May 20, 2008 Humanities Core Course

Today's Plan

1) Kluger's Still Alive

2) Museums

3) Free Will

4) Discussion Questions

Today I'd like to focus in on "Part Two: The Camps." There are a number of issues in this part which deserve our attention.

There's the part about comparison vs. uniqueness, and what can be shared.

There's also talk of the Museum Culture.

As we'll see, these two issues are intertwined.

Let's read the entire seven pages. It will help those of you who've read it already (all three of you–ha!), and it will bring those of you who have not yet read it the chance to get up to speed.

Here are some key quotes:

"We don't honor the dead with these unattractive remnants of past crimes; we collect and keep them for the satisfaction of our own necrophilic desires. Violated taboos, such as child murder and mass murder, turn their victims into spirits, whom we offer a kind of home that they may haunt at will. Perhaps we are afraid they may leave the camps, and so we insist that their deaths were unique and must not be compared to any other losses or atrocities. Never again shall there be such a crime."

"The same thing does not happen twice anyway. Every event, like every human being and every dog is unique. We would be condemned to be isolated monads if we didn't compare and generalize, for comparisons are the brigdes from one unique life to another. In our hearts we all know that some aspects of the Shoah have been repeated elsewhere, today and yesterday, and will return in new guise tomorrow; and the camps, too, were only imitations (unique imitations, to be sure) of what had occurred the day before yesterday."

"During a discussion with some youngsters in Germany I am asked (as if it was a genuine question and not an accusation) whether I don't think that the Jews have turned into Nazis in their dealings with the Arabs, and haven't the Americans always acted like Nazis in their dealings with the Indians?"

"You learned nothing there, and least of all humanity and tolerance. Absolutely nothing good came out of the concentration camps ... ."

"And yet they could easily have objected. Don't I often insist that I learned something in the camps about what happens to us in extreme situations, which was good to know later on and was usable precisely because I don't reject all comparisons? And don't I resent those who would deny me this knowledge and those who assume, without further inquiry, that we all lost our minds and morals there?"

"Though the Shoah involved millions of people, it was a unique experience for all of them."

From an earlier part of the book:

"I feel no compunction about citing examples of my mother's petty cruelties towards me, my hearers act surprised, assume a stance of virtuous indignation, and tell me that, given the hardships we had to endure during the Hitler period, the victims should have come closer together and form strong bonds. Particularly young people should have done so, say the elderly. But this is sentimental rubbish and depends on a false concept of suffering as a source of moral education."

(Page 52.)

So, where does that leave us? I would like to discuss this, now that we've all read it. What do you think?

This bears directly on the current controversy as to how the "holocaust" should be used.

What are the museums for?

Has anyone been to one?

Let’s look at some.

Now, I turn to the question of free will in Kluger's Still Alive.

Free Will

This is the view that our actions originate with us and that we are, at least in some instances, the authors of our actions such that we can be held morally responsible for them.

Determinism

This is the view that everything, including human action, is necessitated or caused by what has come before.

The Key Question

How is free will related to determinism?

Some Answers to our QuestionCompatibilism (sometimes called soft determinism): Free will is compatible with

determinism; Freedom is absence from external constraint.Incompatibilism: Free will is not compatible with determinism

Libertarians: Reject determinism in favor of free willHard determinists: Reject free will in favor of determinism

Kluger’s take in Still Alive (pages 106-109)

What do you think?

Kluger's take in Still Alive (page 39):

" ... we know how they died in the gas chambers. The strong climbed on top of the weak in the last agony, as they choked. So the men were always on top when they pulled out the corpses, and women and children at the bottom. That is what came to mind when I heard that he liked to say he had no elbows: the question of whether he trampled on those who were weaker. My father did this? On kids like me, when he died? Perhaps he didn't, since he had no elbows. But do you have a choice, or have you reached the limits of freedom, when you are choking on poison gas? These are the questions I cannot answer and cannot shed."

What do you think?

Now, onto the Discussion Questions ...

1. Courage and Cowardice. Brecht’s Prologue to Antigone prompts the question: “What would you do?” On p. 156, Kluger considers not only this question, but also what we can expect of ourselves or others in terms of courage. Read her comments carefully and decide how you would agree or disagree (or both).

2. Family: Describe Kluger’s relationship with her mother. When this book appeared in Germany, many were shocked that she would speak of her mother in these terms. When it appeared in the US, Laura Bush gave it to one of her daughters for Christmas because it portrayed “an interesting mother-daughter relationship.” What do you think of this relationship.

3. What kind of relationship does Kluger have with her father? With her brother?

4. Kluger suggests that she is not being fair to many of those she writes about. Where does she do this and, if she knows she is being unfair, why does she write what she does?

5. (184) “Damn right, I am hard to satisfy!” Our narrator asks a lot of others and she acknowledges this. Have you found her difficult or difficult to satisfy? Where?

Anything else?

Cool ...