Hannah Arendt's The Banality Of Evial

Hannah Arendt had experienced two world wars and was once persecuted into the concentration camp by Nazi race. The formation of her thoughts was largely influenced by her life experices and the social environment, among which, her thinking on "evil" was the core of her thoughts. In a long time, she was dedicated to the study of totalitarian evil problems and finished her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism", and came up with an unprecedented "the radical evil" concept.Such kind of "evil" appearing at the same time with totalitarian system made human beings "superfluous", eliminated human beings'freedom and plurality and went beyond all degrees that humans can understand.However, in 1961 Arendt attended the trial of Jerusalem. After she met former Nazi official Eichmann,her thoughts changed. She held that those hideous crime may only come out of some superficial mediocre motivation, and she put forward the widespread disputed "the banality of evil" concept.She found the motivations behind evil was not cruel, but just the ordinary weaknesses human beings have. This empty, superficial evil also broke the mysteriousness of evil. Eichmann was such kind of person that took superior's orders as the supreme principle and discipline has replaced the moral responsibility to become the highest virtues. In her opinion, evil having never been pondered, has no depth, but only good has depth and is essential. The banality of evil only illustrates the properties of evil; it doesn't mean the harm of the mediocre evil is insignificant; in fact, its consequence is quite terrible and destructive.The realistic significance of this paper on one hand is to refuse deepening autocratic evil, to realize that the collective evil caused by ordinary people also is destructive and to consider the collective and individual responsibility in political and moral field from human level. On the other hand, based on Arendt's study of the banality of evil, this paper attempts to arouse modern people to confirm history and dare to face the ugly page of the national history and let people learn lessons to avoid collective evil happening again. Meanwhile, this paper attempts to demonstrate the causes and pratical significance of the banality of from the perspective of political philosophy. evil...