Banality of Evil

Steven James Bartlett in his book The Pathology of Man analysed human evil. Considered in a clinical rather than a religious sense, evil refers to human violence, cruelty, enslavement of other species and destruction of the environment. Bartlett's ideas are presented and then applied to technology, in particular the technology of repression. Implications include the need for a normative treatment of technology.

Vortrag vom 06. Dezember 2017, am Bezirkskrankenhaus Bayreuth

Anhand der künstlerischen Arbeiten einer Traumapatientin unternommene philosophische Wanderung. Von der Oberfläche her werden Themenkomplexe wie "Leibselbst", "das Böse" und "das Fremde" im Kontext des künstlerisch-therapeutischen Prozesses der Patientin betrachtet

Appel à contributions pour un dossier de la revue Implications philosophiques qui entend mettre en parallèle et croiser les réflexions anthropologiques, de philosophie morale, juridique et sociale avec les réflexions esthétiques sur les fictions

Our world has become inundated with images of a reality in which ‘evil’ thrives, and ‘good’ seems to be a naïve, utopian fantasy. ‘Good’ is reserved for superheroes and children’s stories, while the ‘real world’ is driven by greed, violence, and hatred. If we are so consumed with evil, then is there any point to writing about it? Perhaps the more important question is ‘why should we ever stop writing about it?’. Towards that end, this volume is intended to act as a catalyst to an ongoing destabilization of mental (philosophical) and social (political, historical) regimes of ‘evil’ in thought and practice. It is compiled with the intention of saying something new about a very old topic, as a reminder that this is an unfinished conversation which stretches back millennia and has a deeply tangible impact on the worlds within which we live today. Contributors are Peter Brian Barry, Lima Bhuiyan, Diedra L. Clay, Zachary J. Goldberg, Sophia Kanaouti, Stefanie Schnitzer Mills, Rallie Murray, Asli Tekinay and Claudio Vescia Zanini.

Il presente lavoro si fa carico di questioni che il confronto con il fenomeno del Totalitarismo non può non suscitare nello studioso, oltre che nell'uomo in quanto uomo. Alla luce degli scritti di Hannah Arendt, si analizzeranno il regime e il soggetto totalitario. Secondo l'autrice, sono soltanto due i governi totalitari che si sono dati storicamente, quello nazista in Germania e quello comunista in Russia, accomunati da tratti – quali l'atomizzazione sociale, il bisogno continuo di vittime, l'anti-utilitarismo, l'uso di strumenti come la violenza e il terrore – che risultano indispensabili per la sopravvivenza di regimi di questo genere. Anche la propaganda, marcatamente ideologica e falsa, riveste un ruolo fondamentale nella promozione del consenso, indice della tendenza del Totalitarismo a fondare la propria esistenza sulla menzogna. Il carattere menzognero investe poi la natura stessa dell'uomo, sia di chi aderisce al regime, sia di chi ne è vittima, in un processo di disumanizzazione del soggetto che raggiunge l'apice nel campo di concentramento. Qui, il male assume un aspetto radicale, eppure non manca di stupire, insieme, per la sua apparente banalità. Nell'analisi del fenomeno in questione sarà prezioso inoltre il riferimento agli scritti di Kafka, dove è implicito molto di quello che il Totalitarismo esplicita. Infine, ci chiederemo se esso sopravviva ancora oggi, mostrando il rischio che possa conseguire la vittoria definitiva dietro forme esasperate di Negazionismo. ​

Hannah Arendt, in a letter to Gerschom Scholem, claims that now she has published her work Eichmann in Jerusalem she abandoned the concept of radical evil and came to the conclusion that evil has no depth or demonic dimension. This study analyses her understanding of radical evil in The Origins of Totalitarianismas well as the concept of the banality of evil in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, and poses the question of whether Arendt’s thinking about evil marks a discontinuity, as not only the author herself asserts, but also some commentators (D. Villa), or whether the core of her thought on evil has not in any way altered and only points of emphasis are different (R. Bernstein). Arendt has reasons for her rejection of the concept of radical evil, which are connected with her opening assumption that evil is always merely shallow and banal, and that it cannot be overcome even dialectically. This thesis is not, however, new, and evidence of it can be found not only in The Origins of Totalitarianismbut also in the correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers from the 1940s. The aim of this study is to show that the shift from the concept of radical evil to banal evil is a change in points of emphasis, rather than a change in the content of the concept, even if the points emphasized were already present in the earlier work of this important philosopher.

