Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CGU Theses & Dissertations CGU Student Scholarship 2012 The rP oblem of Coming to Terms with the Past: A Post-Holocaust Theology of Remembrance Jeremy D. Fackenthal Claremont Graduate University Recommended Citation Fackenthal, Jeremy D., "The rP oblem of Coming to Terms with the Past: A Post-Holocaust Theology of Remembrance" (2012). CGU Theses & Dissertations. Paper 33. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/33 DOI: 10.5642/cguetd/33 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the CGU Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in CGU Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Problem of Coming to Terms with the Past: A Post-Holocaust Theology of Remembrance by Jeremy D. Fackenthal Claremont Graduate University Spring 2012 © Copyright Jeremy D. Fackenthal, 2012 All rights reserved. APPROVAL OF THE REVIEW COMMITTEE This dissertation has been duly read, reviewed, and critiqued by the Committee listed below, which hereby approves the manuscript of Jeremy D. Fackenthal as fulfilling the scope and quality requirements for meriting the degree of Ph.D. in Religion. Dr. Roland Faber, Chair Claremont Graduate University, Claremont Lincoln University Kilsby Family/John B. Cobb, Jr. Professor of Process Studies Dr. Philip Clayton Claremont Graduate University, Claremont Lincoln University, Claremont School of Theology Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty Dr. Oona Eisenstadt Pomona College Fred Krinsky Professor of Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Religious Studies Abstract The Problem of Coming to Terms with the Past: Toward a Theology of Remembrance by Jeremy D. Fackenthal Claremont Graduate University: Spring 2012 This dissertation examines the problem of coming to terms with the past in post-World War II Germany in the wake of the Holocaust by examining the philosophical critiques of Theodor Adorno and Eric Voegelin. It then extends these critiques into the ongoing discussion of post- Holocaust philosophy and theology, while introducing the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead as a helpful and appropriate means for continuing metaphysical reflection and perceiving the influence of the past upon the present and future in post-Holocaust discourse. This dissertation suggests, alongside Adorno and Voegelin, that finally coming to terms with the past proves much more dangerous than helpful. Instead, the focus should remain on remembering and reflecting critically upon the deleterious past of the Holocaust in order to avoid forgetfulness or effacement of the past. Whitehead’s philosophy provides a metaphysical means for considering how the past remains with us in the present and into the future. Out of this injunction to remember comes a theology of remembrance, which draws heavily from Walter Benjamin’s writing on weak messianism and inverse theology. The final focus of the dissertation is the development of a Christian theology of remembrance that requires Christians to rethink theology in light of the Holocaust. Dedication In loving memory of Judy Goldblatt, who taught me to love life, to embody tikkun olam, and to strive after better possibilities for the world even in the face of hopelessness. Acknowledgements I wish, first and foremost, to thank my wife and partner, Megan Fackenthal, for her love and support throughout my time as a graduate student. I am grateful for her encouragement, her advice, and her help as a sounding board for ideas. I would also like to thank my advisor and committee, Roland Faber, Philip Clayton, and Oona Eisenstadt, for their wisdom, their feedback, and their friendship through the writing process. I am particularly indebted to my advisor, Roland Faber, for his support of me and for the ways that he has helped to build and launch my academic career. Finally, I am deeply grateful to several friends who made this writing process so much more pleasurable than it otherwise would have been. To Tripp Fuller, thank you for the late night discussions and philosophical/theological arguments. To Tracy Hawkins, thank you for your own example of determination and high scholarship and for providing much needed moral support. To Kirsten Gerdes, thank you for our stimulating philosophical and ethical discussions and for your constant encouragement to seek out academic opportunities. v Contents Introduction 1 Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Politics of Memory 8 Structure and Chapter Outline 15 Chapter 1: 18 Theodor Adorno and the Problem of Coming to Terms with the Past Theodor Adorno: Philosopher and Critical Theorist 18 The Meaning of Working through the Past 20 Guilt and Consciousness 24 Democracy, Fascism, and German Politics 