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Humanism in response to the

Holocaust—destruction or innovation?
Jörn Rüsen
Published online: 18 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: Jörn Rüsen (2008) Humanism in response to the Holocaust—destruction or
innovation?, Postcolonial Studies, 11:2, 191-200

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 Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 191200, 2008

Humanism in response to the

Holocaust*destruction or
innovation?
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JÖRN RÜSEN

Auschwitz ist eines jener großen Menetekel, die in Gestalt eines schrecklichen
Schlags auftreten, um den Menschen hellhörig zu machen*falls er hinhört.
Imre Kertész1
It is the intention of this article2 to confront a plea for a new world-wide
humanism with the historical experience of the Holocaust. It is rather easy
to postulate humanistic values as a guideline for intercultural encounter and
communication, but it is difficult to make this humanistic set of values
plausible, to bring it down to earth, and to give it a place in real life, and
make it effective in the course of history.
There are a lot of arguments in favour of creating a new humanism to
solve the problem of intercultural communication in the globalizing process
of today. In this process, different cultural traditions have to come to terms
with their difference. At the same time they have to come to terms with the
necessity of a trans- or cross-cultural set of values, which are capable of
solving conflicts in a peaceful and sustainable way. I don’t believe, of course,
that conflicts are mainly a matter of values or cultural orientations, but
culture plays an important role in them: it articulates conflicts, gives them
sense and meaning by interpretation, and it is necessary to solve them
according to dominant patterns of significance and interpretation. These
patterns allow or prevent the search for peaceful solutions; they decide
whether human interaction is fundamentally or even exclusively driven by a
blind will to power, or whether the human will to power has’an eye’ of
thinking and reflecting, which gives human agency a sense-directed
intention, referring to acts of understanding and a search for alternatives.
Such an anthropology where culture*the human ability of making sense of
the world*is not simply a tool for pursuing interests but also a mode of
conceptualizing them, is a basis for a new humanism. This humanism is a
framework of cultural orientation which confronts the conflicts and clashes
between different cultural traditions with a comprehensive idea of human-
kind. It includes a general and fundamental normative quality of human life.
Humankind is both: the widest horizon of the validity of social norms and the
widest horizon of experiencing human life. It has a normative and an
ISSN 1368-8790 print/ISSN 1466-1888 online/08/02019110 # 2008 Jörn Rüsen
DOI: 10.1080/13688790802004703
 JÖRN RÜSEN

empirical dimension, which can only be artificially distinguished from each

other.
Humanism is an explication of this synthesis. It can be expressed in the
Kantian formulation: that every human being is not only a means for the
purposes of others, but a purpose in itself.3 The normative meaning of this
statement is clear: human intersubjectivity should be guided by the rule that
everyone has to recognize everybody else as a subject of his or her own, with
his or her own will and ability to guide it by sense*and meaningful
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intentions. The empirical meaning of this statement articulates an approach

to the vast field of culture where these intentions have become manifest in
different life-forms changing in space and time.
There is an established category of this synthesis of regulating and
experiencing human life in the vast variety of its cultural orientations: it is
history. According to my definition history presents humankind as a realm of
experience and as a realm of normativity, called ethics. And here lies the
problem of humanism: it inevitably refers to history, and it is this reference
which confronts it with a sharp difference between a general ethical rule of
human conduct and the reality of human life. The awareness of difference is
not new, but its austerity is.
This difference has two sides: first the variety and even heterogeneity of
value systems in human life contradicts the idea of a universal valid
humanistic value system. Since this variety includes different humanisms
with claims for universal validity, any approach to this validity creates
conflicts and clashes. In order to avoid them, the only plausible and realistic
humanism seems to be relativistic.
The second objection of history to humanism is the overall and obvious
fact of human inhumanity. The Holocaust is a paradigm for this inhumanity.4
It represents it in an utmost radicality. Its logic is the ethnocentric
asymmetrical evaluation in distinguishing between self and otherness,
between belonging together and being different from others. And its
factuality is a murder of six million people. They were robbed of their
quality of being human by an imposed definition of their identity, which
condemned them to death. Its utmost radicality is the ethnocentric negation
of the victims’ status as human beings. Thus their ascribed identity meant
their death.
As to the problem of difference and relativism, it can’t be treated in the
context of my consideration of the importance of the Holocaust experience
for the new world-wide humanism. I can only indicate a possible solution:
one has to establish a meta-level of normativity referring to the level of
cultural diversity.5 On this meta-level diversity can be affirmed and, at the
same time, overcome in a universal rule. It is a meta-rule of mutual
recognition of cultural difference in intercultural communication.6
But what about the Holocaust experience? It is the Holocaust as a world-
wide accepted paradigm of inhumanity which seems to negate any attempt at
a humanistic world view. Has the tradition of Western humanism not been
murdered in Auschwitz? Does its effect as ‘Zivilisationsbruch’ (rupture of
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 HUMANISM IN RESPONSE TO THE HOLOCAUST*DESTRUCTION OR INNOVATION?

