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.
İçerik tablosu
Prologue: Only the Darkness? The Philosopher’s Project Why Study the Holocaust? Handle with Care Raul Hilberg’s Ethics Gray Zones and Double-Binds: Holocaust Challenges to Ethics Post-Holocaust Restitution of a Different Kind Duped by Morality? The Ethics of Forgiveness The Ethics of Prayer The Holocaust, Genocide, and the ‘Logic’ of Racism Will Genocide Ever End? The Holocaust and the Common Good Epilogue: Standing Here Notes Select Bibliography Index
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JOHN K. ROTH is the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Centre for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at Claremont Mc Kenna College, USA, where he has taught since 1966. He is the author or editor of more than forty books, including most recently
Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
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