Hannah Arendt: banal evil and tHe judgmen

Abstract

Hannah Arendt wrote that the “banal evil” stems from the inability of the individual to think. However, we may wonder whether evil can not originate from the lack of judgment, when the individual commits evil acts because he neither verify the data nor evaluate them. In that case, the “banal evil” is due to the absence of “reflective judgment” (or reflective) and of the “enlarged mentality” theorized by Kant. Tthe judgment may solve many of the gaps that lead to evil when it is derived from the thought, as, for instance, the necessity to distinguish the reasoning from the thought.