Moral Relativism and the Holocaust

What can the Holocaust teach us about morality and ethics? Does the Holocaust pose a challenge for moral relativism? Zygmunt Bauman argues yes.

In Modernity and the Holocaust, Bauman argues that the Holocaust proves that societal rules, norms and standards cannot be the only source of morality. Perpetrators often argued in court that they were only following the law of their country. How can we judge them if morals are the product of a relative social context?

Instead, Bauman argues, the source of morality is in a fundamental responsibility to another in proximity. And there’s plenty of evidence for this. A biological repulsion to killing, for example. Or the distancing and division of labor that was required to scale the genocide. If proximity and responsibility are at the heart of a kind of moral objectivity, what might the consequences of this be?

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Sources:

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men

Douglas Huneke, A Study of Christians Who Rescued Jews During the Nazi Era

Roger S. Gottlieb, Some Implications of the Holocaust for Ethics and Social Philosophy

Janusz Reykowski, The Justice Motive and Altruistic Helping: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Europe

Kristen Renwick Monroe, Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust

Credits:

[carlomarx]

"I'll return to genocide in the future."
-Then & Now, Feb 9, 2021

[matildaborgenstierna]

This channel is absolutely amazing! As a new sociology student i find that it pretty difficult to get used to and decipher the complex ideas and language in the literature, and your videos provide a sort of starting point of understanding that makes that whole process a lot easier. What you're doing is truly democratising knowledge!

[TealiciousTea]

'Society manipulates morality' is perhaps the keenest insight from Modernity and the Holocaust. Certainly the one that has stayed with me and haunted my thinking the most.

[lsobrien]

This is fascinating, thanks. Would love to see more Bauman related vids.

[Air_Dan]

Thank you for making such amazing videos, as a graduate student all these videos help me understand text and etc. better especially during this period of online learning. I just became Patron on Patreon and I hope this community continues to grow and it will with such polished, digestible academic videos!

[seungmin]

Was waiting for Bauman to pop up since the last video!! Appreciate these videos so much. Lots of love from Seoul.

[alldavids]

Your channel is quickly becoming my favorite. Great work.

[rasleyforde]

Our moral it's inscribed in our heart. Our emotions and instincts often are imoral, but the spirit it's the source of good. We all know this deep down

[humanbeing]

It's disturbing how many of the features of the holocaust are repeated throughout history.
I'm particularly reminded of the "haircutting order" of Qing China, which mandated Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and have the rest as a braid, which serves as a policy the subjugate the majority Han population, along with restrictions in government positions Han people can hold, forced deportations, outlawing of mixed-race marriages, various massacres etc.

[nelsonphillips]

Some people wouldn't say the things they say online in the real world. I don't do that, apparently I am difficult to get along with.

[Skepticallady]

Your content is awesome! Looking forward for the Thomas Hobbes videos! Thank you and a big hug from Costa Rica 😄

[annihilist]

enlightening video, thank you. i have renewed thanks for my proximity to so many different cultures and religions, despite not following them myself, in my neighbors and community, and the freedom they have to peacefully practice them.

[cameronmclennan]

Really great series, thanks so much for these videos. You mentioned your next series would be on human behaviour, mostly focusing on the social sciences, which I understand. However, I'd love at some point to see you incorporate the recent advances in understanding in the other sciences, which, for me, are excellently described by Robert Sapolsky's book: "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst"

Also, you mentioned in the last video the theories of mob/crowd behaviour of Gustave Le Bon, which were also discussed in Tom Nicolas' video from a couple of days ago on Cancel Culture. If you haven't yet seen it, seems like you two countrymen would have some interesting conversations about these topics! Thanks again for your work

[Andi_andI]

Antisemitism never really went away. As a Jewish individual I want you to know how much it means to me personally to see people openly discussing the history surrounding it. Too often in the UK it feels like a topic people would rather pretend doesn't exist. Thank you.

[huesophie]

This is such an important video! Everybody needs to hear this

[toobalkain]

Irene Zisblatt, the author of the famous Five Diamonds, brought 5 diamonds to Auschwitz in case she needed money to buy food, and because they were frisked daily, for 4 years she'd eat, defecate and eat those diamonds again, sometimes without as much as washing them since water was scarce, or she'd clean them with a bit of soup after the trip to the latrine. She managed to survive the whole thing and keep the diamonds in her possession, I guess she didn't need to buy food after all, then waited for 30+ years telling no one about her amazing feat, and then wrote the book that made her a star, entered the lucrative holo lecture circuit and became a professional holocaust survivor doing quite well for herself. A TV show seems to be in the works to make sure we never forget.

[creepycrawlything]

The speaker in this video offers, amongst the many things said, two notions. Firstly, and crucially, a notion of how morality can emerge and have effect, where "distance" is less present in a social than it is on a societal plane. Secondly, the notion that morality (extant?) can or tends to be manipulated by societal dynamics. These two notions (three if we count "distance" as central to the thesis offered in the video) are perfectly valid.
What might then come to mind for some, is: that more might have to be said about the social; and more might have to be said about any "morality" emerging from or having its epigenesis in the social.
Foucault and Nietzche and many others then offer a conception of the social and what can emerge from its dynamics, that perhaps suggests (far?) greater complexity than the thesis of this video allows for.
My own sense then is, that for some individuals, and they dramatically represented by Foucault and Nietzche, feral truth seeking and testing takes such priority, that recourse to thinking about ethics and morality is secondary (more attaching to the phenomena of otherness rather than self), if at all taken up.
My further sense is, that while approaching the Shoah Holcaust in terms of ethics and morality is valid and relevant, it may miss the crucial point that the likes of Foucault and Nietzche and many others, inquired existentially into the same matrix of being from which Nazism and the insanity of antiSemitism emerged, and opposed that perverse outcome on the ground from which it emerged.

[aaron]

It boils down to empathy, otherwise known as 'the golden rule.'

[PackinForSuperbowl]

I would never equivocate the suffering of the Jewish people (and others) tortured and killed during this madness to probably anything else in human history but a thought experiment I've run has plagued my mind for a long time. While we as a society said to the Nazi soldiers that they alone were responsible for the evil they did and being ordered to do so didn't absolve them of responsibility, we painted it (insubordination) out to be easier to do than it likely was.

What we needed to be asking is how much suffering should we have expected them to endure in order to not follow those orders, right? There clearly has to be some line where we would be forced to agree that the suffering they would incur for not following orders absolved them legally from being responsible for what they did when following those orders. For example, if one's decision to disobey orders resulted in their entire family being killed, is that a high enough price for them to pay for not following orders? What is the exact price we expect someone to pay for being held responsible to do that right thing? What crimes would you commit to save your child's life? What would you do that is considered morally wrong to save your toenails from being ripped out?

[TheLacedaemonian]

Thank you for doing these videos on the Holocaust. They have been incredibly informative and important in helping understand the banality of evil. The idea of proximity and morality is fascinating!