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NTU Studies in Language and Literature 57 Number 21 (June 2009), 57-80

The Banality of Radical Evil in the Name of Enjoyment:

Hannah Arendt Revisited through Ethics of

Psychoanalysis

Han-yu HuangAssociate Professor, Department of English

National Taiwan Normal University

ABSTRACTHannah Arendt is always preoccupied with the problem of evil in her political and moral theory. Her conceptualizations of the “radical evil”and “banality of evil” in totalitarian regimes, however, provoke a greatamount of controversies over moral thinking, judgment andresponsibility. In light of Lacanian psychoanalytic ethics and Žižekianideology critique, this essay will elucidate the conceptual consistency of

“radical evil” and “banality of evil”: hence, “the banality of radical evil.”Such a theoretical framework of political and moral analysis is groundedin the centrality of desire, fantasy and enjoyment, and places much weighton the entanglement of the superego with morality as well as evil. Thefinal part of this essay will explore how “the banality of radical evil in thename of enjoyment” outlives totalitarian regimes and continues to hauntus today.

Keywords : enjoyment, evil, perversion, superego, totalitarianism



58 NTU Studies in Language and Literature

以快感為名之激進／陳腐邪惡：

以精神分析倫理學重讀鄂蘭

黃涵榆

國立臺灣師範大學英語文系副教授

摘要

漢娜鄂蘭在其政治與道德理論中一直都關注著邪惡的問題，她所提出的極權

體制中的「激進邪惡」與「惡之陳腐」的概念，引發諸多關於道德思考、判斷與

責任的論爭。本文透過拉崗精神分析倫理學與紀傑克意識形態批判理論，闡述看

似矛盾的「激進邪惡」與「惡之陳腐」兩個概念之間的同一性。本文所援引的政

治與道德分析理論架構特別重視慾望、幻想與快感，觀照超我、道德與邪惡之間

錯綜複雜的關聯。文末將論證「以快感為名之激進／陳腐邪惡」何以在極權體制

之後繼續在當前時代中陰魂不散。

關鍵詞：快感、邪惡、變態、超我、極權主義



The Banality of Radical Evil 59

The Banality of Radical Evil in the Name of Enjoyment:

Hannah Arendt Revisited through Ethics of

Psychoanalysis

Han-yu Huang

Introduction: Arendt in Context

In her lifelong career of thinking and writing, Hannah Arendt never stops being preoccupied with the problem of evil. Her political theory of human rights, government, civil society, and so on, are mainly developedfrom her long-term observation and study of the political crises engendered by totalitarian regimes in terms of the breakdown in morality (Kohn,Introduction x). Accordingly, Arendt’s prolific works substantiate thenecessity of revising traditional philosophical, political, moral andsociological conceptualizations of evil.

One may be easily tempted to disregard Arendt as irrelevant to the early

twenty-first century we are living in, on the grounds that “most” totalitarianregimes have already collapsed, and Nazis’ anti-Semitism, deportations,concentration camps, gas chambers, the Holocaust . . . are purely tooexceptional to apply to “normal” situations. Unwittingly based on a rather crude demarcation between the state of normality and exception, suchrejections concern an imprecise interpretation of Arendt—namely, thatArendt’s works make sense only in the particular political, historicalsituations under which they were written—and unjust judgments on her contributions to political and moral theory; more fundamentally, they betray a

defensive resistance to look at evil in its true face. As Margaret Canovancomments,

Totalitarianism as portrayed by Arendt was not a plague that haddescended on humanity from some external source. It wasself-inflicted, the outcome of human actions and the processesthey set off. . . . While totalitarian regimes were exceptionalevents, they were in her eyes the most extreme example of a phenomenon that was alarmingly common in the modern world,as men set off destructive processes, and then . . . do their best to

speed these processes along. (35)




In other words, Arendt does not conceive of totalitarian evil in metaphysical,

religious terms; its extreme destructiveness, absolutely immanent and secular in modernity, is perpetrated by men themselves through institutional,technological means and engages our moral thinking on both systemic andindividual (existential) aspects. Moreover, the complication of the exceptional,“most extreme” and the normal, “alarmingly common” at issue here deservesour critical concerns as well; it is a theme that has been repeatedly, albeit indifferent contexts, invoked by political theorists such as Carl Schmitt, JacquesRancière, Giorgio Agamben, to name only a few.

As a matter of fact, contemporary theory does not lack its critical

(re)turn to Arendt. In the fields of biopolitics and biophilosophy, Arendt isoften understood as the person who early observes the political effects of human birth, labor or, in Agamben’s terms, “bare life as such” and, moregenerally, the roots of modernity in biopolitics (Esposito 149-50, 177-79).Besides, contemporary Leftist thinkers of radical politics, in their universalizing projects and rethinking, reformulations of the political, receiveArendt in a highly critical vein. Among them, Badiou seems to voice the mostdetermined critiques of Arendt’s political philosophy as a whole for itssubmission of political analysis to ethical norms and reduction of the politicalto plurality of opinions, consensus and, ultimately, parliamentarianism ( Ethics 115-16; Metapolitics 11, 22-24).

