“The only form of the philosophy-literature distinction which we need is one drawn in terms of the contrast between the familiar and the unfamiliar, rather than in terms of a deeper and more exciting contrast between the representational and the non-representational, or the literal and the metaphorical.” This is the first of the points urged by Richard Rorty in his article on ‘Deconstruction and Circumvention’ published in Critical Inquiry, vol. II, no. I, Sept. 1984. In what follows I shall (...) be trying to explain why, despite the large number of points on which I should be inclined to agree with Rorty, I do not agree with this one; trying to produce arguments to justify my disagreement; and trying too, no doubt, in perhaps more ‘literary’ than ‘philosophical’ fashion, to give to my explanation some force of persuasion. (shrink)

Asking, How could they do it? about the many ordinary people who have been perpetrators and those who resist extensive evils – genocide, human trafficking, endemic sexualized violations of females, economic exploitation -- the book delves into historic, contemporary, national, and international examples. The author, a moral philosopher, draws also on literature, psychology, economics, journalism, pop culture. Reversing Arendt’s banality of evil, she finds that mind-deadening banality, thoughtless conventionality, ambition, greed, status-seeking enable the evil of banality.

Jean-Luc Nancy provides an analysis of the anti-Semitic aspects of Heidegger's recently published Black Notebooks. Nancy refers to a philosophical or "historial" anti-Semitism marked, nonetheless, by the "banality" of ordinary anti-Semitism pervading Europe. Heidegger's thought is placed in the broader context of the European (especially Christian) impulse toward new beginnings.

Whilst there has been much talk about the supposed 'banality of evil', there has been comparatively little discussion of the putatively parallel notion of the 'banality of good'. This paper explores some of the resonances of the phrase and proposes that banally good acts have the leading feature that the agent's reasons for action do not include the thought that the effects intended are good . It is argued, against David Blumenthal, that the label 'banal' should not be (...) applied to acts of spontaneous or everyday goodness but instead to those characterized by a lack of genuine moral commitment, for example, acts done purely in obedience to authority, or from self-seeking motives or mere habit. Finally, it is proposed that the doing of good in a banal mode may reasonably be encouraged in circumstances where more estimable moral motives may be lacking or feeble. (shrink)

The eminent philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt once attended a similar trial with a similar plea: the 1961 trial of the mid‐level Nazi official Adolf Eichmann. She portrayed him as an exemplar of what she termed the banality of evil. After his capture in 1960, Eichmann was tried on charges including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Eichmann was an exemplary case of the thoughtlessness and lack of self‐reflection that goes into setting unthinkable atrocities into motion. Like Eichmann, (...) Mao doesn't cut the figure of a hardline fanatic, blinded by ideology. Mao's unwillingness to place the cause ahead of his own desires should indicate that he isn't wholly blinded by fanaticism, as Dresden is. In her characterizations of Eichmann, Arendt noted his odd lack of imagination, his inability, in other words, “to think from the standpoint of someone else.”. (shrink)

La pensée du cliché est indissociable d’un geste critique, qui en fait l’envers de l’originalité : ressassés, usés, signes de paresse intellectuelle, les clichés désignent dans la langue la puissance du commun. Au-delà d’une condamnation expéditive, qui génère elle-même ses propres clichés (des clichés il faut toujours se défaire), nous proposons ici d’analyser en détail les raisons de la critique, en prêtant une attention particulière aux apports de deux théoriciens du style, Antoine Albalat et Rémy de Gourmont. Ces deux auteurs (...) ont participé à la condamnation du cliché de manière constructive, fournissant listes, éclairages linguistiques, mais aussi une « philosophie du cliché » (R. de Gourmont) qui met en regard les automatismes de la mémoire et la qualité particulière des images portées par les clichés. La confrontation de leurs analyses permet de renouveler la problématique du cliché et de penser l’efficacité et l’évolution particulière de ces images, que l’on présente d’ordinaire comme figées. (shrink)

