Probably the most famous contribution to the discussion of the nature of evil in the modern world over the last half-century, at least in the field of political theory, is that of Hannah Arendt. Her thesis regarding ‘the banality of evil’ set out in the course of her reflections on the Eichmann trial in Eichmann in Jerusalem, first published in 1963, is widely celebrated and much invoked, if not always unambiguously favourably. Exactly what she meant by this captivating but misleadingly simple phrase is less easily understood than is sometimes thought and has been the cause of heated debate. One thing that Arendt's perceptive and sometimes brilliant argument unquestionably brought to the fore, however, is an insufficiently appreciated feature of the guise of evil as manifested in the modern world: this is its routinisation and bureaucratisation. What is striking about such evil is, paradoxically, the apparent ordinariness of its mien. She found in Eichmann not the kind of moral monster or political fanatic typically associated with evil in the popular imagination but, instead, a rather dull and anonymous functionary ‘conscientiously’, as he (not entirely convincingly) maintained, fulfilling his duties within the bureaucratic system of the Nazi state. She argued that what those, like Eichmann, who willingly served in the Nazi system lacked was primarily the imagination and reflectiveness to question it: Arendt presents him as literally ‘thoughtless’.