To accurately position Arendt in the intellectual background andformation of discourses and to intervene in the controversies as brieflysketched above, though a task worth our efforts, will be beyond the attemptedscope of this paper. Instead, this paper sets out to complete a more limited butconcise goal: that is, revisiting Arendt’s ethico-political theory of evil through psychoanalytic ethics. In this aspect, the major controversy that Arendt

arouses circles around the difficulty, if not impossibility, of thinking together “radical (absolute) evil”—mainly developed in her Origin of Totalitarianism (1951) and other works around 1950s—and “banality of evil,” the subtitle of her Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), a problematic coinage that shecontinuously elaborates through her later works. Arendt first consciouslyapplies the Kantian language “radical evil” in her study of totalitarianism(Matuštik 95; Young-Bruenl 2), but later replaces it with “banality of evil.”This involves not merely a terminological revision but also her break withKant’s formalistic moral philosophy1: for example, Kant posits subjective

1 For Kant, morality has no need of material, empirical determining grounds; it is separated from




freedom as a priori, as manifested even in the case of radical evil, while

Arendt posits the possibility of its destruction (Matuštik 95). The latter part of this paper will present the conceptual consistency of “radical evil” and“banality of evil”—more accurately put, the two sides of one singleconcept—and the persistent concerns of Arendt’s moral thinking on evil inmore details. At this moment, we only need to recapitulate the theme of ClintEastwood’s Mystic River (2003). Does the film not confront us with thetraumatic understanding that radical, horrible evil can be disguised under thesemblance of banal, mundane routines of daily life? Does the film notdramatize “the banality of radical evil” in question: to reunite family and to

make normal life go on, what does it matter to execute a friend, since it iseasy to pretend that nothing really happens? And does this moral theme notalso apply to the Bush administration’s call for “returning to ordinary life”after 11 September 2001 and during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Revisiting Arendt through ethics of psychoanalysis, to a great extent, brings about the confrontation of two lacks. On the one hand, although Arendtmakes her frequent presence in the existing psychoanalytic-ethical literature by, for example, Žižek and Copjec, and in a number of psychoanalytically-informed contributions to Radical Evil (1996), these works fail to open upany integrated understanding of radical evil and banality of evil by way of asystematic engagement in both Freud’s and Lacan’s clinical assessments andtheoretical conceptualizations of the superego and perversion. After his rather sketchy reference to Richard Bernstein’s proposal in Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (1996) that we observe the compatibility, rather than thecontradiction of Arendt’s notions of radical evil and banality of evil, Žižek does touch upon the pervert’s subjective position but immediately drops thediscussion of Arendt and turns to Kant instead ( PF 231-32).2 On the other

“ends” and solely bound with the condition of freedom (33-34). And the subject’s conformity to thelaw, which testifies the subject’s a priori freedom, requires no verification by reason and empiricalexamples. This does not mean that actions and consequences do not count anything in moral judgment, but that they are not self-sufficient and what fundamentally determines a moral good or evil lies beyond the subject’s consciousness. The roots of radical evil, accordingly, do not lie in anynatural impulses or objects but in the subject’s choice of a priori evil maxim, in “a rule that the power of choice itself produces for the exercise of its freedom” (46): in other words, this evil isradical in the sense that it “corrupts the ground of all maxims” (54).

2 The abbreviation of The Plague of Fantasies. Other books by Žižek will be hereafter cited as DSST ( Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?), FA (The Fragile Absolute), LA ( Looking Awry), ME (TheMetastasis of Enjoyment ), PD ( Puppet and Dwarf ), PF ( Plague of Fantasies), PV (The ParallaxView), SOI (The Sublime Object of Ideology), TKN ( For They Know Not What They Do), ZR (The Žižek Reader ). For data of publications, see Works Cited.




hand, Arendt in many crucial aspects, such as thoughtless and superficiality,

which she takes to be the operation definitions of evil, seems to resist or fallshort of psychoanalytic explanations (Alford 54; Young-Bruehl 4). Arendt’slack, or silence, at issue here has its counterpart in Kant’s moral philosophy,to which Lacan himself and Lacanian theorists add the supplement of thesuperego.

In light of Lacanian psychoanalytic ethics and Žižekian ideologycritique, this essay will elucidate the conceptual consistency of “radical evil”and “banality of evil”: hence, “the banality of radical evil.” Such a theoreticalframework of political and moral analysis is grounded in the centrality of

desire, fantasy and enjoyment, and places much weight on the entanglementof the superego with morality as well as evil: put in Lancanian/Žižekian terms,any given public ideology and power grip the subject only on condition thatthey appeal to its superego, drives and enjoyment as their underside, obscenesupports, and so does moral evil. “The banality of radical evil”conceptualized in this paper, accordingly, manifests the doubling of thesubjective/institutional, depth/surface and inside/outside, Lacanian extimacy,or “the unconscious is on the outside.” The final part of this paper willexplore how “the banality of radical evil in the name of enjoyment” outlivestotalitarian regimes and is still haunting us today.

Radical Evil in Totalitarian Regimes

To examine how totalitarian regimes engender a collapse of morality aswell as political crises, we need a self-reflexive understanding of thedifficulty of political and moral judgments in the first place. The totalitarian power system, in spite of its public façade, greatly relies on secret, ubiquitous,

constant, but incalculable and unpredictable spying and surveillance (Arendt,OT 403, 431).3 Totalitarian subjects under such conditions can never be surewho are who and whom can be trusted. Moreover, it is hard, if not impossible,to draw the boundaries between criminals and normal persons, the guilty andinnocent, since the neutral zone of ordinary life, a space of “irrevocableuniqueness” not touched and foreseen by the law ( EU 334), which wassupposed to be a protective shield of privacy and freedom against the

3 The abbreviation of The Origins of Totalitarianism. Other books and collections of essays byArendt will hereafter be cited as EJ ( Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ), EU (Essays in Understanding 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism), LM (The Life of theMind ) and RJ ( Responsibility and Judgment ). For data of publications, see Works Cited.




infringement of political power, has been destroyed and the existence of

individuals depends on either actual crimes or complicity in crimes ( EU 124-25). Moral understanding, judgments and actions, therefore, become outof the question. Thinking such a state to its most horrible extreme, we mayfollow Arendt to posit that a whole people could be employed in systematicmass murder, which defies human reason and imagination, explodes thetraditional categories of political, legal and moral thought and action, andtears apart the intelligible constitution of human existence (Arendt, EU 126;Kohn, Introduction xix).

