Moral responsibility for banal evil

Journal of Social Philosophy 37 (4):501–520 (2006)
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Abstract

It has often been argued that Hannah Arendt ‘let off’ Eichmann through her concept of the banality of evil. In this paper I argue, through revisiting and modifying the concept of the banality of evil, that we can reject such criticism. That is, by judging that a perpetrator, like Eichmann, commits evil banally in no way undermines the grounds for holding them to be responsible for their actions, but it does help us to understand why such perpetrators act as they do and to teach us how we might prevent such evil from occurring again.

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Paul Formosa
Macquarie University

Citations of this work

Kant on the radical evil of human nature.Paul Formosa - 2007 - Philosophical Forum 38 (3):221–245.
Kant on the Limits of Human Evil.Paul Formosa - 2009 - Journal of Philosophical Research 34:189-214.
Imagined Utopias: Animals Rights and the Moral Imagination.Steve Cooke - 2017 - Journal of Political Philosophy 25 (4):1-18.
Understanding Evil Acts.Paul Formosa - 2007 - Human Studies 30 (2):57-77.
The Problems with Evil.Paul Formosa - 2008 - Contemporary Political Theory 7 (4):395-415.

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References found in this work

Philosophy and politics.Hannah Arendt - 2004 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 71 (3):427-454.
Some Questions of Moral Philosophy.Hannah Arendt - 1994 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 61 (4):739-764.
Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.Seyla Benhabib - 2000 - In Dana Richard Villa, The Cambridge companion to Hannah Arendt. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 65--85.
Reflections on the Banality of (Radical) Evil.Henry E. Allison - 1995 - Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 18 (2):141-158.

View all 8 references / Add more references