The Evil of Banality

Abstract

Evil is a day-to-day experience suffered by everyone in a common struggle for existence. Many a time we are both victims and perpetrators of this horrendous reality. The crux of the problem lies in moral and political explanations within rational and irrational discourse. Morality and reason are not necessarily compatible attributes. A responsible human society, however, benefits in their symbiotic alliance.

On the level of historical insight and political thought there prevails an ill-defined, general agreement that the essential structure of all civilizations is at the breaking point…. Desperate hope and desperate fear often seem closer to the center of such events than balanced judgment and measured insight. The central events of our time are not less effectively forgotten by those committed to a belief in an unavoidable doom, than by those who have given themselves upto reckless optimism.

Hannah Arendt (1975: vii)

This article is largely based on my keynote address delivered (in absentia) to the University Grants Commission (UGC)-sponsored International Seminar on Society and Terrorism, T. M. Bhagalpur University, Bhagalpur, India, May 20–21.