The well-known metaphor on the banality of evil, used by Arendt on the trial of the Nazi hierarch Eichmann in Jerusalem, can also be reviewed in the light of the so-called "affective turn" in the social sciences. Eichmann's tragic obedience to the creators of the Holocaust does not only derive from the renunciation to implement an autonomous thought, in the context of the Nazi system, but also from a deep inability to feel emotions and to develop empathic relationships. This (...) allows a process of identification with the manipulation of emotions and feelings put into practice by the regime and at the same time a process of pathological detachment towards the politically persecuted by the regime itself. Keywords: Symbolic politics; Affective Turn; Political communication La ben nota metafora sulla banalità del male, usata dalla Arendt nel processo al gerarca nazista Eichmann a Gerusalemme, può anche essere rivista alla luce della cosiddetta "svolta affettiva" nelle scienze sociali. La tragica obbedienza di Eichmann ai creatori dell'Olocausto non deriva solo dalla rinuncia ad attuare un pensiero autonomo, nel contesto del sistema nazista, ma anche da una profonda incapacità di provare emozioni e di sviluppare relazioni empatiche. Ciò consente un processo di identificazione con la manipolazione delle emozioni e dei sentimenti messa in pratica dal regime e allo stesso tempo un processo di distacco patologico nei confronti dei perseguitati politicamente dal regime stesso. Parole chiave: Politica simbolica; Svolta affettiva; Political communication. (shrink)

What Nietzsche calls “the problem of science” concerns the place or value of science in the wider culture, what science does for or to culture, and to people who believe in its "truth." In framing this question, Nietzsche’s thought becomes a counterweight to a positivism that the philosophy of science has never entirely eliminated from its thinking. Not only is there is important continuity between Comte's original positivism and the later logical positivists; the assumptions about science which they share (...) are precisely those Nietzsche questions. (shrink)

On the Southern border of the United States in 2018, the decision was made to implement a separation policy among refugees and migrant families arriving at the border - and so a group of government employees left their homes, bidding farewell to their families as they went to work, and began to separate hundreds of children from their families, forcefully taking them to holding centres. Developing Hannah Arendt's analysis of the banality of evil, The Path to Mass Evil demonstrates (...) how the most educated, sophisticated, and advanced societies in human history have the potential to turn into an enormous killing machine, implementing mass murder on a vast scale. (shrink)

