Hannah Arendt

German-American political philosopher — author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem — who created the concept of the banality of evil and provided the most philosophically sophisticated analysis of totalitarianism.

Creates the banality of evil as a concept — Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem (on Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem) argued that Eichmann was not a monster but a thoughtless bureaucrat who never considered the moral implications of his actions; the concept (that evil is often banal, not demonic) is the most philosophically provocative contribution to understanding the Holocaust.