> Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil,' as I understand it, refers to human beings who are incapable of thinking. Within a massively bureaucratized and divided system, the immense guilt of killing someone is broken down into tiny, mundane tasks, like stamping a document. Because the system absorbs all individual moral friction, ordinary people can become cogs in a vast machinery of evil without ever questioning it.

While I fully accept that "the banality of evil" has become such a well-known aphorism that it's meaning may have shifted, this is not how Hannah Arendt introduced the saying. She was specifically talking about Adolf Eichmann and what motivated him. Eichmann wasn't some low-level cog "numbed by the system" - he was the logistical architect of the Holocaust, and he knew his actions would lead to the deaths of millions of people.

What Arendt meant by "the banality of evil" was that Eichmann wasn't motivated by a rabid hatred of Jews. He just wanted to get his promotion, move ahead, make money, etc. But, again, he knew his actions would murder millions, he just didn't care. He wasn't "broken down by the system", he was the system.

"The banality of evil" really is talking about motivation in Arendt's use of it. Often times we think of "evil" as needing to be motivated by fanatical hatred, but a lot of the time it's just motivated by a desire for a nicer car.