civilization)7 not forbid any idea of humanism as one of the traditional

essentials of Western culture?
As a historical fact, the Holocaust indeed negates universal humanism in a
twofold way of dehumanizing: it dehumanizes victims and the perpetrators as
well. The victims are robbed of their humanity and physically killed, and the
perpetrators mentally kill their own humanity by dehumanizing and killing
the others. The relationship among them is asymmetrical, of course; it is
characterized by the difference between suffering and acting.
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But only looking at the dehumanization of victims and perpetrators

presents the Holocaust in too narrow a perspective. In its social context one
has to take into account those who profited from it and those who were the
bystanders. Both groups shared the process of dehumanization in general to
different degrees. Profiting from the dehumanization of others dehumanizes
the profiteers, and witnessing dehumanization and keeping distance and
neutrality breaks the humanity of the bystanders, which they share with the
victims.
How can humanism, which claims a universal normative quality for every
human being simply because he or she is a human being, come to terms with
this experience of radical and universal dehumanization?
On a meta-historical level, Dan Diner’s thesis that the Holocaust represents
a ‘rupture of civilization’ should be taken seriously. How is it possible to
formulate this thesis? As long as such a thesis can be understood in the
context of Western humanism, namely a claim or even a lamentation of its
negation, the possibility of a ‘new’ humanism is at least not unthinkable.
This can easily be proven by the first and most convincing answer to the
question of what the Holocaust means for humanism, namely the normative
statement that this should never happen again. Such a statement refers to the
basic humanistic principle that men cannot be treated in the way that they
were treated in the Holocaust. Adorno called this appeal a new categorical
imperative, and described it as the essence of our relationship to the
Holocaust.8 But does this appeal represent the new humanism we need for
our cultural orientation? I don’t think so. The reason is that it destroys the
synthesis between the empirical and the normative dimensions and elements
of humanism. It stands for its contrary, since it simply states a dichotomy
between fact and norm, experience and value, between that which is the case
and that which ought to be. It weakens the normative elements of humanism
to a sheer postulate which is spared from reality and puts the burden of
inhumanity on the realm of historical experience. We may call Adorno’s idea
a desperate humanism, which attributes it only a negative meaning, that there
should not be inhumanism, without saying a word of what humanism could
or should be.
A plausible humanism should overcome this form of abstract and negative
appeal. There is no way leading around or against history as long as
humanism synthesizes normativity and experience into the idea of historical
dynamics, which includes the present and gives a stimulating future
perspective. But when we refer to history do we not apply historical sense
criteria to the Holocaust in order to make it compatible with humanism?
193
 JÖRN RÜSEN

