Response to Clack

I welcome Beverley Clack's introduction of Hannah Arendt's concept of thoughtlessness into the discussion of the problem of evil. Arendt had in mind the time-serving or careerist functionary, conscientiously performing an administrative task in a totalitarian bureaucracy, eyes and heart closed to the horrors of the system they serve. But thoughtlessness is not confined to 'organization men' of limited abilities. It is also characteristic ideological zealots and criminal thugs. Could intellectuals, and even philosophers, be guilty of it? Well, what is thoughtlessness? Clack describes thoughtfulness as that which connects "one's actions to effects felt in the lives of others', and later she glosses thoughtlessness as the incapacity to make a " connection between [one's] actions and the fate of others". 'Thoughtlessness' here is being use din that ordinary sense which I say that someone has acted or spoken without regard for others: 'I'm sorry, that was so thoughtless of me'.