Augustine, Arendt, and Melanie Klein: the (de)privation of evil.(Article)

Abstract

It does not appear as if Augustine's conception of evil as the privation or absence of goodnes is adequate to account for the horrors of the 20th hundred Whether this is true hangs on how we interpret "privation." Drawing upon Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion, I argue that the privation of goodnes may be seen not purely as the absence of goodnes on the contrary as the active destruction of goodnes its intentional deprivation. This, it turn rounds out, is enough to make faculty of perception of Hannah Arendt's otherwise confusing conception of the banality of evil. Making faculty of perception of her concept ...