Indeed, if we simply continued the traditional procedure of historical sense

generation we would miss the challenge of the Holocaust as a historical
event.9 It would deprive it of its traumatic character, by which it destroys any
historical sense criteria that would provide the temporal chain between past,
present and future with a continuous meaning expressed in the form of a
coherent narrative.
Modern historical thinking has mainly conceptualized this meaning of
history as essentially humanistic. And it is this inherent inner-worldly secular
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humanism which has lost its credibility by the events of inhumanity in the
history of the twentieth century, culminating in the Holocaust.
So the only way of keeping up the reference of humanism to history is to
reconceptualize historical thinking. It has to change its sense criteria and
open them to catastrophic experiences of inhumanity strictly running against
the traditional humanism as it has been embedded in the foundation of
modern historical thinking to a large extent.
In order to answer the challenge of the Holocaust as a historical event, and
to prepare the ground for a new humanism in historical thinking, a new
strategy of historical sense-generation and a new category of historical
thinking have to be introduced. Categories open up dimensions of experience
and possibilities of interpreting them. And sense-generation is the way such
an interpretation is brought about. The strategy which has to be introduced
into historical thinking is mourning as an intellectual activity, and the new
category should be suffering.
As to mourning, our understanding is too narrow. It is only seen as a
procedure of emotions directed to personal losses. But mourning can be
pursued by thinking as well and it can address losses of a far-reaching past.
By mourning the loss of humanity the Holocaust has brought about,
accepting and working this into our historical understanding of what it
means to be human, a lost humanism is kept present and given a future
perspective in its absence.10
The category of suffering has not played a role in the established traditions
of the humanities and social sciences. A general overview of Western culture
(at least in its intellectual form*less in literature) can lead to the diagnosis of
a deeply rooted and long-lasting tradition of forgetfulness of suffering. (To
forget if not to suppress it is a way of coming to terms with it.) This is true for
historical thinking as well. History has never neglected the fact that human
beings suffer. Hegel, for instance, characterized world history as a slaughter
bench, and Ranke described his feelings while looking at the surface of
human history in the following way:
The multitude of facts can’t be overlooked; their impression is wretched. We
always see how the more powerful one overcomes the weaker till a more powerful
one takes him and destroys him, until the process of our times has come, which in
turn will endure the same. . . . Nothing remains but the feeling of vanity of all
things and a disgust for many a heinous crime, by which men have stained
themselves. We don’t see, for what all these things occurred . . .11

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 HUMANISM IN RESPONSE TO THE HOLOCAUST*DESTRUCTION OR INNOVATION?

Herder wrote a long paragraph on the senselessness of history in his

Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind12 but all three
thinkers*and they are representative of modern historical thinking (with a
few exceptions like Freud, Foucault and Girard)*conceptualized historical
meaning beyond this senselessness rooted in human suffering. They even did
not use the word’suffering’ in a prominent way in spite of its daily evidence.13
Historical thinking has to tear this veil of forgetfulness of suffering into pieces
and to open up the threatening view of suffering as an anthropological
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universal in its manifold realizations in the varieties of human life. By

suffering I don’t only think of pain and unpleasant feelings but of a category
of the sense-generating interpretation of the human world.
This runs strictly against any optimism and triumphalism which very often
have accompanied the idea of humanism. If humanism were nothing but a
concept of human perfectibility, self-empowerment, and the ability to
dominate nature and the human world (which inevitably leads to the idea
of progress in a normative meaning), this humanism has definitely been killed
in Auschwitz.
But humanism has always been more and different from simple human self-
empowerment. In its origins in stoic philosophy14 it emphasized fragility
(fragilitas) and weakness as characteristics of human nature. Its idea of the
normative quality of being a human being has always been connected with
this insufficiency of human nature. The greatest representatives of humanism
have declared this insufficiency not only as constitutive for human culture but
as an insurmountable limit to its development. In Kant’s ‘Idea of a universal
History with cosmopolitan purpose’ from 1786, this modesty of humanism is
expressed in the context of a philosophy of history which presents progress as
a leading criterion of historical sense. And it is exactly in this context of what
we are used to call enlightenment’s optimism that Kant says: ‘One cannot
fashion something absolutely straight from wood that is as crooked as that of
which man is made.’15 In the twentieth century, Emmanuel Levinas put the
same idea of human nature into the words: ‘The I is, from head to toe, to the
core of his bones, vulnerability.’16 Instead of self-empowerment humanism
stressed the vulnerability of every human being as a key source of social
solidarity. It needs cultural power to overcome this fragility and to bring
about a liveable life. This overcoming means education, and education means
cultivation. The culture of this cultivation is based on the principles of
equality and the ability of organizing one’s life according to plausible sense
criteria principally shared by the others in one’s own social context.This is a
rather abstract and ideal typological characterization of humanism, ignoring
its historical variety. I only want to stress the fragility and vulnerability of
human life as a starting point for the concepts of humane values in human
nature. They lead to the need for education, self cultivation and social
solidarity.
In respect to the Holocaust we don’t only have to stress this anthro-
pological starting point. We have to radicalize it to mean a fundamental
fallibility of men. This meets one of the most threatening items of our
knowledge of the perpetrators and victims. Yehuda Bauer articulated this
195
 JÖRN RÜSEN

