The social construction on the banality of evil in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the concept of 'banality of evil', as conceived by the German philosopher of Jewish origin, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), especially from the judgment of Adolf Eichmann, in 1961, in Jerusalem. However, it is necessary to note that the proposal here is not of a legal or technical nature regarding the legal processes of Adolf Eichmann's conviction, as this requires another theoretical approach. So, the purpose of this text is to understand the philosophical and social notion of evil as a structural part of modern society. Therefore, in the Arendtian perspective, it is understood that there is no evil on the one hand and the good side on the other, in a dichotomized and dualistic way, on the contrary, the theoretical-methodological path proposed by Hannah Arendt aims at understanding evil from the good, the common, the normal, these being the social agents who maintain the structural logic of the 'banality of evil' in the context of modernity