O presente trabalho visa discutir o tratamento do mal e do diabo na Bíblia se baseando nas obras de Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels e Karen Armstrong. Estes três estudiosos do cristianismo primitivo nos mostram que muitas das respostas que são dadas hoje já apareciam de forma embrionária nos primeiros séculos do cristianismo, quando a Bíblia foi escrita, já outros são desenvolvimentos mais recentes e com isso levantam a questão de se além de sua validade filosófica, eles têm também respaldo religioso. Assim, destaca-se que se o problema do mal não pode ser visto como definitivamente resolvido exatamente no texto sagrado que lhe dá origem, então é plausível que este também não seja o melhor lugar para encontrar nossos princípios éticos e morais definitivos. Argumento, este sim, que é muito utilizado pelos chamados “neo-ateus”.

This chapter argues that the problem of evil is a way to reflect upon three underlying
problems that pertain to legal pluralism as a critical, self-reflective theory. First, legal pluralism is prone to be absorbed by its “saved subjects.” Second, there is no theoretical
space outside or above political contestation. Third, the legal pluralist herself potentially
exerts influence on the observed through her observations. By analyzing the debate be
tween Eugen Ehrlich and Hans Kelsen, the chapter demonstrates how these three issues accompany the development of the debate on legal pluralism and how the problem of evil emerges as its underlying enigma.

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

In this article I look at the idea of the banality of evil provided by Hannah Arendt, in order to investigate its potential within theology. The concept of the banality of evil exposes a specific kind of evil often overlooked, namely that much evil is not done with the intention to do evil, but because of a thoughtlessness by the perpetrator. Through thoughtlessness one can become the instrument of an even greater evil without noticing it, as seen with Eichmann's blind following of orders during the rise of the Third Reich. But thoughtlessness can be countered by 'thinking', a term Arendt turns into her own. Thinking stops the wheel of endless action and is always open. Open for a world that could be different. This kind of openness provides the fertile soil for ethical discernment in any given situation. An informed theology must therefore find a way to reconcile an openminded discernment and a wholehearted obedience to God. A God fearing free thinking.

This exists in a revised and more extensive version in my book "Bruecken zum Uebernatuerlichen: Simone Weil ueber das Boese, den Krieg und die Religion" (Bernardus-Verlag, 2018).
It was originally published in "Jahrbuch fuer Religionsphilosophie", vol. 11, 2012,  pp. 143-183.
Dieser Beitrag untersucht Simone Weils Verständnis der Natur
des Bösen, mögliche Motivationen für die Entscheidung zum Bö-
sen und mögliche Antwort darauf. Zuerst wird gezeigt, wie Hannah
Arendts Konzept der »Banalität des Bösen« mit Weils Gedanken
der Monotonie des Bösen teilweise übereinstimmt. Die Furcht
vor schmerzhafter Selbsterkenntnis im Lichte Gottes ist das
Hauptmotiv für das Böse. Die Entscheidung dafür geschieht fast
unbewusst. Die Antwort darauf ist das Kreuz, durch das Böses in
eigenes Leid verwandelt wird.
This paper investigates Simone Weil’s understanding of the nature
of evil, possible motivations for the decision to do evil and
possible answers to evil. First, it shows how Hannah Arendt’s concept
of the “banality of evil” partially overlaps with Weil’s idea of
its monotony. Fear of painful self-recognition in the light of God is
the main motivation for evil. The decision for evil happens almost
unconsciously. Transforming evil into own suffering through the
cross is the answer. http://www.beck-shop.de/fachbuch/inhaltsverzeichnis/9783495465011_TOC_001.pdf

Arendt’s reflection on the problem of evil is characterized by a tension between two interpretations: a historical-political one, referable to the concept of the “totalitarian evil”, and another one, which uses the traditional categories of moral philosophy and metaphysics and which can be defined through the famous expression “banality of evil”. Arendt introduced this notion in the well-known and discussed book, published in 1963 in which she had examined the figure of Adolf Eichmann.

