Abstract

Susan Neiman claims in Evil in Modern Thought that Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem may be understood as a work of theodicy inasmuch as it gives “meaning to evil that helps us face despair.” More precisely, Neiman claims that to call evil banal “implies that the sources of evil are not mysterious or profound but fully within our grasp” and even “shallow enough to pull up.” This note argues that Neiman’s interpretation of Arendt’s book is mistaken and that Arendt does not hold that evil has “shallow” roots, but no roots at all.

Highlights

  • In her book Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman proposes that we may use the word “theodicy” in two senses

  • To quote: To call evil banal is to offer not a definition of it but a theodicy. For it implies that the sources of evil are not mysterious or profound but fully within our grasp. They do not infect the world at a depth that could make us despair of the world itself

  • Arendt does not seek to make evil appear meaningful by appeal to some vast cosmic plan; she seeks to orient us toward evil in a way that gives us hope

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Summary

Introduction

In her book Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman proposes that we may use the word “theodicy” in two senses. Neiman is surely correct that Arendt’s book is of philosophical interest, but it is difficult to agree with Neiman, and against Arendt, that it is a treatise on evil.

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