The Victim in Ethical Theology

Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Améry

Authors

  • Paul Rigby Saint Paul University Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.v26i2.233

Keywords:

Levinas’ Tragical Ethical Theology, Jean Améry, Nietzche

Abstract

Nietzsche would regard Levinas’ ethical theology, in which the moral subject is responsible for the oppressed as “other,” as a “slave morality” which derives its moral force from resentment. In defence of Levinas’ ethics I turn to the life and reflections of Jean Améry, Jew, philosopher, atheist, resistance fighter tortured by the Gestapo, survivor of Auschwitz. His life is a “trace” of the tragic inhabiting Levinas’ theology. Améry rejects Nietzsche’s view of resentment. Drawing upon Bataille’s distinctive understanding of sadism, Améry claims that oppression is a pitiable degree of loneliness in the face of the tormentor’s lust for domination. This can be righted if the
tormentor, by desiring to reverse this situation, becomes a fellow human being. Améry rejects evangelical forgiveness as a sub-moral abandonment of the oppressed’s responsibility for the oppressor. The historical impossibility of this reversal reveals the tragic destiny of the oppressed and of Levinas’ theology of the “other.”

References

Adorno, Theodor W. 1973 Negative Dialectics, translated by E.B. Ashton. New York: The Seabury Press.

Ash, Timothy Garton. 1998 The truth About Dictatorship. The New York Review of Books 45(3): 35–40.

Améry, Jean. 1977 At the Minds Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities. Trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella Rosenfeld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Levi, Primo. 1995 The Drowned and the Saved. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. London: Little Brown.

Levinas, Emmanuel. 1981 Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff.

Ethics and Infinity. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Collected Philosophical Papers. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff

Nine Talmudic Readings. Trans. Annette Aronowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1967 On the Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books.

Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.

Published

2008-01-23

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Rigby, P. (2008). The Victim in Ethical Theology: Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Améry. Religious Studies and Theology, 26(2), 233-254. https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.v26i2.233