Contemporary thinkers such as Philip Zimbardo, Alexander Hinton and
Elizabeth Minnich recently coined the terms Banality of Heroism, Banality
of Everyday Thought, and Banality of Goodness respectively (without these
concepts being the linchpins of their theses). These terms can be retraced
to one thinker in particular who is constantly referred to by them: Hannah
Arendt. Arendt’s Banality of Evil, a key concept in her work, was devised
to discuss the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This paper seeks to
critically analyze these “banalities,” and ascertain whether they have
contributed meaningfully to the existing literature on the problem of evil.

Nous nous donnons pour objectif, dans ce travail, de porter notre attention sur le rapport que le mensonge entretient avec la politique dans la modernité. Pour ce faire, nous étudierons et analyserons le texte d'Arendt, « Vérité et politique ». Pour Arendt, l'avènement de la modernité, qui signifie, pour elle, le déploiement de la fin de la métaphysique occidentale, se traduit par une crise de la culture, due au rapport qui existe entre la philosophie et la politique depuis Platon. En effet, selon notre philosophe, dès le commencement, les philosophes chercheraient à trouver les moyens d'échapper à la politique, où règne l'opinion, et partant la pluralité (et donc l'imprécision, le flux, le changement), pour se réfugier dans le séjour de la pensée, où règne la vérité, qui n'est pas soumise au changement. Alors que la vérité philosophique est singulière, la politique repose, au contraire, sur la pluralité, donc sur les différents points de vue. Cet antagonisme caractérise, pour Arendt, la philosophie politique occidentale (opposition de la vie du philosophe à celle du citoyen). Quant à la place du mensonge dans la politique, Arendt en voit l'origine dans cette conception : la modernité, qui a consommé une rupture radicale avec la tradition, est aussi marquée par la présence du mensonge. Celui-ci est, d'après notre philosophe, le rejet des vérités de fait, qui sont des faits que l'on constate tout simplement : pourtant, la contingence des faits humains permet de les contredire. Alors le mensonge devient une action et se traduit comme volonté de changer le récit de l'histoire. Ce qui distingue la modernité des temps anciens, c'est que dans celle-ci, puisque la vérité des faits est rejetée, il faut toujours changer la falsification et cela aboutit à un cercle vicieux : c'est qu'en établissant le mensonge, on ne se procure pas un sol ferme à partir duquel on peut comprendre le monde mais au contraire on détruit le sol à partir duquel on pouvait comprendre le monde. Notre hypothèse est que le mensonge met fin à la politique, laquelle relève de la liberté humaine de commencer quelque chose de neuf, et il conduit, comme Arendt l'a remarqué, au totalitarisme.

To determine whether or not there is such a thing as an evil person, is to first determine whether or not evil itself exists, and if so, what it is. The intuition that evil may have some qualitative character that distinguishes it from other wrongs can best be explained as a combination of a contrast effect, the phenomenon of actor-observer bias and the qualitative differences between vices. As a result, it will be shown that what ‘evil’ refers to is nothing more than an extreme wrong as when the topic of moral depravity is explored in more detail it becomes clear that there is no real way of partitioning wrong actions into two kinds. Any attempt to do this is not helpful to a more comprehensive understanding of ethics.

