Victor Klemperer

In writings about the Holocaust, both Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt appeal to a concept of shame that extends the reach of the concept in a dramatic way. In its more familiar uses, we experience shame because of a failing of our own (I refer to this as “self-incurred shame”) or because of the failing of another with whom we share membership of a significant group (“other-incurred shame”).  Levi ascribes shame to those soldiers who came across Auschwitz in early 1945; and Arendt writes of an “elemental shame,” the “shame at being human.” Neither case fits the familiar models.This article provides an analysis of both “self-incurred” and “other-incurred shame” in order to reach an understanding of the importance of Levi and Arendt’s extension of the concept and of the challenges it poses.  It also explores the relationship between shame and responsibility and defends a notion of collective guilt. At various points, it engages with the work of Gabriele Taylor, Bernard Williams, Max Scheler,  and David Velleman.

Etwas am Wort Weltanschauung ist bekenntnishaft, es transportiert einen suggestiven Mehrwert, der nicht leicht zu erfassen ist. Adorno konstatiert in der Philosophischen Terminologie, dass es häufig mit einem Possessivpronomen versehen wird: "meine Weltanschauung". Im Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist die Freiheit nicht nur des religiösen, sondern auch des „weltanschaulichen Bekenntnisses“ verankert (Art. 4 GG); historisch und systematisch betrachtet ist der Begriff zudem in der Nachbarschaft von Wissenschaft und Ideologie anzusiedeln.
Jede eingehendere Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Kompositum muss sich mit dem aporetischen Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Geltungsanspruch, Relativismus und verabsolutierender Setzung befassen. Dabei handelt es sich bei dem Wort selbst um eine sehr deutsche Angelegenheit. Wie Angst, Besserwisser und Lebensraum, figuriert das Wort Weltanschauung als Lehnwort in zahlreichen anderen Sprachen; es zählt zu den sogenannten Intraduisibles; das Englische world view ist zu optisch, world concept wiederum zu konzeptuell. Es ist die Geschichte deutschsprachiger Philosophie sowie die politische Geschichte Deutschlands überhaupt, die den Ruhm wie die Infamie des Weltanschauungsbegriffs begründet haben.
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Aus der Verlagsankündigung des Lexikons:

"Weltgeschichte, Halbwelt, Weltanschauung: Es gibt keine Welt ohne Welt-Komposita. Das Lexikon entfaltet diese These in 57 Artikeln im Grenzbereich von Essay und Wortgeschichte.
Die Rede von der Welt ist in aller Munde, zumal angesichts der aktuellen Dynamik, die als fortgeschrittene ‚Globalisierung‘ begriffen wird. Besonders in der deutschen Sprache tritt das kleine Wort mit der großen Bedeutung häufig in zusammengesetzten Wörtern auf. Solche Welt-Komposita sind immer auch Verfahren, Welten – die es ja nicht an sich und je schon gibt – zu komponieren, und ihre genauere Analyse ermöglicht Einblicke in die Vielfalt der Kompositionsweisen."

In this book, Timothy Snyder (Professor of History at Yale University) shows how the rhetoric of US President Donald J. Trump channels the propaganda of the infamous dictators of the twentieth century.  Snyder is an expert on twentieth-century totalitarianism and has written several scholarly books about that subject.

Political speech is a type of performance poetry. That may seem unlikely to those who struggle with its clichés and platitudes, but understanding the links between political speech and oral traditions of poetry allows us to appreciate its strengths alongside its weaknesses, the creativity alongside the banality. Applying ethical standards appropriate to oral performance, rather than the literary default mode of critics like George Orwell and Don Watson, gives us a stronger moral critique of all those anti-intellectual dishonesties cloaked in boredom we know so well. Making the case, Stay on Message explores the poetics of political speeches in Australia, the USA, and elsewhere—with examples of both the good and the delightfully appalling.

