ATS2875 Chapter Notes - Chapter 42: Primo Levi
30 Aug 2018
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Hu(cid:373)a(cid:374)ity: a moral history of the twe(cid:374)tieth ce(cid:374)tury - Instead they were made out of the same cloth, they were average people, averagely intelligent, wicked, save for exceptions, they were not monsters: there are two trusts, people with different characters respond very differently to moral crises. It may fail or may be overridden, this may be by fear, either of the bullying sergeant or of a whole apparatus of state terror: or it may be overridden by the pressures of obedience or conformity. This was a feature of the gradual abandonment of the prohibition on the international killing of civilians in war: another form of disconnection between what people do and their sense of moral identity. The division of labour can make the contribution of any single person seem unimportant: there is evidence to suggest that those who rescued victims of the nazis had not been given a rigidly disciplined upbringing.