The article reexamines Hannah Arendt’s shift from “radical evil” in The Origins of Totalitarianism to “the banality of evil” in Eichmann in Jerusalem and subsequent writings. At the heart of this shift stands Arendt’s realization that she exaggerated the role of ideology in motivating ordinary people to become mass murderers. Instead, political conformity—namely, self-adjustment to the ruling political order simply because it is the ruling order—becomes Arendt’s main explanation for the participation of “ordinary people” in the Nazi mass murder. This shift in Arendt’s interpretation is truly radical, and its implications require further consideration and investigation.

The human has always prided himself as an exceptional ‘moral species’ but has always been haunted by two questions: ‘Why am I not good when I want to be; ‘why do I do bad when I don’t want to’.  This is at the heart of what scriptures and sages have long alluded to as the eternal internal struggle-between good and evil - that wages in the human consciousness.
The book posits that much of our confusion and angst stems from our inability to recognize the ramifications of this ‘war’ between two sides of our own ‘self’.  It is because we are ignoring this ‘war’ between two sides of our own ‘self’. It is because we are ignoring this war that we are losing all other wars of the world. That ignorance is the primary source of all the horrors, malevolence, and violence that fill us with so much dread. But a ‘favorable’ outcome is possible only if the forces of goodness are aided to get an upper hand consistently - and that calls for two cathartic changes:  consciousness-change by inducing a turn from the mind to the heart; and contextual-change, by radically reconstructing the roles of morality, money, and mortality in our everyday lives. The book offers a menu of insights and options we all can use to tilt the scales in the war waging inside each of us.

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Carl Jung used this as metaphor for the psyche.  In all humans there are light, surface, and shadow.  Light is that to which we attend within the psyche.  Shadow is that to which attention is withheld.  Our attention focused in a specific area turns shadow to light and light to shadow.  Surface contains our ego ideals.  These are the standards of conduct or personal traits that a person values and to which he or she aspires.  These have been shaped by the development of the ego or conscious personality and are derived in great part from one’s interaction with society, peer groups, parents, and religious mores.  This article examines and describes various elements of the shadow.

Nelle pagine che seguono faremo riferimento a fatti, eventi ed opere non molto lontane da noi e appartenenti, di diritto, alla storia contemporanea, al cruento e movimentato “secolo breve”. Al centro del mio studio, infatti, sono il tenente colonnello nazista Adolf Eichmann, il processo che l’ha visto coinvolto nel 1961 e le riflessioni di Hannah Arendt, instancabile coscienza critica delle vicende e delle idee politiche del Novecento.
Il mio percorso di ricerca si connota come interdisciplinare e, in un certo senso, border-line situandosi tra storia contemporanea e filosofia pratica, intrecciando spunti e modalità analitiche dell’una e dell’altra. Ho quindi effettuato il tentativo di far dialogare su questi temi la storia e la filosofia, spesso accomunate solamente dall’insegnante negli studi liceali, portando avanti parallelamente l’analisi della controversa figura di Eichmann e le riflessioni di Hannah Arendt, con particolare attenzione a La banalità del male. I protagonisti di questo lavoro sono stati, entrambi, oggetto di importanti evoluzioni, quando non di veri e propri rovesciamenti, relativamente alla loro conoscenza e interpretazione.
Noi tutti ci troviamo, quotidianamente, ad essere spettatori di atrocità, costretti ad assumere la nostra dose di male quotidiano.
La scelta di questo oggetto di studio nasce quindi dalla necessità, sempre attuale, di riverificare alcuni punti fermi; di rafforzare, scandagliare e proteggere verità che potrebbero perdersi.

Testimonies of sexual violence relate to the different paths leading to its discussion as much as the possibilities and the forms of narrating it, the angle from which the narrative comes from and how it is perceived by the audience; in others words, the probability of the victims being listened to and/or believed. On the one hand, the victim's voice-fitted with testimonial value and the role of mediation-can be metamorphosed in message bearer as well as evidence of the crime. The act of becoming witness can generate remedial effects: motivated by the idea of pursuing and generating justice, the testimony is intended as a communication act of the experience and the value awarded to it. On the other hand, sexual violence testimony conforms to the formal rules governing the acceptable evidence that (de)limit expression of suffering in order to corroborate them with other cases. The need for comparison to establish the suffering veracity (as credibility) and make justice overshadows the victim's personal emotions and survival practices.

