Javascript must be enabled to continue!

Is radical evil banal? Is banal evil radical?

View through CrossRef

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of the motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary.

SAGE Publications

Philosophy & Social Criticism

Title: Is radical evil banal? Is banal evil radical?

Description:

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all.

I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps.

The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann.

As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of the motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary.

Related Results

Dewi Zephaniah Phillips’ Critique of Theodicies

The problem of evil, which is one of the important issues of contemporary philosophy of religion, is one of the important arguments expressed in the context of objection to the exi...

Banal Time: War After Grand Narrative

This essay identifies the banal temporality of endless war in both the affective disposition signaled by the POW/MIA flag and the conditions of apperception of the war planners who...

Civilization Without Evil in Leszek Kołakowski’s Works

Leszek Kołakowski had a keen interest in the phenomenon of evil, and many of his works address this topic. Kołakowski made attempts to explore the origin of evil, human experiences...

Belief in Conspiracy Theories that Differ in Evil Intentions: Correlations with Anger and Other Traits

The present research extended past correlational research (Harmon-Jones & Szymaniak, 2023) by manipulating the mediator – evil perceptions – in the relationship between tra...

Radical Versus Non-Radical Resection for Small intestinal Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors: A Propensity Score-Matched Analysis

Abstract Surgical resection is the first choice for the treatment of small intestinal gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), but the best surgical method for small intest...

The Problem of Systemic Evil for Atheists/Non-Theists

Abstract This chapter utilizes the two key theses that have been established in previous chapters: (i) the problem of systemic evil raises a more forceful challenge ...

The Problem of Evil as a Problem of Axiological Expectation Mismatch

Abstract This chapter argues that the problem of evil is much deeper than it is normally conceived to be because the core is relevant not only to traditional theists...

The Problem of Evil

Abstract Philosophers and theologians tend to approach the problem of evil through a specific framework, centred on the age-old dispute between traditional theists a...