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At the time of the Eichmann trial, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, conducted an innovative study. It addressed the perpetual conflict between obedience and conscience. Indirectly, the study addressed the bizarre justifications of genocide by Nuremberg War Criminals on the basis of obedience and following orders (Miale and Selzer 7).

In the experiment, the teacher was to administer an electric shock of increasing intensity to the learner upon each mistake. However, the teacher was oblivious to the fact that the learner was an actor, merely indicating discomfort as punishment increased. When the teacher asked for advice regarding increasing the punishments, he/she was verbally encouraged to continue. Ultimately, 65% of the teachers obeyed orders to punish the learner all the way to the end of the 450-volt scale. Not a single teacher disobeyed orders before reaching 300 volts (Miale and Selzer 8).

Obedience significantly dropped when the experimenter was absent, or when the experimenter provided contradictory instructions. In fact, at times, the teacher questioned the experimenter, asking who was responsible for shocking the learner. Upon the reply that the experimenter assumed full responsibility, the teachers seemed to accept the response and continue shocking. The results of the study merely raised more questions. Foremost, how could these teachers bring themselves to continue shocking?

Milgram maintained that every human possesses the dual capacity to function as an individual exercising his/her own moral judgment and the capacity to relinquish his/her autonomy. Yet, he failed to understand the deeper meaning inherent in the transformation of ordinary behavior through obedience to orders. Milgram argued that since authority demands obedience, the subjects administered increasingly high shocks in obeying the authority of the experimenter.

While the teachers feeling of responsibility did affect how they acted, it cannot explain the behavior. The deeper meaning lies within the responsibility paradox between beauracracies and the individual. Indeed, moral responsibility is not a transferable property as is personal property. In the experiment, the teachers confused moral responsibility of the individual with technical responsibility, in which certain officials are deemed accountable in an institution for an action, decided by the institution (Dimsdale 336). When the institutions are no longer legitimate and turn immoral, the individual cannot remain unconcerned with the moral considerations of their actions.

Many have argued that it is obedience, as opposed to aggression, that explains the Nazi horrors (Miale and Selzer 10). This myth merely provides an excuse for those who willingly participated and obeyed the government. Accordingly, one can exemplify the virtue of adherence to orders when following superior orders which permit personal goals of wealth, status, power and providing for ones family. However, this does not excuse genocide and evil.

Logically, one must ask if the authoritative command permits a relaxation of internal restraints, thereby releasing the aggressive impulse (Dimsdale 335-336). Then aggression, as opposed to obedience, becomes the rational and justification for such tragedy. The interpretation is supported by the fact that without external sanction, all subjects administered a far lower level of shock. Without such an external stimulus, mainly, an invitation to do greater violence to another human being, the potential obedients aggressive drives were controlled.

According to Milgram, in a wicked world decent people act wickedly. However, according to the latter argument for agression, in a wicked world people act in a wicked way yet justify themselves on the grounds of obedience. Does the latter challenge the notion that the Nazi leaders, while perpetrators of extraordinary evil, were normal people? Are they identified as psychotic and psychopathic? No. That the Nazis perhaps gave in to their wicked ways merely substantiates the dual nature of humankind. Their wicked actions illustrate that they chose evil. Ultimately, evil cannot be justified on the basis of obedience or responsibility. People are conscious of and responsible for not only what they intend to do, but all that they do. And it is the deeds that define the person and their nature.

The danger is perhaps greatest when the orders of authority are themselves immoral, because the subversion of our perception of right and wrong ensues. Indeed, ones conscience then opposes the inclination to stop and encourages ones duty to participate further. Hence, how can one know what is actually right when values experience a role reversal? Therein lies the difficulty. In such a situation, a commitment to basic truths necessitates a rebellion against society and steadfast opposition to immorality. Albert Camus in The Rebel illustrates the complexity of confronting that which oppresses beyond a tolerable limit:

"What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion. A slave who has taken orders all his life suddenly decides that he cannot obey some new command. What does he mean by saying no? (13)."

As Camus relates, the act of rebellion is more than simply refusing. It demands the placement of morality before all else, even to life itself. It is becomes a struggle for the supreme good, an All or Nothing scenario from which awareness is born (Camus 21). Either the rebel identifies completely with good or faces complete destruction and suffering by a domineering force. Hence, the act of rebelling demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice life itself for a common good more important than ones own destiny. Yet, one must ask if it is natural for one to place collective good before the individual, or simply necessary? Further, how can one be convinced that the rights one defends reflect absolute good and embody waterproof ideological constructs?

