了十萬年，寶玉和漢娜不過是最近的兩個例子。

漢娜在紐約猶太老友的祝福和質疑中，獨自飛去以色列旁聽艾希曼的公開審判；同時訪舊。

世界電影的新世代觀眾可能會驚訝於片中猶太人都以德語交談，必須掃除歷史塵封才能認識到老輩猶太人可以看作是一群被納粹賤民化而離散的（一度）德國子民，正如那些曾經被共和國清洗除去的地主和知識份子。

審判開始了。

被漢娜日後形容成猥瑣平庸的艾希曼，在鏡頭的取舍下更像個看透一切的（史學）老教授，重複說著「你們不懂那個時代」，而永遠帶著一句潛台詞「你們太無聊」。

當起訴官終於被激怒而厲聲喝問：你說你只是執行命令，那麼如果上級命令你殺你父親，你也執行嗎？

這時，艾希曼答道：「如果他被領袖證明是有罪的，我當然會執行。

」如果是浸潤中國文化很深的觀眾，此時該會感到強烈的憎惡和恐懼；而不只是在智性層次予以輕蔑的評語，像是漢娜加之於艾希曼的那些形容詞，例如極度愚蠢之類。

弒親屬於中國古代刑罰典律中最深重的罪惡，僅次於弒君。

但是弒君這個詞偶然還能見諸學者的議論文字，因為史鑒太多，而弒親則幾乎被放逐於言說之外，很難啟齒討論。

在一個將父子互相隱庇而抵抗國家權力奉為典則的國度裏，如果出現一個人，竟公開辯稱父亦可殺，弒親無罪，公眾怎麼能說他只是平庸愚蠢？

怎麼能不說他已被惡魔附體？

很難輕易對紀錄片剪輯出來的艾希曼投予一個「不思考」的定論。

有沒有可能艾希曼正是通過了思考（不管它多麼錯誤或被動），比如，要破除一切所謂封建陋習和個體本能而締造強大民族國家，才選擇了投身納粹體制，也同時被納粹體制選擇，而坐上了那個位置？

相反的，有沒有可能，在艾希曼眼裡，那種分别朋友新舊遠近而左右袒的言談、那種朋友之間不責善的信念、相信大家終將言歸於好的信心，才是真正平庸而拒絕思考的生物本能（和屬於東方的愚昧），而它一樣可能在任何時間地點，對任何異類和弱者犯下罪惡，只是它的罪惡更為庸常，甚至日常？

