BRATTLEBORO — Author and commentator Elizabeth Minnich will be in Brattleboro on Saturday, Sept. 8, from 4 to 6 p.m., in the Meeting Room at Brooks Memorial Library to introduce and discuss her new book, The Evil of Banality: The Life and Death Importance of Thinking (Rowman & Littlefield. 2017).
Minnich will be supported for the event with music provided by local musicians Scott Ainslie, Peter Amidon, and a group of singers, according to a news release.
A moral philosopher, Minnich began her quest to comprehend how ordinarily decent people make “extensive evils” (genocide, slavery) and “extensive good” possible when, as Hannah Arendt's teaching assistant, she went with Arendt to defend Arendt's controversial concept, the banality of evil.
Minnich's book, The Evil of Banality, was reviewed by Dr. Sarah Evans: “This is a brilliant, wonderfully written, and tightly argued book. The key concepts of intensive vs. extensive evil and intensive vs. extensive good are exceptionally useful tools for sorting through the ethical dimensions of ordinary lives in a way that puts all of us on notice that it is simply not sufficient to use categories of the “unthinkable” to distance ourselves from learning to think well, both separately and together.”
Minnich is the award-winning author of Transforming Knowledge. She co-authored The Fox in The House: How Privatization Threatens Democracy with songwriter and community organizer Si Kahn, and has published op-eds as well as papers in anthologies, magazines, journals, and textbooks.
Elizabeth's spouse, organizer and songwriter Si Kahn, will be with her, and the afternoon program will start with a few of Kahn's songs, arranged by Peter Amidon, and performed by a group of area singers.
Scott Ainslie will also offer two songs that tie directly to the themes of Minnich's The Evil of Banality: “Don't Obey” and “Confession.”
Ainslie's “Don't Obey” was inspired by a quote from philosopher and writer C.P. Snow: “When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion. The German Officer Corps were brought up in the most rigorous code of obedience ... in the name of obedience they were party to, and assisted in, the most wicked large scale actions in the history of the world.”
Ainslie's song, “Confession,” was written from a torturer's point of view and takes many of its details from the killing of anti-Apartheid activist Stephen Biko.
“It is a regrettably timely warning for all of us about the use of patriotic emotions to justify behavior toward our fellow human beings for which we would accept no other excuse,” Ainslie says.
Brooks Memorial Library has two copies of The Evil of Banality for loan. Readers may also purchase the book in advance at a 30 percent discount using a coupon available at the library or online at bit.ly/Min30disc.
Books will be available for sale at the library as well.