Course Description

Instructor: Dan Zins, PhD

Minnich was a student of Hannah Arendt (“Eichmann in Jerusalem�/�The Origins of Totalitarianism�), and like her mentor has dedicated much of her life to preventing recurrences of authoritarianism/totalitarianism, human rights violations, and mass killing. We will focus on Minnich’s suggestions for thinking more incisively and productively about intensive and extensive evil, what all of us can do to reduce remedial evil in the world, and how we can more effectively cultivate intensive and extensive goodness. Keywords for this course: complicity, thoughtlessness, obedience, self-deception, willful blindness, resisting authoritarianism/fascism, cynicism/realistic hope, critical thinking, empathy, altruism, Holocaust rescuers.