Berel Lang - Böcker

"These essays are extremely well written, with the clarity and accessibility that one has come to expect from Berel Lang, one of the most respected and significant philosophers writing about the Holocaust and its impact." —Michael L. MorganIn these trenchant essays, philosopher Berel Lang examines post-Holocaust intepretations—and misinterpretations—showing the ways in which rhetoric and ideology have affected historical discourse about the Holocaust and how these accounts can be deconstructed. Why didn't the Jews resist? How could the Germans have done what they did? Why didn't more bystanders join in the rescue? In Lang's view, these questions become mischievous when the circumstances in which victims, perpetrators, and bystanders played their roles are omitted or obscured. To confront such issues adequately requires comparative and contextual evidence. Post-Holocaust addresses such questions as the place of the Holocaust in the Nazi project as a whole, the roles of revenge and forgiveness in post-Holocaust Jewish thinking, Holocaust commemoration as artifice or "business," and the relationship of the Holocaust to traditional antisemitism. Lang's analysis provides an incisive and fruitful basis for confronting these critical subjects.Jewish Literature and Culture—Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor

From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, the first intellectual biography of Primo Levi to describe the intersection of his roles as both chemist and writerIn 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of fewer than 25 who survived the eleven months before the camp’s liberation. Upon returning to his native Turin, Levi resumed work as a chemist and was employed for thirty years by a company specializing in paints and other chemical coatings. Yet soon after his return to Turin, he also began writing—memoirs, essays, novels, short stories, poetry—and it is for this work that he has won international recognition. His first book, If This Is a Man, issued in 1947 after great difficulty in finding a publisher, remains a landmark document of the twentieth century. Berel Lang's groundbreaking biography shines new light on Levi’s role as a major intellectual and literary figure—an important Holocaust writer and witness but also an innovative moral thinker in whom his two roles as chemist and writer converged, providing the “matter” of his life. Levi’s writing combined a scientist’s attentiveness to structure and detail, an ironic imagination that found in all nature an ingenuity at once inviting and evasive, and a powerful and passionate moral imagination. Lang’s approach provides a philosophically acute and nuanced analysis of Levi as thinker, witness, writer, and scientific detective.About Jewish Lives: Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.More praise for Jewish Lives:"Excellent." –New York Times"Exemplary." –Wall Street Journal"Distinguished." –New Yorker"Superb." –The Guardian

Originally published in 1991, this book analyses the relation between writing and ethics in a number of social contexts – in politics, as language discloses its connections to the institutions of totalitarianism and democracy; in the university, as contemporary scholarly ideals find an uncomfortably accurate representation in the stylistic forms of academic writing; in daily social practice, ranging from the status of truth in journalistic writing to the connection between pronouns and affirmative action; and finally in the ethical structure of language itself.

Originally published in 1991, this book analyses the relation between writing and ethics in a number of social contexts – in politics, as language discloses its connections to the institutions of totalitarianism and democracy; in the university, as contemporary scholarly ideals find an uncomfortably accurate representation in the stylistic forms of academic writing; in daily social practice, ranging from the status of truth in journalistic writing to the connection between pronouns and affirmative action; and finally in the ethical structure of language itself.

Subverting the boundaries between philosophy and literature, this book addresses such topics as aesthetics, criticism, epistemology, and ethics and social theory.Mind's Bodies: Thought in the Act both marks and subverts the boundaries between philosophy and literature. On the analogy of the body-mind relation, Lang argues for the textual character of philosophical writing, addressing as grounds for that claim topics in aesthetics, criticism, ethics and social theory, and epistemology.

In What Is Called Thinking, Martin Heidegger wrote, "Man speaks by being silent." Berel Lang demonstrates that Heidegger's own silence spoke consciously and deliberately in response to what has been called the "Jewish Question." Posed simply, the Jewish Question, as it gained currency in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, asked how (or if) the Jews were to live among the nations. The Holocaust radically altered the significance of the Jewish Question and, still, the great philosopher did not speak.Lang interrogates Heidegger's silence for its possible meanings. He asks: What does it tell us about someone who prided himself on his ability to think that Heidegger never felt compelled to address the Jewish Question or to respond to the Nazi genocide? Lang demonstrates that Heidegger's silence after the Holocaust had its foundation in his silence on the Jewish Question before its occurrence. That earlier silence, he suggests, was based in the conceptual and historical role Heidegger ascribed to the Volk and in particular to the German Volk. Heidegger's silence, Lang concludes, was thus not simply an expression of prejudice or of his public persona. It derived from his philosophical thought and becomes, therefore, a necessary consideration in assessing Heidegger as a thinker. In this context, Lang suggests, Heidegger's silence still speaks.

