%0 Journal Article
%T Between banality and radicality: Arendt and Kant on evil and responsibility
%A Javier Burdman
%J European Journal of Political Theory
%@ 1741-2730
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1474885116640725
%X The paper reads Kant¡¯s notion of radical evil as anticipating and clarifying problematic aspects of what Arendt called ¡®the banality of evil¡¯. By reconstructing Arendt¡¯s varied analyses of this notion throughout her later writings, I show that the main theoretical challenge posed by it concerns the adjudication of responsibility for evil deeds that seem to lack recognisable evil intentions. In order to clarify this issue, I turn to a canonical text in which the relationship between evil and responsibility plays a central role: Kant¡¯s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Relying on an interpretation of this writing by Arendt¡¯s mentor Karl Jaspers published in 1935, in evident connection to National Socialism, I challenge Arendt¡¯s own interpretation of Kant¡¯s notion of radical evil, which, I argue, represents an antecedent, rather than a contrast, to ¡®the banality of evil¡¯. For Kant, radical evil consists in the destruction of the person¡¯s sense of responsibility, thus producing a self-exculpatory mentality such as the one that characterised Eichmann during his trial
%K Arendt
%K Kant
%K evil
%K responsibility
%K Eichmann
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474885116640725