Hannah Arendt2012

Hannah Arendt:
Western tradition mistakenly assumes that the greatest evils of mankind arise from selfishness. But in our century, evil has proven to be more radical than was previously thought. And we now know that the truest evil, the radical evil, has nothing to do with selfishness or any such understandable, sinful motives. Instead, it is based on the following phenomenon: making human beings superfluous as human beings. The entire concentration camp system was designed to convince the prisoners they were unnecessary before they were murdered. In the concentration camps men were taught that punishment was not connected to a crime, that exploitation wouldn't profit anyone, and that work produced no results. The camp is a place where every activity and human impulse is senseless. Where, in other words, senselessness is daily produced anew. So to summarize: If it is true that in the final stage of totalitarianism, an absolute evil emerges, absolute as it no longer relates to human motives, then it is equally true that without it, without totalitarianism, we would never have known the truly radical nature of evil.