Abstract
This chapter draws a parallel between Améry’s intellectual attitude in Auschwitz and Descartes’s intellectual attitude in the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). It shows how both Améry and Descartes took refuge in their intellect. Descartes sought refuge in the certainty of the I think after carrying out his methodical doubt. And Améry espoused intellectual transcendence as a coping mechanism after failing to comprehend the unifying thread that led to the rise of Nazism. The chapter concludes with Améry’s view that the intellect is in essence a logical framework similar to Descartes’s Cogito, which is primarily fit for contemplation.
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Notes
- 1.
Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits. Sidney Rosenfeld & Stella Rosenfeld (Trans.) (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. 106–7. Heretofore will be cited as AML.
- 2.
Marina MacKay, The Politics and Pathologies of War Writing in Conflict, Nationhood and Corporeality in Modern Literature. Petra Rau (Ed.) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 175.
- 3.
AML, p. 7.
- 4.
AML, p. 8 Preface.
- 5.
AML, p. 9 Preface.
- 6.
AML, p. 8 Preface.
- 7.
Thomas Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 77.
- 8.
AML, p. 9 Preface.
- 9.
Thomas Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 77.
- 10.
AML, p. 11 Preface.
- 11.
Jean Améry, Enlightenment as Philosophia Perennis in Jean Améry: Radical Humanism Essays. Sidney Rosenfeld & Stella P. Rosenfeld (Trans.) (Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 138–9.
- 12.
AML, p. 10 Preface.
- 13.
Christopher Bigsby, Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 19.
- 14.
AML, p. 2.
- 15.
Stephen C. Feinstein, Art After Auschwitz in Problems Unique to the Holocaust. Harry J. Cargas (Ed.) (Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 1999), p. 152.
- 16.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Donald A. Cress (Trans.) (Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1993), p. 13.
- 17.
Roger Ariew, Descartes and Scholasticism: The Intellectual Background to Descartes’ Thought in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. John Cottingham (Ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 65.
- 18.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Donald A. Cress (Trans.) (Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1993), p. 13.
- 19.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Donald A. Cress (Trans.) (Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1993), p. 16.
- 20.
AML, pp. 2–3.
- 21.
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Donald A. Cress (Trans.) (Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 1993), p. 20.
- 22.
AML, p. 6.
- 23.
Margherita Ganeri, ‘Intellectuals and the Memory of Auschwitz. Améry, Levi and the Unusual Case of Viktor E. Frankl’ Italica, Vol. 92, Number 4, 2015, p. 828.
- 24.
AML, p. 3.
- 25.
AML, p. 3.
- 26.
AML, p. 5.
- 27.
AML, p. 5.
- 28.
AML, p. 6.
- 29.
AML, p. 7.
- 30.
Jean Améry, Enlightenment as Philosophia Perennis in Jean Améry: Radical Humanism Essays. Sidney Rosenfeld & Stella P. Rosenfeld (Trans.) (Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 139.
- 31.
AML, p. 8.
- 32.
Thomas Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), p. 69.
- 33.
AML, p. 12.
- 34.
AML, pp. 12–3.
- 35.
AML, p. 12.
- 36.
AML, p. 12.
- 37.
Georg Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. T.M. Knox (Trans.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 222.
- 38.
AML, p. 14.
- 39.
AML, p. 14.
- 40.
AML, p. 14.
- 41.
AML, p. 14.
- 42.
AML, p. 15.
- 43.
AML, p. 2.
- 44.
AML, p. 15.
- 45.
Soren Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong (Trans.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 18.
- 46.
AML, p. 15.
- 47.
Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Trans.) (New York: Zone Books, 1999), p. 74.
- 48.
AML, p. 16.
- 49.
AML, p. 16.
- 50.
AML, p. 17.
- 51.
Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Trans.) (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 152.
- 52.
AML, p. 17.
- 53.
AML, p. 13.
- 54.
AML, p. 18.
- 55.
AML, p. 19.
- 56.
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Trans.) (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), p. 227.
- 57.
Ibid., pp. 306–7.
- 58.
Margherita Ganeri, ‘Intellectuals and the Memory of Auschwitz. Améry, Levi and the Unusual Case of Viktor E. Frankl’ Italica, Vol. 92(4), 2015, p. 828.
- 59.
AML, p. 19.
- 60.
AML, p. 19.
- 61.
AML, p. 11.
- 62.
AML, p. 19.
- 63.
AML, p. 19.
- 64.
AML, p. 20.
- 65.
AML, p. 20.
- 66.
AML, p. 20.
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Jean-Marie, V. (2018). Memory, the Jewish Intellectual, and Cartesian Cogito. In: Reflections on Jean Améry. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02345-4_1
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