Reconceptualising Responsibility: The Ethics of Refugee Policy
After being briefly incarcerated in Berlin by the Gestapo in 1933, German philosopher Hannah Arendt was forced to flee from her home. Arendt subsequently spent the next two decades as a vagrant, stateless Jew before obtaining refugee status in the United States. This experience uniquely positioned her to later report upon the trial of high-ranking Nazi official, Adolf Eichmann, which occurred almost thirty years later. The book that soon followed, Eichmann in Jerusalem, saw this fiercely independent political thinker present her controversial thoughts and observations on the banality of evil and challenge traditional conceptions of moral responsibility.
With more displaced persons than ever before in human history, the political philosophy of Arendt offers contemporary readers an alternative way in which to analyse their individual role in a global refugee crisis that is largely created by totalitarian regimes. Do we, as political actors, possess a moral responsibility to question the policies of our governments and assist those that are fleeing persecution? Though clearly relevant to contemporary circumstances, it is worthwhile to first elaborate Arendt’s ideas and her theory of responsibility in the context in which they appeared.
“This captures the crux of Arendt’s commentary on responsibility: while countries may not have an explicit legal responsibility to act, this does not absolve them of their ethical culpability.”
Eichmann in Jerusalem transports readers to the infamous trial where Arendt critiqued the human condition and, through dispelling the myth perpetuated by the prosecution that Eichmann was an anti-Semitic zealot, called into question the entrenched legal and moral dogma that individuals who commit evil deeds must be motivated by malicious intentions. Eichmann was undoubtedly a zealous architect of the Holocaust and yet, seemingly through self-deception, he felt no personal responsibility for his actions that led to the death of countless innocents. What struck Arendt was the utter normalcy of a figure, an observation confirmed by multiple psychiatrists, who had nonetheless committed the acts of a monster. The stark reality that dawned on the thinker was that whilst the actions of this dispassionate yet meticulous bureaucrat were undoubtedly monstrous, his intentions were utterly banal.
Nazism was an assault on the faculty of independent thought. For Arendt it became clear that Eichmann’s failure to engage with, or reflect upon, his actions were what constituted the worst part of his crime. He was a man who had become so consumed by the bureaucratic rigidity and routinisation of the Third Reich that he was incapable of formulating ideas of his own. Detached from reality, Eichmann was never forced to justify his nefarious work because he believed that he was simply fulfilling his duty under the rules stipulated by the regime. Arendt succinctly articulates that self-deception had become a moral prerequisite for survival — one was effectively forced to disassociate from their actions and the remorse which would otherwise normally be expected to accompany them.
The responsibility of nations to fight such oppressive regimes and assist those who are victims of this form of rule is captured in her chapter addressing the deportations of Jews which occurred in Western Europe. The parable of Denmark and their protection of their Jewish population illustrates that collective opposition to wicked government policy is possible and can even alter the views of ardent supporters. Parallels between the unfulfilled responsibility of the global community during WWII and its responsibility during the current refugee crisis can be clearly drawn.
Arendt advances another underlying argument that the international community possess an obligation to develop mechanisms for responding to the victims and perpetrators of human rights abuses. Whilst there are international laws related to refugee protection which create exceptions to state sovereignty, the existence of draconian border policies in countries such as Australia are a reminder that there remains no legal mechanism requiring sovereign states to comply with international conventions.
This captures the crux of Arendt’s commentary on responsibility: while countries may not have an explicit legal responsibility to act, this does not absolve them of their ethical culpability. For those living in stable societies far from conflict it is easy to ignore the cries for help from desperate refugees, it is easy to continue participating in everyday routines, and it is even easier to not question or be informed on the refugee policies which liberal democratic governments enact in their name. This thoughtless evasion of responsibility is the result of a failure to engage in an internal dialogue with oneself. It demonstrates the ease with which otherwise terrifyingly ‘normal’ law-abiding citizens can cooperate and become bystanders to the suffering of others.
Eichmann stands testament to the fact that such citizens can commit or become complicit in nefarious acts without being motivated by evil intent. Given that Arendt argues emphatically for our moral responsibility to act, we are thus driven to abandon the convenient sense of security afforded by our private lives, reconnect with the public sphere and become politically engaged. We may be separated politically from the refugees who are forced from their homes every day, but for Arendt we can never be ethical separated from them. Our responsibility to act, to question, and to think always extends to those around us, even if it seems beyond our control.
The twisted interpretation of Kantian moral philosophy adopted by Eichmann serves as evidence of the myriad ways in which people can seek to abrogate their responsibility to think for themselves. To defend inaction on the basis that such concerns lay outside of our control is to reproduce the logic of Eichmann who did not believe it was his place to question the Third Reich and its actions.
Those who claim that in reaching such a conclusion Arendt absolves Eichmann and the Nazis greatly misread her work.¹ Instead, Arendt’s writing stressed that his duty-bound blind allegiance to Hitler and inability to think critically do not exonerate him from his heinous acts. By affording evil an almost biblical status, those responsible for such acts can be elevated to fantastical beings, untouchable by the interventions of ordinary people.
Arendt emphasises that we remain individually responsible for these actions — for even if eighty million Germans had collectively done as Eichmann did it would still not ethically excuse him. In her own powerful words, “…politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same”.
As crimes against humanity continue, the lessons of responsibility that Arendt discovered whilst covering the trial of Eichmann remain relevant: indifference is akin to complicity and complicity is akin to the crime. Her unsympathetic political prose is a reminder, in an unprecedented period of displacement, that those who think have a responsibility to challenge political ideas and judge the morality of the status quo. Though we may never stand trial as Eichmann did for our own actions or inactions during the current refugee crisis, Arendt inspires modern audiences to actively hold themselves to account and each reassess our responsibility as political citizens to combat evil when it inevitably appears within the world.
¹ A critique driven by the idea that understanding the intent of those who commit evil undermines the severity of their actions.
