The Evil of Banality : On the Life and Death Importance of Thinking, Expanded Edition

Inthis expanded edition ofThe Evil of Banality, Elizabeth Minnich argues for a tragic yet hopeful explanation of "extensive evil,\u0022 her term for systematic, normalized harm-doing on the scale of genocide, slavery, sexualized dominance. The book now includes a new preface, new chapter, and expanded afterword addressing ongoing extensive evils, the paradox of lying, and the importance of developing the thinking without which conscience remains mute. Extensive evils are actually carried out not by psychopaths, but by people like your quiet next-door neighbor, your ambitious colleagues. There simply are not enough moral monsters to do the long hard work of extensive evils,nor enough saints for extensive good.In periods of extensive evil, people little different from you and me do its work for no more than a better job, a raise, the house of the family "disappeared\u0022 last week. So how can there be hope? Such evils are neither mysterious nor demonic. If we avoid romanticizing both the worst and best of

which humans are capable, we can recognize andsay no to extensive evil, practice and sustain extensive good, where they must take root - in ordinary lives. [Publisher's text]

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