Abstract

Primo Levi wrote in the preface to his account of Auschwitz in the second publication of “If This Is a Man” (1958) that his purpose in writing was to provide documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind. Later, thirty years into his writing career, in an appendix for Italian scholastic editions of the book, he wrote that the judges were his readers. He explained his need to adopt a calm and sober voice in his account, to avoid emotional overtones. In this way, he would assume the voice of a witness who prepares the ground for the judge. To intentionally read as a judge who inherits Levi’s story as, in part, an ethical statement and charge, I turn to moral philosophers, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Iris Murdoch, and Emmanuel Levinas. I argue that for contemporary readers of Levi’s account, the assumption of judgment requires a growing conscious commitment, even so far as to entail a daily practice, to work for conditions in our human environments that guard from and proactively address forms of violence, including scapegoating, injustice, and sustained oppression.