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Chapter 5 - Conscience and the Banality of Evil

from Part II - The Moral Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2026

David Luban
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

When inner dialogue concerns moral choices, we call it “conscience” – dialogue with an internalized other who witnesses what we do and judges us. The chapter elaborates on this theme. It then turns to Arendt’s concern that the quest for inner harmony the motivation of morality may lead us to withdraw from the messy fight against evil for fear of getting our hands dirty. This chapter rebuts this argument. In the penultimate section of the chapter, it analyzes a well-known letter Arendt wrote to Gershom Scholem about her shift from “radical evil” to “banality of evil.” Arendt invokes several different conceptions of radical evil without marking the differences; distinguishing them yields an explanation of her shift and an account of banality of evil. A postscript offers a reading of Eichmann’s prison memoir to ask whether he did think morally, as he claims. The answer is no; seeing why reinforces Arendt’s diagnosis of Eichmann’s banality.

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