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10. The Holocaust as a Test of Philosophy
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I I " 10 THE HOLOCAUST AS A TEST OF PHILOSOPHY Alan Rosenberg and Paul Marcus There are issues in the conduct of human affairs in their production of good and evil which, at a given time and place are so central, so strategic in position, that their urgency deserves, with respect to practice, the names ultimate and comprehensive. These issues demand the most systematic reflective attention that can be given. It is relatively unimportant whether this attention be called philosophy or by some other name. It is of immense human importance that it be given, and that it be given by means of the best tested resources that inquiry has at command . -John Dewey1 Dewey was right. There are such issues that, ". . . in their production of good and evil ... are so central, so strategic in position, that their urgency deserves, with respect to practice, the names ultimate and comprehensive." There can be little doubt that the Holocaust is such an issue. But Dewey also states, almost casually, that it is "relatively unimportant whether this attention be called philosophy or by some other name." Does this imply, as it seems, that it does not matter that philosophers have paid so little attention to the Holocaust? Or is it, rather, a matter of considerable importance? It must be admitted that within Dewey's perspective whether such an inquiry be called "philosophy" is unimportant. For, so long as such an examination "be given by means of the best tested resources that inquiry has at command," what does the name given to the inquiry matter? Surely philosophers are well accustomed to seeing their "best tested resources" appropriated by nonphilosophers in the analysis of a wide range of issues, both trivial and of "immense human importance." And yet, when it comes to the issues raised by the Holocaust, these very resources are largely ignored in the vast literature that those issues 201 Copyrighted Material 202 I PART THREE: ECHOES FROM THE DEATH CAMPS have evoked. Accordingly, it may well be argued-and is argued in what follows-that the Holocaust raises issues that do matter to philosophy. The fact is that the issues raised by the events of the Holocaust comprise, in an "ultimate and comprehensive" sense, a critical test of the ability of philosophers to deal with what Dewey has elsewhere called the "problems of men," and which, we are given to understand, are of "immense human importance." It has been clear for some time that the Holocaust is a challenge to the very meaning of our civilization. It is now apparent that it is also a fundamental challenge to philosophy. We have only to survey the literature that purports to examine the meaning of the Holocaust in order to make explicit the nature of this test of philosophy. The literature presents us with nothing less than a welter of enigmas and paradoxes.2 On the one hand we are told that we must understand the Holocaust so that we can prevent its recurrence , and yet we are also informed that it is a unique event beyond comprehension.3 We are told that the Holocaust is an historical aberration , yet we are asked that it be taught as part of history and serve as a warning for the future. We are told that the horrors and violence of the Holocaust have made our conventional language obsolete, yet that same language is regularly employed to press the significance of the events upon us. The most disconcerting of all the paradoxes and enigmas that surround the Holocaust and the one that we are primarily concerned with in this essay is that although the Holocaust is purported to be an event of profound historical significance that, as such, must have a profound impact on subsequent social, cultural, and political events, at the same time it is recognized that no such profound impact has in fact occurred. In short, it is paradoxical both to hold that the Holocaust is of such great historical significance as to necessarily evoke changes in the values underlying our society, and to recognize at the same time that it has not done so. The claim that the Holocaust is a profound and significant event constituting a major watershed in world history is often made. Thus Henry Feingold calls it a "central event for our time ... because what died at Auschwitz was the promise and hope embodied in Western civilization."4 Emil Fackenheim claims that the Holocaust was epoch making: "The world ... like the...