“Could the activity of thinking not only condition us against evil-doing but predispose us towards right action?” This is a question in Hannah Arendt’s last and unfinished work, The Life of the Mind. It seems to be one of those unanswerable questions, even if the asker believes he has provided one. When such questions are segregated from ultimate goodness, from the purity of Eden to which man can never return on his own, we will not find satisfactory answers. We might as well ask if we can clean our faces in mud.
That reminds me of the premise of the book, Crimes of Galahad (Reviewed Here). Galahad dedicates himself to evil, defined as doing in every case that which meets his highest self interest. Yet his analysis of every decision that comes before him concludes that doing good rather than giving in to the temptation to cruel, petty or spiteful actions will lead to the best return in the long run.
Reminds me of the warning in Proverbs 1 that those who set out to harm others only lay a trap for themselves.
Therefore, banal is a good word to describe the evil geniuses behind the Nazi regime. The cruelty and heartlessness that characterized their actions produced what they wanted in the short term, but in the end destroyed them.