Totalitarianism and Perversion of the Law

Abstract

Arendt's examination of the Eichmann case provides another point of view to elucidate a fundamental aspect already present in The Origins of Totalitarianism. According to Arendt, the ambition of totalitarianism is less to control human spontaneity than to eradicate it completely and make it superfluous. This can only be achieved by setting up devices for twisting, deviating and inverting human relationships and ways of life. While it requires the complicity of all to implement such a project, it also requires actors involved to the point of direct criminality, such as Eichmann. Eichmann's justifications in the Jerusalem trial hint directly at the "dis-interestedness" of the totalitarian actor Arendt speaks of in Origins: someone who has withdrawn from himself and deposited his own self and his capacity to act in the self of the Führer, identified with the people. As if nothing was left of his spontaneity but his vital energy. Eichmann also hid behind the famous "obedience to orders", but Arendt pays special attention to the precision that Eichmann adds, according to which he obeyed the Führer's will, which had acquired the force of law. Claude Lefort calls this identification a "perversion of the law". In what follows, I intend to base our analysis of totalitarian perversion and the perversion of the law on a recent work by the jurist Olivier Jouanjan, devoted to legal ideology as it appears in the Nazi discourse and practice of law.