Moral Arrogance and not Understanding the Holocaust

I have just been reading a particularly interesting posting by Michael Hauskeller concerning Primo Levi’s attitude to the Holocaust. Levi’s attitude is summed up by Hauskeller as follows,

“Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand is almost to justify. Let me explain: ‘understanding’ a proposal or human behaviour means to ‘contain’ it, contain its author, put oneself in his place, identify with him.” (1)

Hauskeller is inclined to concur with Levi and claims that whilst we must know what causes evil, such as the Holocaust, we should not try to understand it. In this posting I will investigate Hauskeller’s claim. I will conclude that if we fail to attempt to understand the Holocaust we can be accused of moral arrogance. I will then suggest such arrogance is dangerous.

Hauskeller supports his claim as follows.

“Understanding is more intimate, it bridges the reflective distance between the subject and the object of understanding. By “understanding” the Holocaust we would acknowledge it as a real human possibility, as something that is understandable for humans to do. But it is important to reject this possibility, to preserve an image of the human that positively excludes it.”

The Holocaust was a great evil and perhaps we could attempt only to know what caused it in order to prevent a similar event ever happening again. Perhaps we could also attempt to regard people like Hitler and Stalin as not really human. My response to such attempts is twofold. Firstly the holocaust was not committed by Hitler and a few of his cronies alone. The holocaust was an evil and it was made possible by a great number of people doing evil. Were all such people animals, sub human or even untermensch in Nazi terminology? Secondly what does it mean to know what caused the Holocaust? Does it simply mean to know what conditions preceded it? Does it exclude trying to understand the thinking of its perpetrators? If it does then I would suggest our knowledge is dangerously limited. I would further suggest if our knowledge of what caused the holocaust is not to be dangerously limited then we must try to understand the human beings who carried it out as well as those who planned it.

Levi says the hatred that caused the Holocaust is not in us; it is outside man, it is a poison fruit sprung from the deadly trunk of Fascism. He goes on to say no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and others. The implication of the above is such people are not normal human beings. Perhaps Levi is correct and such people are not normal human beings. But nonetheless they are human beings, even if defective ones, and as such share many of the characteristics of normal human beings. Moreover all of so called normal human beings share some of the harmful characteristics of such people, if to a much lesser degree. We all can be cruel, even if it is only the occasional uncalled for cutting remark. I would suggest if we differentiate ourselves completely from such people we might justly be accused of moral arrogance. The reasons for this differentiation are understandable. But nonetheless this arrogance is extremely dangerous. It leads us to the conclusion we have no need to understand such people. But such arrogance also means we fail to fully understand and hence control the harmful characteristics we share with such people. In attempting to preserve a certain image of what it is to be human we fail to adequately understand ourselves.

1.      Primo Levi; 2000; If This Is a Man, and The Truce; Everyman; introduction.