The starting point of this article lies in the idea, defended by Hannah Arendt, according to which only goodness can be radical, while evil is merely banal. The idea of a banality of evil is present in Arendt’s work Eichmann in Jerusalem, although it is explicitly not presented as a general theory on evil as such – it is more particularly in her correspondence with Gershom Scholem that one can find this specific distinction between evil and goodness mentioned. How (...) is this distinction to be understood? This article proposes the idea that such a distinction has to be construed on an ontological level: evil is ontologically deficient, since it does not take hold in a specific capacity of human beings, which would be what Hannah Arendt calls the demonic evil, but in the absence of thinking, i.e. in the absence of a specific human faculty. Conversely, only goodness expresses a creative human faculty, which is precisely thinking, and which, following Hannah Arendt, can be fully realized only through a political, collective dimension. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 257-259 [Access article in PDF] Atrocity, Banality, Self-Deception Adam Morton Keywords evil, self-deception, banality, atrocity, motivation When talking about evil we must make a fundamental choice about how we are to use the term. We may use it as half of the contrast "good versus evil," in which case it covers everything that is not good. That includes moral incompetence, (...) lack of imagination, willingness to follow orders, overreactions, and a host of other reasons why people who do not have personalities that we would call evil do things that are wrong, often very wrong. Call this the weak reading of evil: evil as wrongdoing. Or we may use it with the meaning suggested by "evil person," "really evil act," "the evil lurking in all of us," and other such idioms. If we do this, we focus on a particular class of actions, and the motives and people that produce them, that arouse a particular moral revulsion in us. Call this the strong reading of evil: evil as atrocity (for more on this contrast see Morton [2004] and Card [2002]).Kubarych, following Peck, thinks of evil in the strong way. Most of the time at any rate: Some of the philosophers, such as Kant, that he draws on are thinking of evil in the weak way, and some of his quotations are from the German, where good/bad/evil distinctions are not drawn in the same way as in English. He explores a general explanation of evil that seems to be targeted at the psychology of extremely abhorrent actions. But, I argue, his account is in danger of collapse in either of two directions. Depending on how we interpret Kubarych's account, it could turn out that it describes all wrongdoing as evil, or, making some different choices, it could turn out that there are no really evil people.The strong reading of evil is definitely the most interesting and potentially fruitful. After all, we have no shortage of satisfying explanations of why people lie to get out of unwelcome appointments, steal to support their children or their drug habits, or defraud investors to become rich. But we do feel deeply puzzled by those who commit torture, serial murder, or genocide. We ask of these people not so much "Why did he do it?" as "How could he do it?" We feel the need of a philosophical or psychological theory that can give us even a slight handle of these people and their deeds. There are two risks associated with the project of explaining atrocity, though. The first is the risk of accepting unsatisfactory accounts, just because they purport to explain what we desperately want to understand. The second is the risk of supposing that there is a single explanation when the causes of the phenomenon are in fact too varied. On other topics these two risks have often combined to make people believe what seem to us now to be evident falsehoods. Humans have often for example wanted to know the causes of disease, and as a result have accepted blanket explanations, in terms of [End Page 257] evil spirits or lack of faith, that seem ludicrous to us now that we have a better grasp of the variety of factors that can cause our bodies to misfunction. So before asking naively "Why and how can people do these awful things?" we should ask "Is there a deeper causal unity here, beyond the fact that we react to these acts with horror?"My suspicion is that there is not much unity, that it is asking too much to want a common profile to the psychology of serial killers, or of proponents of genocide, let alone a profile that applies across these and other categories. What we can do, I believe, is describe our concept of evil in such a way that we can leave some parameters to be filled in by a large variety of objective psychological factors. Even this runs the risk that the really relevant factors cannot be forced into the role that the philosophical account requires. In... (shrink)

There has been much recent debate concerning how Hannah Arendt's concepts of radical evil and the banality of evil `fit together', if at all. I argue that the first of these concepts deals with a certain type of evil, in particular the evil that occurred in the Nazi death camps. The second deals with a certain type of perpetrator of evil, in particular the banal `nobody', Eichmann. As such, bar a localized incompatibility in regard to Arendt's early account of (...) the motivation of perpetrators of radical evil, these two concepts are independent but nonetheless highly complementary. Key Words: Hannah Arendt • banality of evil • Adolf Eichmann • evil • forgiveness • Immanuel Kant • punishment • radical evil. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the burgeoning literature on death, philosophers have tended to focus on the significance death has (or ought/ought not to have) for the one who dies. Thus, while the relevance one's own death has for others (and the significance others' deaths have for us) is often mentioned, it is rarely attributed any great importance to the purported real philosophical issues. This is a striking omission, not least because the deaths of others - and the anticipated effects our own death will (...) have on those we leave behind - are normally of great importance outside the confines of academic philosophy. In this paper I want to do three things: (i) argue that philosophers' treatment of death tends to distort the issue (Sections I-111); (ii) outline some of the ways others' deaths figure in how we assess our own mortality (Sections IV-V); and (iii) raise some general questions about the value of 'theorising' death (Section VI). (shrink)

