Thinking And Moral Considerations By Hannah Arendt

In her work “Thinking and Moral Considerations”, Hannah Arendt discusses the value of human thought, specifically lack thereof. She contends to further the line of thinking of past great philosophers like Socrates, and Descartes, in that thinking is what makes us human, and it is one of the most important things we can do. Thinking is what allows us to have morals and be original, unique beings. She discusses how an inability to think leads people down a dangerous path, as thinking is directly associated with our conscience. This idea is what led to her now (in)famous theory of the “Banality of Evil” (Arendt 7). She first posed this idea in her “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, and then expands on in this lecture. This comes from her reporting on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, one of the main orchestrators of The Holocaust.
The theory of the “Banality of Evil” comes from her belief that evil does not come from anything extraordinary or uncommon. Evil, in Arendt’s mind, comes from thoughtlessness, and shallowness. This is also a larger critique of people as a whole, outside the realm of evil. She believes that people are all too willing to obey orders and be herded, without any real thought. This takes her to further dissect what it means to “think” and look at how other philosophers (mainly Socrates) look at thought. Thought is important because it leads you to virtue, and a better understanding of “justice, happiness, temperance, and pleasure” (Arendt