ABSTRACT
The primary contradiction in ethical conflicts confronting the administrator is that he should act obediently towards his superiors, while at the same time it is he who ultimately is responsible for his actions. Milgram is aware that there is a great difference between an experiment in a laboratory and the forms of obedience encountered under Nazism. But the essence of obedience to Milgram is the same. The majority of the participants acted in obedience to the experiment leader and administered what they believed to be very high shocks to the student on the other side. The participant becomes morally bound to the experiment leader or authority's foster conscience in a way which can be expressed in the concepts of 'loyalty', 'duty' and 'discipline'. Milgram's experiment is valuable because it uncovers, in experimental form, obedience's voluntary character, which Arendt already displayed in the Eichmann case.