In her foundational political treatise, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt notes that deception is an essential component in the development and maintenance of totalitarian rule. 1 This deceit is made necessary by the regime's simultaneous need to hide the truth of its activities from its subjects, as well as from the non-totalitarian world of which it is a part. In order to accomplish this, the totalitarian state relies on a combination of secrecy, surveillance, and propaganda in order to produce a world of fiction so as to placate the masses under their control, and to avoid provoking the suspicion of outside actors. Although the speeches, imagery, and state documents of the Third Reich have been the subject of a great deal of scholarly scrutiny, the language used by the National Socialist Party -what is now known as Nazi-Deutsch -has received comparatively little attention. 2 However, it was primarily through the use of this language, which flourished in both the public and private spheres of German discourse, that the Nazis sought to achieve their goal of complete ideological domination. This discursive manipulation not only sought to divorce the German people from the reality that they were experiencing, but also aimed to produce a body of subjects that were at once both fanatical and docile, unthinking and yet unquestioningly obedient.

"Durch Klemperers Fokus auf das Schriftbild und seinen Träger wird der Forschungsgegenstand auf seine Materialität reduziert und unter dem Blick durch die Lupe bis zur Unkenntlichkeit vergrößert. Gerade Klemperer, der mit philologischen Mitteln aufzuklären versteht, der den Ernst der politischen Lage nicht nur begreift, sondern am eigenen Leib akut erfährt, lenkt hier den Fokus auf die Grenzen des Verstehens: Er macht ein materielles Gewebe sichtbar, das vom tödlich gewordenen semantischen Gewebe ablenkt, er lässt die philologische Kontextualisierung des Zeichens in eine Dekontextualisierung übergehen, bis nur noch Fasern und Farben, 'die Einzelparzellen des gelben Gewebes, die Ungleichheiten des schwarzen Aufdrucks' übrig sind.
Im Zentrum seines Interesses steht die Tatsache, dass etwas am Zwangszeichen sich heteronom zu jenem Zwang verhält, den es bewirkt. Klemperer scheut die Nähe zu seinem Gegenstand nicht, er sucht sie geradezu exzessiv, wodurch sich allerdings das Verhältnis von Nähe und Distanz destabilisiert: Durch die Lupe des Philologen betrachtet, rückt der Stern so fern, als würde er, wie bei wirklichen Gestirnen üblich, mit dem Fernrohr studiert. Der verfremdende, Entfernung erzeugende Blick durch die Lupe lässt sich als sprachphilosophisches und machttheoretisches Interesse begreifen, das sich auf das Morsche, jeglicher Letztbegründung entbehrende Moment der sprachlichen Gewalt richtet."

Suivant la voie ouverte par le philologue allemand Victor Klemperer, à partir d'une perspective interdisciplinaire, ce livre a pour objet la description et l'analyse des discours extrémistes actuels les plus violents. Il s'intéresse plus particulièrement aux appels au meurtre et à leurs légitimations politiques ou religieuses, du djihadisme contemporain au suprématisme blanc. Les différents auteurs tentent de décrire et d'analyser ces discours, dits « meurtriers », dans leurs formes, leurs soubassements et leurs effets. En mettant au coeur même de la désignation la question du rapport entre discours et actes, la dénomination « discours meurtriers » peut permettre le repérage de traits caractéristiques, ainsi que le relevé de modes opératoires et d'enjeux sociaux ou subjectifs propres à ces énoncés ou à ces langages. Ils interrogent cette performativité propre aux propagandes idéologiques actuelles, où le discours tend à se précipiter dans l'action, au lieu de la suspendre ou de l'élaborer. Les discours meurtriers peuvent recouvrir les discours de haine par les passions destructrices qu'ils véhiculent ou qu'ils suscitent, mais ils se distinguent par l'incitation ou l'appel au meurtre et sa justification, ainsi que par des effets d'anéantissement clairement repérables. L'actualité montre jusqu'à la caricature, au-delà de la propagande et de la terreur déployée par l'autoproclamé « État islamique », combien il est urgent d'interroger ce qui est peut-être en train d'arriver aujourd'hui, dont les langages pourraient être à nouveau l'instrument et le symptôme. Il est en effet crucial de chercher à comprendre pour tenter de prévenir ces forces du discours au service du négatif et de l'anéantissement de toute altérité.

