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Human Nature and Holocaust: Understanding Levinas’s Account of Ethics Through Levi and Wiesel
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 36, Number 2, October 2012
- pp. 330-346
- 10.1353/phl.2012.0035
- Article
- Additional Information
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Ethics occupies a central role in Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy, although considerable controversy exists surrounding the nature of this centrality. I argue that Levinas’s concern with ethics is ultimately related to a reconceptualization of human nature, one in which living at another’s expense is a central feature. This becomes apparent through a close investigation of his notions of shame, creation, and substitution. Descriptions of Holocaust experiences in the work of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel corroborate this account, revealing metaphysical guilt as a central feature of human existence.