Primo Levi’s Gray Zone: Implications for Post-Holocaust Ethics

The Holocaust calls into question the very possibility of ethics. In his landmark book The Drowned and the Saved (first published in 1986), Primo Levi introduced the notion of a moral “gray zone.” The author of this essay re-examines Levi’s use of the term. He discusses some of the ways in which the expression has been misappropriated and misunderstood—and why this matters.