一切留給觀眾思考。

本片真是後勁十足。

Arendt & Eichmann: The New TruthMark LillaHannah Arendta film by Margarethe von TrottaHannah Arendt: Ihr Denken veränderte die Welt [Hannah Arendt: Her Thought Changed the World]edited by Martin Wiebel, with a foreword by Franziska AugsteinMunich: Piper, 252 pp., €9.99 (paper)1.In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi’s final book on his experiences at Auschwitz, he makes a wise remark about the difficulty of rendering judgment on history. The historian is pulled in two directions. He is obliged to gather and take into account all relevant material and perspectives; but he is also obliged to render the mass of material into a coherent object of thought and judgment:Without a profound simplification the world around us would be an infinite, undefined tangle that would defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions…. We are compelled to reduce the knowable to a schema. lilla_1-112113-250.jpg Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary TrustHannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, Sicily, 1971Satisfying both imperatives is difficult under any circumstances, and with certain events may seem impossible. The Holocaust is one of those. Every advance in research that adds a new complication to our understanding of what happened on the Nazi side, or on the victims’, can potentially threaten our moral clarity about why it happened, obscuring the reality and fundamental inexplicability of anti-Semitic eliminationism. This is why Holocaust studies seems to swing back and forth with steady regularity, now trying to render justice to particulars (German soldiers as “ordinary men”), now trying to restore moral coherence (Hitler’s “willing executioners”).Among Primo Levi’s virtues as a writer on the Holocaust was his skill at finding the point of historical and moral equipoise, most remarkably in his famous chapter “The Gray Zone” in The Drowned and the Saved. It is not easy reading. Besides recounting the horrifying dilemmas and unspeakable cruelties imposed by the Nazis on their victims, he also gives an unvarnished account of the cruelties that privileged prisoners visited on weaker ones, and the compromises, large and small, some made to maintain those privileges and their lives. He describes how the struggle for prestige and recognition, inevitable in any human grouping, manifested itself even in the camps, producing “obscene or pathetic figures…whom it is indispensable to know if we want to know the human species.”Levi tells the story of Chaim Rumkowski, the vain, dictatorial Jewish elder of the Łódź ghetto who printed stamps with his portrait on them, commissioned hymns celebrating his greatness, and surveyed his domain from a horse-drawn carriage. Stories like these that others have told and others still have wished to bury are unwelcome complications. But Levi tells them without ever letting the reader lose sight of the clear, simple moral reality in which they took place. Yes, “we are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit.” But “I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer.”Two recent films by major European directors show just how difficult this point of equipoise is to find and maintain when dealing with the Final Solution. Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt is a well-acted biopic on the controversy surrounding Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and its place in her intellectual and personal life. Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust is a documentary about Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish elder of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, who was considered a traitor and Nazi collaborator by many of the camp’s inmates, and was the only elder in the entire system to have survived the war. The directors have very different styles and ambitions, which they have realized with very different degrees of success. But neither has managed to replicate Levi’s achievement.2.Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was published fifty years ago, first as a series of articles in The New Yorker and then, a few months later, as a book. It’s hard to think of another work capable of setting off ferocious polemics a half-century after its publication. Research into the Nazi regime, its place in the history of anti-Semitism, the gestation of the Final Solution, and the functioning of the extermination machine has advanced well beyond Arendt, providing better answers to the questions she was among the first to address.In any normal field of historical research one would expect an early seminal work to receive recognition and a fair assessment, even if it now seems misguided. Yet that is only now starting to happen within the history profession, in works like Deborah Lipstadt’s judicious, accessible survey The Eichmann Trial (2011). As the strong reactions to von Trotta’s film indicate, though, the Arendt–Eichmann psychodrama continues in the wider world. Now as then critics focus on two arguments Arendt made, and on the fact that she made them in the same book.The first, and better known, was that although Adolf Eichmann was taken by many at the time to be the mastermind of the Final Solution, the trial revealed a weak, clueless, cliché-spewing bureaucrat who, according to Arendt, “never realized what he was doing,” an everyman caught up in an evolving bureaucratic program that began with forced emigration and only later ended with extermination as its goal. That one “cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann” did not, in her eyes, reduce his culpability. From the start Arendt defended his capture, trial, and execution, which were not universally applauded then, even by some prominent Jews and Jewish organizations.1 This her critics forget, or choose to forget. What they remember is that she portrayed Eichmann as a risible clown, not radically evil, and shifted attention from anti-Semitism to the faceless system in which he worked.Had Arendt written a book on what she called “the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil” in modern bureaucratic society, it would have been read as a supplement, and partial revision, of what she said about “radical evil” in The Origins of Totalitarianism. No one would have been offended. But in Eichmann she made the unwise choice of hanging her thesis on the logistical “genius” of the Holocaust, whose character she tried to infer from court documents and a few glimpses of him in the bullet-proof glass docket in Jerusalem.To make matters worse, in the same book Arendt raised the sensitive issue of the part that Jewish leaders played in the humiliation and eventual extermination of their own people. These included the heads of the urban Jewish community organizations that facilitated forced emigration, expropriations, arrests, and deportations; and the heads of the Jewish councils the Nazis formed in the ghettos and camps to keep the inmate population in line. These men were understandably feared and resented even if they carried out their duties nobly, while those who abused their power, like Rumkowski, were loathed by survivors, who circulated disturbing stories about them after the war.There was little public awareness of these figures, though, until the Kasztner affair broke in the mid-1950s. Rudolph Kasztner was at that time an Israeli official, but during the war he had worked for a group in Budapest that helped European Jews get to Hungary, which was then unoccupied, and then tried to get them out after the German invasion in 1944. As thousands of Jews were being shipped daily to the gas chambers, Kasztner and his group entered into negotiations with the Nazis to see if some could be saved. After various plans to save large numbers failed, Kasztner persuaded Eichmann to accept a cash ransom and allow 1,600 Hungarian Jews to leave for Switzerland, many of them wealthy people who paid their way and others from his hometown and family.In 1953 a muckraking Israeli journalist claimed that Kasztner had secretly promised the Nazis not to tell other Jews about Auschwitz, trading a few lives for hundreds of thousands. Kastzner sued for libel but lost his case when it was revealed that he had written exculpatory letters to war tribunals for Nazis he had worked with in Hungary. Before his appeal could be heard Kastzner was assassinated in front of his Tel Aviv home, in circumstances that remain obscure to this day. He was posthumously acquitted.The cooperation of Jewish leaders and organizations with the Nazi hierarchy became more widely known through the Eichmann trial and the publication in 1961 of Raoul Hilberg’s monumental study, The Destruction of the European Jews, which Arendt relied on heavily without adequate attribution. Though Hilberg’s book is widely revered today, he was just as widely attacked after its publication by Jewish organizations and publications for emphasizing the leaders’ cooperation and the rarity of active resistance, which he attributed to habits of appeasement developed over centuries of persecution, an argument Bruno Bettelheim echoed a year later in his controversial article “Freedom From Ghetto Thinking.”So Hannah Arendt was not betraying any secrets when she discussed these issues in a scant dozen pages of her book; she was reporting on what came up at the trial and found herself in the middle of an ongoing, and very sensitive, polemic. But exercising her gift for the offending phrase, she also portrayed the Jewish leaders as self-deceived functionaries who “enjoyed their new power,” and she termed their actions “undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story.”Perhaps by “dark” all she meant was especially awful and a sign of “the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused…not only among the persecutors but also among the victims.” But pulled out of context her phrases made it appear that she was equating doomed Jewish leaders with the “thoughtless” Eichmann, or even judging them more severely. In any case, the whole discussion, a small fraction of the book, was psychologically obtuse and made her monstrous in the eyes of many.And the response was ferocious, in Europe and the United States. Her now former friend Gershom Scholem sent Arendt a public letter complaining, rightly, about her “flippancy” and lack of moral imagination when discussing the Jewish leaders, and declared her to be lacking in “love of the Jewish people.” Siegfried Moses, a former friend and recently retired Israeli official, sent a letter “declaring war” on her and got the Council of Jews in Germany to publish a condemnation even before serialization of her book in The New Yorker was complete. (He then flew to Switzerland to try to persuade her to abandon the book project altogether.) The American Anti-Defamation League sent out a pamphlet titled Arendt Nonsense to book reviewers and rabbis across the country, urging them to condemn her and the New Yorker articles for giving succor to anti-Semites.And in the New York intellectual circles that had become her adoptive home, she became the focus of angry attention from friends who once admired her. At the controversy’s peak Dissent magazine organized a forum to discuss the work and invited Arendt (she declined), Hilberg, and their critics. Hundreds showed up and the evening quickly descended into a series of denunciations of Arendt, who was defended briefly only by Alfred Kazin, Daniel Bell, and a few others. Only when President Kennedy was assassinated in November did she finally escape the spotlight.3.This messy episode is the surprising focus of Margarethe von Trotta’s much-discussed new film. As von Trotta tells it, her original intention was to trace the arc of Arendt’s life as a whole, much as she did with Rosa Luxemburg in her award-winning biopic Rosa Luxemburg (1986), but found the material too unwieldy. And so