Bureaucracy and Thoughtlessness: Totalitarian Evil in the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt

Abstract

Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil was inspired by her experience with the totalitarian governments of the twentieth century. However, Arendt argued that the thoughtlessness which was at the root of this banal evil was not unique to totalitarianism. Rather, it was a function of modernity. The bureaucratic governments that have become synonymous with political life in recent decades act as a hedge between individuals and certain stimuli for thought. Through a close reading of Arendt’s political theory it is argued that bureaucracy, though generally benign, presents the same temptation to thoughtlessness as totalitarianism once did.