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The concept of learning from the study of the Holocaust

Department of Sociology, SHiPSS, Armory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4RJ, UK.n.j.pleasants{at}ex.ac.uk

In his much-discussed Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen claims to bring ‘the critical eye of the anthropologist’ to the task of understanding the motivational state of Holocaust perpetrators. This aspect of his methodology has not received much critical attention. In this article I seek to fill that gap. I do so through consideration of Peter Winch’s reflections on the concept of learning from anthropological study of an alien social and cultural world. Goldhagen tells us that perpetrators acted as they did because they believed it was ‘necessary and just’ to do so. But he only tells us thatthey believed this. We need to know howthey could have believed such a thing. Drawing upon Winch’s reflections, and with recourse to a controversial analogy, I address the ‘phenomenological’ question that Goldhagen poses, but fails, to explore.

Key Words: animal utilization • Goldhagen • Holocaust • perpetrators • Winch

History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 17, No. 2-3, 187-210 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0952695104047302


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