The Eclipse of Humanity by Lawrence Perlman

Author:Lawrence Perlman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

6 Heschel and the Postmodernists:

(Are the Demonic and Death Real?)

Several significant conclusions emerge from this study. First, Heschel has oriented the major thrust of his philosophy against postmodernism. This is mainly seen by his reaction to Heidegger’s work, though it is not necessarily limited to it. Second, Heschel believes, as Heidegger does, that one of the main reasons for the fall of humanism is due to a reliance on metaphysics. Their agreement is limited to this one main point. Third, postmodernist humanism in Heidegger’s formulation contributes to an ethos that dehumanizes man and removes the previously self-evident worth of human life, helping us to understand some of the collective and individual actions that are part of the Holocaust. This is not a scientific, political, or sociological judgment, but a phenomenological insight into the meaning of human life with inevitable effects.

While many have read Heschel as an inspiring pietistic rabbinic figure or as a neo-Hasidic figure, he clearly inhabits a specific tradition largely determined by continental European philosophy. It began with his adoption of Husserl’s phenomenological ideas as applied to revelation. It is furthered by his critique of man within the postmodern tradition including Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and Heidegger. Heidegger, whose influence was felt at the crossroads of a great historical upheaval and its aftermath, is no doubt singled out for this reason, and for his deconstruction of being, a movement of single import within and without philosophy.

More than any single factor, this overly pietistic, neo-Hasidic misreading of Heschel, often by those who claim to be his most ardent students and followers, has contributed to a serious neglect of his ideas, their import, and their place in the history of philosophy. This is even more exaggerated when this misreading overshadows his thoughts on contemporary philosophy and the Holocaust.

Continuing in the vein of this study’s aforementioned conclusions, it must be noted that the final words of Who Is Man? are about the reality of evil in human conduct. This is neither a gratuitous nor an insignificant remark in relation to the conclusions I have drawn regarding Heschel and postmodernism, as well as the Holocaust and Heidegger. In fact, it is central to the argument. This chapter will examine their import.

Moreover, it must be noted that Heschel’s conjoining of barbarity and evil in 1965 followed closely on the heels of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Study in the Banality of Evil, which had been published in 1963. In one important sense we can see how Who Is Man? is an argument against Arendt’s neutrality as an independent observer who has separated barbarity from evil by arguing for banality and the minimilization of its horror and lack of humanity. A new historical work has, in fact, brought these facts and biases to light. The study by Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer,652 illustrates Eichmann’s antisemitism that surpassed his attachment to bureaucracy and hence banality. Stangneth explodes the myth created by Arendt that Eichmann did not really know what he was doing and that he “had no criminal motives.

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