she choose to limit herself to Arendt’s life in New York. As she says in the short German book on the film edited by Martin Wiebel, what interested her was not the ins and outs of the Eichmann case but rather Hannah and her friends. This seems an odd choice for a movie but makes sense in view of von Trotta’s other work. Her specialty is didactic feminist buddy movies—in fact, one might say that she’s been making the same film throughout her career. The story usually involves two women, either friends or sisters, one of them a visionary or pillar of strength, the other a jejune admirer, and follows the evolution of their relationship against a political backdrop.In her first solo directed work, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978), a woman holds up a bank to save the child care center she works at, then gets help from a soldier’s wife who becomes her lover and goes into hiding with her. They end up in a rural Portuguese cooperative getting their consciousness raised, are expelled for lesbianism, and have other adventures before it all ends badly. Marianne and Juliane (1981) uses as its model the life of Gudrun Ensslin, a founding member of the Baader-Meinhof gang who committed suicide in her cell in 1977; the story follows the Gudrun character and her sister as their relationship develops from alienation to reconciliation, and ends in a display of sisterly solidarity that reaches beyond the grave.lilla_2-112113.jpg Bettmann/CorbisAdolf Eichmann with Israeli police at his trial in Jerusalem, May 1962Von Trotta’s Vision (1991), which treats the life of the medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen, is the most transparent example of the type. It portrays a courageous, enlightened woman prone to epiphanies who stays true to her visions and resists the church’s attempts to silence her. Along the way she develops a deep if unequal friendship with another nun, then another, provoking jealousy and misunderstanding, though it all works out in the end. She dies revered by those around her, though not by the powers that be.And this, more or less, is the story of Hannah Arendt. The film opens with a jovial Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) in conversation with her best friend Mary McCarthy (Janet McTeer), who in the movie is reduced to a hyperactive sidekick. They discuss men, they discuss love, they have a cocktail party with Arendt’s devoted if wayward husband Heinrich Blücher (Axel Milberg) and fellow New York intellectuals. Then they get news of Eichmann’s capture and the imminent trial. More drinks, more discussion, and then Arendt is off to Jerusalem, where she witnesses the trial mainly from the press room (where she could smoke) and visits an old Zionist friend.Von Trotta deftly intersperses clips from the actual trial into her film and shows Arendt watching them on closed-circuit television in the press room. This device allows her to stage a conversion scene. As the camera slowly zooms in on Arendt watching Eichmann testify, we see on her face the dawning realization that he was not a clever, bloodthirsty monster but an empty-headed fool caught up in an evil machine. She leaves Jerusalem, writes her articles, and all hell breaks loose in New York.It is not true, as some reviewers have charged, that the film portrays Arendt as flawless. Throughout she hears complaints about her tone, from friends like McCarthy and her New Yorker editor William Shawn. She is also challenged repeatedly by her close friend the philosopher Hans Jonas (Ulrich Noethen), who is given some of the best lines in the movie (some drawn from Scholem’s letter). Jonas rejected the very idea of “thoughtless” murder and criticized her for lacking psychological sympathy for fellow Jews trapped in the most horrifying circumstances imaginable. Still, by and large, her critics are portrayed as irrational, defensive Jews who, unlike Arendt, refuse to think about the uncomfortable complexities of the Nazi experience, whether out of shame or omertà.But although Arendt defends herself and the task of “thinking” deftly throughout the film, particularly in a fine public speech at the end, we don’t see her arriving at her position through thinking. Film can portray inner psychological states through speech and action and image, but lacks resources for conveying the dynamic process of weighing evidence, interpreting it, and considering alternatives. Barbara Sukowa smokes and rifles through documents and stares into space like a silent picture star, but we get no sense of the play of a mind. And so we are left with the impression that she, like Hildegard, has had a vision.And perhaps this is how von Trotta sees Arendt. She admits in the book by Wiebel that she, like many on the German left in the 1960s and 1970s, turned their noses up at Arendt for comparing communism and Nazism as instances of totalitarianism and refused to read her books. But later she came upon Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s biography and discovered a strong figure, a female philosopher engaged in political debate whose personal life was also rich in friends and lovers. This woman she could admire and celebrate. The problem is that von Trotta has chosen an episode in Arendt’s life where the stakes were so high, intellectually and morally, that they cannot in good taste be treated as the backdrop of a human interest story. Though the battle may be lost, it can never be emphasized enough that the Holocaust is not an acceptable occasion for sentimental journeys. But here it’s made into one, which produces weird, cringe-inducing moments for the viewer.In one shot we are watching Eichmann testify or Arendt arguing about the nature of evil; in the next her husband is patting her behind as they cook dinner. When Blücher tries to leave one morning without kissing her, since “one should never disturb a great philosopher when they’re thinking,” she replies, “but they can’t think without kisses!” As for the short, incongruous scenes about her youthful affair with Martin Heidegger, the less said the better.The deepest problem with the film, though, is not tastelessness. It is truth. At first glance the movie appears to be about nothing but the truth, which Arendt defends against her blinkered, mainly male adversaries. But its real subject is remaining true to yourself, not to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In her director’s statement on the film von Trotta says that “Arendt was a shining example of someone who remained true to her unique perspective on the world.” One can understand von Trotta’s reluctance to get into the details of the Eichmann case, let alone foreshadow what we know about it now, which would have violated the film’s integrity. But something else seems violated when a story celebrates a thinker’s courage in defending a position we now know to be utterly indefensible—as Arendt, were she alive, would have to concede.Since the Eichmann trial, and especially over the past fifteen years, a great body of evidence has accumulated about Eichmann’s intimate involvement in and influence over the Nazis’ strategy for expelling, then herding, and then exterminating Europe’s Jews. More damning still, we now have the original tapes that a Dutch Nazi sympathizer, Willem Sassen, made with Eichmann in Argentina in the 1950s, in which Eichmann delivers rambling monologues about his experience and his commitment to the extermination project. These have recently been collated and analyzed by the German scholar Bettina Stangneth, and the passages she quotes in her new book are chilling:The cautious bureaucrat, yeah, that was me…. But joined to this cautious bureaucrat was a fanatical fighter for the freedom of the Blut I descend from…. What’s good for my Volk is for me a holy command and holy law…. I must honestly tell you that had we…killed 10.3 million Jews I would be satisfied and would say, good, we’ve exterminated the enemy…. We would have completed the task for our Blut and our Volk and the freedom of nations had we exterminated the most cunning people in the world…. I’m also to blame that…the idea of a real, total elimination could not be fulfilled…. I was an inadequate man put in a position where, really, I could have and should have done more.2 In the end, Hannah Arendt has little to do with the Holocaust or even with Adolf Eichmann. It is a stilted, and very German, morality play about conformism and independence. Von Trotta’s generation (she was born in 1942) suffered the shock of learning in school about the Nazi experience and confronting their evasive parents at home, and in a sense they never recovered from it. (She convincingly dramatizes one of these angry dinner table confrontations in Marianne and Juliane.) Even today this generation has trouble seeing German society in any categories other than those of potential criminals, resisters, and silent bystanders.When left-wing radicalism was at its violent peak in the 1970s the following false syllogism became common wisdom: Nazi crimes were made possible by blind obedience to orders and social convention; therefore, anyone who still obeys rules and follows convention is complicit with Nazism, while anyone who rebels against them strikes a retrospective blow against Hitler. For the left in that period the Holocaust was not fundamentally about the Jews and hatred of Jews (in fact, anti-Semitism was common on the radical left). It was, narcissistically, about Germans’ relation to themselves and their unwillingness, in the extreme case, to think for themselves. Von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt shares that outlook.And so, in part, did Eichmann in Jerusalem. Reading the book afresh fifty years on, one begins to notice two different impulses at work in it. One is to do justice to all the factors and elements that contributed to the Final Solution and understand how they might have affected its functionaries and victims, in surprising and disturbing ways. In this Arendt was a pioneer; and, as Bettina Stangneth notes in her contribution to Martin Wiebel’s book, many of the things she was attacked for have become the scholarly consensus.But the other impulse, to find a schema that would render the horror comprehensible and make judgment possible, in the end led her astray. Arendt was not alone in being taken in by Eichmann and his many masks, but she was taken in. She judged him in light of her own intellectual preoccupations, inherited from Heidegger, with “authenticity,” the faceless crowd, society as a machine, and the importance of a kind of “thinking” that modern philosophy had abolished. Hers was, you might say, an overly complicated simplification. Closer to the truth was the simplification of Artur Sammler in his monologue on Hannah Arendt in Saul Bellow’s 1970 novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet:Politically, psychologically, the Germans had an idea of genius. The banality was only camouflage. What better way to get the curse out of murder than to make it look ordinary, boring, or trite?… There was a conspiracy against the sacredness of life. Banality is the adopted disguise of a very powerful will to abolish conscience. Is such a project trivial? Claude Lanzmann’s recent film The Last of the Unjust leaves no doubt about the answer to that question. At the center of it is a remarkable interview he conducted in 1975 with Benjamin Murmelstein, the Jewish elder of Theresienstadt who survived the war. Murmelstein worked closely with Eichmann for seven years and saw through his camouflaging techniques; he even witnessed Eichmann helping to destroy a Viennese synagogue on Kristallnacht. Yet Murmelstein was also a master of the gray zone, a survivor among survivors whose reputation was anything but pristine. Lanzmann’s film plunges us into that zone and reveals more than perhaps even he realizes.—This is the first of two articles.

