- Title Pages
- [UNTITLED]
- Figures
- Preface
- Editors' Note
-
Introduction Thinking in Dark Times -
Part I Politics -
Reflections on Antisemitism
-
Fiction as Poison
-
A Discriminating Politics
-
Hannah Arendt's Political Engagements
-
What Does It Mean to Think About Politics?
-
Part II Lying and Politics -
A Lying World Order
-
Lying and History
-
Part III Citizenship -
The Experience of Action
-
Dissent in Dark Times
-
Promising and Civil Disobedience
-
Part IV Evil and Eichmann in Jerusalem -
Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question
-
Banality and Cleverness
-
Judging the Events of Our Time
-
Arendt's Banality of Evil Thesis and the Arab-Israeli
Conflict
-
Part V Judaism and Cosmopolitanism -
Liberating the Pariah
-
Hannah Arendt's Jewish Experience
-
The Pariah as Rebel
-
Hannah Arendt's Jewish Identity
-
Jewish to the Core
-
Part VI Thinking in Dark Times -
Thinking Big in Dark Times
-
Crimes of Action, Crimes of Thought
-
Solitude and the Activity of Thinking
-
Part VII Sites of Memory -
Exile Readings
-
Remembering Hannah
-
My Hannah Arendt Project
- Contributors
- Index
Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question
Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question
- Chapter:
- (p.131) Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question
- Source:
- Thinking in Dark Times
- Author(s):
Richard J. Bernstein
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
This chapter argues that the question—Is evil banal?—is badly formulated because it invites serious misinterpretations of Arendt. The question is objectionable for three reasons. First, the question suggests that Arendt has a general theory or thesis about the nature of evil. This is absolutely false. Over and over again she insisted that she was not proposing a general theory when she spoke about the banality of evil. Second, the question obscures the most important aspect of Arendt's thinking about evil. Third, the question obscures a distinction that is crucial for Arendt—the distinction between the doer and the deeds.
Keywords: Hannah Arendt, banality of evil, Nazis, death camps, evil
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- Title Pages
- [UNTITLED]
- Figures
- Preface
- Editors' Note
-
Introduction Thinking in Dark Times -
Part I Politics -
Reflections on Antisemitism
-
Fiction as Poison
-
A Discriminating Politics
-
Hannah Arendt's Political Engagements
-
What Does It Mean to Think About Politics?
-
Part II Lying and Politics -
A Lying World Order
-
Lying and History
-
Part III Citizenship -
The Experience of Action
-
Dissent in Dark Times
-
Promising and Civil Disobedience
-
Part IV Evil and Eichmann in Jerusalem -
Is Evil Banal? A Misleading Question
-
Banality and Cleverness
-
Judging the Events of Our Time
-
Arendt's Banality of Evil Thesis and the Arab-Israeli
Conflict
-
Part V Judaism and Cosmopolitanism -
Liberating the Pariah
-
Hannah Arendt's Jewish Experience
-
The Pariah as Rebel
-
Hannah Arendt's Jewish Identity
-
Jewish to the Core
-
Part VI Thinking in Dark Times -
Thinking Big in Dark Times
-
Crimes of Action, Crimes of Thought
-
Solitude and the Activity of Thinking
-
Part VII Sites of Memory -
Exile Readings
-
Remembering Hannah
-
My Hannah Arendt Project
- Contributors
- Index