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 A ontologia da singularidade e a educação em Hannah Arendt: Uma preparação para o mundo

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Danilo Arnaldo Briskievicz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Value Differences ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Adolf Eichmann ◽  
Vita Activa ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Common World

Investigamos no pensamento de Hannah Arendt a possibilidade de uma ontologia da singularidade relacionada diretamente com a educação, como protomomento da ontologia da pluralidade, iniciada com o nascimento e ampliada pela chegada ao mundo comum, ao espaço da ação. Destacamos alguns pontos de sua teoria política, inter-relacionando-os com apontamentos sobre a educação do texto A Crise da Educação, de 1958. Apresentamos a educação como espaço privilegiado de formação da vida do espírito, essencial, por ser inicial, em tempo e espaço para o exercício pleno da vita activa. A ontologia da singularidade é fundamentada a partir de seis pontos em que é preciso: acolher, preparar e incluir os singulares; fomentar espaços para o discursar, valorizar as diferenças e preservar a tradição. Apresentamos dois antimodelos para a ontologia da singularidade: na educação escolar, os campos de concentração, pela prerrogativa do uso da violência e da mudez; para os educandos, Adolf Eichmann, por causa de seu vazio de pensamento e incapacidade de agir criativamente no mundo. Propomos que a duração da educação é proporcional à criatividade narracional da tradição pela autoridade dos professores.Palavras-chave: Hannah Arendt; Ontologia da singularidade; Filosofia da educação; Vida do espírito ABSTRACTWe investigate in Hannah Arendt's thinking the possibility of an ontology of singularity directly related to education, as protomoment of the ontology of plurality, initiated with the birth and enlarged by the arrival to the common world, to the space of action. We highlight some points of her political theory interrelating them with notes on education of the text The Crisis of Education, 1958. We present education as a privileged space of formation of the life of the mind, essential, for being initial, in time and space for the full exercise of the vita activa. The ontology of the singularity is based on six points in which it is necessary: to welcome, to prepare and to include the singular ones; to create spaces to promote discourse, to value differences, and to preserve tradition. We present two antimodels for the ontology of singularity: in school education, the concentration camps, by the prerogative of the use of violence and dumbness; for the pupils, Adolf Eichmann, due to  his emptiness of thought and incapacity to act creatively in the world. We propose that the duration of education is proportional to the narrative creativity of tradition by the authority of teachers.Keywords: Hannah Arendt; Ontology of singularity; Philosophy of education; Life of the spirit

scholarly journals Hannah Arendt and Augustine of Hippo : On the Pleasure of and Desire for Evil*

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-385
Author(s):  
Antonio Calcagno
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Political Judgement ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Mind

Hannah Arendt wrote two volumes on thinking and willing in The Life of the Mind, but due to her untimely death her work devoted to judgement, especially political judgement, was never completed. We do, however, have a significant amount of writings on this theme as evidenced by her lectures on Kant’s Third Critique. Judgement and thinking are critical in order to prevent what Arendt calls the “banality of evil”. Drawing on Augustine and Arendt’s work on Augustine, this paper seeks to argue that another form of serious evil has its root in what Augustine calls the libido habendi and the libido dominandi, the desire or drive to dominate and possess. It will be argued that Arendt’s solution to the problem of evil as banal can also be applied to the very human desire and pleasure to cause or inflict evil.

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.

Coleridge the Talker

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Karen Swann
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Social World ◽  
William Hazlitt ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind

This chapter explores Coleridge’s late career as a prodigious talker. An insistent strain in contemporary accounts of Coleridge’s talk suggests that his auditors recognized in his talking the dynamics of thinking itself: not a content that could be transported back from one’s encounter with him, but the rhythms of a mind in a state of radical non-relation to a social world with which it nonetheless “colludes,” in Thomas De Quincey’s words. Both Hannah Arendt, in The Life of the Mind, and William Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age, hold up this sort of thinking as a slender, rear-guard resistance that the purposelessness of thought can offer to an unthinking instrumentalism that functions to “reduce law to a system, and the mind of man to a machine,” in Hazlitt’s words. In his time, Coleridge became the figure of a thinking without limits, the bearer of a frail resistance to the modern social and political arrangements from which this thinking withdraws.