The aforementioned collapse of private space synecdochically

exemplifies the ubiquity, as well as obscenity, of the political power of totalitarian regimes which, as can be characterized in no better way thantautological expressions, aims at total domination. What is at issue here doesnot merely involve the perfection of techniques of domination; more crucially,as Arendt professes to demonstrate, we must resort to our fearful imaginationand take on the difficult task of making political, moral judgment on thedestructiveness—hence, radical evil—perpetrated by the unlimited dominationof totalitarian regimes to the substance of human existence. Totalitarianism in power, unlike totalitarianism in its revolutionary movement, captures thewhole social fabric in a state of stasis; no single aspect of ordinary lifehowever private is left untouched, and all individuals are fixed in definite places (OT 456). In fact, totalitarian subjects are no longer entitled to theappellation “individuals,” since their infinite plurality and possibility have been organized and reduced into a never-changing identity (OT 438): theyhave been transformed into cogs in the mega-machine of the regime and can be transferred, replaced or eliminated anytime they no longer fit in the power mechanism: in one word, they have lost their autonomy, unpredictability,

spontaneity . . . all the traits that attest to their humanity, and they are thusmade superfluous.4 Such superfluity attests to the totalitarian radical evil notonly in morality but also in human existential values (Kateb 825-26); humanexistence is nullified from its roots and reduced to nothing but a banal fact:hence, the banality of radical evil. Moreover, we must notice a spectral trend

4 For Arendt, Nazis’ concentration camps stand as the most extreme, horrible instance of thistransformation: hence, the three steps to total domination, as well as the preparation of livingcorpses. People “living” under totalitarian rule are deprived of the rights to have rights and are nolonger sheltered by any existent legal, juridical system—put in Lacanian psychoanalytic terms,they belong to no recognizable Symbolic; their conscience is made questionable when death haslost its meaning, human solidarity been corrupted, and martyrdom become impossible. For details,see OT 447-57.




that may outlive the regimes themselves and continue even when they have

been destroyed (Villa, Politics 14); it does not come from outside but is fullywithin modernity; it is the destructive, nihilistic drive of moderninstitutionalization, systematization and technologization carried to its mosthorrible extreme.

To further understand Arendt’s conceptualizations of radical evil, weneed to examine how the law functions or malfunctions or how it is pervertedin totalitarian regimes. First of all, the permanent state of lawlessness doesnot have any implication of arbitrariness, which means that a definite logic of law, albeit essentially different from the secular positive law, still functions in

totalitarian regimes. As Arendt herself qualifies in “On the Nature of Totalitarianism” (1954), “Totalitarian rule is ‘lawless’ insofar as it defies positive law, yet it is not arbitrary insofar as it obeys with strict logic andexecute with precise compulsion the laws of History or Nature” ( EU 339-40).It is exactly such strict, precise, compulsive execution of “the laws of Historyor Nature” that distinguishes totalitarian evil from the evil of other tyrannies.Such laws legitimate the pretension of totalitarian reign of justice on earth;they are not applied to standards of individuals’ behaviors but to species ingeneral ( EU 462), with the latter turned into not only the objects but also thecarriers or instruments of those laws; they aim at “the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present, and the reliable prediction of thefuture” (OT 469-70). In this aspect neither ideological conviction, which isalways viewed as an unreliable support of the regime, nor the truth or falsehood of those laws is at issue; what preoccupies Arendt is how ideologytransformed into living reality leads to unthinkable terror. It is misleading,however, to claim that Arendt denies the anti-Semitic ideology in bothRussian and German totalitarianism. Indeed, Arendt persistently downplays

the centrality of ideology, as well as the implied dialogue with psychoanalytictheory, in her works on evil, and stresses that no deeply-rooted ideologicalconvictions are necessary to make evil radical and unthinkable: hence, thedisjunction between belief, intention and action which engenders thedifficulties of political and moral judgment in the case of totalitarianism. Inthis aspect, Villa’s clarification that “[Arendt] refuses to locate the meaning of totalitarian terror in the patent irrationality of ideological fantasy or racialhatred” ( Politics 19) does not help our understanding of the true function of the laws of History or Nature in question. Arendt’s refusal of psychoanalytic

explanations of ideology, of course, allows for further research or conjecture.In the juncture of the arguments here, we only need to draw on the typically




Žižekian perspective that ideological fantasy does not merely involve blind

obedience and irrational thinking: it deploys a network of rationalizations for the kernel of the symbolic belief that is always excessively permeated withenjoyment. Ideology grips its subjects not only through the symbolicidentification―in the context of this essay, the identification with the Master signifiers such as History, Nature, Nation, People, etc.― but also through theunderside fantasmatic support of enjoyment, which is an absolute Othernessunable to be symbolized and subjectivized, and always remains excessive,spectral, aberrant and undecidable ( PF 48-50). It is exactly with suchenjoyment qua the underside fantasmatic support of ideology that we can

think together the totalitarian reign of terror, laws of History or Nature, andsuperego (voice of conscience): hence, “the banality of radical evil in thename of enjoyment.”

