Modernity and the Holocaust

Product Information

The people who went out of their way to save Jews from being murdered were the “freaks” of German society. They broke the law and transgressed every norm and value that they had been taught, betraying the world that raised them in the process, as well as their friends and colleagues. Baumann argues that the existence of people like this even in a totalitarian society like Nazi Germany suggests an inherent moral compass in human beings that even the most effective bureaucracy will struggle to completely eradicate. It reminds me that when Chelsea Manning revealed a video of innocent people being murdered by laughing U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, many people genuinely believed that Manning was the one who had committed the moral transgression in this situation. Would workers in the chemical plants that produced napalm accept responsibility for burned babies?... Would such workers even be aware that others might reasonably think they were responsible? Of course they wouldn't, and there is no bureaucratic reason why they should. The splitting of the baby-burning process in minute functional tasks and then separating the tasks from each other have made such awareness irrelevant... remember as well that it is chemical plants that produce napalm, not any of their individual workers." In this state of affairs “only the quantifiable success or failure matter, and seen from that point of view, the tasks do not differ.” Unlike many previous approaches to the Holocaust, Stone focuses mostly on the perpetrators—without neglecting their victims—arguing that the examination of the former is crucial to the understanding of the Holocaust and the beliefs that motivated the Nazi decisions (pp. 244-275). Distance, technology, abstraction, are all modern tools that help overcome people’s aversion to acts that their morality would otherwise never let them commit. The analogies go beyond the most extreme act of killing. A person who would never dream of harming a cat can still play the role of consumer in a factory-farming system that tortures and brutalizes millions of animals. A person who would never steal a penny and gives charity regularly can go to work for a credit card company that systematically cheats and impoverishes the most vulnerable people in society. Massive injustices can be committed in which no one feels responsible, since everyone’s most rational option is to simply take part while not think about it too much. If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help! Essay Writing Service

Stone, Dan, ‘The Holocaust: Child of Modernity’ in Histories of the Holocaust. (Oxford, 2010). Pp 113-159 Hermeneutics and Social Science: Approaches to Understanding. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-132531-5 with Leonidas Donskis): Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 978-0-7456-6274-9

Modernity

a b Moses, A. D. (2008-06-28). "Modernity and the Holocaust". Australian Journal of Politics & History. 43 (3): 441–445. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8497.1997.tb01398.x. Laurea honoris causa a Zygmunt Bauman: materiali (Honorary degree to Zygmunt Bauman: resources)" (in Italian). 17 April 2015. Archived from the original on 9 January 2017 . Retrieved 9 January 2017. Hace un buen tiempo tenía pendiente leer algo del señor Zygmunt Bauman. Lo conocí por una lectura en mis últimos semestres de universidad y quedé fascinada, porque no podía evitar estar de acuerdo con lo que me decía. Me tomo casi ocho años volver a él, no porque fuera aburrido, sino porque cada frase tiene tanto contenido, que sabía que este autor no se puede tomar a ligera y necesita tiempo para procesarse, es de esas lecturas que tiene que ser muy juiciosa. T]he more we discover about the penetration of Nazi antisemitic indoctrination into every sphere of life in the Third Reich, the more it becomes clear that whilst policy-making and individual decisions may have been made on an ad hoc basis, they were made within a framework of vicious, paranoid Jew-hatred... The Holocaust was ‘modern’ insofar as it took place in a ‘modern’ society, was organized bureaucratically and relied in part on technological killing methods... [Yet] the deep essence of the Holocaust was an outburst of transgressive violence that owed more to fantasy-thinking than to the logic of reason, ‘biopower’ or the ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’. But, as I show, thinking about the Holocaust in these terms does not exculpate modern society altogether; rather, the rationalized structures of modernity not only channelled but created the fantasies of Nazism (p. 7). One of Bauman works focuses on the concept of art as influenced by the liquidity of appreciation. The author puts forward the idea that "we desire and seek a realization that usually consists of a constant becoming, in a permanent disposition of becoming". [39] In essence, our aim is not the object of our longing but the action of longing itself, and the worst peril is reaching complete satisfaction.

Modernity and the Holocaust and Concentrationary Memories’ – Prof. Max Silverman (University of Leeds) Moishe Postone reviewed the book for the American Journal of Sociology in 1992. He called the book "important and thought-provoking", although he also argued that "several aspects of [Bauman's] book are problematic" or "puzzling". He concluded that despite some issues, the book "represents an important contribution to contemporary sociological thought". [1] Modernity and the Holocaust is a 1989 book by Zygmunt Bauman published by Polity Press. As the title implies, it explores the relationship between modernity and The Holocaust. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Hell, Julia (November 2010). "Modernity and the Holocaust, or, Listening to Eurydice". Theory, Culture & Society. 27 (6): 125–154. doi: 10.1177/0263276410382026. ISSN 0263-2764. S2CID 145451398. Academic Staff " Sociology and Social Policy " University of Leeds". University of Leeds. 19 December 2016 . Retrieved 9 March 2017.

Download

Our academic experts are ready and waiting to assist with any writing project you may have. From simple essay plans, through to full dissertations, you can guarantee we have a service perfectly matched to your needs. View our services The creation of gas chambers is an example of a task intended to segment the horrible final task of killing as much as possible, breaking up responsibility to the point where it simply “floated” and clearly attached to no one involved. It took a huge supply chain and technological apparatus to create the chambers. Many people were involved, far more than the number needed for an ordinary murder or even an execution by firing squad. Thanks to technology, the monumental act of killing a human being was in fact wedded to the reassuringly small and inconsequential act of pushing a button. As a result even those tasked with actually releasing the gas didn't truly feel that they were personally responsible for as grave an act as mass murder. They were just parts of a machine and effectively saw themselves as such. It had no impact on how they viewed morality in their personal lives. Rationalization: A way of looking at the world and managing it through the use of logic, objectivity and impartial theories and data. This book dismantles the idea of Nazis as a bunch of sadists who just happened to be around at the same time and place and due to exceptional circumstances, managed to get together. It's difficult to quantify the percentage of the population that can be classified as pathologically sadistic, figures vary wildly from 2 to 30%, but even in the worst-case scenario of the highest percentage, it takes something more than pure chance to get them all to work together for an evil purpose. The six chapters of the book, ‘”The final solution”: a German or European project?’ (1); ‘The decision-making process in context’ (2); ‘The Holocaust: child of modernity?’ (3); ‘Race science: the basis of the Nazi world view?’(4); ‘Genocide, the Holocaust, and the history of colonialism’ (5); and ‘The Holocaust as an expression of Nazi culture’ (6) converge to a conclusion (‘Into the abyss’) revolving around the idea that, ultimately, efforts to understand the Holocaust will entail the confirmation, constantly deepened and explicated, of its definition given by Hannah Arendt as early as 1946: that of ‘an organized attempt to eradicate the concept of the human being’ (p. 287). Notes