In The Future of the Holocaust, Berel Lang continues his inquiry into the causal mechanisms of decision-making and conduct in Nazi Germany and into responses to the genocide by individuals and nations—an inquiry that he began in Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide and pursued in Heidegger's Silence. Raising the question now of what the future of the Holocaust is, he addresses among other topics how history and memory together shape views of the Holocaust; how the concept of "intention"—which played a crucial part in the events of half a century ago—shapes history and memory themselves; and how future views of this genocide may alter those of today.In addition, Lang explores cultural representations of the "Final Solution"—from monuments to public school curricula—within the Jewish and German communities. He analyzes ethical issues concerning such concepts as intention, responsibility, forgiveness, and revenge, and puts forward a theory of the history of evil which provides a context for the Holocaust both historically and morally. Addressing the claims that the Nazi genocide was unique, Lang argues that the Holocaust is at once an actual series of events and a still future possibility. If the Holocaust occurred once, he argues, it can occur twice—and this view of the future remains an unavoidable premise for anyone now writing or thinking about that event in the past.

In The Future of the Holocaust, Berel Lang continues his inquiry into the causal mechanisms of decision-making and conduct in Nazi Germany and into responses to the genocide by individuals and nations—an inquiry that he began in Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide and pursued in Heidegger's Silence. Raising the question now of what the future of the Holocaust is, he addresses among other topics how history and memory together shape views of the Holocaust; how the concept of "intention"—which played a crucial part in the events of half a century ago—shapes history and memory themselves; and how future views of this genocide may alter those of today.In addition, Lang explores cultural representations of the "Final Solution"—from monuments to public school curricula—within the Jewish and German communities. He analyzes ethical issues concerning such concepts as intention, responsibility, forgiveness, and revenge, and puts forward a theory of the history of evil which provides a context for the Holocaust both historically and morally. Addressing the claims that the Nazi genocide was unique, Lang argues that the Holocaust is at once an actual series of events and a still future possibility. If the Holocaust occurred once, he argues, it can occur twice—and this view of the future remains an unavoidable premise for anyone now writing or thinking about that event in the past.

A ground-breaking attempt at a prolegomenon to the study of style, this collection brings together eleven essays by distinguished philosophers, literary theorists, art historians, and musicologists, all addressing the role played by style in the arts and literature.

Since Theodor Adorno's attack on the writing of poetry "after Auschwitz," artists and theorists have faced the problem of reconciling the moral enormity of the Nazi genocide with the artist's search for creative freedom. In Holocaust Representation, Berel Lang addresses the relation between ethics and art in the context of contemporary discussions of the Holocaust. Are certain aesthetic means or genres "out of bounds" for the Holocaust? To what extent should artists be constrained by the "actuality" of history-and is the Holocaust unique in raising these problems of representation? The dynamics between artistic form and content generally hold even more intensely, Lang argues, when art's subject has the moral weight of an event like the Holocaust. As authors reach beyond the standard conventions for more adequate means of representation, Holocaust writings frequently display a blurring of genres. The same impulse manifests itself in repeated claims of historical as well as artistic authenticity.Informing Lang's discussion are the recent conflicts about the truth-status of Benjamin Wilkomirski's "memoir" Fragments and the comic fantasy of Roberto Benigni's film Life Is Beautiful. Lang views Holocaust representation as limited by a combination of ethical and historical constraints. As art that violates such constraints often lapses into sentimentality or melodrama, cliche or kitsch, this becomes all the more objectionable when its subject is moral enormity. At an extreme, all Holocaust representation must face the test of whether its referent would not be more authentically expressed by silence-that is, by the absence of representation.

The term "genocide"-"group killing"-which first appeared in Raphael Lemkin's 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, had by 1948 established itself in international law through the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Since then the charge of genocide has been both widely applied but also contested. In Genocide: The Act as Idea, Berel Lang examines and illuminates the concept of genocide, at once articulating difficulties in its definition and proposing solutions to them. In his analysis, Lang explores the relation of genocide to group identity, individual and corporate moral responsibility, the concept of individual and group intentions, and the concept of evil more generally.The idea of genocide, Lang argues, represents a notable advance in the history of political and ethical thought which proposed alternatives to it, like "crimes against humanity," fail to take into account.

This work is an analysis of the ideology, causal patterns, and means employed in the Nazi genocide against the Jews. It argues that the events of the genocide compel reconsideration of such moral concepts as individual and group responsibility, the role of knowledge in ethical decisions, and the conditions governing the relation between guilt and forgiveness. It shows how the moral implications of genocide extend to linguistic and artistic presentations of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

This interdisciplinary collection of primary and secondary readings encourages scholars and students to engage critically with current debates about the origins, implementation and postwar interpretation of the Holocaust. Interdisciplinary content encourages students to engage with philosophical, political, cultural and literary debate as well as historiographical issues. Integrates oral histories and testimonies from both victims and perpetrators, including Jewish council leaders, victims of ghettos and camps, SS officials and German soldiers. Subsections can be used as the basis for oral or written exercises. Whole articles or substantial extracts are included wherever possible.