Ephecticism is the tendency towards suspension of belief. Epistemology often focuses on the error of believing when one ought to doubt. The converse error—doubting when one ought to believe—is relatively underexplored. This essay examines the errors of undue doubt. I draw on the relevant alternatives framework to diagnose and remedy undue doubts about rape accusations. Doubters tend to invoke standards for belief that are too demanding, for example, and underestimate how farfetched uneliminated error possibilities are. They mistake seeing how incriminating (...) evidence is compatible with innocence for a reason to withhold judgement. Rape accusations help illuminate the causes and normativity of doubt. I propose a novel kind of epistemic injustice, for example, wherein patterns of unwarranted attention to farfetched error possibilities can cause those error possibilities to become relevant. Widespread unreasonable doubt thus renders doubt reasonable and makes it harder to know rape accusations. Finally, I emphasise that doubt is typically a conservative force and I argue that the relevant alternatives framework helps defend against pernicious doubt-mongers. (shrink)

In her reply to Gershom Scholem’s criticism of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt writes.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

The article conveys the portrait of a man for whom understanding was a matter of the highest spiritual intimacy, a man who continuously disregarded his possible engagement in the public life as a philosopher, finally a man whom we find, in the twilight of his life, concerned with the intricate tension between the “muteness” of philosophy (as being able “only” to double life by means of rational discourse) and religion. Alexandru Dragomir’s portrait is portrayed in comparison to another important (...) Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica. The comparison is not accidental, since they both come to represent two paradigmatic ways of making philosophy: traditional ontology (centered around Descartes – Kant – Hegel) vs. modern phenomenology (centered around Husserl – Heidegger). (shrink)

This introduction to Jean Baudrillard's controversial writings covers his entire career but focuses on his central, but little understood, notion of symbolic exchange. Through the clarification of this key term a very different Baudrillard emerges.

Im Denken über das Verhältnis zwischen Philosophie und Alltäglichkeit muss man dem Denken den Weg bereiten, indem der Bezug zwischen Philosophie und Alltäglichkeit offengehalten wird. Diesen Bezug halten wir im Denken offen, indem jene im Denken sich vollziehende Grenze, die scheinbar das eine und das andere auseinanderhält, als der Bezug anerkannt wird, der das, was die Philosophie bereithält und den alltäglichen Lebensvollzug in eine Zusammengehörigkeit bringt. So können Philosophie und Alltäglichkeit bisweilen zusammenwachsen, denn so ist zwar das, was die Philosophie (...) bereithält immer das Allgemeine, Allgemeines aber, das über sich hinaus zu greifen trachtet und auf das Leben zielt. (shrink)

Whitehead’s metaphysical conception of life in Process and Reality is elucidated. The article is about neither biology nor psychology, but about how Whitehead’s view of interstitial life might account for these scientific disciplines’ range of phenomena. Whitehead’s view of the universe as always novel but rarely original will be clarified, as will the role of eternal objects.

La philosophie est comme un casse-noix : certaines personnes ne réussissent qu'à se pincer les doigts avec, les professionnels le retournent dans tous les sens, et puis - quand même - il se trouve des gens qui s'en servent pour ouvrir ces merveilleuses noix qu'on appelle les pensées. Philosopher, c'est bien ; philosopher soi-même, c'est mieux. Philosopher soi-même chaque jour sur le quotidien, sur du banal, c'est le mieux, quand on ne compte plus sur la religion ou l'idéologie politique. Le (...) maître à penser, c'est toi. A quoi ressemble un petit-déjeuner? As-tu assez de courage pour te reconnaître dans le miroir et te reconnaître sur le " trône "? Que se passe-t-il quand tu es tenté au bureau? Une fois réveillé, vas-tu interpréter et utiliser tes rêves? Finalement, rien de tel qu'un simplissime " Où, quand, comment, pourquoi? " devant un gros problème. Chaque jour est un beau jour pour philosopher... (shrink)

When political philosopher Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of ‘banality of evil’ she did so in reference to the actions of Germans who appropriated the doctrines of National Socialism “thoughtlessly” and without obvious intentions to do evil. But, Arendt’s description of this phenomenon entails that such banality can be found even in a democracy such as the USA. The relation of law and morality must therefore be unambiguous to defend the rule of law against the rule of men. (...) However, a legal philosophy other than positivism is essential to safeguard the Republic against the overreach of executive power. And, where the psychopathology of Donald Trump is at the core of America’s electoral discontent in 2020, as mental health professionals have argued, there is all the more reason to take Arendt’s counsel especially seriously today. It is in this context that it is argued here that the American public must beware Trump’s inducement of America’s banality of evil. (shrink)

