Language:
German
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung
Angaben zur Quelle:
8,2 (2007) 118-131
Keywords:
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Lévinas, Emmanuel
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
Abstract:
Based on a lecture held at the international conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Phänomenologische Forschung, Wuppertal, October 2005. States that Arendt and Levinas, like all connected in one way or another to the experience of the Holocaust, see it as a break in history, an event we cannot cope with, a trauma or wound that opens up at unexpected times. It has put an end to all previous certainties, our trust in others and in ourselves; it is opposed to integration and to meaning. But the destruction wreaked by the Holocaust is also the base of a new beginning; its meaninglessness spurs a search for meaning. All this happens also in the writing of Arendt and Levinas. Points out that the connection to the Holocaust varies in degree: that of the survivors, the direct witnesses, those close to the victims, those who have only heard about it, and those unaffected. When the traumatized write "Holocaust literature" or "Holocaust philosophy", their writing cannot be branded subjective or pathological; it is an expression of the trauma and the search for an answer to it, and thus is an objective part of the Holocaust experience itself.
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink
