Radical Evil

Contemporary thinkers such as Philip Zimbardo, Alexander Hinton and
Elizabeth Minnich recently coined the terms Banality of Heroism, Banality
of Everyday Thought, and Banality of Goodness respectively (without these
concepts being the linchpins of their theses). These terms can be retraced
to one thinker in particular who is constantly referred to by them: Hannah
Arendt. Arendt’s Banality of Evil, a key concept in her work, was devised
to discuss the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This paper seeks to
critically analyze these “banalities,” and ascertain whether they have
contributed meaningfully to the existing literature on the problem of evil.

When contrasting something with its opposite, such as positive numbers with negative numbers, attraction with repulsion, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, Kant sometimes says the latter are not merely cases of negation or privation of the former, but that they have their own, independent grounds. But do negative judgments of taste have a priori grounds? There are two kinds of negative judgments of taste: “This is not beautiful” and “This is ugly.” Can they be a priori judgments? Or are they always impure and without a priori basis? In this essay, I will argue that they can be pure a priori judgments, contrary to what many Kant scholars claim. But the issue is complicated and there are good arguments on both sides. I will give detailed analyses of examples involving part-whole relationships, objects of art, and aesthetic ideas. I will also draw parallels with moral judgments and the idea of radical evil. I argue that as morally evil acts must have a priori grounds, so must aesthetic judgments about ugliness.

Una problemática en los estudios sobre el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt consiste en elucidar la relación entre el “mal radical” y la “banalidad del mal”. Al respecto se cuenta con numerosas teorías que buscan dar cuenta de los cambios de parecer de la autora en la obra, sobre todo en lo que concierne a la relación existente entre el “mal radical” y la “banalidad del mal”, reflexión a partir de la cual pueden darse múltiples respuestas ubicadas entre los extremos de la mutua exclusión o la total complementariedad. Este trabajo aspira a continuar indagando sobre las motivos que llevaron a Arendt a efectuar este tipo de transición conceptual.

Este artículo aborda dos objetivos principales. Por una parte, se analiza la idea de política que emana del pensamiento de Hannah Arendt, partiendo de su situación personal y biográfica, la cual está enclavada en su formación como pensadora política en la Alemania de entreguerras. Por otra parte, se reflexiona sobre la idea de mal radical que elabora dicha pensadora, idea que ella confronta con su concepción de la política, si bien el mal radical fue una experiencia muy arraigada en el siglo XX, marcando las historias de vida de millones de personas en las sociedades occidentales. A este respecto, la tesis principal es que la idea de política es totalmente opuesta a la idea de mal radical en Arendt; es decir, la política y el mundo común desaparecen y pierden su sentido al surgir el mal radical y los totalitarismos.

In Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason (1793) Kant distinguishes three types of predisposition that form the moral nature of human beings. These are: animality, which denotes the quality that human beings are living beings; humanity, which ascribes the rational nature of human beings; and personality, which is the predisposition of the human being as having responsibility. The inclusion of this third disposition, of personality, appears to add a new dimension that is not found in Kant’s earlier critical works. Indeed, one source for this disposition could be Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose Letters on the Kantian Philosophy both popularised Kant’s works and opened new aspects for Kantian philosophy. Significantly, Reinhold tried to create a stronger distinction between human capacity and reason than found in Kant’s notion of practical reason. Hence Kant’s own inclusion of Reinhold’s notion suggests that the value of personality is detached from reason. This possibility runs against the predominant interpretation of Kant as an Enlightenment thinker who bases everything on reason. In this paper I will consider whether the predisposition of personality can be reconciled with a predominately rational interpretation of Kant or whether it reveals the importance of a non-rational basis in Kant’s philosophy.

Addressing the nature of radical evil is regarded as an important theological approach to understanding culture. This study situates theological and philosophical studies of radical evil to highlight important areas of discourse within Pentecostalism. A case study of the faith community of East Gate Supernatural Living Church provides the space for an in depth analysis of the roles of radical evil in Pentecostal worship and the theo-social imaginary. Further, this study investigates the narratives underlying the Pentecostal service and suggests the need for an investigation into the nature of liturgy.

Nel saggio mi propongo di mostrare come, sin dall’inizio, convivano in Hannah Arendt la tesi della radicalità del male totalitario (in quanto massima negazione della umanità dell’uomo mai realizzatasi storicamente) e quella della sua banalità, nel senso specifico del carattere contingente e “superficiale” delle sue manifestazioni storiche specifiche. Volendo, si potrebbe dire che al primo aspetto corrisponde il carattere “essenziale” del male totalitario (la sua unicità e originalità) e al secondo la sua contingenza e mancanza di profondità. Oltre a ciò, vorrei mostrare come dalla radicalità del male totalitario discenda la sua imperdonabilità e dalla sua banalità il bisogno di comprenderlo al fine, oltre che di combatterlo, di impedire che esso estenda il suo influsso distruttivo fino alla preclusione di ogni possibile riconciliazione col mondo e ri-radicamento in esso. Componente essenziale di un simile esercizio di comprensione è una franca presa di coscienza della costitutiva fragilità e ambiguità anche della realizzazione più compiuta e armonica della condizione umana, elemento che spiega come il male totalitario abbia potuto diffondersi come un “fungo” (ovvero come un parassita) sulla superficie della condizione umana. In essa non si dà infatti alcun genere di immunità al male.

This paper explores the ethics of social science research by taking the Canadian context as a case study of the increasing formalization of ethics review procedures in North America. Based on a biomedical model of harm prevention, all university
research involving humans in Canada, regardless of discipline, must pass through an ethics board review. I read the official ethics policy document governing review procedures for human research in Canada and use two examples of criticism of such policy as entry points to identify and explore a limit in understandings of social research ethics. This limit is reached when ethics policy is criticized on the basis of the incompatibility of a general rule applied to a particular research situation. Using concepts from the ethical philosophies of Kant and Lacan, I move beyond the question of the application of general rules to particular research situations and push research ethics into different territory, where neither general rules nor the notion of particularity can be relied on to ground ethical action. In this other terrain, radical responsibility and unguaranteed decision are the only signposts.

This book includes a thoroughly revised and annotated version of the full text (Pluhar's 2009 translation) of Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Kant's text is provided a few sentences at a time, followed by 1-3 paragraphs of commentary on each passage. Variant readings from other recent translations are provided in the footnotes, where relevant, along with comments on the nuances relating to the original German. A detailed Glossary defends the most controversial of the 500+ words whose translations have been changed. Hundreds of variations between the first (1793) and second (1794) editions are noted, with explanations of the rationale in many cases. About 50 "corrections" made to Kant's German text by the Akademie Ausgabe editor are highlighted; many of these are rejected as introducing claims into the original text that Kant would not have made. Kant's sources are identified for many of his claims, and interpretive debates in the recent secondary literature (especially works published in the past 15 years) are summarized with relevant referencs, as well as connections made to related passages in Kant's other writings.