29 Cultural and Individual Anti-Semitism 34 Adorno’s Turn to the Subject as Working Upon the Past 39 Chapter 2: 43 Eric Voegelin’s Critique of the Unmastered Past The Political Philosophy of Eric Voegelin 44 The Cliché of the Unmastered Past 46 The Cliché of Collective Guilt 54 Dedivinization, Dehumanization, and First and Second Reality 59 Master of the Present and Critical Self-Reflection 65 Chapter 3: 68 Metaphysics After Auschwitz The Failure of the Enlightenment 69 Aristotle and the Logic of Form 73 Metaphysical Reflection and Temporal Existence 77 The Remains of Metaphysical Reflection 85 Chapter 4: 94 Whitehead’s Speculative Philosophy as Metaphysics in Fall Whitehead as Mathematician and Philosopher 95 Speculative Philosophy as a System of General Ideas 99 Whitehead’s Philosophical Method 108 Oscillation Between Experience and Abstraction 112 Chapter 5: 123 Whitehead and the Relation Among the Past, Present, and Future The Non-linearity and Relativity of Past and Present 124 Creativity, Novelty, and the Potentiality of the Future 129 Tragedy and the Universality of Unique Events 137 Chapter 6: 152 Whitehead and God The Dipolar God 154 Problematizing Whitehead’s God 164 Whitehead’s Relationship to Theology 174 Chapter 7: 182 vi Theological Implications of Working Upon the Past and Mastering the Present Adorno’s (Inverse) Theology 183 Voegelin and Theology 193 Jewish Responses to the Holocaust 200 Christian Theology After the Holocaust 211 Chapter 8: 217 A Christian Theology of Remembrance Volf’s Theology of Remembrance 219 Metz on Memory After Auschwitz 223 Benjamin’s Weak Messianism and Inverse Theology 225 Remembrance of Damaged Life 239 Bibliography 251 vii Introduction: Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Possibilities of Remembrance After the Second World War, as Europe sifted through the rubble of destroyed cities and towns and as survivors of Nazi concentration and extermination camps sought for a means to go on living, the German populace faced serious questions regarding the period from 1933 to 1945. Many in Germany referred to 1945 as Jahr Null,1 demonstrating a strong desire to move forward with a clean slate, effectively forgetting the recent past of Nazi rule. However, as the next twenty years proved, the process of negotiating Germany’s history and examining the relation between the past and present in German society and politics was not so simple as the phrase Jahr Null might denote. As Germans slowly began to admit, discuss, and examine the baleful events of the Second World War and the Holocaust, German intellectuals and public figures coined various terms for the process of recognizing and questioning the past, the most prominent of which became the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung. This word (or string of words) has been translated most often in English as “coming to terms with the past,” though a more literal translation would be “mastering the past.” Vergangenheitsbewältigung appeared in public use around the late 1950s and was accompanied by other terms, such as Aufarbeitung, “working through the past.” The question of how to come to terms with the past occupied much conversation in German politics, media, and intellectual circles, and Vergangenheitsbewältigung “came to denote all discussions about the appropriate political, social, and moral agendas for the post fascist age and all initiatives designed to implement these alleged historical lessons.”2 Moreover, Vergangenheitsbewältigung evolved into the means by which many Germans 1 Stuart Parkes, Understanding Contemporary Germany (New York: Routledge, 1997), 148. 2 Wulf Kansteiner, “Losing the War, Winning the Memory Battle: The Legacy of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust in the Federal Republic of Germany,” in The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, ed. Richard Ned Lebow, et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3. 1 attempted to deal with their own guilt as a result of their direct or complicit involvement in the Final Solution, the term by which the Nazis referred to the systematic murder of approximately ten million people. Though Vergangenheitsbewältigung may have originated as a worthwhile exercise in self-reflection, its critics (and I with them) note that it quickly devolved into a means of hastily dealing with the past so as to be done with and move on from the past. Indeed, the phrase “mastering the past” demonstrates that the process aims at its own sort of “final solution” as a point in time in which the past has been “mastered,” a point at which the past can be set aside or simply swept under the rug. This understanding of Vergangenheitsbewältigung as a finite process with a clear end remains today and is exhibited in