In this Book
- Suffering Witness: The Quandary of Responsibility after the Irreparable
- Book
- 2000
- Published by: State University of New York Press
- Series: SUNY series in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art (discontinued)
summary
Conceptualizes the question of witness and responsibility, following the Holocaust, using continental philosophy, theology, and literary theory. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, James Hatley uses the prose of Primo Levi and Tadeusz Borowski, as well as the poetry of Paul Celan, to question why witnessing the Shoah is so pressing a responsibility for anyone living in its aftermath. He argues that the witnessing of irreparable loss leaves one in an irresoluble quandary but that the attentiveness of that witness resists the destructive legacy of annihilation.
“In this new and sensitive synthesis of scrupulous thinking about the Holocaust (beginning with scruples about the term Holocaust itself), James Hatley approaches all the major questions surrounding our overwhelming inadequacy in the aftermath of the irreparable. If there is anything unique (in a non-trivial sense) about the Holocaust, surely it is the imperious moral urgency that compels those who contemplate it to revise their view of what it means to be human, and to bear witness to such an event.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Front Matter
- Table of Contents
- p. vii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xi
- Abbreviations
- pp. xiii-xiv
- Content
- Introduction
- pp. 1-10
- 3. The Transcendence of the Face
- pp. 73-102
- 6. Blaspheming G-d: Facing the Persecuted
- pp. 167-206
- Back Matter
- Bibliography
- pp. 249-260
Additional Information
ISBN
9780791491959
MARC Record
OCLC
794701356
Pages
282
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No