insight into the fundamental potentials of the human mind by the remarkable
words: ‘I have learned for myself, that we all have small parts of Adolf
Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler within us, but we have also small parts of
helpers within us.’17 And in respect to the victims, we know from shocking
examples how easily they can become perpetrators themselves.18 So we have
to realize that the perpetrators are normal people*people like ourselves19*
and that the victims rather easily can become perpetrators. It depends upon
the circumstances whether’normal’ human beings*even human beings who
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feel committed to humanistic values*become inhumane and commit crimes

against humanity.
Fragility as an anthropological universal includes moral ambivalence.20
Therefore humanism can no longer present the normative quality of being a
human being as a natural gift to humankind. Instead it depends upon
circumstances and is not a reliable disposition of the human mind but a
matter of decision of the human subject. Suffering can be relieved at the cost
of others or by intersubjective cooperation. What prevails is a matter of
contingency. In his statement Yehuda Bauer went on to point to this
contingency as a manifestation of human freedom: ‘It depends upon us, what
decision we make and whether a new genocide will occur. Eichmann is a
horrible warning.’
This categorical revision of the anthropological foundations of humanism
does not give up the traditional categories of freedom and reason. It only
attributes to them a more contingent and ambivalent quality. Freedom is still
a valid element since the humane values are seen as a matter of the free will.
But this will is now put into conditioning contexts with overwhelming
determining power. And reason remains as a fundamental dependency of the
free will upon the world view and its inbuilt rules of conduct in the minds of
people. Even the most horrible crimes were committed within a framework of
values the perpetrators claimed for themselves.21
Remaining in the realm of this (idealistic) tradition makes humanism one-
sided and in its universalism simply Euro-centric.22 In order to enlarge its
scope for the purpose of intercultural communication today, the traditional
categories of freedom and reason have to be made anthropologically
universal. In the case of freedom this is rather simple: every human being
tends to oppose dependence on foreigners and strangers. Humans only accept
a life-form which they think of as their own. Reason can be understood as the
ability of men to argue in order to make their claims for plausibility
acceptable. This ability is a universal element of human culture.
Traditionally, suffering as a feature of humanity has vanished in the
concept of a humane culture. Today we should emphasize this feature. It has
to be applied all the more to the traditionally pre-given concepts of
humanism. Suffering can be relieved but never overcome. This anthropolo-
gical insight makes humanism modest. It prevents the human mind from the
typical modern self-esteem of being able (in the words of Max Weber) to
dominate everything by calculation.23 Humanism has traditionally included
this attitude of domination (mainly in respect to nature, but only in a
somewhat limited way).24 According to nature it was the idea of a
196
 HUMANISM IN RESPONSE TO THE HOLOCAUST*DESTRUCTION OR INNOVATION?

cosmological order which stands for harmony, and in respect to the human
world it was the idea of human dignity which limited domination through a
set of basic human and civil rights. Both limitations have to be re-
conceptualized in respect to the new insights into the fallibility of the human
mind as a starting point for a new humanism. They have to be strengthened,
radicalized, and historized according to the conditioning power of historical
contexts.
The Holocaust as historical experience does not only stand for the
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anthropological universal of suffering. In its traumatic character it also

stands for senselessness as an integral part of historical sense generation.25
This senselessness breaks the coherence of a thoroughly meaningful narrative
in historical interpretation and representation. It evokes ruptures and
incoherence in the narrative formation of history. It definitively gives it an
open form concerning its meaning within the cultural framework of human
life, open for failure as well as for success. What does this mean for a plausible
concept of humanism? Humanism has to enclose a fundamental ambivalence
into its concept of the normative dimension of being a human being. This
corroborates the potential of inhumanity in the vulnerability and fallibility of
humankind.26
This does not mean scepticism concerning the cultural power of humanism.
It only gives a sharp point to subjective responsibility. It shapes it into the
feature of practical reason transgressing the hitherto developed forms of
cultural life. It criticizes any established tradition of humanism as fixed
element of cultural orientation. It makes it restless and gives it a utopian
transcendence.
Does this utopian element not move humanism away from history? Does it
not pull away the ground of historical experience from under its feet? This
would only be the case if history were traditionally understood as the
contrary of utopia. But this juxtaposition is not valid.27 Elements of
exuberance belong to social reality and they have to be realized as such
when humanism refers to history.
The increase of contingency and discontinuity in historical thinking28
brought about by the traumatic experience of the Holocaust demands a new
awareness of contra-factual concepts of sense and meaning in human life and
their impact on the process of historical developments. This is not the same as
a plea for a revitalization of traditional modern utopian thinking. On the
contrary: the confounding mixture of negating pre-given conditions and
circumstances of human life and, at the same time, of presenting a utopian
vision in the form of a programme for political and social practice, has led to
the crimes against humanity in modern societies.
In respect to these historical experiences the end of utopia has been
proclaimed after 1989, at latest. But exuberance is an anthropological
universal which can’t be wiped out from the human culture of an unlimited
pragmatism. Pragmatism without visions of humanity is empty. At the same
time, visions of humanity without pragmatism are inhumane since they
neglect the fundamental vulnerability and fallibility of the cultural nature of
humankind.
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 JÖRN RÜSEN

