Morality After Auschwitz

Morality After Auschwitz PDF

Author: Peter J. Haas

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1625645732

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Endorsements: "This book is a study of the Holocaust as problem in ethical theory. How could a whole society participate in an ethic of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without opposition from responsible political, legal, medical, or religious leaders? How does a society create and adopt its ethical norms? This is a study in narrative ethics at its best, yet the author's purpose is to discover how a people redefined evil to the degree that they committed heinous atrocities that were reprehensible under normal circumstances." --Guy Greenfield, Southwestern Journal of Theology "Peter Haas gives us a good overall description of the Holocaust, the way the Nazis and their myriad collaborators treated the Jews. The book . . . is well formulated and well written. It makes a good one-volume introduction to the Holocaust." --Frederick K. Wentz, Lutheran Quarterly "Peter Haas urges us to recognize ourselves in the perpetrators of the Holocaust. . . . In the course of setting forth his position, the author offers a concise and wonderfully accessible account of the formation of German political culture from Bismarck through Hitler. . . . Morality After Auschwitz is a serious book that should provoke long thoughts, and perhaps useful disputes, about the power of ethics to shape political cultures." --First Things

Morality After Auschwitz

Morality After Auschwitz PDF

Author: Peter J. Haas

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1725233878

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"This book is a study of the Holocaust as problem in ethical theory. How could a whole society participate in an ethic of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without opposition from responsible political, legal, medical, or religious leaders? How does a society create and adopt its ethical norms? This is a study in narrative ethics at its best, yet the author's purpose is to discover how a people redefined evil to the degree that they committed heinous atrocities that were reprehensible under normal circumstances." --Guy Greenfield, Southwestern Journal of Theology "Peter Haas gives us a good overall description of the Holocaust, the way the Nazis and their myriad collaborators treated the Jews. The book . . . is well formulated and well written. It makes a good one-volume introduction to the Holocaust." --Frederick K. Wentz, Lutheran Quarterly "Peter Haas urges us to recognize ourselves in the perpetrators of the Holocaust. . . . In the course of setting forth his position, the author offers a concise and wonderfully accessible account of the formation of German political culture from Bismarck through Hitler. . . . Morality After Auschwitz is a serious book that should provoke long thoughts, and perhaps useful disputes, about the power of ethics to shape political cultures." --First Things

Mortality and Morality

Mortality and Morality PDF

Author: Hans Jonas

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 1996-07-08

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0810112868

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Hans Jonas, a pupil of Heidegger and a colleague of Hannah Arendt at the New School for Social Research, was one of the most prominent phenomenologists of his generation. This carefully chosen anthology of Jonas's shorter writings - on topics from Jewish philosophy to philosophy of religion to philosophy of biology and social philosophy - reveals their range without obscuring their central unifying thread: that as living, biological beings, we are also beings who die, and who must consider the implications for current and future ethical and social relations.

Autonomy After Auschwitz

Autonomy After Auschwitz PDF

Author: Martin Shuster

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-09-12

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 022615548X

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Could our modern commitment to freedom be related to or even cause a variety of extreme modern evils, most notably (but not exclusively) Auschwitz? Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomythe idea that we are beholden to no law except one imposed upon ourselvesis considered the truest philosophical expression of free human agency. In this context, philosopher Martin Shuster examines the notion of autonomy and its relationship to modern evil. Taking its cue from the work of Theodor Adorno, this book shows that the notion of autonomy, as emblematically conceived in this German philosophical tradition, is not only self-defeating and unstable, but also dangerous and connected to extreme evils like genocide because it ultimately dissolves our capacities for reason, especially practical reason, and thereby our very standing as agents. Examining Adorno s understanding of modern evil in the context of his debate with Kant on autonomous agency, Shuster shows how Adorno developed a conception of autonomous agency that manages to avoid any connection to extreme evil. Throughout, Adorno is put into dialogue not only with many traditional European philosophical interlocutors (including Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty), but innovatively, also with a variety of Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin. Shuster aims to integrate and situate Adorno s work, then, within both traditions discussions of freedom and autonomy, demonstrate the deep ethical stakes that are involved in these debates, and offer new insights and lessons from Adorno s writings."

Ethics During and After the Holocaust

Ethics During and After the Holocaust PDF

Author: J. Roth

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2005-10-28

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0230513107

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Questions shape the Holocaust's legacy. 'What happened to ethics during the Holocaust? What should ethics be, and what can it do after the Holocaust?' loom large among them. Absent the overriding or moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust could not have happened. Its devastation may have deepened conviction that there is a crucial difference between right and wrong; its destruction may have renewed awareness about the importance of ethical standards and conduct. But Birkenau, the main killing center at Auschwitz, also continues to cast a disturbing shadow over basic beliefs concerning right and wrong, human rights, and the hope that human beings will learn from the past. This book explores those realities and the issues they contain. It does so not to discourage but to encourage, not to deepen darkness and despair but to face those realities honestly and in a way that can make post-Holocaust ethics more credible and realistic. The book's thesis is that nothing human, natural or divine guarantees respect for the ethical values and commitments that are most needed in contemporary human existence, but nothing is more important than our commitment to defend them, for they remain as fundamental as they are fragile, as precious as they are endangered.

Ethics After Auschwitz?

