Thinking and Killing
Thinking and Killing by Alon Segev
English | Oct. 17, 2013 | ISBN: 1614511284 | 117 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
English | Oct. 17, 2013 | ISBN: 1614511284 | 117 Pages | PDF | 1 MB
This book explores the phenomenon of the Third Reich from a philosophical perspective. It concentrates on how Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism are conceived by eight German thinkers from the Continental tradition, exposing and then exploring the tension between ideology and philosophy, between submission to authority and genuine critical thinking, which constitute the essence of the Continental philosophical tradition.
Nazism and the genocide of the Jews are arguably among the most studied, analyzed, and debated subjects in modern history. Even when one disregards the question of whether these are unique or rather potentially repeatable events, they remain a reference point in dealing with any other mass killings. It is common to ask, for example, whether Stalin’s mass executions or the genocide in Darfur exceeds the Holocaust in number of causalities, cruelty, or thoroughness of the perpetrators carrying out the annihilation. In posing the question regarding the Holocaust in that way, one tends to utilize a quantitative analysis, or to view it as an unexplainable phenomenon without antecedents (or some combination of the two).