The racist killing of Georg Floyd in the Summer of 2020 created waves of protests not only in the U.S. but all over the globe. In Turkey, my home country, there were also street demonstrations that demanded justice for Floyd, but “Twitter activism” was more popular. Turkish-speaking-twitter became a hotbed for condemnations. Amidst an array of tweets condemning Floyd’s racist killing, one stood out and made it to the headlines of alternative media outlets. A former official of the authoritarian Turkish (...) government, Yusuf Yerkel, wrote the following tweet in Turkish on June 5, 2020, in response to Floyd’s racist killing; here, I provide an English translation of his infamous tweet (the Turkish original of which is still available on Yerkel’s account on Twitter): “The reason that protests grew to this extent in the U.S. seems to be based on a phenomenon, in H. Arendt’s terms, ‘banality of evil,’ which has become evident in the face of Floyd’s murder. An ordinary White cop’s atrocity as an “everyday job” was the tipping point.”. (shrink)

Two central strands in Arendt's thought are the reflection on the evil of Auschwitz and the rethinking in terms of politics of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics. Given Heidegger's taciturnity regarding Auschwitz and Arendt's own taciturnity regarding the philosophical implications of Heidegger's political engagement in 1933, to set out how these strands interrelate is to examine the coherence of Arendt's thought and its potential for a critique of Heidegger. By refusing to countenance a theological conception of the evil of Auschwitz, Arendt (...) consolidates the break with theology that Heidegger attempts through his analysis of the essential finitude of Dasein. In the light of Arendt's account of evil, it is possible to see the theological vestiges in Heidegger's ontology. Heidegger's resumption of the question concerning the categorical interconnections of the ways of Being entails an abandonment of finitude: he accommodates and tacitly justifies that which can have no human justification. (shrink)

Nazi evil makes the people of Eichmann, this is the whole context of the banality of evil. The destruction of Nazi evil is so unprecedented that it forms a whole new evil- Radical evil. Radical evil is not the change in the degree of evil, but the lack of traditional cognition or conception that suits it. Compared with the traditional evil, Radical evil cancels the concept of man itself. The banality of evil does not oppose Radical evil is (...) a new evil, does not deny its destruction, it criticizes the understanding of this evil as the devil. Replacing Radical evil with Extreme evil highlights the feature of no thinking of this evil. The banality of evil goes against words and thought, and it cannot be understood in the way of exploring the roots. The banality of evil is about thinking rather than knowing, aiming to seek meaning rather than knowledge. Thinking is a political activity, which does not directly bring knowledge and directly guide behavior, but generates independent judgment, thus helping to deal with evil. (shrink)

This article revisits the case of Woody Allen’s mockumentary Zelig via Friedrich Nietzsche’s diagnostic of mimicry in The Gay Science. It argues that the case of the “human chameleon” remains contemporary for both philosophical and political reasons. On the philosophical side, I argue that the case of Zelig challenges an autonomous conception of the subject based on rational self-sufficiency by proposing a relational conception of the subject open to mimetic influences that will have to await the discovery of mirror neurons (...) in the 1990s in order to find an empirical confirmation. On the political side, I say that Zelig foregrounds the power of authoritarian leaders in the 1930s to cast a spell on both imitative crowds and publics in terms that provide a mimetic supplement to Hannah Arendt’s account of the “banality of evil”. The philosophical purchase of Zelig’s cinematic dramatization of a mimetic subject is that it reveals how the “inability to think” characteristic of the case of Eichmann rests on unnoticed affective principles constitutive of the all-too-human penchant for “mimicry” the film dramatises. Thus reframed, the human chameleon reflects the dangers of mimetic dispossessions that reached massive proportions in the past century and continue to cast a shadow on the present century. (shrink)

