A major aspect of Hanna Arendt’s thinking focuses on the notion of what she calls
the “banality of evil.” This is a term that refers to the seemingly paradoxical fact
that acts of evil are often not committed by particularly evil people. This is
pointedly illustrated by Arendt in her study of Adolf Eichmann. As it turned out,
Eichmann was a reasonably sensible person who was not the monster that one
might expect considering the sheer amount of evil the man perpetrated—evil that
would not have been possible except for his keen bureaucratic skills. Arendt’s
analysis of Eichmann reveals that he was able to execute the acts of evil he did
precisely because he was not “thinking.”
The term “thinking” for Arendt has a specific meaning and carries with it
some, to say the least, philosophically difficult problems. These problems, save for
one, can be set aside for purposes of this talk. The problem to which I am referring
is one in which Arendt’s analysis suggests that there is some sort of perfect thinker
(Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture” 427). My philosophical
interest here is that regardless of what “thinking” turns out to be, it seems to me
that there is a missing step in Arendt’s thought; there is something that Arendt
seems to overlook in her assumptions that gets in the way of thinking and that
might preclude most, if not all, humans from “thinking” in the Arendtian sense —
language codes.
Language codes, as I will be using the term, are words and phrases that stand
in place of and, therefore, mimic, knowledge and understanding. Once a language
code has been adopted, then that code replaces any thinking and, therefore, any
knowledge and understanding that Arendt would have us engage with. If I am right
about language codes, then at best, Arendt’s “thinking” would be much more
difficult to achieve than might have been imagined; at worst, impossible.
