History of the will and banality of evil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2010.742n1102Keywords:
Bureaucratic evil, juridical responsibility, moral responsibility, contingency, individuality, resistance, transcendence, banality of evil, history of the willAbstract
This article discusses the connections existing in The Life of the Mind between the theory of the banality of evil and the history of the will. It interprets Eichmann in Jerusalem as a work about bureaucratic evil, but above all as research concerning both moral and juridical responsibility. From the history of the will it highlights three different aspects that can be connected with the problem of responsibility: the ontology of contingency, the idea of individuality linked to the will and the capacity of transcendence and resistance that we see in the Duns Scotus’ theory, where liberty equals indifference. Finally, it suggests a link between the banality of evil and the ontology of good as these are present in “Some questions of moral philosophy” (1965-1966), the fight against Gnosticism and the defense of a relationship between morality and evil’s intelligibility.
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