To execute the Laws of History or Nature and speed up their movementto consummation, totalitarianism must constantly identify “objectiveenemies” to meet the factual situations reiterated by the rulers (OT 425, 465)and demand “the permanent elimination of hostile or parasitic or unhealthyclasses or races in order to enter upon its bloody eternity” ( EU 321, emphasismine). Moreover, the fantasy of unconditional sacrifice is mobilized to realizeand translate the Laws of History or Nature into living reality and to makethem “race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous action”(OT 465). What must be sacrificed to make way for such a reign of terror, if not all intelligible human traits such as individuality, spontaneity,unpredictability or, in psychoanalytic terms, desire or possibility of desiring?As mentioned above, people under totalitarian rule are frozen in a static socialfabric, and their individual, free, private living space is destroyed; they aredenatured, rendered interchangeable and replaceable, and made cogs in the

mega machine of the regime, the carriers, instruments or, in Villa’s words,“transparent embodiment of the all-pervasive law of Nature of History”( Politics 20). Does such superfluity not attest to the most horrible extreme theseductive fantasy of sacrifice can reach, as well as the fantasy of theundivided society/Other for which the subject sacrifices the objet a of desireand, hence, the possibility of desiring in response to the Causes of History, Nature, Nation, People . . . ? What comes to the fore here, from Lacanian psychoanalytic perspectives, is the pervert’s position. No longer the subject of desire, the pervert identifies with the object to sustain the enjoyment located

in the Other (Maccannell 48-50, 56). As Žižek also explicates, “The pervertdoes not pursue his activity for his own pleasure, but for the enjoyment of the




Other ―he finds enjoyment precisely in this instrumentalization, in working

for the enjoyment of the Other” ( LA 109). Such fantasy of sacrifice, to a greatextent, corresponds to the imaginary scenario of “theft of enjoyment” (by“objective Enemies,” in the context of the arguments here), which is paradoxical in nature: the state of full enjoyment (or, the possession of a“Nation-Thing” in Žižek’s terms) and its loss at the same time. Thetotalitarian/pervert subject defies positive laws through the semblance of transgressive activities and constructs the imaginary Law that is more tied tothe circuit of jouissance rather than desire (since a pervert does not havedesire of his own); in answering to the Other’s call, he submits to jouissance

qua the obscene Law more than ever. Such obedience to the Law does nottestify the subject’s free will but his slavery. Ultimately, totalitarianismremains a site of castration.5

The translation of the laws of History or Nature, as well as fantasy of sacrifice for the Other’s jouissance, into living realities in a precise,compulsive manner as discussed above perverts the law as such from its rootin “the collapse of transcendence into immanence” (Birmingham 85), and thisalso actualizes the totalitarian reign of terror: infernal terror, severed from itstranscendental support of sin and punishment, becomes a purely immanentliving reality with no hope of redemption. Terror no longer functions as themeans to frighten people but as the essence of the regime (OT 440), nor doesit aim at suppressing oppositions, since total terror emerges after oppositionshave already been suppressed (Canovan 27). Such excessive, total terror seems to run by itself without any definite purpose in view and, therefore, beyond any (economic, military, political) utilitarian considerations (Arendt,OT 440, RJ 42; Dietz 88), as is best illustrated by the economically uselesslabor and murder in the concentration camp (OT 445). All elements of

historical tyrannical rules―

wars, massacre, slavery and, of course,concentration camps―can be practiced to freeze people, destroy their free private living space and turn them into replaceable cogs, meld them together but isolate, atomize them in “a desert of neighborlessness and loneliness” and“tranquility of the cemetery” ( EU 348). All these characteristics have their more horrible realization in Nazis’ concentration camps, where human masses,totally engulfed in the atmosphere of loneliness and unreality, can betormented and slaughtered in places completely hidden to the outside world

5 The pervert’s position in question will be explored in more detail later in this essay through acritical survey of the nature of superego.




and can be known only from “the world of perverse, malignant fantasies” (OT

445). Such unthinkable terror crystallizes the nihilistic principle of “everything is permitted” to its fullest degree: no limits on human power tocommit evil deeds can be recognized (Villa, Politics 30). What do we havehere, if not the trinity of the laws of History or Nature, terror, and radical evilset in motion in totalitarian regimes?

The message condensed in Arendt’s figure of speech “world of perverse,malignant fantasies” as quoted above concerns the difficulty of political andmoral judgment on totalitarian radical evil, as is real -ized through purelyimmanent, unthinkable, unprecedented infernal horror. To think the

unthinkable and unprecedented does not ascribe any Satanic greatness to Nazis’ horrendous crimes; it means that the faculty of human judgment in theface of totalitarian radical evil has no conventional political, moral and philosophical categories―not to mention common sense―to rely on. Forcingus into “speech horror,” radical evil

could no longer be understood and explained by the evil motivesof self-interest, greed, covetousness, resentment, lust for power,and cowardice; [sic] and which therefore anger could not revenge,love could not endure, friendship could not forgive. . . . [W]eactually have nothing to fall back on in order to understand a phenomenon that nevertheless confronts us with its overpoweringreality and breaks down all standards we know. (OT 459)6