Ethics After Auschwitz? PDF

Author: Carole J. Lambert

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9781433109645

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Ethics after Auschwitz? Primo Levi's and Elie Wiesel's Response demonstrates how, after their horrific experiences in Auschwitz, both Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel could have deservedly expressed rage and bitterness for the rest of their lives. Housed in the same barracks in the depths of hell, a dark reality surpassing Dante's vivid images portrayed in The Inferno, they chose to speak, write, and work for a better world, never allowing the memory of those who did not survive to fade. Why and how did they make this choice? What influenced their values before Auschwitz and their moral decision making after it? What can others who have suffered less devastating traumas learn from them? «The quest is in the question», Wiesel often tells his students. This book is a quest for hope and goodness emerging from the Shoah's deepest «night».

Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era

Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era PDF

Author: Alejandro Baer

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-25

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1317033760

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To forget after Auschwitz is considered barbaric. Baer and Sznaider question this assumption not only in regard to the Holocaust but to other political crimes as well. The duties of memory surrounding the Holocaust have spread around the globe and interacted with other narratives of victimization that demand equal treatment. Are there crimes that must be forgotten and others that should be remembered? In this book the authors examine the effects of a globalized Holocaust culture on the ways in which individuals and groups understand the moral and political significance of their respective histories of extreme political violence. Do such transnational memories facilitate or hamper the task of coming to terms with and overcoming divisive pasts? Taking Argentina, Spain and a number of sites in post-communist Europe as test cases, this book illustrates the transformation from a nationally oriented ethics to a trans-national one. The authors look at media, scholarly discourse, NGOs dealing with human rights and memory, museums and memorial sites, and examine how a new generation of memory activists revisits the past to construct a new future. Baer and Sznaider follow these attempts to manoeuvre between the duties of remembrance and the benefits of forgetting. This, the authors argue, is the "ethics of Never Again."

A Companion to Nazi Germany

A Companion to Nazi Germany PDF

Author: Shelley Baranowski

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2018-06-18

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13: 1118936884

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A Deep Exploration of the Rise, Reign, and Legacy of the Third Reich For its brief existence, National Socialist Germany was one of the most destructive regimes in the history of humankind. Since that time, scholarly debate about its causes has volleyed continuously between the effects of political and military decisions, pathological development, or modernity gone awry. Was terror the defining force of rule, or was popular consent critical to sustaining the movement? Were the German people sympathetic to Nazi ideology, or were they radicalized by social manipulation and powerful propaganda? Was the “Final Solution” the motivation for the Third Reich’s rise to power, or simply the outcome? A Companion to Nazi Germany addresses these crucial questions with historical insight from the Nazi Party’s emergence in the 1920s through its postwar repercussions. From the theory and context that gave rise to the movement, through its structural, cultural, economic, and social impacts, to the era’s lasting legacy, this book offers an in-depth examination of modern history’s most infamous reign. Assesses the historiography of Nazism and the prehistory of the regime Provides deep insight into labor, education, research, and home life amidst the Third Reich’s ideological imperatives Describes how the Third Reich affected business, the economy, and the culture, including sports, entertainment, and religion Delves into the social militarization in the lead-up to war, and examines the social and historical complexities that allowed genocide to take place Shows how modern-day Germany confronts and deals with its recent history Today’s political climate highlights the critical need to understand how radical nationalist movements gain an audience, then followers, then power. While historical analogy can be a faulty basis for analyzing current events, there is no doubt that examining the parallels can lead to some important questions about the present. Exploring key motivations, environments, and cause and effect, this book provides essential perspective as radical nationalist movements have once again reemerged in many parts of the world.

Good and Evil After Auschwitz

Good and Evil After Auschwitz PDF

Author: Jack Bemporad

Publisher: KTAV Publishing House, Inc.

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9780881256925

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Good and Evil After Auschwitz is a compendium of the papers presented at an extraordinary symposium convened at the Vatican in 1998. It represents the views of more than thirty of the world's foremost theologians and religious thinkers on the inescapable moral question of our era, the problem of how, if at all, believers can reconcile their faith in a just and merciful God with the mass murder of millions of innocents during the Holocaust. Although the symposium took place in the Vatican, it gave voice to the thought and anguish of Jewish and Protestant thinkers as well as Roman Catholics. The participants came from many different countries and include many individuals well known in European intellectual and philosophical circles. The volume includes an interview with Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and excerpts from the writings of Moshe Flinker, Etty Hillesum, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Good and Evil After Auschwitz is a powerful and thought-provoking book. The profoundly moving contributions by the symposium participants can serve as signposts to guide us in the effort to confront the awesome questions posed by the Holocaust, even as they remind us that no human answer can possibly be adequate to its enormity.

Ethics and Theology After the Holocaust

Ethics and Theology After the Holocaust PDF

Author: Didier Pollefeyt

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 9789042937505

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The Holocaust casts a heavy shadow over the twenty-first century. The Nazi extermination camps radically call into question the very foundations of Christianity, modernity and the postmodern world. This book challenges and critically reconstructs ethics and theology by bearing witness to the victims, as well as shining a light on the perpetrators and bystanders, thus providing the basis for a renewed Christian understanding of good and evil for our time. The result is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary post-Holocaust ethics and theology, charting questions at the heart of a new synthesis: our concepts of God, the human person and the (post)modern world, as well as our understanding of ecology, politics, education, sacred texts, Christology, interreligious dialogue, forgiveness and reconciliation and eschatology. The central idea running through the twenty-one chapters of this volume is that the commandment "not to grand posthumous victories to Hitler" is an ongoing and often demanding task that calls for complexity, compassion and renewed commitment to transcendence in all and everything.