The Prevalence of Irrational Thinking in the Third Reich: Notes Toward the Reconstruction of Modern Value Rationality

In: Central European history, Band 30, Heft 3, S. 365-385

Abstract

Within the voluminous literature on the Holocaust, a trend has emerged in recent years: a shift of focus from remembrance and commemoration of this horrible event to serious reflection about its significance in a variety of theological, philosophical, historical, and even aesthetic contexts. This shift has not been an easy one, for its practicioners have had to face the widely held view that the Holocaust is unintelligible or incomprehensible, and that the tools of scholarship are simply inadequate to grasp it in any meaningful way. This view is certainly understandable when uttered by those who have personally survived the Holocaust—voices which played a leading role in the literature of previous decades. But even as these voices recede in time, the obstacles which this event poses to intelligibility remain formidable to many scholars.