Moral Blindness and Modernity: Interpretations and Developments of Arendt’s Concept of Banality of Evil

2020 ◽  
pp. 125-162
Author(s):  
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff
Keyword(s):  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Moral Blindness

Mundane Objects and the Banality of Evil

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart R. Clegg ◽  
Miguel Pina e Cunha ◽  
Arménio Rego ◽  
Joana Dias
Keyword(s):  
Banality Of Evil

The real banality of evil

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Regine Lamboy
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
The Real ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Adolf Eichmann ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] When Hannah Arendt encountered Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem she was struck by the fact that his most outstanding characteristic was his utter thoughtlessness. This raised the questins of whether there might be a connection between thinking and abstaining from evil doing, which she explored in her last book The Life of the Mind. If there is indeed such a connection, there may be a class of people who might be led to abstain from evil doing if they can be persuaded to engage in thinking. This dissertation examines Arendt's success in establishing such a connection. Overall, her project does not really succeed. Her overly formal analysis of thinking wavers between a highly abstract and obscure conceptualization of thinking and a more down to earth definition. Ultimately she winds up stripping thinking of all possible content. .

scholarly journals On the Exception of Hannah Arendt

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 684-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayça Çubukçu
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
The Relationship

This article offers a close reading of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It argues that in this text, Arendt consistently, even obsessively, evaluates the legal and moral challenges posed by Eichmann’s trial through the relationship between exception and rule. The article contends that the analytical lens of the exception allows us to appreciate the perplexities that Eichmann in Jerusalem presents – some fifty years after the book’s publication – from a still uncommon perspective, and enables us to attend in new ways to Arendt’s own suppositions, propositions, and contradictions in this text.

scholarly journals The Legacy of Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Sabah Carrim
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
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.

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