La pratique clinique à la lumière d'une réflexion philosophique : comment le concept de banalité du mal décrit par Hannah Arendt interroge notre responsabilité professionnelle…

Many clinical situations generate relative difficulty for the professionals to substantiate an action or a therapeutic project in the case of a sick person: What is good to do? How and why? The philosophical and political concept of triteness of evil proposed by Hannah Arendt in her book « Eichmann in Jerusalem » (1963), seems interesting to consider when you are a healthcare professional aware of the ethical dimension of our practice. We do not think that there were in the daily caregiver practice sorts of “evil” which can be compared to the genocidal evil studied by Arendt. It is not to consider the Arendt thought as a fundamental truth without any discussion or controversy. The aim is to be hailed on together by some of the aspects of the concept. The concept of triteness of evil unsettles the professionals we are and promotes awareness of our responsibility and of a questioning requirement. We can hurt unwittingly, with the confident feeling of being in line with our mission, our duty to an ordinary practice. There is, in this concept, a call to think oneself, the other and the action. The aim of this article is to allow any healthcare provider to approach the inherent ethical tension in certain banal clinical situation and to identify some ethical or philosophical benchmarks to think about it.