Hannah Arendt propõe investigar os aspectos de um colapso moral acerca do problema da banalização do mal, tese central,  dentro do contexto de burocratização do extermínio inaudito e da nova forma de mal praticado por sua singular ausência de raízes, além das implicações políticas e morais em relação à responsabilidade individual que culminaram com a morte banal de milhões de judeus.
O livro é marcado por digressões, o qual se propõe a ser uma narrativa histórica do julgamento de Adolph Eichmann, burocrata oficial da SS nazista capturado na Argentina, responsabilizado no processo pelo extermínio dos judeus por meio da chamada “solução final”. O julgamento ocorrido em Jerusalém entre os anos 1960-1962 ocasião em que se esperava ver um monstro impenitente.

Experimenter and The Stanford Prison Experiment serve to highlight role-playing in bureaucracy, with the emphasis on distancing oneself from the responsibility for the execution of acts of cruelty in the face of situations of assumed social hierarchy.

Just to be clear, this is not to be a diatribe about social justice and the rationalising of negative behaviours as a result of assumed positions of privilege.  Personally I feel that this unapologetically dominant mode of current politicised discourse, particularly with those who profess that they reject authoritarianism (fascism, oppression, the list goes on ad nauseam), whilst simultaneously adopting an authoritarian (etc.) stance, falls precisely within the realms of critique which both of these films deal with.

Societal norms are frequently used as an excuse for such Behavioural Live Action Role Playing across the board, both consciously and subconsciously. ...

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2016/07/experimenter-stanford-prison-experiment.html

This article presents Hannah Arendt's novel conception of evil, arguing that what animates and undergirds this conception is an understanding of human agency, of what it means to be a person at all. The banality of evil that Arendt theorizes is exactly the failure to become a person in the first place—it is, in short, the evil of being a nobody. For Arendt, this evil becomes extreme when a mass of such nobodies becomes organized by totalitarianism. This article focuses on the connection between Arendt's understanding of personhood and her conception of evil, showing how Arendt falls into a Kantian tradition of prioritizing apperception— thinking—as central for human agency. In this way, the article shows that thinking—being a person—is central to Arendt's work, thereby prioritizing and making sense of her claim in _The Human Condition_ that one is never “more active” than when thinking.

