Quotation
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“the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”
Hannah Arendt · Political philosophy · Modern · 1963
What does it mean?
The lesson of the trial, she says, was the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. Eichmann spoke in clichés. He was not a Shakespearean villain, and the lack of depth was the horror, not a mitigation. A rival reading hears 'evil is ordinary, so it is not so bad', or hears a refusal to see ideology and antisemitism. She was attacked for the tone, and some of the attacks land on the reporting. The phrase itself does not say the crime was banal.
Did Hannah Arendt really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Arendt's English in the epilogue. The longer sentence says that in the last minutes Eichmann was summing up the lesson that the long course in human wickedness had taught: the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. The card keeps her phrase. It does not mean evil is trivial.
Where it comes from
Eichmann in Jerusalem, epilogue
Approximate date: 1963.
How to use it
In a file-passing office, a person speaks entirely in stock phrases about a harm they are administering. The temptation is to look for a monstrous inner life and, not finding it, to relax. Her phrase says the relaxation is the mistake. The phrase does not by itself prove that this particular clerk is an Eichmann. It tells you what you should not require to see before you take the file seriously.
A mindset reading
Banality is about the agent, not about the result. The result was not banal. If the adjective migrates from the man to the murder, the phrase has been turned inside out. That migration is the usual misquotation.
Understand the philosophy
Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963, is a report. The epilogue is where the phrase is delivered as the lesson. The Life of the Mind later ties the same worry to thoughtlessness. They are linked. They are not the same sentence.
- ethics
- mind
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The lesson of the trial, she says, was the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. Eichmann spoke in clichés. He was not a Shakespearean villain, and the lack of depth was the horror, not a mitigation. A rival reading hears 'evil is ordinary, so it is not so bad', or hears a refusal to see ideology and antisemitism. She was attacked for the tone, and some of the attacks land on the reporting. The phrase itself does not say the crime was banal.
Did Hannah Arendt really say this?
Well attested. Arendt's English in the epilogue. The longer sentence says that in the last minutes Eichmann was summing up the lesson that the long course in human wickedness had taught: the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil. The card keeps her phrase. It does not mean evil is trivial.
Which work is it in?
Eichmann in Jerusalem, epilogue Approximate date: 1963.