In this paper I intend to provide an analysis of Thucydides's account of war in the third section of his historical work (3.82-83). Despite some of his early commentators accused him of a certain obscurity, the notions of polemos and stasis he introduces in this text deserve to be discussed and can give a number of insights into the problem of civil war in Western history. My core argument is that there is a clear analogy between Thucydides's concept of stasis, from one hand, and Simone Weil's reflexions on totalitarianism and Klemperer's notebook on Nazi language, from the other hand. In this perspective, not only violence but also propaganda as a manipulation of language are important characteristics of stasis.

The philosophical reflection, existing in diary’s of Victor Klemperer, focuses on the issue of Jewish faculté maîtresse. This issue became one of the most important themes of writing in the works of Á. Heller, M. Blanchot, G. Scholem and E. Jabès. These thinkers also considered Shoah and the human spiritual condition in relation to extermination of Jews in time of the Second World War. Imre Kertész makes the ideas of V. Klemperer complete. Kertész formulated a conception of „being a Jew”, which he understand as a universal situation of existence under destructive influence and pressure of the totalitarian dictatorships. Thinking about a „Jewish condition” as a „metaphor of existence” is relevant to various methods of thinking about the self. According to Klemperer and Kertész a Jewish condition means a „negative being” in a superlative degree and also means homeless, writer’s identity and the perception of Scripture as a symbolic, structural system which form all spheres of the writer’s life.

L a publicación de los diarios del profesor de literatura románica, Victor Klemperer, escritos durante su vida bajo el régimen nacionalsocialista, fue la sensación del mercado alemán del libro en 1995. 2 Klemperer, luterano, de origen judío, describía en ellos el avance del terror nazi desde sus principios hasta llegar, ya en los años de guerra, a la deportación y el Holocausto de los judíos, del cual Klemperer se salvó, primero, gracias a su matrimonio con Eva, mujer aria, y, finalmente, gracias al ataque aéreo británico a Dresde, el 13 de febrero de 1945. Al escapar del infierno de las llamas, su esposa le arrancó la estrella de David de su abrigo y lograron así sobrevivir el fin de la guerra con nombres falsos en Baviera. Después de la capitulación alemana, los Klemperer regresaron a su casa en las afueras de Dresde, que los nazis les habían confiscado. De esta suerte, quedaron en la zona de ocupación soviética y Klemperer hizo todavía una carrera universitaria bajo el régimen comunista, hasta que murió en 1960. El éxito de los diarios de la época nacionalsocialista motivó a la editorial Aufbau a lanzar al mercado la autobiografía de Klemperer, que abarca desde su juventud hasta el final de la Primera Guerra Mundial, escrita entre 1939 y 1945; así como sus diarios de los años comprendidos entre 1918 y la llegada de Hitler al poder en 1933, y finalmente publicó sus cuadernos de los años posteriores a la guerra, su vida en la desaparecida República Democrática Alemana. 3 1 * Traducción de Isabel Galaor 2 Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten. idem, So sitze ich denn zwischen allen Stühlen. Tagebücher 1945-1959, 2 vols., ed. por Walter Nowojski, Aufbau, Berlin, 1999 Los diarios no están publicados de forma íntegra, pero el editor afirma que sólo ha dejado fuera cosas repetitivas. El editor contó con las colaboraciones, tanto de Hadwig Klemperer (en 1995), como de Christian Löser (en las obras publicadas en 1996 y 1999 específicamente). en la Primera Guerra Mundial y en 1920 obtuvo una cátedra en la Universidad Técnica de Dresde, de la que tuvo que renunciar en 1935, como consecuencia de la legislación racial nazi. El resto de su vida ya ha sido referido.

der, selbständiger Handwerker, der weder von der Arbeiterschaft noch vom Bürgertum als zugehörig angesehen wurde, suchte er Zugehörigkeit zu ideologisch unterschiedlich ausgerichteten Gruppierungen, bis er im Nationalsozialismus schließlich seine Ideen verwirklicht zu sehen glaubte.

