Philosophy 2065F/G Lecture : banality of evil

• School: Western University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: Philosophy 2065F/G
• Professor: T A

Document Summary

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us- the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. When i speak of the banality of evil, i do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was no iago and no macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind that to determine with richard iii to prove a villain . Except from an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. A central part of her thesis is that evil can be done although the agent had no intention in doing the act. This is difficult to understand because we don"t normally think of evil in these terms. We think of evil as a person with the intention of doing evil.