This brings a new relationship between humanism and religion into

consideration. Humanism has always had a critical relationship to religion.29
As far as religious transcendence limited or even negated the value of human
life in itself, humanism defends this value against all religious attempts to
outbid it. With this claim in the long run it was rather successful as an
essential part of the Enlightenment. On the brink of modernity humanism
belonged to those cultural forces which established the secular life-form of a
modern civil society. But religion did not vanish in this life-form and neither
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did it dissolve into a universal morality. This dissolution was expected by the
Enlightenment, and later predicted by prominent sociologists, who foresaw an
irreversible trend of rationalization and disenchantment inherent in the
modernization process. Religion remained as a specific relationship to the
divine world with the power of redemption, or it turned into a secular form
and became a political and social ideology of inner-worldly redemption,
covering human suffering by a forced happiness.30
On the other hand traditional humanism underestimated the internal
ambivalence of humanity and the potential of inhumanism lurking in the
depths of the human mind and the cries for redemption. The implausibility of
secular religions (they remain a contradiction in themselves) and the inability
of secular humanism to overcome the potential of inhumanity in the human
mind have led to a new constellation in the relationship between humanism
and religion. In unbroken continuity humanism still has to civilize all
religious ideas of the divine world, limiting or relativizing the internal value of
being a human being. But in a new way humanism can open up to religious
forces which strengthen these values by the power of religious belief. Religion,
on the other hand, has to reshape its forms of belief in the context of a secular
life-form with humanistic cultural orientation. It has to be stripped of its
temptation to use political power to universalize its peculiar form of belief at
the cost of other forms of belief, including secularism.
So, at the end, the Holocaust experience endows humanism with an
increased realism concerning the inbuilt inhumanity in the human mind. And
at the same time and as the other side of the same coin, it gives humanism an
increase in the exuberant forces of the human mind which will always be
challenged by its potentials between good and evil. So it never will be satisfied
with pre-given forms of human life and their unavoidable insufficiencies. It
will permanently inspire them with the desire to imprint humanity into the
mind of every human being.

Notes
1
Imre Kertész, Ich*ein anderer, Berlin: Rowohlt 1998, p 54 (Auschwitz is one of the great warning signs
which appear in the form of a horrible stroke, in order to render man attentive, if he is willing to listen).
2
I am grateful to Inge Rüsen and Meike Vogel for a critical reading of a first draft of this article. The
article profited a lot from the project on ‘Humanism in the era of globalisation*an intercultural
dialogue on culture, humanity, and values’. This project is pursued by the Kulturwissenschaftliches
Institut in Essen in close connection with the universities of Bochum, Dortmund, and Duisburg-Essen.
It is supported by the Stiftung Mercator.

