The Evil of Banality: Arendt Revisited

Autor/in	Minnich, Elizabeth
Titel	The Evil of Banality: Arendt Revisited
Quelle	In: Arts and Humanities in Higher Education: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 13 (2014) 1-2, S.158-179 (22 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1474-0222
DOI	10.1177/1474022213513543
Schlagwörter	Moral Values; Values Education; Thinking Skills; Humanities; Resistance (Psychology); Educational Methods; Altruism; Role of Education; Social Behavior; Antisocial Behavior; Social Attitudes; History; War; Power Structure; Consciousness Raising; Political Issues; Higher Education + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Moral value; Ethischer Wert; Werterziehung; Denkfähigkeit; Geisteswissenschaften; Humanwissenschaften; Resistenz; Educational method; Erziehungsmethode; Altruistic behavior; Altruismus; Bildungsauftrag; Social behaviour; Soziales Verhalten; Social attidude; Soziale Einstellung; Geschichte; Geschichtsdarstellung; Krieg; Bewusstseinsbildung; Politischer Faktor; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen
Abstract	"The banality of evil" (Arendt) remains controversial and useful. Ironically, the concept is now itself a banality. To revisit and extend it, we consider the "evil of banality", the profound dangers of cliched thoughtlessness. A distinction is proposed: "intensive" versus "extensive evils". The former takes few people and is readily romanticized as demonic. The latter takes many people over time and is badly misunderstood if romanticized: it requires many reliable workers. The paper introduces the "continuum of attentiveness" in relation to the doing of evil or good (from Eichmann and Saddam Hussein's obtuse thoughtlessness, to the poet Wislawa Szymborska's astonishment at the ordinary). Education, especially in the Humanities, may be our last best hope to teach people to think, to see, and to resist the evils enabled by banality. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10