就像电影最后，她的昔日好友所说＂把自己扮演成一个瞧不起犹太人的德国知识分子＂。

确实，汉娜阿伦特从哲学的高度思辨Einchmann这个＂杀人机器＂的平庸之恶，写出「在耶路撒冷的艾希曼」。

她的总结是＂思考，不是知识，是区分对错，美丑的能力＂。

这番演说和理论赢得满堂喝彩，放弃思考只是服从，其实放弃的是自己作为人类的权力。

保持思考，不断思考，这也可窥探到德国的哲学是如何蓬勃发展的。

但是，从情感上来看，真的无法接受。

哪怕是在昏庸无能麻木冷血的犹太委员会。

当你真正作为第三方去评判他的时候，一堆热血，存良知的人民，第一时间还是会维护他的。

汉娜够胆魄，冒天下之大不韪。

这也确是她一贯作风。

至少，她在思考。

我们呢？

我们，希望看了之后，能思考。

思想家在常人没有想法的地方思考——电影《汉娜·阿伦特》里的哲学命题特约撰稿 王绍培【剧情简介】1960年，以色列宣布抓捕到前纳粹德国高官、素有“死刑执行者”之称的阿道夫·艾希曼，并于1961年在耶路撒冷进行审判。

已在美国居住多年的著名犹太女哲学家汉娜·阿伦特（巴巴拉·苏科瓦 Barbara Sukowa 饰）受《纽约人》邀请为此次审判撰稿。

当汉娜·阿伦特前往耶路撒冷观看审判后，却在艾希曼的阐述、民意和自己的哲学思考之间发生了分歧。

当阿伦特将艾希曼当年的行为提高到哲学的高度，她的文章不出所料地引发了社会上的恶评和抨击，一些汉娜·阿伦特的老友甚至和她绝交反目。

这个当年海德格尔门下最得意的女学生在疾风骤雨中想全身而退，却发现一切都已经不像自己预计的那样简单。

（豆瓣 ）一般中国人知道汉娜·阿伦特，多是因为她读大学时曾经跟自己的老师、有妇之夫海德格尔谈过一场恋爱。

有一本书《汉娜与马丁》讲的就是这段往事。

我记得书里说正是由于失恋的极度痛苦导致阿伦特把注意力完全转向了阅读和学问。

书里还说很多年后，在欧洲名满天下的海德格尔在北美本来没有人知道，是因为阿伦特的推荐才慢慢被北美的读者所了解的。

上周结束的“德国电影周”深圳站放映了10部各具特色的德国电影，包括这部《汉娜·阿伦特》，文化背景的距离，让此片成为一致公推的烧脑片。

这个人物片其实是在讲“思考”。

1阿伦特去耶路撒冷主要是为了看“活生生的艾希曼”如果是中国现在的电影导演来拍摄阿伦特的传记片，那么，上面说到的这个“爱情故事”不容舍弃，因为这是一个绝对有“票房保证”的电影素材。

但《汉娜·阿伦特》的导演偏偏选取的是阿伦特人生中引起最强烈争议的一个“思想事件”来描写——这个事件可以简称为“耶路撒冷的艾希曼”——既精雕细琢，又浓墨重彩，而恋情之类的故事只是偶尔闪回一下就带过去了。

