The Evil of Banality: On the Life and Death Importance of Thinking

In this expanded edition of The Evil of Banality, Elizabeth Minnich argues for a tragic yet hopeful explanation of “extensive evil,” her term for systematic, normalized harm-doing on the scale of genocide, slavery, sexualized dominance. The book now includes a new preface, new chapter, and expanded afterword addressing ongoing extensive evils, the paradox of lying, and the importance of developing the thinking without which conscience remains mute. Extensive evils are actually carried out not by psychopaths, but by people like your quiet next-door neighbor, your ambitious colleagues. There simply are not enough moral monsters to do the long hard work of extensive evils, nor enough saints for extensive good. In periods of extensive evil, people little different from you and me do its work for no more than a better job, a raise, the house of the family “disappeared” last week. So how can there be hope? Such evils are neither mysterious nor demonic. If we avoid romanticizing both the worst and best of which humans are capable, we can recognize and say no to extensive evil, practice and sustain extensive good, where they must take root – in ordinary lives.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Preface to the Expanded Edition: If Not Now, When? Introduction: What Were They Thinking? PART I: EVIL—THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE Chapter 1: Truth and Fiction: Camus’ The Plague Chapter 2: Thinking about Not-Thinkingh Chapter 3: Changing Minds Chapter 4: Escaping Explanations, Excuses Chapter 5: Meaning, Truth, Rationality, Knowledge, and Thinking Chapter 6: Romanticizing Evil Chapter 7: Intensive Evil, Extensive Evil Chapter 8: The Ordinary for Good and Ill PART II: GOODNESS: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Chapter 9: Phillip Hallie: It Takes a Village Chapter 10: Preparing for Extensive Goodness? Chapter 11: Looking for Good Beyond the Village Chapter 12: The Banality of Goodness? PART III: FERTILE GROUNDS FOR EXTENSIVE EVIL Chapter 13: Seeding Prepared Ground Chapter 14: Large-Scale Enclosures: Meaning Systems Chapter 15: Physical Enclosures of Bodies, Minds Chapter 16: Laying out the Strands Chapter 17: Why Not Lie? Expanded Afterword: Teaching Thinking Notes Bibliography: Sources and Resources Index Author Biography

About the Author :
Elizabeth Minnich received her doctorate from the Graduate Faculty of The New School under the direction of Hannah Arendt, whom she served as teaching assistant. Following twenty-five years as professor at the Union Institute, she was appointed Distinguished Fellow, President’s Office, the AmericanAssociation of Colleges and Universities. She is the author of Transforming Knowledge and co-author of The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy.

Review :
This expanded edition of The Evil of Banality, which I greatly admire, could hardly be more timely. The whole matter of evil being done thoughtlessly looms larger in every day’s headlines. The book, in its wide-ranging display of the dangers of mindless complicity as well as complacency in the face of spreading chaos, is essential reading for today. Read this book. It will lighten your way in the darkness of our times.