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Article
At the Mind’s Limits and German-Jewish Symbiosis: Or, Améry on Guilt and the Possibility of Redemption
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy (2016)
  • Robert Erlewine
Abstract
At the 50th anniversary of the Jean Améry’s Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten, published in English as At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations By a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, this work is garnering increased attention in the Anglophone world. Perhaps it should not be surprising that there is increased interest in this book at this moment when our attention is repeatedly drawn to the plight of immigrants and exiles, state sanctioned use of torture, and police violence—all themes At the Mind’s Limits deals with at length. While this recent attention is certainly appropriate, it nevertheless tends to blur the specific and particular socio-political and cultural contours of the work. Améry becomes a writer about the plight of the victim in general, such that specificity of his Jewishness is lost and the already submerged theological dimensions of his work remain obscure.
Keywords
  • Améry,
  • Judaism,
  • Theology
Disciplines
Publication Date
2016
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2016.792
Publisher Statement
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy is an electronic, open access, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. For more information please visit the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy online.
Citation Information
Robert Erlewine. "At the Mind’s Limits and German-Jewish Symbiosis: Or, Améry on Guilt and the Possibility of Redemption" Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy Vol. 24 Iss. 3 (2016) p. 140 - 156 ISSN: 1936-6280
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/robert_erlewine/17/