- Title Pages
- Preface
- Answering Auschwitz
- Prologue: Answering Auschwitz: Levi's Science and Humanism as Antifascism
-
Chapter 1 “Warum?” -
Chapter 2 Guilt or Shame? -
Chapter 3 Primo Levi and the Concept of History -
Chapter 4 Kenosis, Saturated Phenomenology, and Bearing Witness -
Chapter 5 After Auschwitz: What Is a Good Death? -
Chapter 6 The Humanity and Humanism of Primo Levi -
Chapter 7 Levi and the Two Cultures -
Chapter 8 The Partisan and His Doppelganger: The Case of Primo Levi -
Chapter 9 Primo Levi in the Public Interest: Turin, Auschwitz, Israel -
Chapter 10 Primo Levi's Struggle with the Spirit of Kafka -
Chapter 11 Ethics and Literary Strategies -
Chapter 12 Literary Encounters and Storytelling Techniques -
Chapter 13 Primo Levi and the History of Reception -
Chapter 14 Autobiography and the Narrator -
Chapter 15 Writing Against the Fascist Sword -
Chapter 16 “Singoli Stimoli”: Primo Levi's Poetry -
Chapter 17 Primo Levi's Correspondence with Hety Schmitt-Maas -
Chapter 18 A Note on the Problem of Translation -
Chapter 19 Primo Levi: A Bibliography of English and Italian Scholarly Writings, 2003–2010 - Epilogue Primo Levi's Gray Zone: A Sequence of Drawings
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Contributors
- Index
The Humanity and Humanism of Primo Levi
The Humanity and Humanism of Primo Levi
- Chapter:
- (p.87) Chapter 6 The Humanity and Humanism of Primo Levi
- Source:
- Answering Auschwitz
- Author(s):
Joseph Farrell
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
In a wide-ranging, polemical lecture in Turin in 1979, Primo Levi discussed the roots and variations of racial prejudice in history, finding early traces of the phenomenon even in the seemingly innocuous biblical verse in the Canticle of Canticles, “Nigra sum sed formosa.” (I am black but beautiful.) The very title of the work, If This Is a Man, implies the same anguished questioning on humanity and humanism that is present in the lecture, and in both works Nazism is presented as the very denial of humanism as well as of the humanitarian spirit and even of shared humanity. It can be noted that the distinguishing feature of Levi's account of the Holocaust is the prominence given to the malevolent process of dehumanization.
Keywords: Primo Levi, humanity, humanism, Nazism, Holocaust, dehumanization
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- Answering Auschwitz
- Prologue: Answering Auschwitz: Levi's Science and Humanism as Antifascism
-
Chapter 1 “Warum?” -
Chapter 2 Guilt or Shame? -
Chapter 3 Primo Levi and the Concept of History -
Chapter 4 Kenosis, Saturated Phenomenology, and Bearing Witness -
Chapter 5 After Auschwitz: What Is a Good Death? -
Chapter 6 The Humanity and Humanism of Primo Levi -
Chapter 7 Levi and the Two Cultures -
Chapter 8 The Partisan and His Doppelganger: The Case of Primo Levi -
Chapter 9 Primo Levi in the Public Interest: Turin, Auschwitz, Israel -
Chapter 10 Primo Levi's Struggle with the Spirit of Kafka -
Chapter 11 Ethics and Literary Strategies -
Chapter 12 Literary Encounters and Storytelling Techniques -
Chapter 13 Primo Levi and the History of Reception -
Chapter 14 Autobiography and the Narrator -
Chapter 15 Writing Against the Fascist Sword -
Chapter 16 “Singoli Stimoli”: Primo Levi's Poetry -
Chapter 17 Primo Levi's Correspondence with Hety Schmitt-Maas -
Chapter 18 A Note on the Problem of Translation -
Chapter 19 Primo Levi: A Bibliography of English and Italian Scholarly Writings, 2003–2010 - Epilogue Primo Levi's Gray Zone: A Sequence of Drawings
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Contributors
- Index
