Lyndsey Stonebridge - Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil

Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham, talks about Arendt’s reaction to Eichmann’s trial.

About Lyndsey Stonebridge "I am Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham, in the UK."

Key Points

• Arendt coined her famous phrase “the banality of evil” at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, as a way of describing the Nazi war criminal’s utter thoughtlessness about his crimes. • Contemporary examples of “radical thoughtlessness” include sending elderly people back to their care homes to die from COVID-19. • Thinking by itself is never enough. You have to take action to maintain a community in which you can have what Arendt called the “right to have rights”.

Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, 29 May 1961, United States Holocaust Museum, Courtesy of Israel Government Press Office. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the phrases that Arendt is most well known for is “the banality of evil”, which she coined when she went to watch the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961.

Eichmann was a war criminal who had escaped to Argentina. In 1960, he was captured by Israeli secret services, the Mossad, and brought to Jerusalem for trial. It was an extraordinarily important moment in the world’s coming to terms with the Holocaust.

Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” is often misunderstood as her saying that Eichmann was kind of innocent because he was just part of this banal system. But, actually, what Arendt was trying to get at takes us back to the issue of thinking – or the opposite of thinking, which is thoughtlessness.