Ron Rosenbaum
I asked Steiner about his argument that the Jews were killed because they tortured the conscience of mankind.
"You seem to be saying that something about the Jews--that there is a rational hatred--"
George Steiner
"No--it is--no. Call it, if you want, an intuitive (hatred)--I believe that explanations for anti-Semitism of a sociopolitical nature are fine as far as they go, but they tell you nothing about two things. About Jew-hatred where there are no Jews (in contemporary Poland, for instance) and about the ontological decision that one must kill the human person because of its being. And hence I put forward this image, this hypothesis that our invention of God, of Jesus, our invention of Marxist utopia, has left humanity so uncertain inwardly that it is trying to banish its own bad conscience."
Ron Rosenbaum
"Are you saying, then, that the torture of conscience is worse than the torture in the camps even?"
George Steiner
"Over the long run," he says, "to feel yourself at fault probably builds up unbearable hatreds, self-hatreds, to feel yourself found out."
Explaining Hitler
THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF HIS EVIL
Ron Rosenbaum
Chapter 17
George Steiner: Singling out the Jewish "Invention of Conscience"
page 316
I asked Steiner about his argument that the Jews were killed because they tortured the conscience of mankind.
"You seem to be saying that something about the Jews--that there is a rational hatred--"
George Steiner
"No--it is--no. Call it, if you want, an intuitive (hatred)--I believe that explanations for anti-Semitism of a sociopolitical nature are fine as far as they go, but they tell you nothing about two things. About Jew-hatred where there are no Jews (in contemporary Poland, for instance) and about the ontological decision that one must kill the human person because of its being. And hence I put forward this image, this hypothesis that our invention of God, of Jesus, our invention of Marxist utopia, has left humanity so uncertain inwardly that it is trying to banish its own bad conscience."
Ron Rosenbaum
"Are you saying, then, that the torture of conscience is worse than the torture in the camps even?"
George Steiner
"Over the long run," he says, "to feel yourself at fault probably builds up unbearable hatreds, self-hatreds, to feel yourself found out."
Explaining Hitler
THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF HIS EVIL
Ron Rosenbaum
Chapter 17
George Steiner: Singling out the Jewish "Invention of Conscience"
page 316
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