The Lesser Evil: Moral Approaches to Genocide Practices

ISBN-13: 9780714683959 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004 / 244 str.

Helmut Dubiel; Gabriel Motzkin

Opis

This book compares the genocide perpetrated by both Nazism and Communism. Both political systems were evil yet, when compared, they lose some of their power to shock. The book considers: the different receptions given to Nazism and Communism; whether people can behave rationally in contexts of great wickedness; whether the Communist or Nazi worldview was more rational the relationship between post-war memories and history; and how atrocities are remembered by society and how intellectuals construct them. The editors argue that these twentieth-century evils invite comparison if only because of their traumatic effects and that we have an obligation to understand what happened and an obligation to understand how we have dealt with it.

Spis treści

Part 1: Approaches 1. Nazism-Communism: Delineating the comparison 2. The Uses and Abuses of Comparison 3. Worstward Ho: On comparing totalitarianisms 4. Imagining the Absolute: Mapping western conceptions of evil 5. Remembrance and Knowledge: Nationalism and Stalinism in comparative discourse 6. Comparative Evil: Degrees, numbers and the problem of measure Part 2: Frames of Comparison 7. The Institutional Frame: Totalitarianism, Extermination and the State 8. Asian Communist Regimes: The other experience of the extreme 9. A Lesser Evil?: Italian fascism in/and the totalitarian equation 10. On the Moral Blindness of Communism Part 3: Legacies 11. Totalitarian Attempts, Anti-Totalitarian Networks: Thoughts on the taboo of comparison 12. If Hitler Invaded Hell: Distinguishing between Nazism and communism during World War II, the Cold War and since the fall of communism 13. The Memory of Crime and the Formation of Identity 14. Mirror-Writing of a Good Life?

O autorze

Helmut Dubiel is the incumbent of the Max Weber-Chair at New York University.

Gabriel Motzkin is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.