On thinking: Open letter to Hannah Arendt

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 159 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Agnes Heller ◽  
David Roberts ◽  
Peter Beilharz
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
New School ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind

Thesis Eleven is honoured to be able to publish this text by our late friend and mentor Agnes Heller. It was secured in the period before her recent death, and is published now posthumously in her memory. Echoing her earlier text written as an Imaginary Preface to Arendt’s Totalitarianism, it responds to themes in the later text, The Life of the Mind. These were among the most eminent of the minds referred to later as Women in Dark Times. Their connection was not only institutional, via the New School, but represented a deep and ongoing affinity and critical engagement in political and philosophical terms. The imaginary letter arcs around issues and questions indicated by Cicero, Kant, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, including matters of republicanism, rhetoric and the question of thinking. Best of all, it shows Agnes Heller at work, at her best: it shows her thinking. Like Arendt, she offers inspiration, provocation, through thinking.

scholarly journals «Rom» som metafor i utviklingen av (kritisk) tenkning: En diskusjon av begrepene «kritisk tenkning» og «etisk bevissthet» i læreplanens overordnede del i lys av Hannah Arendt

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-248
Author(s):  
Marianne Hustvedt
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
National Curriculum ◽  
Spatial Metaphors ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Pedagogical Literature

This article aims to discuss the key notions ‘critical thinking’ and ‘ethical consciousness’ in the new national curriculum in the light of the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s work The Life of the Mind. Much has been said about being critical, but not so much about thinking. It is the claim of the author that it is unclear in both the national curriculum and some of the pedagogical literature as to what characterizes thinking, and that this stems from a theoretical deficit for understanding the activity of thinking. The consequence is that concepts such as thinking and judgement are confused and thinking is instrumentalized. Hence the article proposes to see Arendt’s use of the metaphor ‘space’ and other spatial metaphors to determine hallmarks of the activity of thinking. A vital hallmark of Arendt’s work is the radical autonomy of thinking partly detached from judgment and instrumental purposes. The author thus attempts to give a critical but constructive contribution to the national curriculum’s description of thinking as ‘giving room for uncertainty and unpredictability’ which could be understood in light of Arendt’s thought.

Hidden Depths

Symposium ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Hannah Lagrand ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind

Throughout her work, Hannah Arendt continually insists on the importance of the division between public and private. However, while the value of the public is a clear theme in Arendt scholarship, the unique value of the private often goes overlooked. In this essay, I draw on Arendt’s work in The Life of the Mind, particularly her discussion of the thinking activity, in order to draw out the richness that the hiddenness of the private has to offer as well as to explore what it might look like to care for the private in a modern world.Dans son travail, Hannah Arendt insiste continuellement sur l’importance de la division entre le public et le privé. Cependant, bien que la valeur du public soit un thème évident aux oeuvres intellectuelle d’Arendt, la valeur unique du privé vient souvent négligée. Dans cette dissertation, je m’appuie sur les travaux d’Arendt dans The Life of the Mind (La Vie de l’Esprit), en particulier son débat sur l’activité mentale, afin de faire ressortir la richesse dissimulée que le privé a à offrir ainsi que d’explorer ce à quoi cela pourrait ressembler si on s’occupait du privé dans un monde moderne.

scholarly journals The Life of the Mind: A Study of Faculty Spaces in Academic Libraries

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Engel ◽  
Karen Antell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Library ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
University Of Oklahoma ◽  
The Social ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Library As Place ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University

The value of the academic library as “place” in the university community has recently been debated in the popular and scholarly library literature, but the debate centers on student use of library space rather than faculty use. This study addresses the issue of faculty use of library space by investigating the use of “faculty spaces”—individual, enclosed, lock-able carrels or studies—through a series of interviews with faculty space holders at the University of Oklahoma and a survey of ARL libraries. Both elements of the investigation show that faculty spaces are heavily used and highly valued by faculty members, especially those in the social sciences and humanities. The researchers present the results of the interviews and the survey, and explore the reasons for the continuing value of faculty spaces in the age of electronic information.

And Worldlessness, Alas, is Always a Kind of Barbarism: Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Educating in Worldless Times

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-532
Author(s):  
Stephanie Mackler
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Best Response ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

Background/Context In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote “The Crisis in Education,” arguing that schools should not be used for political purposes and should instead introduce children to what she calls “the world.” The world, for Arendt, comprises the artifacts, ideas, values, and interactions that connect people together. In that same year, she published The Human Condition, a damning analysis of the problem of what she calls “world alienation” in the modern era. By this, she means that we experience a radical sense of disconnection and alienation from the physical and social world we share with others. The tension between these two pieces is provocative, because one advocates giving children a world, while the other suggests that there is no longer a world to give. Purpose/Objective This article begins from the aforementioned point of tension to consider what Arendt might have said about education in 2008, particularly in light of the discussion of world alienation in The Human Condition and Arendt's later work on thinking in The Life of the Mind. Although Arendt's analysis of worldlessness is multifaceted, this article focuses on one specific aspect of her argument: the way our very approaches to thinking— including the way we conduct scholarly inquiry—contribute to the loss of the world. Research Design This work is philosophical in nature, focusing on several of Hannah Arendt's published works. Conclusions/Recommendations Drawing on Arendt's work on thinking, the author argues that the best response to worldlessness is a specific type of thinking. The article concludes by suggesting that educational researchers and practitioners consider the ways in which education is currently implicated in the problem of world alienation, as well as the ways that we can start thinking differently in response. “The future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.”1

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