Event series
Hannah Arendt and The Banality of Evil Now
Film & Discussion Series
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
Fifty years ago, German writer and political thinker Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” while covering the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker. Her reports were revolutionary in form and content and highly controversial. Taking her thinking as a reference point, the Goethe-Institut Washington presents a series of events that discuss the construction or re-invention of evil in contemporary discourses, be it the catastrophe in Ukraine or at the borders of the EU. Why are Arendt’s perceptions still relevant today, delving deeply into systems that drive our moral standards and behavior. Can evil occur anywhere and any time? And what does it have to do with Totalitarianism?
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind
Fifty years ago, German writer and political thinker Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” while covering the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker. Her reports were revolutionary in form and content and highly controversial. Taking her thinking as a reference point, the Goethe-Institut Washington presents a series of events that discuss the construction or re-invention of evil in contemporary discourses, be it the catastrophe in Ukraine or at the borders of the EU. Why are Arendt’s perceptions still relevant today, delving deeply into systems that drive our moral standards and behavior. Can evil occur anywhere and any time? And what does it have to do with Totalitarianism?