In this article I discuss T. Wartenberg’s claim that the film The Act of Killing, which has as protagonists and quasi co-authors perpetrators of the 1965–66 Indonesian massacre, ‘confirms’ and ‘supplements’ Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ thesis. I argue for a more moderate version of the first part of this claim and expand upon the second. Thus, I suggest that the film gives us clues to articulate Arendt’s thesis with theories of alienation, hence also with Marxist theorizing. Central here is (...) the idea that deficient sensibility, which, according to Wartenberg’s claim, supplements Arendt’s idea of ‘thoughtlessness’, is related to an alienating process within which cinema plays a prominent role. Thus, my argument revolves around the premise that in the film the question of mass evil-doing is intertwined with positing its own medium as an object of reflection, revealing cinema as carrying a contradictory potential. The critical upholding of Arendt’s thesis that the film enables also concerns the relationship of ‘banality’ to ideological motivation, a rather problematic issue in Arendt’s thesis. The film, I argue, suggests that ‘banality’ does not necessarily exclude ideological zealotry. (shrink)

Diane Vaughan’s popular book, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, advances a thesis that I termed the “cog in the machine manifesto”: since the Challenger disaster was the result of the determined, mechanistic movement of the parts of the organizational system; once the mechanism was set in motion, the disaster was inevitable, and could not have been prevented. In order to expose the fallacies of the cog in the machine manifesto, I consider an alternative umbrella (...) thesis and four sub-theses. The umbrella thesis proposes that the causes of the Challenger disaster were the lack of an overall 'safety first' ethos, and irresponsible choice and poor decision-making practices in the lead up to and including the final risky decision. The four sub-theses are as follows: (1) the widespread justification that one always faces inherent risk when one operates in the realm of risky technology (a thesis foreshadowed by Vaughan’s book) is an illicit and misleading justification when one considers that there is no binding necessity to employ the risky technology; (2) the real culprit is not so much "risky technology," which locates the risk in the technology, but "risky assessment," which locates the risk in the decision to employ technology while not basing that decision on known safe designs and continued use on performance data; (3) the decision to choose an Orbiter without a passenger and crew abort system is proof in and of itself of a lack of a "safety first" management priority; (4) an analysis of the fateful eve of the Challenger launch teleconference launch decision makes it impossible to construe it as a banal, routine and inevitable organizational mistake. A careful examination of the “cog in the machine manifesto” and similar frameworks that purport to explain moral disasters will reveal that the language of risky technology, organizational complexity, and inevitable accidents is deeply pernicious and should thus be avoided at all costs. (shrink)

Sergei Eisenstein’s 110th anniversary celebrated in 2008 calls for a re-assessment of his overall heritage, which until now has been customarily perceived in Western film scholarship as - in Annette Michelson’s words - ’indissolubly linked to the project of construction of socialism’ - a view shared from Marie Seton to Jacques Aumont, from Kristin Thompson to Ian Christie and from David Bordwell to Anna Bohn. Not only did Eisenstein’s output magnificently and persuasively outlive this project, but from our vantage point (...) at the beginning of the twenty- first century we can see its position within the complex tapestry of the cultural, philosophical, political and aesthetic developments of the twentieth century from a different angle. Drawing on the recently published in Russia Eisenstein’s magnum opus Method and the author’s research on still unpublished Eisenstein’s writings of the same period, including his diaries, the present paper positions the discussion of Eisenstein’s theory-and-practice between two diametrically opposed philosophical poles - utopia and event. I argue that while Eisenstein’s theoretical writings were encompassed by a number of utopian ideas, which were, nevertheless quite different from the utopian projects of bolshevism, it is his cinematography, which now - in the context of an on-going discussion in continental philosophy - can be defined as ’cinema of event’ that demonstrates the biggest and radical discrepancy between Eisenstein’s work and both ideology and art of socialism - the world of ‘realized utopia.’ . (shrink)

