War as a Suspension of Morality: Lévinas and the Literature of the Holocaust

Abstract

Drawing on the concepts of ethics and otherness that are central to the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, this article examines Lévinas’s notions of war as the suspension of morality and of peace as the dominant force that gives ethical meaning to the world. By emphasizing the ethical imperatives reflected in responsibility and duty to the Other, the impossibility of killing, the proximity of the Other and his face, in contrast to the impudence of war and its immorality, the text offers possible answers to the problems of forgetting and erasing the Other in the state of war. In this context, the author draws on examples of horror in concentration camps, referring mainly to the book Night by Elie Wiesel. In addition, an attempt is made to address possible traces of philanthropy and the ethics of infinity by examining images of attitudes toward the Other that are often at odds with Lévinas’s understanding of the ethical, using examples not only from Wiesel but also from Remarque and the contemporary Serbian writer David Albahari.