Plight Of Political Evil And Modern Ethics

My effort in the dissertation is to probe into the modern ethicalperplexity from the perspective of political evil in Arendt's thoughts. Different from the evil in western tradition of moral philosophy, one which regards evil as deprivation of good or the result produced by certain special power, political evil is toeradicate the very conditions that makes humanity possible------to destroy humanplurality, individuality, and spontaneity, thus it breaks down all standards we know. This indicates the collapse of western civilization and system of its values. Due to the "radical evil" which attacks humanity and the human world that makes politics possible, it results in the ethical perplexity in modern age. Not only does political evil destroy the external world, but also it destroys the human interior world. The phenomenon of "banality of evil" in Eichmann is a good example. "The banality of evil" refers to a specific quality of mind of the doer himself, but never to the needs. The most striking quality of Eichmann, she claims, is not stupidity, wickedness or sadism but one she describes as "thoughtlessness". "Thoughtlessness" leads to monstrous crime committed by the ordinary people. It is "the banality of evil" and "thoughtlessness" that lead Arendt to concern the question of the relation between thinking and evil. She suggests that thinking is among the conditions that make men abstain from evildoing though thinking itself doesn't prevent men from evildoing. The destruction of thinking has a liberating effect on the faculty of judgment. Judging can make thinking manifest in the world of appearances. Arendt regards judgment as the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly, namely the reflective judgment of taste. The faculty of judgment plays a preeminent role in Arendt's political and moral thought. However, there is a tension between morality and politics. To be a good man is a matter of keeping off evil-doing, whereas to be a good citizen means assuming shared responsibility for the public world.