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Dr. Aparna Vincent

Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Management, Indore

HANNAH ARENDT AND BANALITY OF EVIL

Introduction

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the
twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in
1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for several Jewish refugee
organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively
intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American
universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact
both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging
debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The
Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the
fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two
important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature
of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in
1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life
of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita
contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).

Banality of Evil

In 1963, she published the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, her
account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi military officer and one of the key figures of
the Holocaust. Eichmann was hanged to death for war crimes. Arendt’s fundamental thesis is
that ghastly crimes like the Holocaust are not necessarily committed by psychopaths and
sadists, but, often, by normal, sane and ordinary human beings who perform their tasks with a
bureaucratic diligence.
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Dr. Aparna Vincent
Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Management, Indore

After watching Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem Arendt proposed the idea that evil acts are not
necessarily perpetrated by evil people. Instead, they can simply be the result of bureaucrats
dutifully obeying orders. In her report for The New Yorker, and later published in her 1963
book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt expressed how disturbed she
was by Eichmann — but for reasons that might not be expected. Far from the monster she thought he’d
be, Eichmann was instead a rather bland, “terrifyingly normal” bureaucrat. He carried out his murderous
role with calm efficiency not due to an abhorrent, warped mindset, but because he’d absorbed the
principles of the Nazi regime so unquestionably, he simply wanted to further his career and climb its
ladders of power.
Eichmann embodied “the dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable
ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them.” His actions were defined not so much by thought, but
by the absence of thought — convincing Arendt of the “banality of evil.”

“Banality of evil” is the idea that evil does not have the Satan-like, villainous appearance we might
typically associate it with. Rather, evil is perpetuated when immoral principles become normalized over
time by unthinking people. Evil becomes commonplace; it becomes the everyday. Ordinary people —
going about their everyday lives — become complicit actors in systems that perpetuate evil. Evil,
according to Arendt, becomes banal when it acquires an unthinking and systematic character.
Evil becomes banal when ordinary people participate in it, build distance from it and justify it,
in countless ways. There are no moral conundrums or revulsions. Evil does not even look like
evil, it becomes faceless.

Further Explanation (Optional reading for better understanding )

This idea is best understood within the context of how Arendt viewed our relationship to the world. We
live and think not in isolation, Arendt argues, but in an interconnected web of social and cultural
relations — a framework of shared languages, behaviors, and conventions that we are conditioned by
every single day.

This web of social and cultural relations is so all-encompassing in shaping our thought and behavior we
are barely conscious of it. It only becomes noticeable when something or someone doesn’t conform to
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Dr. Aparna Vincent
Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Management, Indore

it. For example, if you were invited to a formal dinner, and proceeded to forego cutlery and eat your
meal with your hands, you’d draw many a strange and disapproving look — perhaps you’d even be
asked to leave by the more militant guests, for whom ‘eating with cutlery at formal dinners’ is such a
deeply ingrained principle as to be worth defending with vigour.

But do we ever take the time to truly challenge the principles we’ve inherited, to ensure they stand up
to our own individual scrutiny? Are we even aware of our biases and learned behaviors? For Arendt,
the answer to these questions is largely no — and it is precisely our tendency to adopt judgements
without thinking that allows evil's banality to flourish.

For, if we’re not careful, evil principles can gradually emerge to become the new normal, and like the
militant cutlery-using guests at the formal dinner party, we’ll defend those principles not necessarily
because we’ve independently concluded they’re worth defending, but because they’re 'normal'.