Evil conceptualized this way is radical in the sense that it disrupts thecorrespondence between action and motivation, moral standards of understanding and judgment, human sentiments, legal justice, and languages;it obliterates the foundations of human community and forces human subjectsinto moral, epistemological, emotional and linguistic abyss. Accordingly, the

traditional conception of evil as the absence (or privation) of good loses itsexpressive, conceptual and interpretative values in the face of radical evil onthe surface and in the state of excess. As Peg Birmingham comments, “The problem for Arendt is that the Western tradition has not faced up to our veryreal capacity for incalculable evil, preferring instead to see evil as a kind of nothingness―a lack of Being or the Good” (82). To this point, we must avoid

6 These ideas demonstrate how banality is always germane to Arendt’s conceptualization of radicalevil and, therefore, why Arendt is reluctant to seek for psychoanalytic explanations, a reluctancethat precludes Arendt from realizing the full implications of “the banality of radical evil” accordingto her conceptualization. For more qualifications of speech horror, see Arendt, RJ 23, 56, 75; Villa, Politics 33.




mystifying radical evil with supernatural, Satanic greatness: it is human, all

too human; it need not be grounded in evil motives but can seamlessly fit inmores, manners, customs, which can be changed at will and socially accepted by “ordinary” men ( RJ 43, 53-54) and which “keeps normal society goinginto the conformity that allows and even encourages the ideological passionsof a comparative and few to create a whole system of evil” (Kateb 829).Radical evil, in conclusion at this point, is the most alien kernel of our beingand human community―hence, Lacanian extimacy―that resists fullsymbolization and domestication, forces us into an abyss of thinking and judgment, where we have nothing to rely on, and, hence, confronts us with

the urgency of rethinking and reviewing political, moral and philosophicalcategories. If anything, this paper, through the Lacanian notions of superegoand enjoyment, builds up some psychoanalytic-ethical perspectives for looking at radial evil in its state of excess and impossibility.

Evil Is But a Skin Deep: From Radical Evil to Banality of Evil

Eichmann in Jerusalem provokes more controversies than any other works by Arendt, who loses a number of friendships and is alienated from theJewish community because of the book (Kohn, Introduction xi). Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, for Arendt herself and her critics as well,constitutes a difficult “affair” in political, jurisprudential and moral theorythat engenders the tension between the international and national, universaland particular (Benhabib 77-78). Should Israel hand over the juridical right toan International Court? Is Israel justified to speak for all the victims of Eichmann? In what charge should Eichmann be put to trial? What precedentscan be cited to pass judgment on him? During the trial, the judges never cease

to question Eichmann’s “conscience.” However, it is not the absence but presence of conscience, as always a problematic issue in political and moraltheories, that leads to the difficulty of understanding the evil coming to thefore from his crimes: namely, the banality of evil that is as “fearsome,word-and-thought-defying” ( EJ 252) as radical evil. Eichmann under Arendt’sanalysis, therefore, mediates and embodies these two sides of evil, since he isthe chief executor of the Final Solution.

“The banality of evil,” first of all, refers to the “specific quality of mindand character of the doer himself” (Benhabib 74) which lies underneath the

semblance of ordinariness, no matter how extraordinarily horrendous the actsthemselves are. In using the phrase, as well as in her conceptualization of




radical evil, Arendt departs from the traditional metaphysical conception of

evil as the deprivation of good and “ultimate depravity, corruption, or sinfulness” (Benhabib 75). Disrupting the proportion between actions andmotives, Arendt’s conception of “the banality of evil” does not trivialize, notto mention exonerate, the horrendous crimes committed by Eichmann and Nazis and make them less guilty and monstrous (Kohn, Introduction xii;Kristeva 144). Rather, it points to the fact that crimes not grounded indemonic motives are exceedingly, incomparably worse, more dreadful thanany other “normal” crime. As Susan Neiman accurately elaborates,

Precisely the belief that evil actions require evil intentions allowed

totalitarian regimes to convince people to override moralobjections that might otherwise have functioned. Massive propaganda efforts undertook to convince people that the criminalactions in which they participated were guided by acceptable,even noble motives. (275)

How are people like Eichmann convinced of the disproportion betweenactions and motives in question, if not through their superego? Accordingly,we should not reduce what is involved here to blatant lies or ideologicalfalsifications of propaganda. If we follow Arendt to characterize “the specificquality of mind and character” of Eichmann as “thoughtlessness,” what is atissue is not the privation of thought. On the contrary, Eichmann is toothought-ful, full of the thoughts of the Other, or he is thought through by thesuperego qua the Other. And what is disavowed in his thoughtlessness is hisability, as well as responsibility, to resist what makes him thought-ful.

Moreover, we should not oppose “the banality of evil,” as well asArendt’s repeated accentuation that “the greatest evil is not radical” ( RJ 72,95), to “radical evil” as such and claim that Arendt changes her mind or is

battling with herself in her thinking and writing on evil. At its most obvious,Arendt’s exposition of totalitarian evil as “radical” argues for a fundamentalreviewing of existing institutions and legal, political and moral theories, andthe banality of evil in her later works exactly consistently corresponds to andelaborates such concerns (Ludz 798; Phillips 130). Throughout her career,Arendt is consistently preoccupied with the disproportion between acts andmotivations. Hence, “The greatest evil is not radical” can only be taken as aqualification that evil is radical on the surface, not in terms of deeply-rootedevil motives, pathology or ideological convictions. If “superfluousness” of

human existence in the modern (totalitarian) system stands as one of thecentral themes in Arendt’s earlier works, it also pertains to the banality of evil




or, more accurately, “the banality of radical evil”: the existential fragility,

finitude and superfluousness of the modern subject accounts for theemergence of radical evil that Nazis perpetrate through their execution of thelaws of History or Nature and promise of undivided identity and society.