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3
‘Man in the system of nature (homo phaenomenon, animal rationale) is a being of little significance and,
along with the other animals, considered as products of the earth, has an ordinary value . . . But man as
a person, i.e., as the subject of a morally-practical reason, is exalted above all price. For such one (homo
noumenon) is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of other people, or even to his own ends,
but is to be prized as an end in himself. This is to say, he possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth)
whereby he exacts the respect of all other rational beings in the world, can measure himself against each
member of his species, and can esteem himself on a footing of equality with them.
The humanity in one’s own person is the object of the respect which he can require of every other
being, but which he also must not forfeit. Consequently, he can and should value himself by a measure at
once small and great, according to which he regards himself as a sensible being (according to his animal
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nature) or as an intelligible nature (according to his moral predisposition). But since he must regard
himself not merely as a person in general but also as a man, i.e., as a person having duties which his own
reason has imposed upon him, his insignificance as a human animal cannot injure the consciousness of
his dignity as a rational man. And he should not disavow the moral self-esteem of such a being, i.e., he
should pursue his end (which in itself is a duty) neither cringingly nor servilely (animo servili) as though
seeking favour, nor should he deny his dignity; but, rather, he should always pursue his end with an
awareness of the sublimity of his moral nature (and such awareness is already contained in the concept
of virtue). This self-esteem is a duty of man to himself . . .’ The Metaphysics of Morals, 1st edn,
Königsberg: Nikolovius, 1797, p 93: English translation at http://praxeology.net/kant7.htm (accessed 27
June 2007).
4
Fritz Stern has called it ‘the universal potential of humankind for evil’ (‘das universelle Potential der
Menschheit zum Bösen’). See Fritz Stern, Fünf Deutschland und ein Leben, Erinnerungen. München:
C.H. Beck, 2007, p 10.
5
See Jörn Rüsen, ‘Culture: Universalism, Relativism or What Else?’, Journal of the Interdisciplinary
Crossroads 1, 2004, pp 18.
6
For a broader presentation of this thesis see Jörn Rüsen, ‘How to Overcome Ethnocentrism: Approaches
to a Culture of Recognition by History in the 21st Century’, Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 1(1),
2004, pp 5974; also in History and Theory 43, 2004, theme issue: ‘Historians and Ethics’, pp 118129.
7
Dan Diner, Zivilisationsbruch: Denken nach Auschwitz, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1988.
8
Theodor W Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Gesammelte Schriften VI), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1977, pp 356, 358.
9
See Jörn Rüsen, ‘Krise, Trauma, Identität’, in Zerbrechende Zeit. Über den Sinn der Geschichte, Cologne:
Böhlau, 2001, pp 145180; ‘The Logic of Historization*Metahistorical Reflections on the Debate
between Friedländer and Broszat’, in History. Narration*Interpretation*Orientation, New York:
Berghahn Books, 2005, pp 163187; and ‘Holocaust-Memory and German Identiy’, in ibid., pp 189
204.
10
A more detailed argument can be found in Jörn Rüsen, ‘Trauer als historische Kategorie. Überlegungen
zur Erinnerung an den Holocaust in der Geschichtskultur der Gegenwart’, in Hanno Loewy and
Bernhard Moltmann (eds), Erinnerung, Gedächtnis, Sinn. Authentische und konstruierte Erinnerung,
Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1996, pp 5778; ‘Historisch trauern*Skizze einer Zumutung’, in
Burkhard Liebsch and Jörn Rüsen (eds), Trauer und Geschichte (Beiträge zur Geschichtskultur, vol 22),
Cologne: Böhlau, 2001, pp 6384. See also Jörn Rüsen, ‘Trauma and Mourning in Historical Thinking’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in History and Archeology 1(1), 2004, pp 1021.
11
Leopold von Ranke, Vorlesungseinleitungen, ed. Volker Dotterweich and Walther Peter Fuchs (Aus
Werk und Nachlaß, vol IV), Munich: Oldenbourg, 1975, p 185.
12
Johann Gottfried Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, abridged, and with an
introduction by Frank E Manuel, trans. T O Churchill, Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1968, part 3, book 15, introduction.
13
This is the case even today. A short overview of prominent encyclopaedias of the humanities and social
sciences shows a remarkable lack of the entry ‘suffering’.
14
I mainly refer to the work of Hubert Cancik, ‘Humanismus’, in H Cancik, B Gladigow, and K-H Kohl
(eds), Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, vol III, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1993, pp 173
185; id., Antik*modern. Beiträge zur römischen und deutschen Kulturgeschichte, ed. Richard Faber,
Barbara von Reibnitz and Jörg Rüpki, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1998 [on humanism: ‘Die Würde des
Menschen ist unantastbar’. Religions*und philosophiegeschichtliche Bemerkungen zu Artikel 1, Satz 1
GG, pp 267292; Gleichheit und Freiheit. Die antiken Grundlagen der Menschenrechte, pp 293316;
Der Ismus mit menschlichem Antlitz. ’Humanität’ und ’Humanismus’ von Niethammer bis Marx und
heute), especially pp 293316; pp 317332]; id., Die frühesten antiken Texte zu den Begriffen
’Menschenrechte’, ’Religionsfreiheit’, ’Toleranz’, in Klaus M Girardet and Ulrich Nortmann (eds),