The perpetrators of the Holocaust demonstrated an ability to redefine evil. This is perhaps the most frightening concept of all (Haas 179). In fact, those who carried out heinous crimes under Nazi rule were not morally deficient, essentially evil and grotesque people, but ethically sensitive and conscious. Their actions displayed acquiescence and an awareness, but because the Nazi ethic presented an entirely new moral standard, they perceived their deeds as anything but evil. Indeed, the Nazi ethic found extensive acceptance due to its gradual, incremental development, and its similarity to the conventional Western system of ethical convictions. The motto of the SS, the Nazi police, further illustrates the power of ethics: Right is that which serves the German People (qtd. in Haas: 142). With this realization, the problem of the Holocaust becomes not only how common people can commit extraordinary evil, but how evil is understood. By what mechanisms is evil redefined so people in good conscience can commit Holocausts (Haas 179)?

The Holocaust is embodied not by utter, absolute evil, but by an ethic and the ability to alter society by providing new definitions to and conceptions of good and evil. Indeed, isolating the Holocaust strips it of its lessons. Therefore, it we care about humanity, we must deromanticize and confront evil, realizing our potential within. Similarly, there are those who regard the murder of the Jews of Europe as a shoah, or natural catastrophe. Yet, Amos Oz illustrates that the Holocaust was never an outbreak of forces beyond human control. An earthquake, a flood, a typhoon, an epidemic is a shoah. The murder of the European Jews was by no means a shoah (81). Hence, confronting evil necessitates an understanding of the power of words. Words can both reduce the individual to a mere fragment of a symbol, or permit the ignorant a glimpse of blazing light.

The Holocaust also marked the failure of the law to stand above individual choices and institutional ethics. While humanity ideally casts law as guardian to moral standards of right and wrong, the Nazi experience and the resulting Holocaust illustrate how law is at best merely a slave to society (Haas 203). The laws of a country do not guarantee against crimes against humanity. Logically, one must question the role of international law and its guarantee against evil. In fact, international law can also deviate from its noble origins. It is dissapointing to realize the force behind the Holocaust and all evil, the capacity to redefine morality, ultimately proves far beyond the reach of legality. It lies within.

The implications of evil as ordinary are numerous and frightening. As long as the potential for evil exists within, the threat of depriving innocent others of their humanity remains a vivid possibility. A simple glimpse at reality illustrates how widespread evil is in life. The actions of Hitler and Stalin are just a few examples of genocide, torture, and crimes against humanity throughout the 20th century alone. There are the massacres of Armenians, Cambodians, Gypsies, and Indonesians, as well as a different, but nonetheless present, method of evil: the millions oppressed by poverty, disease, starvation, and war. Yet there is hope in combating the evil within. By understanding our extreme potentials we can confront an ever-present evil and work towards its restraint, both individually and collectively.

Within the Holocaust, we find consolation and hope in the altruism of the few righteous Jews and gentiles who risked all to save others despite overwhelming ethics of evil, or those victims who heroically acted both individually and collectively to survive or even escape from demise among the ashes of their fellow people. We must focus our attention on these pillars of moral rectitude and redeeming integrity. They stand out against a backdrop of extraordinary evil for their selfless actions, for risking all to save another out of love and a reluctance to accept the warped morality advocating destruction of another human being and depriving the undeserving of their humanity.

The inherent danger in declaring how the ordinary person can commit the most horrendous evil stems from the common tendency to slide from understanding to excusing. Understanding such behavior as basic to human nature cannot permit the alteration of our moral judgment of these actions or actors. Ultimately, the sole measure of human nature is our capacity to do good and resist what is wrong.

Avoiding further evil requires facing evil. This in turn necessitates tracing evil from unchosen, subtle actions to the actions and vices which exert dominance. The answer lies in improving our control over our conduct and our freedom to choose good by developing a reflective temper (Kekes 225, 236). The latter imbues within us a motivation to increase self-control and restrain our reactions, while permitting greater understanding of the essential evil conditions of life. However, facing evil and approximating good requires sound moral tradition. Is this possible? Does hospitable morality, or objectivity in good and evil, exist?

