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Suffering Witness: The Quandary of Responsibility After the Irreparable
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Suffering Witness: The Quandary of Responsibility After the Irreparable Hardcover - 2000

by James Hatley


From the publisher

Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, James Hatley uses the prose of Primo Levi and Tadeusz Borowski, as well as the poetry of Paul Celan, to question why witnessing the Shoah is so pressing a responsibility for anyone living in its aftermath. He argues that the witnessing of irreparable loss leaves one in an irresoluble quandary but that the attentiveness of that witness resists the destructive legacy of annihilation. "In this new and sensitive synthesis of scrupulous thinking about the Holocaust (beginning with scruples about the term Holocaust itself), James Hatley approaches all the major questions surrounding our overwhelming inadequacy in the aftermath of the irreparable. If there is anything unique (in a non-trivial sense) about the Holocaust, surely it is the imperious moral urgency that compels those who contemplate it to revise their view of what it means to be human, and to bear witness to such an event.

Details

  • Title Suffering Witness: The Quandary of Responsibility After the Irreparable
  • Author James Hatley
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Pages 282
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher State University of New York Press
  • Date October 2000
  • Features Bibliography
  • ISBN 9780791447055 / 0791447057
  • Themes
    • Ethnic Orientation: Jewish
    • Topical: Holocaust
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 99087496
  • Dewey Decimal Code 940.531

Media reviews

Citations

  • Reference and Research Bk News, 02/01/2001, Page 23

About the author

James Hatley is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Salisbury State University.