Subsequent Healing: The banality of evil and the ethics of thinking in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This paper examines briefly the transition in Hannah Arendt’s concept of evil from its radical character to its banality, seeking to investigate whether the faculty of thinking might be intrinsically linked to not committing it. Although Arendt’s primary purpose was to identify the fundamental activities of man, I conclude that there may be an identification between this faculty and the possibility for it to provide a guarantee of ethics, especially when, in attempting to maintain it, the subject acts against some of the prevailing social and legal standards.

Key words: radical evil, banality of evil, ethics of thinking, Hannah Arendt.