1960年5月24日，逃亡到阿根廷的前纳粹杀人犯阿道夫·艾希曼被以色列特工人员绑架回国，阿伦特一直密切关注。

一到艾希曼将在耶路撒冷审判的事情确定下来，阿伦特就向《纽约客》杂志的编辑约翰·肖提出作为杂志的特约采访写稿人去现场。

约翰·肖当然非常高兴有这么一个重量级的人物来当记者。

而对于阿伦特来说，她去耶路撒冷，主要是为了看“活生生的艾希曼”。

果然，跟她的想象一样，杀人恶魔并没有一副恶魔的嘴脸，她对他这样写下了她的第一印象，她看见“玻璃亭中的男子一点也不粗野”。

这个最初的印象跟她后来得出“恶的平庸”的结论，有一个神秘的通道，因为这个看起来并不粗野的男子正是“恶的平庸”的肉身形象。

纳粹德国当年有一个严密的灭绝犹太人的计划。

而事实上他们真的屠杀了600万犹太人。

阿道夫·艾希曼是纳粹德国的高官，也是在犹太人大屠杀中执行“最终方案”的主要负责人，被称为“死刑执行者”。

事情在我们看来非常简单：一个纳粹高官，手上沾满了犹太人的鲜血，后来被抓到以色列接受审判，最后被判处绞刑。

这个案件事实清楚、证据确凿，还有什么可以质疑的吗？

但思想家就是在常人没有想法的地方思考。

阿伦特的老师兼朋友雅思贝尔斯就认为以色列不能审判艾希曼，因为以色列不能代表所有的犹太人，而且，他还担心对以色列抱有敌意的人会把艾希曼打扮成殉教者。

阿伦特不同意老师的意见，但她的思考以及得出的结论比老师的看法具有大上百倍的争议。

2阿伦特认为，艾希曼“真是一个傻瓜，但却并不是傻瓜。

”首先，阿伦特认为，艾希曼“真是一个傻瓜，但却并不是傻瓜。

”这个矛盾的说法是什么意思呢？

意思是：艾希曼具有思考的能力，但他放弃了思考。

作为一个没有思考能力的人，他并不知道大屠杀的计划，他只是大屠杀机器上的一个齿轮。

这个观察和思考包含了两个方面的推论：一方面剥夺艾希曼的骄傲，因为他有时候也会为自己杀了600万犹太人感到洋洋得意，而作为一个放弃了思考的人，他其实是没有资格来骄傲的，因为他并不知道他做的事情有什么含义；另一方面，也为艾希曼开罪，因为他只是一个杀人机器上的齿轮，他没有制定“最终方案”，他只是作为一个执行者来参与了这个行动，而这个行动在当时的环境中甚至可以说是一种职务行为，所以，他没有资格作为被告。

其次，其实跟阿伦特追究“恶的平庸”有关系的是犹太人的罪责问题，这使她得出的另一个争议甚至更大的结论，那就是“对犹太人来说，犹太人领袖对自己的种族灭绝起到这样的作用，毫无疑问是整个黑暗的故事中最阴暗的一章。

”阿伦特写道：“犹太人的公务员制作出同胞们名单及其财产的表格，为征收强制遣送一个灭绝的费用，从本人那里收取钱，确认他们是否迁出公寓设施；为逮捕犹太人，提供警力协助把同胞押送列车，还有作出了最后表现好的姿态，最终是通过把没收的犹太人公司的资产完好地移交出去，来取得对方的信赖。

”当然，阿伦特明确的说法也是支持对艾希曼处以绞刑的：“正因为你的指示，实行的政治，我们谁都不希望和你一起住在这个地球上，这就是你应该判处绞刑的理由，也是唯一的理由。

”当然，阿伦特没有主张去审判犹太人领袖。

但是，她的思考包含的推论是显而易见的。

3即使要付出绝交的代价，阿伦特还是坚持出版了她的著作对于阿伦特的上述思考，我们不妨这样假设一下：我们抓获了一个日本战犯，这个战犯深深地参与了南京大屠杀。

现在，我们审判他。

但有一个思想家出来说，这个战犯放弃了思考，他只是在执行他们国家的侵略计划，他没有资格对南京大屠杀这样的事情负责。

另一方面，对数十万人中国人死亡负有责任的是一批中国人，他们配合了日本人的行动。

这个假设不完全等同当年纳粹实行大屠杀的情况，但某些方面是一样的。

我们不难想象，犹太人对阿伦特多么恨之入骨。

起码的一点是：你阿伦特只有思考，没有热血，你是一架冷冰冰的思考机器。

身为犹太人，你不爱犹太人，你不爱以色列这个国家，你不爱自己的民族。

这样的指责事实上是落到阿伦特身上了。

但她明确指出，她确实不爱任何一个国家、民族或者人群，她只爱自己的朋友。

对于任何一个国家、民族或者人群来说，阿伦特都像是一个“外来的女儿”（这是她的丈夫布吕歇尔对她的爱称），是一个贱民——所谓“贱民”就是边缘化的、逸出了体制的不受待见、总有争议的个人。

