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On the Southern border of the United States in 2018, the decision was made to implement a separation policy among refugees and migrant families arriving at the border - and so a group of government employees left their homes, bidding farewell to their families as they went to work, and began to separate hundreds of children from their families, forcefully taking them to holding centres. Developing Hannah Arendt's analysis of the banality of evil, The Path to Mass Evil demonstrates how the most educated, sophisticated and advanced societies in human history have the potential to descend into profound inhumanity and in the extreme can turn into enormous killing machines, implementing mass murder on a vast scale.
Suitable for undergraduates and graduates in philosophy, sociology, psychology and religion, Michael Hardiman reveals how traditional understandings of morality fail to grasp how ordinary citizens become collaborators and engage in a range of levels of evildoing. He also highlights the necessity of confronting this evil in the increasingly divided and antagonistic world in which we find ourselves today.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
1. Philosophical Approaches to the Problem of Evil
2. The Banality of Evil
3. Banality and the Masses
4. Ideology, Totalitarianism and Mass Evil
5. Pernicious Ideologies
6. Totalising Ideology and Religion
7. The Fusion of Ideology with Banality
8. The Murderous Alphabet
9. Combatting Mass Evil: Arendt’s Legacy Today
Index
About the author
Michael Hardiman Ph.D. works as a psychologist, educator and independent scholar. The early part of his career featured work in the fields of counselling and personal development training. He specialised in the areas of recovery from early life trauma, and addiction. More recently he has engaged in the field of political philosophy with particular focus on the problem of human evil especially as it expresses itself in mass evildoing and genocide. He conducts training seminars and workshops nationwide to family centres, third level institutions and to adult education services. He is the author of six books. Michael lives and works in the West of Ireland.
Summary
The Path to Mass Evil reveals how traditional understandings of morality fail to grasp how ordinary citizens become collaborators and engage in a range of levels of evildoing, and in turn the necessity of confronting this evil in the increasingly divided and antagonistic world we find ourselves in today.
