Ethics After Auschwitz?

Can we still speak of a “human condition”—a moral term—when human beings are capable of genocide? Does ethical responsibility have meaning if another’s death can be manufactured by the state? Can traditional morality and religion still find a place in a world of which it cannot make sense? In this class, we will take the Holocaust as the beginning of a tragic account of contemporary humanity and examine the possibilities for human life and morality in light of the social and political orchestration of mass killing and oppression. Authors include, Adorno, Agamben, Arendt, Fackenheim, Foucault, Levi, and Levinas.