The above existential bases of the modern subject pertain to the bourgeois subject, a purely modern everyman. Radical evil need not becommitted by any Satanic figure with perverted motivations or fatal power; itfits in the life of paterfamilias with all the outer aspects of respectability.Such a man―quite ordinary and commonplace, neither demonic nor monstrous, neither a fanatic, sex maniac nor a sadist ( EU 129, LM 4)―is

“ready to sacrifice his beliefs, his honor, and his human dignity” ( EU 129) for the sake of his wife, his children and his pension. He does not stand out; he isan anonymous mob man who only coordinates himself and does not act out of conviction: such anonymity, as well as superfluousness, is the key to themodern socialization and institutionalization of banality (May, “Socialization”89) and accounts for the transmutation paterfamilias into the instrument of madness and horror, or “the instrument of the Other’s jouissance” asconceptualized above.

The transmutation in question also returns us to Eichmann’sthoughtlessness, or his inability to think, which should not be confused withstupidity, since it can be found in intelligent people ( RJ 164). As pointed outabove, Eichmann is spoken or thought through by the Other, as can beobserved from “his” language and conscience. The language Eichmann usesduring the trial is composed of self-fabricated clichés, stock phrases,conventional and standardized expressions. One is tempted to agree with the judges that Eichmann feigns his empty talk most of the time without noticingits striking consistency. For example, every time the judges appeal to

Eichmann’s conscience during the cross-examination, they unexceptionallymeet his elated clichés like “I shall gladly hang myself in public as a warningexample for all anti-Semites on this earth” ( EJ 53).7 Even at his death,

7 Two more examples will suffice:One of the few gifts fate bestowed upon me is a capacity for truth insofar as it depends uponmyself. ( EJ 54)

Today no man, no judge could every persuade me to make a sworn statement, to declaresomething under oath as a witness. I refuse it, I refuse it for moral reasons. Since myexperience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I

have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or any other authority willever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won’t do itvoluntarily and no one will be able to force me. ( EJ 54-55)




Eichmann does not relinquish his elated, grandiose style; he draws on the

cliché from funeral oratory: “After a short while, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men, long live Germany, long live Argentina,long live Austria. I shall not forget them” ( EJ 252). Eichmann’s enslavement by clichés is symptomatic of the connection of his thoughtlessness, hisinability to think with his inability to speak: he mutates into an affectlessdummy who has lost his individuality and been possessed, instrumentalized by the Other’s discourse. As Arendt comments, “No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by themost reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others,

and hence against reality as such” ( EJ 49). All the standardized expressions,ultimately, protect Eichmann against all the horrible realities which hecontributes to building up and against the responsibility of thinking and judgment (Meade 122).

To better understand how superfluousness and thoughtlessnessconstitute the banality of radical evil, or how Eichmann is thought and spokenthrough by the Other, we also need to bring the problem of conscience intodiscussion. First of all, the banality of radical evil deviates from theconventional conception of evil as the absence of (moral) conscience.Eichmann’s conscience is not silenced but perverted; it continues to tell himnot what is right and wrong but what “duty” is (Villa, Politics 45): hence, theconflation of morality with legality, or reception of “voice” as written laws.Eichmann’s conscience, like the clichés he addictively relies on, soothes himwith the self-indulgent falsifications that no one is against the Final Solution( EJ 116) and executing mass killing requires great ability, courage, loyalty, or whatever “heroic” or “moral” virtues; it always speaks with “the voice of respectable society around him” ( EJ 126). In other words, responding to the

voice of conscience, for a bourgeois subject or paterfamilias like Eichmann,is the way to build up social respectability, to be coordinated into “realities”and recognized by the Other. We are thus brought back to the pervert’s position as sketchily depicted above: conscience works beyond individualdecisions and turns the subject into a mere executor of the will of thegroup/Other (Maccannell 61). In fact, the will of the group/Other in question,as well as the law, is identified with the will and desires of the Führer , whichare elevated to the status of universal and transcendental law and need not be put down in words but work through an identical voice in all men’s heart:

“Thou shalt kill” ( EJ 148), purely the listener’s own creation to fill the emptyvoice of conscience with contents. Eichmann’s claim that he strives to live up




to Kant’s moral philosophy, accordingly, is worse than hypocritical cover-up;

it demonstrates how the Law has been perverted, corrupted from its root,since what is supposed to liberate man in Kant, the moral law, turns out to bethe source of evil (Hewitt 84). Ultimately, the banality of radical evilembodied by Eichmann attests to the most horrible extreme of modern bureaucracy, as is run by perverted, consequence-blind bureaucrats wielding“expert knowledge”—in Lacanian terms, the University Discourse—whichreduces the population to disposable bare life (Young-Bruehl 5; Žižek, PV 298).

