Hannah Arendt

the banalization of human life and the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemics brought to Brazil a new reality and, together with it, the need to discuss new ethical and legal issues. This is why it could be asked whether there is (or there can be) a relationship between Brazilian reality during the COVID-19 health crisis and the concept of “banality of evil”. That is, to ask what is most important: saving lives or the country's economy? Preserve the right to life or to the individual liberties? With a saturated health system, without sufficient hospital beds for all serious Covid cases, would it be ethical to choose who would have the right to an ICU bed, either a younger or an elderly person? The expression referring to the “banality of evil” can be found in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), in which the author discusses the issue of “banal evil”. This topic will be compared with some events that took place during the pandemics. In other words, in the context of scarcity of resources lived during this health crisis, will be addressed the importance of an individual responsibility upon the lives of others, not as lives that do not deserve to be lived, but as equal in rights to life and health. The concept of banality of evil, in Hannah Arendt, is related to the absence of thinking, to something that allows to a “normal” individual to practice (or support) actions without necessarily wanting them, nor feeling any kind of pleasure nor taking any profits from the suffering of others, but rather, which are, by their own results, bad actions. This kind of evil arises from the lack of an individual's ability for establishing a silent relationship with himself/herself, which is essential to the act of thinking. In this text, it is aimed to analyze the individual responsibility in the ordinary life of a community, under Arendtian perspective.