The problem of radical evil in Hannah Arendt

Although the concept of evil is old as the history of humanity, it is common knowledge that the problem of evil arose along with rational thought. Addressing the nature of radical evil which is the modern version of the problem of evil as the primary problem today as in the past, the specific aim of this study is to discuss the distinctive elements of the problem of evil in the modern era based on the breaking points and moral emptiness created in Nazi Germany. In general, it aims to urge people to reconsider the meaning of evil nowadays when the boundaries between good and evil have been blurred and the concept of evil and contents of all moral principles have become ambiguous. Contemporary thought on evil gave up blaming the God for what happened, and turned to question the human, humanitarian values and morality. Despite dating back to before the World War II, the concentration camps, entailing all meanings of the concept of evil with its power over humans wielded by the Nazis as well as experiments on human nature, have become a philosophical problem in itself. In such an atmosphere, the first questions to impose themselves upon us will be the following: "How on earth people in the middle of the modern Europe could become gears of such an evil or remain unresponsive to it? Is the first problem based on certain uses of the concept of evil? If so, what is the nature and content of the concept of evil? Is evil Radical or Ordinary? Or could evil be both radical and ordinary? Approaching these questions and problems with Arendt, through the totalitarian understanding in Nazi Germany, the study offers a critical perspective on the speculative aspect of the concept of evil in the modern sense.