The Banality of Radical Evil in the Name of Enjoyment: Hannah Arendt Revisited through Ethics of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Hannah Arendt is always preoccupied with the problem of evil in her political and moral theory. Her conceptualizations of the ”radical evil” and ”banality of evil” in totalitarian regimes, however, provoke a great amount of controversies over moral thinking, judgment and responsibility. In light of Lacanian psychoanalytic ethics and Žižekian ideology critique, this essay will elucidate the conceptual consistency of ”radical evil” and ”banality of evil”: hence, ”the banality of radical evil.” Such a theoretical framework of political and moral analysis is grounded in the centrality of desire, fantasy and enjoyment, and places much weight on the entanglement of the superego with morality as well as evil. The final part of this essay will explore how ”the banality of radical evil in the name of enjoyment” outlives totalitarian regimes and continues to haunt us today.