应该说，阿伦特并非不知道思考的代价，事实上她有时也会为了这些可能的代价而搁置思考。

比如说，她认同西塞罗的一段名言：“我与其跟柏拉图的敌手一起认真地思考，倒不如和柏拉图一起堂而皇之地迷路。

”她可以为了朋友而放弃争论，但是，当涉及重大的政治命题时，她也愿意承担后果。

如此重视友情的阿伦特因为《耶路撒冷的艾希曼》系列文章的面世，一些朋友跟她绝交了。

即使是要付出绝交的代价，阿伦特还是坚持出版了她的著作。

4“恶不是根本的东西”，阿伦特写道：“只有善才有深度，才是本质的。

”这就是思想家之为思想家难能可贵的地方。

即使在客观上，阿伦特或者为艾希曼起到了辩护人的作用，或者将犹太人领袖置于被告的位置，但比较起来，所有这些都不是阿伦特最关心的。

她真正关注的是思考“恶的本质”。

阿伦特的丈夫布吕歇尔常常认为“恶”是一种“可笑的现象”，恶是平庸的，没有深度的，一个人不能因为恶行而被“放大”，多大的恶行也只证明这个恶人的渺小。

恶之所以能够造成那么大的灾难，布莱希特认为那是因为“悲剧是采用了与喜剧相比更加不认真的做法来处理人类的疾苦的。

”如果说，艾希曼对大屠杀是有责任的，那么，这个责任跟其“不思考”有关系。

犹太人之所以也承担一点的责任，那么，也跟他们的不思考有关系。

“恶不是根本的东西”，阿伦特写道：“只有善才有深度，才是本质的。

”但善缺乏的时候，或者说，当善不到位的时候，恶就出现了，这时出现的恶是平庸的恶，它仅仅只需要不思考这个条件就足够了。

这其实是一个非常深刻的结论。

大规模的恶所造成的灾难，其实仅仅只需要不思考的人群就可以实施或者造成。

我们用这个结论来观察中国大地上出现的灾难，尤为富有解释性。

当我们让人停止思考、中断了思考的习惯时，恶就随时会以各种各样的方式出现。

因此，阿伦特把阻止恶的出现希望寄托在思考上——她有时称之为判断活动。

她说：“……这种判断活动中必要的前提条件不是高度发达的知性和道德上的锻炼，只是自觉地与自己自身一起活下去的习惯。

即苏格拉底和柏拉图以来的，我们通常叫做思维活动，其实是某个自己与自己自身之间无言的对话，是经常进行的一种习惯。

……远未能够信赖的人，却是怀疑主义者，这么说，不是说因为怀疑主义者是善，或是说，怀疑就是健康的，而是因为‘这样的人’习惯了决心认真思考事物的行为。

最善的人，就是知道无论发生什么，只要我们活着，就拥有与我们自己一起活着的命运的那些人们。

”当然，在《汉娜·阿伦特》这部电影中，我上面所说的这些含义，它没有也不可能一一呈现。

但电影对于这个载入史册的思想争议的表现，无论是人物刻画，还是过程叙述，都是充分的、饱满的、力道十足的，同时也是意味深长的。

汉娜·阿伦特提出了她的著名观点，认为艾希曼所犯下的罪行，并非极端之恶，而是平庸的恶，那是在邪恶体制之下，每个小人物都可能犯下的恶。

因为他们彻底放弃了思考的权利，以制度之思想代替了自己的思考。

你放弃思考，让制度的思想取代自己的思想，必然会丧失自己的良知，必然导致平庸之恶，众多的平庸之恶，必然会导致整个社会灾难的发生。

恶一向都是激进的，它没有深度也没有魔力。

它可能毁灭整个世界，恰恰是因为它的平庸！

极权国家没有真相，民众得不到真相，最高统治者也由于信息被层层过滤、隐瞒，同样得不到真相，而知道真相的人，因为恐惧更不敢说出真相。

所以，国家到处欣欣向荣。

当罪恶的链条足够长，长到无法窥视全貌时，那么每个环节作恶的人都有理由觉得自己很无辜。

思考所表现出来的，不是知识，而是分辨是非的能力，判断美丑的能力。

——汉娜·阿伦特

汉娜·阿伦特 (2012)8.22012 / 德国 卢森堡 法国 / 剧情 传记 / 玛加蕾特·冯·特罗塔 / 芭芭拉·苏科瓦 珍妮·麦克蒂尔

想看此片已是许久，对于汉娜·阿伦特，一直有着深厚的兴趣。

从极权主义的起源一书的出版到平庸之恶观点的提出，汉娜·阿伦特总是给予我敏锐深刻和强硬不妥协的印象。

正好深圳有个德国电影展，恰好有此片，于是毫不犹豫地订票观看。

整个影片应该说是拍得比较闷，而且字幕的翻译也有些问题。

如果事前对于汉娜·阿伦特缺乏了解，对于艾希曼审判缺乏了解的话，在观影过程中会显得比较吃力。

现场观众的反应也说明了此点，大部分观众在大部分时间里都有些昏昏欲睡的感觉，只是到了最后阿伦特在课堂中的激情演说，才调动起部分观众的情绪，甚至伴随着课堂上的掌声，也有观众鼓起掌来。

客观而言，此片还是较为准确地还原了阿伦特当时的生活。

作为一部德国影片，既有着德国影片硬与闷，也具有德国影片的明晰与冷峻。

该片注重观点的交锋，而对趣味性重视不够。

影片对于汉娜·阿伦特，只聚焦于其一生中很短一个时期，即以色列对于纳粹艾希曼审判，她发表文章为艾希曼辩护，从而引起轩然大波。

影片只是通过几个闪回，将其一生的思想与行为进行了回顾。

导演并不关注阿伦特个人的生活，甚至对于她与其老师海德格尔的关系，也只是在镜头前一闪而过。

而是花了相当的笔墨，突出展现了汉娜·阿伦特喜欢思考与毫不妥协的性格。

艾希曼是个恶名昭彰的纳粹罪犯，负责屠杀犹太人的最终方案，被称为“死刑执行者”。

很多犹太人对其恨之入骨，在耶路撒冷审判之时，为防被杀，他的前面装着防弹玻璃，也就是阿伦特所称的玻璃盒子。

其实对于整个的纳粹德国来说，艾希曼绝对只是一个小人物。

在审判之中，他也不承认自己所犯之罪，他认为他的一切行为只是在执行命令。

他真诚地信奉着纳粹的思想，坚定地相信领袖所做的一切都是正确的。

因此在执行命令时，也是不假思索毫不犹豫地执行。

在他的心目中，并未将犹太人当作人，而只是杀人机器所需要吞噬的原料。

在他执行任务之时，他已非正常之人，他失去了思考的能力，失去了正常人的情感，而是异化成为一台机器。

汉娜·阿伦特正是据此而为他辩护。

艾希曼所犯下的当然是滔天大罪，毕竟六百万犹太人或多或少因他而死去，即使直接死于他手下的也不少。

但阿伦特并不认为他应该承担被指控的责任，将其带至法庭上审判也并不公正。

这样并不符合对于法庭来说最为重要的正义原则。

艾希曼杀人，并非是他与所杀之人有着直接的利益关系，也非他仇视这些他所杀之人，他与这些被杀的犹太人素昧平生。

他杀他们是因为要执行命令，他相信元首的话，觉得杀死这些犹太人有利于纳粹事业，有利于德国的生存与发展。

在执行命令之时，他不会去思考自己所行之事是否正义，更不会去质疑元首的命令是否有问题，而且由于没有思考，也没有了正常人内心中固有的善恶判断。

艾希曼只是一个杀人机器，他按照体制或者制度的指令，机械而无情地杀死犹太人。

只要这种制度不改，将谁放到那个位置上，都会执行杀人的命令，只是程度的不同而已。

因此艾希曼所犯下的罪愆，并非个人的罪愆，而是制度之罪，是纳粹那种邪恶的思想或者主义带来的罪愆。

由此，阿伦特提出了她的著名观点，认为艾希曼所犯下的罪行，并非极端之恶，而是平庸的恶，是在邪恶体制之下，每个小人物都可能犯下的恶。

艾希曼并非大奸大恶之人，从其法庭上的表现来看，他也是一个彬彬有礼之人。

他也不愚蠢，喜欢康德的哲学，并自称以康德哲学来作为自己行事准则。

他为人夫为人父，恪守着自己应尽的责任，在家人的眼里完全可能是个完美的儿子、丈夫或者父亲。

如果将他放到一个正常的社会，他会是个守法的好公民，也许还会是社会的中坚。

不幸的是，他生于乱世，生于一种极其邪恶的制度之下，他没有成为好公民，而是成为了杀人的艾希曼。

而这，正是当时整个德国人的缩影，每个德国人都可能成为艾希曼。

艾希曼这种小人物何以会有着平庸之恶？

汉娜·阿伦特指出，这是因为他们彻底放弃了思考的权利，以制度之思想代替了自己的思考。

他们完全将自己当成了所服膺制度中的一颗螺丝钉，自己存在的目的，就是与这个制度步调一致，就是让这个制度完美地运转，从不去思考这个制度本身是否有问题，思考这个制度的合理性。