Teachers as Absurd Heroes : Camus' Sisyphus and the Promise of Rebellion -- Education as Empowerment : Exploring Dostoyevsky's Notion of "the Underground" -- Kafka's The Metamorphosis and the Challenge of Relating to Strangers -- Negotiating Contingency : Sartre's Nausea and the Possibility of Losing Control in a Technological World -- Nietzsche on the Significance of Learning about the Past -- Martin Buber's Metaphor of "Starting from Above" and the Issue of Educational Authority -- Hannah Arendt's Concept of the " (...) class='Hi'>Banality of Evil" : On Thoughtlessness in Education -- Maxine Greene, Opening Spaces and Education for Freedom. (shrink)

My writing is simply a set of experiments in life—an endeavour to see what our thought and emotion may be capable of—what stores of motive, actual or hinted as possible, give promise of a better after which we may strive—what gains from past revelations and discipline we must strive to keep hold of as something more than shifting theory. I became more and more timid—with less daring to adopt any formula which does not get itself clothed for me in some (...) human figure and individual experience, and perhaps that is a sign that if I help others to see at all it must be through the medium of art. George Eliot. In his inaugural lecture, given in Birkbeck College in 1987, Roger Scruton, who has done as much as anyone else in recent years to bring the importance of art in general and literature in particular to the attention of philosophers, contends that ‘philosophy severed from literary criticism is as monstrous a thing as literary criticism severed from philosophy’. The first, he argues, aims to be science: strives after theoretical truth which it can never attain; and results in banality clothed in pseudo-scientific technicalities: while the second is liable to find consolation in the kind of nonsense which pretends that in the study of literature we are confronted with nothing other than an author-less, unreadable, ‘text’. Philosophy, he maintains, ‘must return aesthetics to the place that Kant and Hegel made for it: a place at the centre of the subject, the paradigm of philosophy and the true test of all its claims’. (shrink)

Comment penser l'effort aujourd'hui? Le thème peut sembler à la fois banal et faussement suranné. Banal, d'une part, parce que l'effort est, pour paraphraser Descartes, "la chose du monde la mieux partagée". Depuis toujours, nous sommes enjoints à "faire des efforts", dans des domaines très variés de l'existence, pour apprendre à marcher ou faire du vélo, à l'école, dans nos relations avec autrui puis, plus tard, pour mener à bien des études et une vie professionnelle, trouver le bonheur dans notre (...) vie privée et surmonter les "coups durs" qui sont le lot de chacun. Banal aussi, parce que, tel un marronnier des propos de comptoir, le thème est dans l'actualité, lorsqu'il s'agit de déplorer le "manque d'efforts" des "jeunes générations" ou la perte du "goût de l'effort", à l'école notamment. Ainsi, l'effort serait requis partout, et pourtant perdu, omniprésent dans les discours et si difficile à définir, si difficile à saisir aussi dans les actes. De quoi parle-t-on, de l'effort physique, démonstratif, ou de l'effort intellectuel, intériorisé, impalpable, mais dont les neurosciences visent à montrer la teneur somatique? (shrink)

Philosophy of History is in crisis. This crisis has a structural origin in separating a finitude of the one (fate, destiny, nation, people, identity) from an infinitude of the many (individuals, biographies, contingencies, banalities). This difference seems to produce an aporia. Where could history be that would talk of both?

