On violence with Hannah Arendt: The genocide as absolute evil

Abstract

This article explores the concept of violence according to the German philosopher of Jewish origin Hannah Arendt. By determining the violence of the genocidal process, we present the thought of the philosopher passing through radical evil to reach the absolute evil. The article focuses on “the banality of evil” by traveling through the 20th century and identifying the different totalitarian ideologies that were at the root of the genocides, especially that of the Armenians and the Jews.