- relation to history - Fachenheim
- Chalier
- Problem of alterity of evil
- Teitelbaum
- Rubenstein
- Steiner
- Arendt
In Shoah research, there was a shift from intentionalism (one person/group is responsible for the event that happens); another approach is functionalism - (developed by some as the thesis that) the Holocaust is the result of a certain rationality that is present in Western culture.
Arendt comes up with the banality of evil after watching Eichmann in Jerusalem.
She was at the Eichmann process in Jerusalem, and wrote a series of articles therein.
Theses of Arendt:
- protest the pedagogical character of the trial - it legitimized the state of Israel (“look at that devil there and see…“)
- [missed it]
- Wants to understand the crimes from the point of view of man, not of human rights.
Thesis 3) relates to her idea of thoughtlessness. She claims that the problem of Eichmann was not that he was evil or stupid, but that he couldn’t reflect on what he was doing.
This is what she calls the Gedankenlosigkeit.
Other texts of Arendt - wherein he develops the problem of thoughtlessness in a philosophical vein.
She wrote first on totalitarianism, then on the banality of evil, then vita activa, then the live of the mind (thinking, willing, judging).
She develops thoughtlessness based on the work of Kant. The volume on judging was reconstructed from lectures she gave, but she never finished the last book (died).
Thoughtlessness refers to the paradox that wise people can be affected by a lack of judgement. This problem can be found in the third critique of Immanuel Kant, the critique of Urteilskraft.
Evil exists in a perversion where a wrong maxim determines all the other maxims.
Kant argues that evil perverts the order of maxims, placing the private first, and the categorical imperative secondary.
She discusses the attitude of Eichmann towards Kant, “the duties of the authoritarian citizen.” He claims he did what he had to do as a loyal citizen. He states that he not only obeyed orders, but also the law. He clarified the obedience to the law with the first formulation of the categorical imperative. They asked him to formulate the first categorical imperative. “The principle of my will and striving must be such that it can at all times be elevated to the level of general legislation.”
He replaced the categorical imperative with the fuhrer. Your actions have to be in accordance with what the fuhrer would like. This is the categorical imperative for the daily use of the little man.
The inflection of the imperative raises the question of whether one could judge and know what they are doing.
The act of judging is (for Arendt) one of the central questions of all time; for Arendt, Eichmann did not have the capacity to judge. Arendt shifted from the ethical texts of Kant, to the critique of Urteilskraft.
She’s the one who makes justice intersubjective (on political judgement). For Kant, it’s a purely individual thing: what your neighbor does has no influence on whether you should act justly. The operation of imagination assists what is no longer present, and renders them to our taste and sense; we judge thereafter whether these objects are tasteful or not ← this is the operation of imagination.
Arendt argues that this operation was absent in Eichmann; he was unable to reflect on the event in which he was involved (because he couldn’t bring it to his mind). In the event itself he acted very rationally. “Organizing a Holocaust takes a great amount of intellectual capacity” [- prof]. He could not take ein Schritt zuruck (to borrow a word from Husserl).
The operation of the imagination makes an absolute object immediately present and leads to taste - “do i enjoy it or not” - the operation of […] however, leads to whether or not one can agree with what they are doing. It is only in thinking about an activity that one can come to disagree or agree; not the object itself is important, but that we can judge and approve with pleasure.
Lyotard De L’enthousiasme - therein he writes of the French Revolution; very cruel period in french history, but there is also a lot of enthusiasm surrounding it. He says that Kant would agree with the French revolution only after it happens, once he sees the meaning thereof in the totality of Western history.
Kant calls this the sensus communis: in the critique of pure reason, he deals with the problem of the unknowable, the problem of transcendental aesthetics, analytics, and dialectics. In Kant’s vision, sensorial perception is communicable for all because we share the same senses.
The categorical imperative remains valid even if nobody communicates about it. In the critique of Urteilskraft, though, he argues that judging whether you can agree with a certain action or not relies on common sense. Common sense is the least one can expect of someone predicated with ‘human being.’
Kant says that trusting your sensus privatus over the sensus communis is a kind of madness.
There is nothing more natural than abstracting temptation or emotion when seeking a judgement that should serve as a universal rule.
When you participate in your professional life later on, in institutions, every institution has some set of rules and procedures. When you lose yourself in procedures, you may forget what you are doing.
the professor claims that, in his personal point of view, the Israeli are now doing in Gaza the same thing the nazis did
[oh my god we’re talking about polymarket in jewish philosophy]
[Teitelbaum, i think, claims] First of all, Israelites are not allowed to establish their lives collectively in Palestine. Asks the people of Israel not to revolt against its nations. He please with the diaspora, and the Zionist movement, according to him, is a mistake and is against the will of God. He claims the Shoah was there to bring them back to the right track, that of anti-Zionism.
Can a people be punished by killing 6m members thereof? Seemingly a very strong claim.
Reading the book of Job in the bible, he is confronted with a lot of evil. He loses his family, children, richness, sitting there, sick in his own body. There is a dialog between Job and God: Job’s friends say that he is being punished for some misdeed; but Job was convinced he did not. He was a just man, yet received all the evil possible in reality; it can be seen as a kind of test of the faith of Job in the eyes of transcendence. His friends, discussing with him, said he is punished for some evil.
Some authors compare the testing of Job’s faith with that of Abraham (commanded to sacrifice his son).