The voice of conscience of such a bourgeois family man as Eichmann

sooths, or seduces, him with social respectability and recognition, themorality of mores, manners, customs and conventions, which are sociallyaccepted by ordinary men and susceptible to change at will. What is horribleabout the banality of radical evil at issue, if not its entanglement with thesuperego morality of mores that forecloses truly ethical judgment andresponsibility, and allows for concentration camps, gas chambers and theHolocaust? Thus said, however, the other side to such morality, the concept of “collective guilt,” is equally flawed according to Arendt. “Collective guilt”upon the first glance seems to work well as the antidote to the mass crimes based on mass morality but ends up with the moral nihilism as that of thelatter. As Arendt emphatically points out, collective guilt may turn out to be“a highly effective whitewash of all those who had actually done something,for where all are guilty, no one is” ( RJ 21). For Arendt, guilt or innocenceonly makes sense when it is applied to individuals, who, like Eichmann, are judged for their specific responsibility. Both superego morality of mores andcollective guilt, as well as “cog theory,” sever freedom of choice andresponsibility from morality; and it is exactly such severance in the guise of

normality and ordinariness that constitutes the banality of radical evil.

Superego and Evil in the Name of Enjoyment

From the above discussion, we may acquire a psychoanalytic-ethicallesson that the roots of the banality of radical evil lie in the pervert’s position,superego’s voice of conscience, and morality of mores, all of which areinseparable from the affective attachments of, for example, sense of guilt,shame and anxiety. We may surmise that what makes the banality of radical

evil unthinkable for Arendt is exactly the conductivity of such moral affects tohorrendous crimes rather than moral acts. Although Arendt is much reserved




about “guilty feelings,” her repeated characterization of moral thinking as

“the silent dialogue between me and myself” ( RJ 93)8

only makes the casemore complicated, though we can fully understand her persistent concern for man in the singular, rather than men in the plural (Ludz 806). How are we torationalize Arendt’s equation of moral thinking with silence? How can such asilent dialogue be distinguished from the voice of conscience that makesEichmann thoughtless, the voice that is rather sonorous, ferocious than silent?At this moment, we should first bear in mind that, from psychoanalytic perspectives, what seduces the thoughtless, superfluous, replaceabletotalitarian subject into the fantasy of sacrifice (for Nature, History, People,

Nation etc.) and perverts the Law from its root is the obscene, superegoicvoice of conscience charged with the command to transgress/enjoy.

To elucidate how superegoic voice of conscience, which is supposed todictate the subject’s moral thinking and acts, ends up being entangled withenjoyment and evil, it will be fruitful to recapitulate the vicissitude of thesuperego in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Roughly from1920s onwards, Freud gradually dissociates the tie between the superego andthe ego ideal (social expectation and recognition, or the Symbolic in theLacanian sense) along with the maturation of the tripartite topography of id-ego-superego, and the most fundamental shift is that death drive becomesthe central concept in the theory of the superego, as characterized withseverity, sense of guilt and tension with the ego, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), “The Ego and the Id” (1923), Civilization and Its Discontent (1930) (Boothby, Death and Desire 5, Freud as Philosopher 173-74; Garcia 223). Freud now conceptualizes the superego in relation to thedesexualization, sublimation of the love object, identification of the objectinside the ego, and transformation of object-libido into narcissistic libido: in

other words, the formation of the superego corresponds to the process inwhich libido turns from the object to the ego itself or takes the ego as itsobject (“The Ego and Id” 30-31). Such desexualization and sublimation of object-choice turns out to be the source of aggressiveness (which is originally bound by erotic components). Aggressiveness is inhibited not throughextraneous influence, fear of external authority or social anxiety―namely, the bad conscience which is likely to lead to “bad” behaviors as long as they arenot caught― but in the form of introjected conscience, which takes over a portion of the ego (“The Economic Problem of Masochism” 170, Civilization

8 Also see RJ 21, 29, 57, 69, 96-97, 100




and Its Discontents 123, 125, 127-28). Therefore, the formation of the

superego carries the more primordial tension between the id and ego to amore severe stage: though coming into being from a portion of the ego, thesuperego turns the forces drawn from the id against the ego (“The Ego andId” 52-53). In its service to the three overbearing masters (id, the superego,and realities), the ego is subject to self-judgment and sense of humility andguilt, which may not originate from actual behaviors (“The Ego and Id” 37,Civilization and Its Discontents 123): hence, the dominance of moralmasochism or culture of death instinct. The superego never ceases to blamethe ego for the unsatisfied aggressive instincts. More instinctual renunciations

only make the superego crueler and more insatiable. Ultimately, the more onesubmits to the superegoic commands, the more uncertain, difficult moral behaviors turn out to be.

The Freudian conceptions of the superego as depicted above acquiremore theorized formulations through Lacanian perspectives. What comes tothe fore is the superego’s paradoxical, split nature: the moral consciencespeaks “No!” to the subject, while the obscene, perverted underside of thesuperego knows the subject’s jouissance and commands it to enjoy/transgress.This also constitutes the vicious circle that traps the subject: “[T]he more onesacrifices to [the superego], the more it demands” (Lacan, Seminar VII 302).In other words, the more the subject represses the transgressive desire inservice of the moral law, the more desire returns to obsess the subject, whichends up feeling guiltier for not enjoying enough (Žižek, DSST 100, FA 141,ME 68, PV 90). The subject’s psychical balance is thus always intruded,disturbed and persecuted by the superego’s voice that is loaded with excessivecontents: the will and desires of the Führer qua the Father- jouissance or thecommand “Thou shalt kill” in Nazis’ case. Such voice deflects the ethical

