At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities
by
by
Sidney Rosenfeld (Translator),
Stella P. Rosenfeld (Translator)
When Contradiction Reigns
As Jean Améry says in the discussion of his own torture by the SS, it is not possible to communicate one’s pain accurately without becoming an inflictor of pain. Only by becoming the torturer’s victim can one comprehend the pain of another victim. Thus he establishes both the inadequacy of language and the essential isolation of that which we call the mind, which can be penetrated by words but not by the real experience of others. There is a truth to Cartesian solipsism that is confirmed only by the human body in extreme distress.
But words can penetrate to the mind, which is constituted by words. Or perhaps more accurately, the mind demands one’s experiences have some kind of explanation. It is this demand that exceeds the mind’s limits so that Améry doesn’t hope to achieve it. Even in his preface to the second edition (in 1976, 30 years after the events described), he admits to being unable to make sense of his experiences:
Others, Améry recounts, did have an explanation. Christians could cite the apocalypse and subsequent redemption. Communists might revel in the destructive evidence of late stage capitalism. Fervent Jews saw the hand of a protecting God even in their abject misery. But there was no explanatory comfort available in Plato, Kant, or Hegel, much less the Nazi-intellectual Heidegger. Even the cultural heritage of Goethe, Beethoven, and Nietzsche had been usurped by the torturers. For the person of intellect not centred around a religious or political belief there was nothing. “In the camp the intellect in its totality declared itself to be incompetent.”
And yet Améry finds a reason for the lack of explanation, which is in a sense an explanation. The fundamental, mind-numbing contradiction of not just the camp but of all of National Socialism was expressible: “… the state did not order him to die, but to survive. The final duty of the prisoner, however, was death.” The prisoner was committed to dying, for as long and as painfully as economically feasible. The misery of dying destroyed all thought, metaphysics most particularly, and with that the thought of death itself was obliterated. The prisoner feared not death but the possibility of dying in an even more wretched way. “Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight.”
The camps, therefore, were a microcosm of National Socialist society. This was a society intent on destroying itself as its only objective. This society tortured itself because it was not just led by but also composed of torturers. “Torture was not an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence.” Its only legacy is the victim:
I find it impossible not to compare this nihilism with the politics of the Right demonstrated today in many places throughout the world, especially in America. It is clear that as I write Republicans have adopted a strategy of national destruction. Anything that inhibits or threatens their power - lost elections, black people, immigration, vaccination, intellectual argument, law itself - are deemed fraudulent, immoral, anti-American, and are resisted with violence as required. But it is also clear that achievement of power will destroy their own destructive achievement. They have no other objective and they take pride in that. Améry provides the only sort of explanation that makes sense to me.
As Jean Améry says in the discussion of his own torture by the SS, it is not possible to communicate one’s pain accurately without becoming an inflictor of pain. Only by becoming the torturer’s victim can one comprehend the pain of another victim. Thus he establishes both the inadequacy of language and the essential isolation of that which we call the mind, which can be penetrated by words but not by the real experience of others. There is a truth to Cartesian solipsism that is confirmed only by the human body in extreme distress.
But words can penetrate to the mind, which is constituted by words. Or perhaps more accurately, the mind demands one’s experiences have some kind of explanation. It is this demand that exceeds the mind’s limits so that Améry doesn’t hope to achieve it. Even in his preface to the second edition (in 1976, 30 years after the events described), he admits to being unable to make sense of his experiences:
“I did not strive for an explicative account at that time, thirteen years ago, and in the same way now too, I can do no more than give testimony… I had no clarity when I was writing this little book, I do not have it today, and I hope that I never will. Clarification would also amount to disposal, settlement of the case, which can then be placed in the files of history. My book is meant to aid in preventing precisely this. For nothing is resolved, no conflict is settled, no remembering has become a mere memory. What happened, happened. But that it happened cannot be so easily accepted.”
Others, Améry recounts, did have an explanation. Christians could cite the apocalypse and subsequent redemption. Communists might revel in the destructive evidence of late stage capitalism. Fervent Jews saw the hand of a protecting God even in their abject misery. But there was no explanatory comfort available in Plato, Kant, or Hegel, much less the Nazi-intellectual Heidegger. Even the cultural heritage of Goethe, Beethoven, and Nietzsche had been usurped by the torturers. For the person of intellect not centred around a religious or political belief there was nothing. “In the camp the intellect in its totality declared itself to be incompetent.”
And yet Améry finds a reason for the lack of explanation, which is in a sense an explanation. The fundamental, mind-numbing contradiction of not just the camp but of all of National Socialism was expressible: “… the state did not order him to die, but to survive. The final duty of the prisoner, however, was death.” The prisoner was committed to dying, for as long and as painfully as economically feasible. The misery of dying destroyed all thought, metaphysics most particularly, and with that the thought of death itself was obliterated. The prisoner feared not death but the possibility of dying in an even more wretched way. “Dying was omnipresent, death vanished from sight.”
The camps, therefore, were a microcosm of National Socialist society. This was a society intent on destroying itself as its only objective. This society tortured itself because it was not just led by but also composed of torturers. “Torture was not an accidental quality of this Third Reich, but its essence.” Its only legacy is the victim:
“Whoever was tortured, stays tortured. Torture is ineradicably burned into him, even when no clinically objective traces can be detected… Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world.”
I find it impossible not to compare this nihilism with the politics of the Right demonstrated today in many places throughout the world, especially in America. It is clear that as I write Republicans have adopted a strategy of national destruction. Anything that inhibits or threatens their power - lost elections, black people, immigration, vaccination, intellectual argument, law itself - are deemed fraudulent, immoral, anti-American, and are resisted with violence as required. But it is also clear that achievement of power will destroy their own destructive achievement. They have no other objective and they take pride in that. Améry provides the only sort of explanation that makes sense to me.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ November 04, 2021
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