在电影中，汉娜·阿伦特重复了她老师海德格尔的话，思考并不能给我们带来知识，而只是让我们能够判断善恶与美丑。

最后，她提出，思考能带来力量。

德国之所以会出现那种浩劫，恰恰是当时所有的德国人都不思考的结果。

如果只是追究艾希曼个人的责任，而不去追究制度的罪恶，不去理解这种平庸的恶，那么犹太人的悲剧还会在世界重演。

其实，这种重演一直都在进行中。

从纳粹德国，到红色苏联，这都是汉娜·阿伦特所经历过或者所耳闻过。

当然，还有一些更平庸的恶，仍充斥于很多地方，包括我们脚下的这片土地。

在这里，直到二十一世纪的今天，我们仍然拒绝思考，仍然只有一种思想，一种制度的思想，占据着我们每个人的头脑。

我们天然地相信，现存的一切都是合理的，都是理所当然的，并自觉地充当着这架机器上的螺丝钉，维持着这个制度的运转。

我们不也是如艾希曼那样，犯下了平庸之恶吗？

虽然我们没有如艾希曼那样冷静而疯狂地杀人，但我们仍然会像他一样，坚定不移地去执行制度指派于我们的任何任务。

我们没有杀人，并非我们厌恶杀人，只是我们没有被历史推到那样一个位置上。

纳粹将犹太人定义为非人类，因此艾希曼们就会不加思索地执行着命令，从肉体上去消灭这个民族。

有些制度则是蔑视着人类普遍认知，仇视着既有的人类文化创造与思想成果，去追求所谓的放之四海而皆准理论，全民不也如上世纪三四十年代的德国人一样，不加思索地疯狂地去摧毁着一切。

