In this 2 day Master Class, Prof. Elizabeth Minnich will discuss the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, with special emphasis on Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil. This serves as the background for Minnich’s latest book, The Evil of Banality: On The Life and Death Importance of Thinking (2017). This work presents elaborates the concept of “extensive evils” through the examples of as slavery, human trafficking, economic exploitation, for-profit penitentiaries, etc. Minnich considers explanations of the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of extensive evils by social psychologists and historians such as Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo, whose work on obedience to authority and peer pressure she challenges.

Dates and times:

July 27, 2018 – 10:00-13:00 and 14:00-17:00

July 28, 2018 – 10:00-13:00

Location:

Technologiepark 21

Elizabeth Minnich is Professor of Philosophy at Queens University of Charlotte (Charlotte, North Carolina) and Distinguished Fellow at the Association of American Colleges & Universities. She received her PhD from the New School for Social Research in 1977. Her dissertation, “Philosophy, Democracy and Communication: A Study of John Dewey As Political Philosopher,” was supervised by Hannah Arendt and Richard Bernstein. She was Hannah Arendt’s teaching assistant in 1969-70, at the time when Arendt was defending her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann (“The Engineer of the Nazi Final Solution”). This is where Arendt announced her controversial observation concerning the “the banality of evil.” In the years since then, Minnich has continued reflecting on, researching, and writing about evil, which culminates in her reversal of Arendt’s concept: the evil of banality.

Participants are encouraged to send questions to Prof. Minnich via email.

Related Events: Libori Summer School 2018