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As every voter realizes, politically motivated lies, propaganda, and spin present significant challenges to a just and fair democracy. Political myth, however, is a less recognized and potentially more dangerous adversary. While lies and propaganda might be exposed for what they are, and spin may be corrected by the ‘facts’, political myth is largely immune to argument and reason because it projects a dream for the community, a narrative in light of which a group or nation orients itself and forms its identity. At the same time, however, these myths can be used to exclude and silence those whom a community rejects. As Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer wrote of the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933: “The real rearmament began with the origin and rise of the political myths. The later military rearmament was only an accessory after the fact.” But, what is political myth, and how does it work? According to Cassirer, myth works according to the 'magical' function of language, a mode of speech wherein saying and being coincide. This immediate link between what is said and what becomes the case for a community means that myth can breed discontent, violence, and paralysis, even while it speaks ostensibly in terms of freedom and security, and cultural identity. “Political myth acted in the same way as a serpent that tries to paralyze its victims before attacking them," Cassirer says. "Men...were vanquished and subdued before they had realized what actually happened.” This talk examines the relationship between language and politics in the context of Nazi Germany, with an eye toward current and emerging forms of political practice.

This talk was given November 3rd, 2016, at the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Colloquium, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL

"« Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Wingsoc »
Three main topics will be raised in this address: a contextual one, a theoretical one and a practical one. First, what is the general philosophical relevance of Whitehead’s works and especially of Process and Reality? Hence three issues. Primo, why exactly should the contemporary thinker be concerned with Whitehead? Secundo, why does the reading a frightfully clumsy text such as Process and Reality remain essential? Tertio, how to read Process and Reality itself? Second, what is Whitehead’s enduring intuition? It is arguable that to grasp the “Creative Advance of nature,” one needs to come to terms with three ideas. Primo, creativity or becoming. Secundo, efficacy or being. Tertio, vision or “god.” Last but not least, the crucial question of the cash value of Whitehead’s cosmology has to be raised. A critical reading of Whitehead’s corpus reveals that the most problematic field is likely to be the political one. Technoscience, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism and just wars were not suspect for him. There are three main traces of this. Primo, the historical political commitment of Whitehead is nebulous. Whitehead is allegedly a Tory (a liberal) but he seems actually a Whig at heart, a conservative of sorts. Facts gathered by Lowe speak of themselves. Secundo, Whitehead’s socio-political writings provide only broad principles that are basically Victorian, i.e., completely foreign to the post WWI era and equally inapplicable to ours. The contrast with W. James (1842–1910) is striking. Equally impressive is how Whitehead’s work is challenged and solicited by L. Mumford (1895–1990). Tertio, the specification of a genuine Whiteheadian utopia would benefit from a dialogue with two of his compatriots: Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) and George Orwell (1903–1950). In conclusion, we obtain a more balanced interpretation of Whitehead’s legacy, that stands out for its cosmological virtues and its application in scientific and theological fields but that dramatically lacks applicability in social and political matters. By temperament, Whitehead was comfortable only in purely abstract matters."

