Absolute evil is evil detached from any humanly comprehensible motive

Evidence

And if it is true that in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears (absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives), it is also true that without it we might never have known the truly radical nature of Evil. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 13

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s definition of ‘absolute’ or ‘radical’ evil as what cannot be deduced from comprehensible motives — a key concept for understanding how totalitarian atrocity exceeds ordinary moral frameworks.
• XREF: This prefigures the biopolitics/necropolitics distinction between killing as an instrument and killing as a telos in itself. — connects to: Theory’s proper object is evil and suppression, not the good; Calling terrorism transcendent evil blocks the worldly analysis needed to counter it — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1430