Abstract
This chapter reveals different aspects of Améry’s intricate philosophical approach toward the problem of testimony. I tackle Améry’s dealing with this issue in light of three philosophical challenges: (a) testimony and the question of historical objectivity; (b) testimony and the reality of evil; and (c) the tension between testimony and the concept of moral kitsch, as well as the relation between testimony and the problem of the so-called universalization of the Holocaust.
Die Leute reden über Politik und Geschichte, objektive Vorgänge. Ich bleibe fixiert, bis zum bittersten Ende, an das Erlebnis.
—Améry (2005), p. 46)
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- 1.
Regarding the uniqueness of the Holocaust, see, for example, Margalit and Motzkin (1996). Améry himself stresses occasionally the sui-generis of the Holocaust; see, for example, his 27.2.67 letter to Horst Krüger: “Ich habe noch immer und trotz der ungeheurlichen Verbrechen in Vietnam […] das Gefühl, als sei das Dritte Reich etwas Singuläres und Irreduktibles” (Améry 2007, p. 271).
- 2.
See, for example, Eilperin (2015).
- 3.
See, for example, Dunham and Chiacu (2015).
- 4.
Benhorin (2010).
- 5.
Bletman (2016).
- 6.
See here a series of papers published by Améry from 1969–1978: “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus” (1969), “Die Linke und der Zionismus” (1969), “Juden, Linke—Linke, Juden. Ein politisches Problem ändert seine Konturen” (1973), “Der neue Antisemitismus” (1976), “Shylock, der Kitsch und die Gefahr” (1976), “Der ehrbare Antisemitismus” (1976), in Améry (2005, pp. 131–200). This issue stood at the center of Améry’s attention also in his letters; see, for instance, his public letter to Erich Fried (Améry 2005, pp. 79–83).
- 7.
See here Lang (2013).
- 8.
“Die Zeit der Rehabilitierung. Das Dritte Reich und die Geschichtliche Objektivität”.
- 9.
All translations from Améry’s works are mine.
- 10.
For different attempts of philosophers after Kant—mainly Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling—to overcome this Kantian maze, see Noller (2015). The Kantian position is much more sophisticated than presented here, and he developed it further after Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten; my aim here was just to point to the kind of challenge he was facing.
- 11.
See, for example, Stangeth (2011).
- 12.
An interesting point regarding Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, a text which serves according to Arendt as a mere report (Bericht) of the Eichmann’s trial, is the fact that the testimonies of the survivors—which constituted more than 50% of the court’s hearing—are barely mentioned by Arendt. I will address some other aspects of the tension between philosophy and testimony in due course.
- 13.
See, for example, the definition Schelling suggests for freedom.
- 14.
- 15.
Améry explicitly mentions the term ‘kitsch’ in this essay; he quotes some lines from Heidegger’s Der Feldweg and maintains that they would have a place of honor in a book dedicated to German kitsch (2004, p. 321).
- 16.
For a revealing discussion on this issue, see Kulka (1988).
- 17.
For an encompassing account on Heidegger and the political in general, see Grosser (2011).
- 18.
Regarding Heidegger’s celebrated—and morally outrageous—comparison between the “mechanized food industry” which is, according to Heidegger, “in essence the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers and extermination camps”, Berel Lang remarks that an hypothetical reader of these comparisons “who was unaware that Heidegger had written [this comparison] […] after living through—in—the twelve years of Nazi rule might reasonably infer that its author had inhabited a distant land in another age, that he possessed at most second or third hand knowledge of the events he refers to, and that because of this he would care only academically about their histories […]”; in: Lang (1996, p. 19). This corresponds, I think, to Améry’s line of thought, according to which Heidegger’s writing evokes the impression that he was not attending his historical time in a way.
- 19.
For other examples besides Heidegger, see Sluga (1993).
- 20.
This is not to say that Jaspers did not genuinely suffer during the war (his wife was, for instance, Jewish, and Jaspers himself was fired from his job at the university in Heidelberg and lived in constant peril of being arrested and deported for the duration of the war), or that Jaspers only pretended—post factum—to be an opponent of the Nazis world view and acts (this was surely not the case). Améry simply rejects the analogy implied by the use of the same linguistic terminus.
- 21.
This, I believe, might explain, among other factors, Améry’s principal rejection of new French philosophy. Améry raises, though, a series of principal (i.e. philosophical) reasons why he thinks philosophers like Foucault or Lévi-Strauss are nothing but a new form of ‘irrationalism’ (‘Ein neuer Verrat der Intellektuellen’, 2004, p. 163); however, one cannot help noticing that Améry’s existential state as a witness also plays an important role in this rejection. For structuralism assumes, according to Améry, “mistrust in the subject, in the language, in the sense of what is said” (e.g. see in ‘Wider den Strukturalismus. Das Beispiel Michel Foucault’, 2004, p. 99), and even doubts that something ever happened, that there are occurrences in the world, that the very concept of historical facts has an application (‘Fremdling in dieser Zeit. Zu Werk und Gestalt des Strukturalisten Claude Lévi-Strauss’, 2004, p. 122). But this means, in fact, to deny the very possibility of being a witness; for the witness is a subject, and he tells about something which took place, and he does so using language. The witness on whom evil was inflicted wants to speak, and it is as if (French) philosophy doubts his ability of doing so, as if philosophy itself cannot, on principal ground, entail ‘testimony’ as such. In this sense, the witness, by his very existence, refutes—in an existential, not in a logical way—these philosophies.
- 22.
“Mein Judentum” (Améry 2005, p. 41).
- 23.
On some major aspects of the generalizations, see Yakira (2010).
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Kravitz, A. (2019). On Historical Objectivity, the Reality of Evil and Moral Kitsch: Jean Améry as a Witness. In: Ataria, Y., Kravitz, A., Pitcovski, E. (eds) Jean Améry. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28095-6_2
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