Hannah Arendt stutzt. Sie sitzt im Jerusalemer Gerichtssaal und sieht den Mann, der gerade in den Glaskasten geführt wird – einen unscheinbaren, schmächtigen, behornbrillten Mann mit leicht zerzaustem, spärlichem Haar. Dieser Mann soll für die Ermordung von Millionen Juden mitverantwortlich sein? Hier erscheint kein Monster, sondern ein Spießer, ja ein Niemand – „ein Gespenst, das noch dazu Schnupfen hat und gleichsam von Minute zu Minute in seinem Glaskasten an Sub-stantialität verliert.“ (BJ, 471) Arendt ist irritiert und hat offenbar eine Erfahrung gemacht, denn man sieht es ihr am Gesicht an, dass Ihre Erwartungen enttäuscht wurden. Soweit eine Szene in Margarete von Trottas Film Hannah Arendt.
Ich kann nicht beurteilen, ob es sich so zugetragen hat. Allerdings wäre es zu-mindest verwunderlich, wenn, wie auch Elisabeth Young-Bruehl meint, „[d]er ‚leibhaftige‘ Eichmann“ Arendt etwas Neues „gelehrt“ hätte.  Es ist viel plausibler, anzunehmen, dass sie hier nur das sieht, was sie schon seit 20 Jahren zu wissen meint.  Denn das in Eichmann in Jerusalem etablierte Täterkonzept findet sich schon im Bild der Täter des modernen Verwaltungsmassenmordes, das Arendt seit 1945 gezeichnet hat. Dieses Täterbild ist aufs Engste mit Arendts Moderne-Verständnis verbunden, speziell mit dem schillernden Konzept einer „Herrschaft des Niemand“ bzw. dem, was man ihre Depersonalisierungsdiagnose nennen kann.
Im Folgenden werde ich dieser Diagnose nachgehen und fragen, ob es Arendt gelingt, das Besondere der Täter der Shoah damit zu fassen. Dabei möchte ich vorab Umrisse von Arendts Modernebegriff skizzieren, in dem bereits die Arbeit, das Interesse, das Man und die große Zahl als Momente anonymer Herrschaft auftauchen.
Im zweiten Teil wird dann die Totalitarismustheorie einbezogen, in der die Herrschaft des Niemand in drei miteinander verbundenen Bedeutungen als Ursache der Massenverbrechen des 20. Jahrhunderts begriffen wird. 1. Bürokratische Herrschaft als übergesetzliche „Herrschaft des Niemand“, die 2. im Namen eines „Nie-mandsland[es] übermenschlicher Kräfte“ (E, 743) ausgeübt wird und 3. „das größte […] Böse“ bewirkt, „das von Niemanden begangen wurde, das heißt, von menschlichen Wesen, die sich weigern, Personen zu sein.“ (ÜB, 101). Die Idee der Niemandsherrschaft wird sich damit auch als Grundlage für die berühmte „Banalität des Bösen“ erweisen, die Arendt Eichmann attestiert.

Nel saggio mi propongo di mostrare come, sin dall’inizio, convivano in Hannah Arendt la tesi della radicalità del male totalitario (in quanto massima negazione della umanità dell’uomo mai realizzatasi storicamente) e quella della sua banalità, nel senso specifico del carattere contingente e “superficiale” delle sue manifestazioni storiche specifiche. Volendo, si potrebbe dire che al primo aspetto corrisponde il carattere “essenziale” del male totalitario (la sua unicità e originalità) e al secondo la sua contingenza e mancanza di profondità. Oltre a ciò, vorrei mostrare come dalla radicalità del male totalitario discenda la sua imperdonabilità e dalla sua banalità il bisogno di comprenderlo al fine, oltre che di combatterlo, di impedire che esso estenda il suo influsso distruttivo fino alla preclusione di ogni possibile riconciliazione col mondo e ri-radicamento in esso. Componente essenziale di un simile esercizio di comprensione è una franca presa di coscienza della costitutiva fragilità e ambiguità anche della realizzazione più compiuta e armonica della condizione umana, elemento che spiega come il male totalitario abbia potuto diffondersi come un “fungo” (ovvero come un parassita) sulla superficie della condizione umana. In essa non si dà infatti alcun genere di immunità al male.

The book Eichmann in Jerusalem - a Report on the Banality of Evil was the result of Hannah Arendt's coverage of the trial of Otto Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem for the The New Yorker. Arendt identified three motives that led her to concern herself with the Eichmann trial: she wanted to know who Eichmann really was “in the flesh”; she wanted to assess the possibility of a new kind of crime and criminal in their juridical aspects; she was concerned about the nature of evil. Starting from these Arendtian motivations, this article analyzes the juridical implications of the Eichmann trial; the controversy over the Jewish question; the concept of the "banality of evil" and its importance in Arendt´s thinking. Although Arendt asserted the failure of traditional thought to grasp the phenomenon of evil in her analysis of radical evil in The Origins of Totalitarianism, only after the Eichmann book and the "banality of evil" did she cultivate this interest in a new move toward ethics. What Arendt detected in Eichmann was not stupidity; in her words, he displayed something entirely negative: thoughtlessness. Eichmann’s ordinariness manifested itself in an incapacity for independent thought. Eichmann became the protagonist of an apparently unexceptional experience: the absence of the critical thought.