« Philosophical Witnessing » Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 1 11 March 2009 10:29:47 AM the tauber institute for the study of european jewry series Jehuda Reinharz, General Editor Sylvia Fuks Fried, Associate Editor The Tauber Institute Series is dedicated to publishing compelling and innovative approaches to the study of modern European Jewish history, thought, culture, and society. The series features scholarly works related to the Enlightenment, modern Judaism and the struggle for emancipation, the rise of nationalism and the spread of antisemitism, the Holocaust and its aftermath, as well as the contemporary Jewish experience. The series is published under the auspices of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry�established by a gift to Brandeis University from Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber�and is supported, in part, by the Tauber Foundation and the Valya and Robert Shapiro Endowment. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com and www.upne.com/series/taub.html Berel Lang Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence David N. Myers Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz Sara Bender The Jews of Białystock during World War II and the Holocaust Nili Scharf Gold Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet Hans Jonas Memoirs Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz, editors Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present Christian Wiese The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 2 11 March 2009 10:29:47 AM also by berel lang Art and Inquiry The Human Bestiary Faces, and Other Ironies of Writing and Reading Philosophy and the Art of Writing Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide The Anatomy of Philosophical Style: Literary Philosophy and the Philosophy of Literature Writing and the Moral Self Mind’s Bodies: Thought in the Act Heidegger’s Silence The Future of the Holocaust: Between History and Memory Holocaust Representation: Art within the Limits of History and Ethics Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History edited volumes Marxism and Art: Writings in Aesthetics and Criticism The Concept of Style Philosophical Style: An Anthology about the Writing and Reading of Philosophy Philosophy and the Holocaust The Philosopher in the Community: Essays in Memory of Bertram Morris The Death of Art Writing and the Holocaust Race and Racism in Theory and Practice The Holocaust: A Reader Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 3 11 March 2009 10:29:47 AM 0HILOSOPHICAL brandeis university press 7ITNESSING waltham, massachusetts published by 4HEß(OLOCAUSTßASß0RESENCE university press of new england hanover and london BERELLANG PREFACE V Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 4 11 March 2009 10:29:47 AM 0HILOSOPHICAL 7ITNESSING 4HEß(OLOCAUSTßASß0RESENCE BERELLANG PREFACE V Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 5 11 March 2009 10:29:47 AM brandeis university press Published by University Press of New England One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766 www.upne.com © 2009 by Brandeis University Press Printed in U.S.A. 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Members of educational institutions and organizations wishing to photocopy any of the work for classroom use, or authors and publishers who would like to obtain permission for any of the material in the work, should contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, NH 03766. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lang, Berel. Philosophical witnessing: the Holocaust as presence / [Berel Lang]. p. cm. — (The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-58465-741-5 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Influence. 3. Good and evil. 4. Philosophy, Jewish. I. Title. d804.3.l3573 2009 940.53'1801—dc22 2009006597 University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 6 11 March 2009 10:29:48 AM to lela, nina, & gabriel, to hannah & leah —and the world before you Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 7 11 March 2009 10:29:48 AM Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 8 11 March 2009 10:29:48 AM « Contents » Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii « i » the holocaust at philosophy’s address 1. Philosophical Witnessing: “. And only I have survived to tell you” 3 2. Truth at Risk and the Holocaust’s Response 17 3. Evil and Understanding: A Holocaust Dilemma 33 4. Jaspers’ Die Schuldfrage: A Presence Early and Late 57 « ii » vs. the unspeakable, the unshowable, and the unthinkable 5. Holocaust-Representation in the Genre of Silence 77 6. Representation and Misrepresentation: On or about the Holocaust 92 7. Applied Ethics, Post-Holocaust 112 8. The Jewish Declaration of War against the Nazis 125 « iii » the presence as future 9. From the Holocaust to Group Rights: Minorities in a Majority World 139 10. Metaphysical Racism (Or: Biological Warfare by Other Means) 156 11. Hyphenated-Jews and the Anxiety of Identity 171 12. Reconciliation: Not Revenge, Not Forgiveness, Perhaps Not Even Justice 187 Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 9 11 March 2009 10:29:48 AM Afterword Wound and Scar 203 Appendix: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 207 Notes 211 Index 231 Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 10 11 March 2009 10:29:48 AM « Preface » The themes of “philosophical witnessing” and “presence” that balance the two sides of my book’s title have shaped its writing, often explicitly, but always at least tacitly. “Presence” refers to the continuing place of the Holocaust in the contemporary world more than sixty years after its nomi- nal end. This sustained aftermath is not unique in the history of atrocity or destruction, and it would be an indignity to argue comparative degrees of wrong or suffering in that dense history. But neither of these consider- ations is a deterrent to writing about the presence of the Holocaust in the post-Holocaust world, many-sided and startling as its appearances there have been. Much of that expression, predictably, has come from individu- als and groups tracing and analyzing the complex combinations of acts and ideas that constituted “the Holocaust” in which they had been enmeshed. And then, too, there are the shock waves from that past that continue to ripple forward, shaping both institutional structures�international, national, cultural�and individuals. Although many in both these groups may be far removed from the event itself, an impulse to confront that past has often come to the surface in them. It is aspects of this presence that I consider here, both looking back to moments or aspects of the Holocaust that warrant attention they have not received and looking forward to a future that the consequences of the Holocaust may, even should, affect in shape and direction and then finally in practice. These appearances have assumed various forms, as expressions of memory (individual and collective) for those who lived through the Holocaust, and through the faculty of moral imagination for the by-now majority of others born only after that event. Both memory and imagina- tion seem in the end private or inward, but both also reveal themselves in the public face of practice: in political and legal determinations of policy, in literary and other artistic representations to which the Holocaust gives voice, in public ritual and commemorative institutions, in the reach of his- torical and philosophical reflection. To be sure, the intense aftermath of the Nazis’ war against the Jews has not reflected a consensus. Internal disagreements about the character of Lang - Philosophical Witnessing.indb 11 11 March 2009 10:29:48 AM that “presence” have ranged from flat denials of its legitimacy (echoing denials of the Holocaust itself ) to the metahistorical claim of the Holo- caust’s uniqueness�opening the space between them to a large number of more nuanced but equally deep issues. So, for examples, the related ques- tions of historical causality and moral responsibility leading up to and in the Holocaust; or the consequences of the Holocaust for the princi- pal groups caught up in it; and finally, to the daunting question of how this past event should be incorporated in the present. Even to acknowledge that last question points to the continuing presence of the Holocaust as itself a moral decision, a biting reminder of the convergence, often denied or ignored, of history and ethics. On this count, one has only to recall the names or terms encapsulated from the Holocaust that stand now as short- hand markers�“Auschwitz,” “Final Solution,” “Kapo”�to recognize the spread of its effects in the discourse of everyday life. Indefinite boundaries mark out all presence, and I make no attempt to impose stricter ones here. Anyone thinking about the Holocaust in a sus- tained way will be aware of the new details of its course that have contin- ually come to light�a pattern unlikely to end soon. One such instance recalled here (chapter 8) is the odd phenomenon of Theodore Kaufman’s slight pamphlet, Germany Must Perish, which had consequences during World War II far beyond what its author or anyone else anticipated; it remains relatively unknown, but in this, too, it is emblematic of the way in which a causal�and casual�improbability may find itself part of a cen- tral and disturbing historical current.