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Menschenrechte und europäische Identität*Die antiken Grundlagen, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005, pp
94104; id., ’Entrohung und Barmherzigkeit, Herrschaft und Würde. Antike Grundlagen von
Humanismus’, in Richard Faber (ed), Streit um den Humanismus, Würzburg: Königshausen und
Neumann, 2003, pp 2341.
15
Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Purpose, trans. T M Green and H Hudson, first
published 1786, sixth principal; www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id929350 (accessed 27 June
2007).
16
Emmanuel Levinas, Humanismus des anderen Menschen, Hamburg: Meiner, 1989, p 94 (‘Das Ich ist,
vom Scheitel bis zur Sohle, bis ins Mark seiner Knochen, Verwundbarkeit’).
17
‘Ich habe für mich gelernt, daß wir alle kleine Teile von Adolf Eichmann und Heinrich Himmler in uns
Downloaded by [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] at 08:31 20 October 2014

haben, wir haben aber auch kleine Teile der Retter in uns. Und es hängt von uns ab, welche
Entscheidungen wir treffen und ob es einen neuen Genozid geben wird. Eichmann ist eine fürchterliche
Warnung.’ Interview in Der Spiegel, October 2000, p 38. Fritz Stern, a prominent Jewish historian who
had left Germany early enough not to become a victim of the Holocaust, has confirmed this insight: ‘I
have come to the conviction that no country is immune to the seduction of such pseudo-religious
movements.’ Stern, Fünf Deutschland und ein Leben, p 10.
18
John Sack, An Eye for an Eye, New York: Basic Books, 1993.
19
Cf. Harald Welzer, Täter. Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden, Frankfurt am Main:
S Fischer, 2005.
20
‘Die Erfahrung zeigt sowohl für das individuelle wie für das gesellschaftliche Leben, daß wir in
besonderer Gefahr zum Bösen sind, wenn wir gar zu sehr das ‘‘Gute‘‘ wollen . . .’ Müller-Hohagen,
Jürgen: Verleugnet, verdrängt, verschwiegen. Seelische Nachwirkungen der NS-Zeit und Wege zu ihrer
Überwindung. Munich: Kösel, 2005, p 229.
21
Welzer called this framework ‘ethics’*and in a neutral meaning this word addresses the interpretative
power of the human mind which can be addressed as reason (in a perverted way, of course, according to
our understanding)*the ability to make sense of one’s own life even in its darkest abysses.
22
I thank Ranjan Seth for this critical hint.
23
Max Weber, ‘Wissenschaft als Beruf’, in Wissenschaft als Beruf 1917/1919*Politik als Beruf 1919
(Studienausgabe der Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe, vol I/17). Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck,1994, p 9.
24
Cf. Jörn Rüsen, ‘Humanism and Nature*Some Reflections on a Complex Relationship’, in Journal for
Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 2(2), 2006 pp. 265276.
25
Cf. note 4 above.
26
It is not very easy to accept this anthropological fundamental without defining humanism as a way to
overcome it (an example can be found in Gottfried Küenzlen, Der neue Mensch, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1997, p 222. But exactly such a ’humanistic’ attempt inevitably leads into inhumane
behaviour. A real end of human fragility and fallibility can only be conceptualized in a totalitarian way.
This kind of ’humanism’ leads to its contrary.
27
Cf. Jörn Rüsen, ‘Rethinking Utopia: A Plea for a Culture of Inspiration’, in J Rüsen, M Fehr, and T W
Rieger (eds), Thinking Utopia. Steps into Other Worlds, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005,
pp 276281.
28
My argumentation comes rather close to ideas of Jacob Lomranz on ‘Aintegration’. Cf. Jacob Lomranz,
‘An Image of Aging and the Concept of Aintegration: Personality, Coping and Mental Health
Implications’, in Lomranz (ed), Handbook of Aging and Mental Health, New York: Springer, 1998, pp
217254.
29
A topical example is Jan Philipp Reemtsma, ‘Muß man Religiosität respektieren?’, in Humanismus
aktuell 9(17), 2005, pp 518; id., ‘Christen und wir. Einige Gedanken aus gegebenem Anlaß’ in Friedrich
Jaeger and Jürgen Straub (eds), Was ist der Mensch, was Geschichte? Annäherungen an eine
kulturwissenschaftliche Anthropologie. Jörn Rüsen zum 65. Geburtstag. Bielefeld: Transcript 2005, pp
89102.
30
Cf. Küenzlen, Der neue Mensch.

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