The political dimension of radical evil and the banality of evil in Hannah Arendt’s thought
Continuities and divergences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35305/cf2.vi16.62Keywords:
banality of evil, political dimension, radical evil, action, judgement, public spaceAbstract
Radical evil and the banality of evil are the two ways in which Arendt has cataloged totalitarian evil at different stages of his work. The aim of this paper is to approach the different Arendtian conceptions of evil from a political perspective in order to determine whether there are continuities or whether, on the contrary, there is an abrupt change in Arendt's thinking. The difficulty that must be faced is that the problem of evil and the political question are not issues addressed by Arendt directly but are transversal contents that must be traced in the totality of his work. It is concluded that radical evil and the banality of evil are not mutually exclusive notions but rather function as expressions that refer to two different levels, one more general and structural and the other linked to the behavior of individuals within the government structures studied.
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