文革比之纳粹德国，其造成的严重后果，亦是不遑多让的。

当然，汉娜·阿伦特所提出的平庸的恶，并非就是为艾希曼之类的人脱罪。

每个身处历史之中的人，都必须对自己的行为负责，都必须承担自己的责任。

有个流传很久的故事，不论其真假，倒是可以从中体会出在恶的制度下，个人责任如何界定的问题。

柏林墙倒之后，德国法庭审判开枪杀死越境者的军人，这些东德的边防军人称自己是在执行任务。

法官反问他们，难道你就不能将枪口抬高一寸吗？

如果边防军人抬高自己的枪，说明了他已经有了独立而深入的思考，拒绝将自己作为制度机器的一部分，从而导致人性的复苏，对于善恶也有了自己的判断。

而你放弃思考，让制度的思想取代自己的思想，必然会丧失自己的良知，必然导致平庸之恶，众多的平庸之恶，必然会导致整个社会灾难的发生。

阿伦特其实并未止步于此。

她在《耶路撒冷的艾希曼》一文中，不光指出了大屠杀中施害者一边的责任，同时也谈及了被害者一方的责任，这才是当时引起轩然大波、激起整个犹太社会愤怒的主要因素。

她认为，之所以会发生六百万犹太人被屠杀的事件，当时犹太社区的领袖与纳粹的合作，也是因素之一。

同时，整个犹太社会对于这种骇人听闻的屠杀，保持着一种沉默，而未有勇气去反抗，也应对屠杀肩负一定的责任。

对于恶的容忍，对于无人性之事的不反抗，实际上也是一种平庸之恶。

这种平庸之恶的泛滥，会让极端之恶越演越烈，导致灾难性的后果。

这当然是正处于痛苦之中的犹太人所不能接受的，他们认为这是向死难者亲属伤口上撒盐。

在当时情形之下，也确实如此。

从此也可看出汉娜的绝不妥协的态度。

她本人是犹太人，正如她本人所声称的那样，她并不将自己当成犹太人，尽管她当时也差点进入纳粹集中营。

然而，我们认真思考，汉娜·阿伦特的话，也并非没有道理。

对于残暴制度的恐惧，只能助长这种残暴的蔓延，从大屠杀直到今天的事例，无不说明这一点。

天助自助者，面对制度的极端之恶，我们还需要勇气。

勇气从何而来？

汉娜·阿伦特说，思考可以带来力量。

当然，思考也会带来勇气。

深入而独立的思考，必然会让我们坚信正义，坚信人类普遍的价值，坚信人类的良知终将战胜邪恶，自然就会有了反抗的勇气。

只有放弃思考的民族，才是最可悲的。

很多人觉得女主演讲英语时的德语口音是个问题，其实是人物设计，而且我觉得挺好的。

虽然阿伦特本人讲英语并不是这样（像影片中所有的R都发成小舌音，THE RIGHT FROM THE WRONG简直惨不忍闻）。

其实苏科瓦英语非常好，网上一找一堆，要讲成这样还挺刻意难为的（毕竟她长期生活在美国），应该是人物特色的一种设计吧。

比如CH一直按德语发音这个梗，在开始的时候是朋友圈聚会，闺蜜纠正她，其他人觉得不可思议。

后来在接到主编催稿电话时，她说CHAT ON THE PHONE也依然是用她一贯的错误发音，保持了一致。

非常棒的是阿伦特书房的再现，桌后面的书柜，和能查到的照片中的家具比例几乎完全一样。

包括布吕歇那边的烟斗等等。

然后片中的60年代纽约全景、耶路撒冷街道这些场景，都很有代入感。

导演说剧中80%的对白都来自真实的文章、书信。

所以无论剧情如何设计，总体而言是非常靠谱的。

就好比影片末尾的演讲，实际上是虚拟的，但一字一句都来自她本人。

甚至关于海德格尔在她心中的位置，以及关于布吕歇（包括阿伦特自己）和他人半公开的多伴侣关系，影片也都有体现，留白恰到好处。

他们之间相互的昵称（戏称），Stup以及Frau Professor，包括一两句法语套话，都是忠实再现的细节。

以色列派Siegfried去找阿伦特的时候，阿伦特一认出对方就开始说德语，而对方开始则是说英语，外交使节嘛，而且有陪同的。。。

直到后来二人争执了才无缝切换到成德语，这个设计也是满分。

不过Hans Jonas的青年扮演者比中老年扮演者头发还稀少，可能算是一个小BUG。

苏科瓦本人已戒烟多年，为了这个角色，她恢复吸烟，然后竟然能在拍完之后又戒掉，真是太厉害了！

其实英语编剧在里面也演了一个小角色，阿伦特最后一次去看病重的 Kurt Blumenfeld 时，出门迎接她的人就是编剧Pam Katz ;-)阿伦特是我看的第二部冯·特罗塔作品，当时非常疯狂，硬头皮德语连蒙带猜看完，又找到很远的图书馆有DVD借过来，看西语字幕确认。

直到后来网上出现更多配音和原声字幕版，才有条件经常翻回去看看。

可能还有不全的，以后想到了再记。

许多年前法国思想家帕斯卡说“做一根会思考的芦苇”，而他也终其一生印证了这一句话，始终把思考作为人生于世最大的尊严。

而当我们将视线从西欧的法国转移到东亚的中国时。

现代的胡适说:“我最大的信仰就是别人有思考的自由”。

当代的王小波也讲:“做一只特立独行的猪。

”思考是什么？

为什么让这么多人如此痴迷？

为什么要思考？

思考究竟能带给我们什么？

思考，这是一个让自由人着迷的东西。

①思考，独立之精神。

思考是最容易获得的东西，任何人只要有志于思考，他就可以得到思考，但同时他又是最难保持的东西，即使是一些一生致力于思考的“哲人”“人神”“圣人”他们时常“反智”。

步履不停、思考不止。

在其间，汉娜·阿伦特的存在是如此的弥足珍贵，身为犹太人，在面对大屠杀时也没有“一边倒”，而是冷静的思考了为什么是犹太人，反思了犹太人的劣性根。

战后全世界批判纳粹刽子手时，她却能够从学者的立场严谨的指出，一切都是“平庸之恶”在作怪。

哪怕她的民族抛弃了她，哪怕周围的人都不理解她，但只要能够不停的思考，那么一切的外在条件都不可以成为阻碍，因为思考可以让我们站在巨人的肩膀上看世界。

而将视线从德国转移到俄罗斯时，我同样也发现了一位熠熠生辉的人物——索尔仁尼琴。

索尔仁尼琴这是一位被称作“俄罗斯的良心”的作家，这是一位被评价为“用一支笔战胜一个超级大国”的思想家。

他因为坚持思考，敢说真话被国家机器放逐海外，囚于集中营暗无天日的牢笼里。

而在集中营疲劳的长途行军中，在冰冷的寒夜里，他说什么也打不倒他，因为他是这个集中营里“永远的逃狱者”。

“永远的逃狱者”——这是一个人对于自由的思考多么浪漫的追求！

②思考，无畏之恒心。

中国历史上的三次思想大爆炸分别发生在先秦、魏晋、民国，无一例外不是战乱连年、名不聊生。

战乱为什么能和思考挂钩呢？

这就要从中国封建王朝的统治制度讲起，我们的帝国在体制上实施中央集权，其精神上的支柱为道德，管理的办法则是依靠以丞相为首的文官集团的文牍。

因此我们的政治非常注重社会的稳定，而不计较对一人一事绝对公允，所以统治阶层相信牺牲少数人换来的稳定是正义的。

他们（统治阶层）奉行的是正如老子所提倡“虚其心、实其腹、弱其志、强其骨，使夫知不敢”，文言翻译过来就是“使人们头脑简单纯朴，让他们的肚皮吃饱，削弱他们的意志，强健他们的筋骨，使人民没有知识也没有欲望，使有智慧的人不敢妄言（妄作主张）”。

由此我们就可以发现符号学家福柯提出的那个关于“权力”的理论——知识与权力。

从国家（延伸为邦国/部落）诞生初，知识就掌握在权力阶层手中，部落时期的最高掌握者是神权代理人祭司和酋长，邦国时期是贵族阶层，到了封建王朝时期则是文官集团，他们控制着书本的传播路径、“异端”思想的交流、学校的建立以及知识的教授，他们相信要稳定的统治那么第一要义是“愚民”。

而那些妄图思考的“异端”例如李贽、黄宗羲之辈，他们的结局只能是身死狱中，因为稳定压倒一切。

所以在此背景之下，秦始皇焚书坑儒，汉武帝罢黜百家、独尊儒术，明清大兴文字狱······但乱世由于没有稳定的统治与成型的大一统国家出现，国家机器的力量大大削弱，由此对人民思想的禁锢随之松动。

这就让我们迎来了中国思想史上最耀眼的三个时代，先秦诸子百家百花齐放百家争鸣、魏晋有竹林七贤建安七子、民国更是思想大拿层出不穷。

新思想的出现冲击着现有的社会阶层，“带血”的革命也推动着社会的变革，思考让人不在愚昧，思考让独裁者走向末路。

回到最初的问题，我们为什么思考，为什么要像汉娜·阿伦特那样思考？

没有绝对公平的社会存在，但上帝会分配绝对公平的人格散落人间。

似乎是19年，杨笠的“普信”言论出圈，这让我想起了汉娜·阿伦特的“平庸之恶”，所以为什么舆论要让这群“体制内弱者”背锅，为群众的不满买单?这是一个“大众传播时代”，只要关注过一些社会新闻就会知道，现在的深度报道越来越少了，取而代之的是片面的、迅速的、极具个人（组织）观点的报道，所以往往一件事的真相往往不是我们最初看上去的那么简单。

其中媒介充当着一个“把关人的角色”，对社会进行环境监控，在这种环境下我们如果不想完全被动的卷入“沉默的螺旋”，那么请学会思考，无论何时，无论何地，无论出于何方立场。

请学会像汉娜·阿伦特那样思考，而不是坚持所谓“以河为界”的正义，相信河这边杀了自己人是魔鬼，杀了河对面的人是英雄。

我们要思考，我们要发声，我们不在冰冷，我们坚信有一份光便发一份热，那时我们的社会会是什么样子？