In Facing Evil, John Kekes addresses the concept of summum bonum, or the existence of a best life for human beings, from the pluralist and relative perspective:

Pluralists believe that morality makes different types of claims on moral agents... The reason pluralists give against there being a summum bonum is that there are many ways of ordering and balancing various incommensurable goods in a single human life. As a result, human lives can be good in many different ways (233)."

Kekes argues against those advocating a summum bonum because it regards a specific package of goods as superior. However, he maintains that the pluralists do support the objectivity of certain, inalienable rights and oppose simple evil. He then introduces relativism as an obstacle to facing evil:

"Relativists suppose that one consequence of incommensurability of goods is that the lives that aim to embody some particular arrangement of goods are also incommensurable... Thus, according to relativists, there are different ways of life, different moral traditions, and different conceptions of good lives, and while moral criticism internal to them is possible and may even be important, external moral criticism is a sign of dogmatism, intolerance, and a noxious imperialism that attempts to impose alien standards on unwilling subjects (234)."

Indeed, the relativists offer no neutral medium or privileged goods. Therein lies the illegitimacy of the movement from pluralism to relativism. The relativist disregards the objectivity of simple evil (Kekes 234-235) Hence, the innocent can potentially be deprived of humanity, by defining evil based on what a particular culture regards as important. In other words, the relativist standpoint is faulty because by refusing the legitimacy of external moral criticism, it ignores the existance of simple evil. This in turn permits the violation of simple evil- the minimum requirements of human welfare.

In confronting evil, humanity must be opposed to simple evil and advocate the legality of moral criticism. Indeed, the objectivity of simple evil provides a crucial standard by which morality can be both judged and defined. Ultimately, in order to achieve intellectual responsibility, one must acknowledge the existance, and legitimacy, of different conceptions and varying perspectives which accept certain absolutes.

The works of Arendt and Levi are specifically valuable in disproving the existence of a rational and moral order from which evil is a departure. Elie Wiesel, noble-laureate and Holocaust survivor, has argued that the most significant and powerful tool available for the release of human acts of goodness are words with their power to produce memory, and so, intention (qtd. In Haas: 227). In essence, stories or myths construct a world of meaning and reveal our true condition, instructing us how to live. They yield essential insights towards promoting human welfare in light of our moral inequality. Indeed, the ultimate challenge lies within our actions: either they promote or negate a moral system of living. In the end, are we willing to place morality before choice, even at the risk of death? Are we willing to rebel against injustice?

In order to survive, we must.

At first glance, socialism best mirrors the crusade for justice and equal rights. Yet, by its very nature, any retreat from this principle is a rejection of the principle in its entirety. In Under This Blazing Light, Amos Oz addresses the faulty nature of not merely socialism, but the concept of a larger order delegated the role of combating oppression and poverty:

"The origin and precondition of all socialism is sensitivity to injustice and hatred of villians. But sensitivity and hatred cannot flourish side by side...

To be a socialist means to fight for the right of individuals and societies to control their own destinies up to that point beyond which men are incorrigibly ruled by fate. It is helpful, however, not to lose sight of the fact that social injustice, political wrong and economic inequity are only one battlefield in the wider arena of human existence, and that we are hemmed in on at least three sides by our pitiful frailty, the pain of our mortality, sexual injustice, and the misery of our fate. These cannot be overcome by any social system... (135-136)."

Can one conclude that dependence on any social system for insuring good and combating evil is structurally wrong and overtly idealistic? Perhaps so. It is not that socialism is any better or worse, but that there are limits to an idealism whose rejection causes great harm to all involved: To be as different from one another as we wish, without oppressing or exploiting or humiliating one another, is an ideal formula which can be aimed for but never fully realised, I know. Whoever tries to apply formulas completely ends up manipulating people (137).

Indeed, the solution ultimately lies within. Therefore, humanity must reject the myth of an external answer to an evil which flows from within. The notion of a society free of all evil will remain a utopian fantasy until humanity accepts the individual potential for both unparalleled good and extraordinary evil. Indeed, precisely because this essential duality gives birth to all evil, the ability to combat oppression and inequality must emerge from within. The individual must destroy a piece of his/her very own heart.