The Ordinary Quality of Resistance: From Milgram's Laboratory to the Village of Le Chambon

According to Hannah Arendt's banality of evil thesis, endorsed by Milgram, it is possible for ordinary people to perform horrendous deeds when these are rendered routine and morally neutral through a framework of legitimate authority. But such a view of human capacities does nothing to explain the actions of equally ordinary people who defied authorities to rescue potential victims during the Holocaust. This article formulates a contrasting but noncontradictory conception—the ordinariness of goodness—and illustrates it by examining closely how the people of the French village of Le Chambon managed, during World War II, to resist the efforts of Vichy authorities to induce them to participate in the persecution of minority peoples, thereby enabling them to save thousands of refugees. Notable features of their resistance are then compared to the ordinary behavior of some of Milgram's disobedient subjects.