Morality After Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic

by Peter J. Haas

Overview

"This book is a study of the Holocaust as problem in ethical theory. How could a whole society participate in an ethic of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without opposition from responsible political, legal, medical, or religious leaders? How does a society create and adopt its ethical norms? This is a study in narrative ethics at its best, yet the author's purpose is to discover how a people redefined evil to the degree that they committed heinous atrocities that were reprehensible under normal circumstances." --Guy Greenfield, Southwestern Journal of Theology "Peter Haas gives us a good overall description of the Holocaust, the way the Nazis and their myriad collaborators treated the Jews. The book . . . is well formulated and well written. It makes a good one-volume introduction to the Holocaust." --Frederick K. Wentz, Lutheran Quarterly "Peter Haas urges us to recognize ourselves in the perpetrators of the Holocaust. . . . In the course of setting forth his position, the author offers a concise and wonderfully accessible account of the formation of German political culture from Bismarck through Hitler. . . . Morality After Auschwitz is a serious book that should provoke long thoughts, and perhaps useful disputes, about the power of ethics to shape political cultures." --First Things

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725233874
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	01/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	268
File size:	40 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Peter J. Haas is Abba Hillel Silver Professor of Jewish Studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
Peter J. Haas is Abba Hillel Silver Professor of Jewish Studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

Part 1 The Intellectual Matrix of an Ethic 11

1 Conceptualizing Evil: The Jew as Symbol 13

2 The Dynamics of Evil: Nineteenth-Century Theories of Racial Conflict 22

3 The Arena for fighting Evil: The Polity of Fascism 31

4 Dissolution of the Old Ethic: The Germany Hitler Inherited 38

5 The Social Context of the New Ethic: Jews and Judaism in the Second Reich 51

Part 2 The Growth of an Ethic 59

6 The Smallest Circle: Germany, 1933-1939 61

7 Exporting the Ethic: Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland 72

8 The Invasion of Russia 81

9 The Expansion into Western Europe 91

10 The Final Stage: Including the Balkans 99

Part 3 Ethics and the Shaping of Social Institutions 111

11 Ethics as Partisan Ideology 113

12 The Bureaucratization of the Ethic: The S.S. 124

13 The Politicization of the Ethic: The German Government 133

14 The Ideal Institution of the Ethic: Auschwitz 141

15 Scripting the Victim: Jewish Councils 156

16 Rewarding the Perpetrators: The Economics of the Holocaust 164

Part 4 Responding to an Ethic: The Loss of Evil 179

17 The Perspective of Insiders 181

18 The Reaction of Outsiders 191

19 Nuremberg: The Failure of Law 203

20 Epilogue: Jewish Theology and the Rethinking of Ethics 214

Afterwards: The Holocaust and Us 231

Notes 235

Index 253

Acknowledgments 257

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This book is a study of the Holocaust as problem in ethical theory. How could a whole society participate in an ethic of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without opposition from responsible political, legal, medical, or religious leaders? How does a society create and adopt its ethical norms? This is a study in narrative ethics at its best, yet the author's purpose is to discover how a people redefined evil to the degree that they committed heinous atrocities that were reprehensible under normal circumstances."
—Guy Greenfield, Southwestern Journal of Theology

"Peter Haas gives us a good overall description of the Holocaust, the way the Nazis and their myriad collaborators treated the Jews. The book . . . is well formulated and well written. It makes a good one-volume introduction to the Holocaust."
—Frederick K. Wentz, Lutheran Quarterly

"Peter Haas urges us to recognize ourselves in the perpetrators of the Holocaust. . . . In the course of setting forth his position, the author offers a concise and wonderfully accessible account of the formation of German political culture from Bismarck through Hitler. . . . Morality After Auschwitz is a serious book that should provoke long thoughts, and perhaps useful disputes, about the power of ethics to shape political cultures."
—First Things

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a study of the Holocaust as problem in ethical theory. How could a whole society participate in an ethic of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without opposition from responsible political, legal, medical, or religious leaders? How does a society create and adopt its ethical norms? This is a study in narrative ethics at its best, yet the author's purpose is to discover how a people redefined evil to the degree that they committed heinous atrocities that were reprehensible under normal circumstances."
—Guy Greenfield, Southwestern Journal of Theology

"Peter Haas gives us a good overall description of the Holocaust, the way the Nazis and their myriad collaborators treated the Jews. The book . . . is well formulated and well written. It makes a good one-volume introduction to the Holocaust."
—Frederick K. Wentz, Lutheran Quarterly

"Peter Haas urges us to recognize ourselves in the perpetrators of the Holocaust. . . . In the course of setting forth his position, the author offers a concise and wonderfully accessible account of the formation of German political culture from Bismarck through Hitler. . . . Morality After Auschwitz is a serious book that should provoke long thoughts, and perhaps useful disputes, about the power of ethics to shape political cultures."
—First Things

From the Publisher