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa sets (...) out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Introduction: What is evil and how can we understand it? -- The theology of evil -- Theodicies -- The privation theodicy -- The free will theodicy -- The Iraenean theodicy -- The totality theodicy -- History as secular theodicy -- Job's insight-the theodicy of the hereafter -- Anthropology of evil -- Are people good or evil? -- The typologies of evil -- Demonic evil -- Evil for evil's sake -- Evil's aesthetic seduction -- Sadism -- Schadenfreude -- Subjective and objective (...) evil -- Kant and instrumental evil -- The impossibility of a "devilish" will -- The paradox of evil -- Moral rebirth -- The evil is the other-idealistic evil -- "Us" vs. "them" -- Violent individuals -- Arendt and stupid evil -- The evil and the stupid -- Radical and banal evil -- Eichmann, Hoss, and Stangl -- Normal people and extreme evil -- Thinking as opposition -- Evil people -- The problem of evil -- Theory and praxis -- Ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility -- Politics and violence -- Evil as a concrete problem. (shrink)

"Out of the box! ". Qui n'a pas entendu cette injonction destinée à ceux que l'on somme d'être créatif? Si nos sens délimitent sans peine des murs et des portes, de quoi se compose la boîte de laquelle on nous enjoint de sortir? Qui la construit et à quoi sert-elle? Nous avons pris au sérieux ce banal mot d'ordre managérial et avons bâti une théorie sur l'innovation. Ce n'est pas une "boîtes" que nous avons identifiée, mais trois "cubes" qui formatent (...) nos identités, nos usages et nos objets. Sujet, verbe, objet tout marché fonde en même temps un récit et s'appuie sur la même grammaire que nous avons apprise sur les bancs d'école. Les neufs dimensions réunies par les trois cubes sont des productions historiques. Elles sont le produit d'un nombre impressionnant d'acteurs : Etats, organismes administratifs, partis politiques, arts, aménagement du territoire, syndicats patronaux ou ouvriers, associations de consommateurs, médias, médecine, droit, formation, police, langue, leaders d'opinion, structures faîtières, etc. Le lecteur découvrira que l'innovation exprime un paradoxe : l'innovation est nécessaire pour les entreprises ; elle aussi est un danger pour ces dernières ; elle doit enfin être domestiquée et "cubée" pour organiser une concurrence. Si l'innovation était débridée, aucun marché n'y résisterait... Trois cubes comme paradoxes de la créativité et de la liberté ; il faut bien des murs, savoir de quoi ils sont faits et où ils sont érigés pour s'évader de temps en temps. (shrink)

Current approaches to contemporary political philosophy are disproportionately western, and the need for more diverse and global perspectives is urgent. To address this imbalance Colin J. Lewis and Jennifer Kling take up a series of contemporary topics in political philosophy and consider how the application of classical Chinese thought can engender new insights and enable progress on some of the thorniest sociopolitical issues. They argue that classical Chinese political theories and views have much to say that is relevant (...) to our contemporary life, and buttress their argument with case studies. Each chapter takes up a particular contemporary sociopolitical issue, describes standard Western approaches to it, and then applies classical Chinese thought to the task of either re-framing it, or suggesting a novel solution. -/- The book engages with and makes progress on several current sociopolitical issues, including the construction and deconstruction of political narratives, the legal standing of robots, the relationships between people, communities, and the environment, the funding (or defunding) of police, the status of private militias, and the question of justified revolution in liberal democracies, among others. While classical Chinese philosophy has been previously dismissed in some circles as inaccessible or banal, Lewis and Kling argue that, to the contrary, it is a powerful lens through which to view and dissect today's challenges. (shrink)

La distinction entre l'approche scientifique du réel des approches religieuse ou philosophique est une tâche urgente si on veut éviter le banal : "Tout est bon, tout se vaut" qui place les diverses connaissances au même niveau d'incertitude et de confusion. Chacune propose en fait un modèle original d'interprétation du monde. Encore faut-il s'attacher à bien comprendre sa portée spécifique et ses limites. Elles ne sont pas équivalentes. Chaque approche est pertinente suivant son intention et dans ses frontières propres. Elles (...) sont comme trois "faces de la vie" pour parler comme Bernard Russel. Il convient seulement de ne pas oublier que la dimension métaphysique de l'existence humaine n'est pas aisément réductible. Ce travail de distinction permet aussi de ne pas les réduire avec ce qui n'est que leurs caricatures : le scientisme, fanatisme et la sophistique. (shrink)