George Orwell'in 1984'ü distopik bir kitap. Kitabın genelinde Büyük Birader(BigBrother) tarafından 7/24 izlenen, düşünce özgürlüğünün olmadığı, geçmişin sürekli değiştirildiği, yalnız dolaşmanın, karşı cinsten biriyle konuşmanın hatta cinsel ilişkiye girmenin bile anormal karşılandığı, hor görüldüğü bir toplum anlatılmakta. Kitapta dikkat çeken unsurlardan biri de "çiftdüşün" ve "yenisöylem" ifadeleri. "Çiftdüşün insanın iki çelişik düşünceyi aynı anda kabullenmesidir. Parti aydını, anılarının hangi yönde değiştirilmesi gerektiğini bilir; bu nedenle gerçekte oynadığını da bilir. Çiftdüşün yöntemiyle gerçeğin gerçeğin zedelenmediğine kendini inandırır. Bu işlem bilinçli yapılmalıdır ama aynı zamanda da bilinçsiz de olmalıdır. Yoksa biz düzenbazlık ve dolasıyla bir suçluluk duygusu uyandırır." diye tanımlamıştır Orwell. Çiftdüşün kitapta "Savaş barıştır", "Kölelik özgürlüktür" şeklinde yansıtılmıştır. Diğer bir dikkat çekici unsursa "Yenisöylem" (Newspeak). Yenisöylem dili, Okyanusya'nın resmi dilidir. Bu dil her ne kadar insanlar arasında kullanılmasa da yazı dilinde özellikle gazetelerde sadece bu dil kullanılmaktadır ve bu dil düşünmeyi minimuma indirmeyi amaçlar. En basitinden şöyle örnek verebiliriz; "iyi" kelimesinin karşıtı literatürde "kötü"dür. Ama 1984'e baktığımızda "kötü" kelimesi yer almaz Yenisöylemde. "Güzel" kavramının belirtici derecesi için "süper, harika" vs. gibi sözcükler yoktur, kullanılmaz. Bunun yerine "artı güzel" ya da "çiftartı güzel" denir. Bu dille yapılmak istenen, dili tamamen yalınlaştırmak. Böylece insanlar, yorum katmadan, kişisel takdir ya da yermelerini kullanamazlar. Yani kısacası dilin herhangi bir özelliği kalmamış olur. Konuşmalar otomatikleşmiş, yazmalar için teknolojik hale gelmiş. Daha çok birleşik kelimelerden oluşan bu dil politik bir dil. Mesela, "iyidüşün" sözcüğü herkesin düşündüğü gibi düşünmek anlamına geliyor. Bu iyi düşünmek, kime ya da neye göre iyi düşünce, herkesin düşündüğü iyi midir gibi soruları akla getiriyor.

Auf der sprachgeschichtlichen Ebene erfüllt Lingua Tertii Imperii. Notizbuch eines Philologen (1947) des jüdischen Wissenschaftlers Victor Klemperer eine grundlegende Funktion, denn kurz nach Kriegsende versucht dieses Werk, »das Gift der LTI deutlich zu machen und vor ihm zu warnen« (LTI). Von der Kritik bisher wenig beachtet wurden aber die individuellen und kollektiven Gedächtnisinhalte des Werkes, die sich tagebuchartig als Anlass und Beweis philologischer Überlegungen erweisen und zur Rekonstruktion der nahen Vergangenheit sowohl eines verfolgten deutschen Intellektuellen als auch eines in den nationalsozialistischen Rausch versetzten Volkes beitragen.

Weber, M. The Global Systemic Crisis and the Requirements of a Whiteheadian Socialism /Мішель Вебер// Буття філософії: Здобутки минулого та виклики сучасності [Текст]: Матеріали всеукраїнської філософської конференції 27-28 листопада 2014 р., м. Дніпропетровськ. М-во освіти і науки України; Нац. гірн. ун-т. – Д.: НГУ, 2014. – 96 с. сс. 22-27.

This article explores the moral charge and pedagogical impulse in the works of H.G. Adler by considering his reflections on language and in particular his articles published in the journal Muttersprache during the 1950s-1960s. More than ‘mere’ philological considerations, these articles ultimately reveal Adler’s core concerns: the power of language (and art) to transform experiences into truthful testimony, the violent potential of language, and the danger of historical, in particular etymological, ignorance. Highlighting the distanced approach that Adler takes, his use of abstraction, and what he leaves unsaid, I show how Adler’s writing on language corresponds and contributes to his overarching efforts to enlighten current society and remind future world citizens of the crimes against humanity committed under National Socialism. To further develop the concept of political philology, the article considers Adler’s connections between language and violence in relation to Victor Klemperer’s specific analysis of the language of National Socialism in his LTI – Notizbuch eines Philologen.