The banality of evil: controversy and complexity of a concept

This article intends to reflect on Hannah Arendt’s concept of banality of evil. It starts with an analysis of the film Hannah Arendt by Margarethe von Trotta. This beginning is not a mere pretext. Because it is a relatively current cinematographic work, it has a public disclosure far superior to the written work of Arendt. In this sense, it becomes important to confront the film, elucidating its aspects more or less concordant with the author’s work. The banality of evil is perhaps the most complex concept proposed by Arendt and has given rise to a controversy that the author could not have foreseen. Margarethe von Trotta's film is extremely loyal to this controversy, although, because it is a film and not a treatise on philosophy, it does not explore all the complexity associated with the concept. This complexity is related to the few clarifications that Arendt provided about her change of mind on the subject of totalitarian evil, which was accompanied by a conceptual modification - from "radical evil" to "banality of evil". I intend to show, without denying the differences between the concepts, that we can combine them in order to think the banality capable of leading to radical evil.