voice of the moral law, the empty voice without content, or the “enunciationwithout a statement” (Dolar 98; Zupančič 164). The moral law, as well as theOther’s desire, now loses its status of an enigma; “Che vuoi?” (what do youwant from me) qua the enigmatic question of both becomes out of question.Rather, the superegoic voice haunts the subject in its overproximal, too full presence with the commands to transgress/enjoy. When “everything is permitted,” namely, when all positive laws can be transgressed at will inservice of the Laws of Nature or History, or jouissance qua the Law as such,when Hitler as the Father- jouissance through the superego’s voice persecutes

the totalitarian subject with the unbearable, insatiable will-to- jouissance, as isembodied in the utopian fantasy of the undivided identity and society, the




subject, now identifying with the objet a or the instrument of the Other’s

jouissance, also sacrifices the possibility of desiring. More accurately, the pervert desires to be fully acknowledged by the Other’s jouissance that iselevated to the status of the Law, and, as Žižek reminds us, we should not failto see an irony at work here: “[T]he pervert, this ‘transgressor’ par excellence who purports to violate all the rules of ‘normal,’ decent behavior, effectivelylongs for the very rule of Law” ( ZR 118). Accordingly, the totalitarian regimeremains a site of castration. It is at this point that we can perceive theintimacy of the pervert’s position to interpassivity. In actively responding tothe Other’s demands― be they calls of History, Nation, or People―the

totalitarian subjects/perverts displace the burden of enjoyment, alwaysexcessive, transgressive and unbearable, to the Other and have the Other toenjoy in their place; in so doing, they may remain passive toward their fantamastic structure. Such interpassivity can be conceived as thefundamental fantasy or “the necessary minimum” of subjectivity: “[I]n order to be an active subject, I have to get rid―and transpose onto the other ―theinner passivity which contains the density of my substantial being” (Žižek,“The Interpassive Subject” para. 17). However, what we see in the totalitarianregime is not merely the public staging but the political mobilization of such(inter)passivity to such a maximal, totalized degree that no aspects of socialfabric and private life are left untouched. Is this not what the banality of radical evil is all about?

After all this, we may be tempted to query if Arendt revisited throughethics of psychoanalysis leads us to any “final solution” to the banality of radical evil. However, as already pointed out previously in this paper,totalitarian evil outlives the regime itself trough a will to total domination of knowledge and fully transparent understanding. This does not bring us back

to obscurantist mystification of evil. Rather, at their most, both Arendt’s work and psychoanalytic ethics clear the ground for looking at and responding toevil ethically. Addressing the ethical response to the “speechless horror” of Nazis’ horrendous crimes, Arendt warns us against contenting ourselves with“the hypocritical confession ‘God be thanked, I am not like that”; instead, sheurges us to realize what man is capable of “in fear and trembling” ( EU 132).For Arendt, to recognize our speechlessness and powerlessness, as analogousto Lacanian subjective destitution, in the face of radical evil, is essential to breaking with our moral, political illusions. Does the pretense that we need

not make any structural transformation in ourselves and the society as long aslife can go on in its normal track not constitute the banality of radical evil in




contemporary liberal-democratic, multiculturalist, global capitalist society of

enjoyment, the evil in the name of enjoyment that keeps our fantasmaticstructure intact?Contemporary society of enjoyment, as can be also named “culture of

drive,” “permissive society,” or “plague of fantasies” in Žižek’s terms, isdriven by the excessive imperatives to consume, transgress and enjoy(McGowan 34). However, in the first place, we must not misrecognizeexcessive, transgressive consumption and enjoyment as the satisfaction or liberation of desire, when the symbolic Father’s prohibitive laws that say“No!” are said to lose their function. From Lacanian perspectives, the

symbolic law and power cannot function without enjoyment as itssuperegoistic, fantasmatic underside support (Lacan, Seminar VII 20-21, 76,177, 185; Žižek, FA 131-32, PD 104, PF 50, TKN 9-10). However, whenenjoyment directly takes the form of imperative necessity or acquires thestatus of the Law, the Symbolic will be unsettled and the subject willencounter more blocks of desiring. Under the drive to encounter and consumeOtherness qua the sublime commodity, today’s consumer-subject never ceasesto feel anxiety toward not being sufficiently exposed to and getting too closeto the Other’s gaze at the same time. Does The Truman Show not enact theanxiety in question here? When Truman takes the “heroic” move to quit theshow and leave the studio, is he not still imagining a Beyond, the Other of theOther, and does he not thus still fall prey to the superego imperatives to enjoythe (non-simulated, real) Thing? When the film is interpreted this way, does itnot end with an interpassive gesture that leaves the status quo and fantasmaticstructure intact? Moreover, when the consumer-subject is offered anywhereand anytime a multiplicity of choices of products, tastes, life styles, bodyfigures, sexualities and identities, and excessive consumption is commanded,

what he actually experiences is a higher degree of difficulty, if notimpossibility, of choosing and desiring (Žižek, PF 154). Such difficulty brings us back to the paradoxical, split nature of superego discussed above. Inthe final analysis, the superego’s excessive imperatives to enjoy hinder thesubject’s access to enjoyment and, hence, triggers castration anxiety with toomuch enjoyment much more efficiently than downright prohibitions (Žižek, PF 114, SOI 37, TKN 30). Certain “rigidity beneath fluidity” thus lurks incontemporary permissive society of enjoyment. Is it not the uncanny doubleof the banality of radical evil which makes men superfluous even after the

collapse of totalitarian regimes?




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[Received 9 February, 2009;

Accepted 1 May, 2009]

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