Rubenstein revolted against this; and developed a kind of thinking about the death of God in the 60s. He comes to a new vision on God, that is no longer theistic. Can be summarized in 4 points
- The holy nothing / the source of life and nature
- this immanentism implies a meaningful universe that is cut off from any god who intervenes with his children
- the Jewish rituals are important because they respond to psychological needs.
- the relation within the religious community remains crucial. The Jewish people can continue because they remain in this community. The world is a meaningless world, however. It is managed by immanent laws, there is no transcendence.
Freud says a similar thing to 3). He claims we have real psychological needs, such as the need to know the origin of life, the need to know what happens after death. Those are deep psychological needs. The need to be evaluated, for the good to be rewarded and evil be punished. Security against nature. [Something about body-[…]]. Religion gives answers to these questions.
The story of heaven and hell, creation, retribution, reincarnation, …, are all the answers of religion. Freud says - the questions are real, but the answers are illusion. We stick to those answers because of the questions; we want to find an answer so badly, these answers have an emotional value because they give a kind of security in life. One can feel at easy when one knows that good people will arrive in heaven, and people arrive in hell.
Freud was also an atheist, like Rubenstein; the questions are real, the answers are illusions. In certain countries there is heavy discussion between creationists and Darwinists. Professor is struck by the fact that Darwinists believe in their theories; rather than treating it as a mere scientific hypothesis. Prof. says they’d become good missionaries. The passion they have in defending that vision is the same as the passion people have defending the creationist story.
When a scientist speaks of black holes in the universe, the scientist is not impassioned. That’s not a matter of life and death; but it is for creationism/darwinism.
The replacement of classical god with a holy nothing leads to evil not being created by God. Where Teitelbaum had an intentionalist vision, Rubenstein went against it.
The third example of thinking about the Shoah is George Steiner. A Season in Hell → he claims that Judaism is an unbearable element in Western culture. Nazism is a barbaric reaction to eradicate Judaism, caused by its unbearability.
Thesis - judaism is unbearable, doesn’t fit in western society, gets barbaric reaction to be destroyed.
Three elements: metaphysical, ethical, political,
Mosaic revelation on mount Sinai, god revealing ‘i am who i am’ and prophetic monotheism are a critique on prevailing polytheism. The natural reflections of polytheism were disturbed by the demands of monotheism. Those familiar with exegesis will know that the 7-day creation story was a reaction against polytheism. The same god made the sun and the moon.
This demand for monotheism undermined the deepest roots of the human psyche. In monotheistic religions there is very strong iconoclasm. Because reason and knowledge are commanded to practice faith, obedience, and love under an abstract love which forbids even images of himself, as pure and inaccessible. [The invisible god and the relatedeness of the Torah are a unique interaction in the human experience. [unsure if I heard right]]. Autonomy under obedience, iconoclasm in monotheism is not just a cultural aspect, but an intellectual aspect as well. This is unbearable for the rational culture of Europe.
Nietzsche called this monotheism the greatest mistake people ever committed. Freud was struck by the invention of monotheism, could not bear it as an atheistic Jew, and said it was invented by the Egyptians.
Actual 3 theses
- In Western culture we have a kind of rationalism, which is questioned by the iconoclasm of monotheism, which is unbearable for the westerner. ← metaphysical element
- The moral supererogation of Christianity appears in the figure of the Jew Jesus of Nazareth. In line with the prophetic tradition, J formulates moral demands that are excessive. Think sermon on the mountain, offering your other cheek. The moral demands of Christianity are a kind of disruption of the natural tendency of the human being. You can have the ethical demands to be good, but here he asks more than just good. Thus, Christianity seems to invite an ethics of self-denial and world-hatred. To be oneself means to destroy oneself by self-hatred. Here he quotes Pascal, “Le moi est haïssable.” ← ethical element
- Socialism and Marxism. Socialism and communism are rooted in a kind of messianic eschatology. Even if this eschatology is atheist. “A lot of jews were involved in the communist revolution of 1917” - prof. They believed that international communism was the coming of the messiah. Nothing is more religious, more closely related to the ecstatic justice of the prophets than the creation of a new, clean city for mankind. For Germany, communism was an unbearable element. ← political element
There is one problem with this thesis. Namely, the historical fact that, starting from the Hascala period (Jewish enlightenment), there originated a kind of symbiosis between Jewish and German culture. Jews were allowed to teach at universities and stuff. Mendelssohn, Einstein, Freud, Husserl, Kafka, and many others were fruits of this symbiosis. Steiner did not take this into account.
We have been presented with 4 possible ways of thinking on the Shoah. Of course there could be 20 authors, but these 4 the professor chose as representative. The Shoah can be seen as a moment of radical break in Jewish history. The challenge for Jewish philosophers is ‘how do we situate ourselves in this element of rupture?’ There are other interesting interpretations, like ‘Modernity and the Holocaust.’ Agamben, ‘the homo sacer,’ developing his thesis in discussion with Foucault, Benjamin.
In the notes, the professor will check whether he put them on toledo or not, and he’ll make a chapter on the concise history of Jewish philosophy. He’ll tell us about a bunch of different people Mendelssohn, etc. Not part of what we need to know for the exam.
Next week we start with the new scheme, and go to Levinas. 3 hours on Levinas, then Vassily Grossman, Life and Fate.
No lesson next week (1 may). There will be a list of study questions for course prep.