Table Of Contenttitle: The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and
Hiroshima : Apocalypse or Utopia?
author: Fasching, Darrell J.
publisher: StateUniversity of New York Press
isbn10 | asin: 0791413764
print isbn13: 9780791413760
ebook isbn13: 9780585063416
language: English
subject Religious ethics, Human rights--Religious aspects,
Technology--Moral and ethical aspects, Utopias--
Moral and ethical aspects, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-
1945)--Moral and ethical aspects, Nuclear warfare--
Moral and ethical aspects.
publication date: 1993
lcc: BJ1188.F37 1993eb
ddc: 241/.62
subject: Religious ethics, Human rights--Religious aspects,
Technology--Moral and ethical aspects, Utopias--
Moral and ethical aspects, Holocaust, Jewish (1939-
1945)--Moral and ethical aspects, Nuclear warfare--
Moral and ethical aspects.
Page iii
The Ethical Challenge
of Auschwitz and Hiroshima
Apocalypse or Utopia?
Darrell J. Fasching
State University of New York Press
Page iv
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1993 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York Press,
State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y.12246
Production by M. R. Mulholland
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fasching, Darrell J., 1944-
The ethical challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima : Apocalypse or
Utopia? / by Darrell J. Fasching.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-1375-6 (alk. paper). ISBN 0-7914-1376-4 (pbk. :
alk. paper)
1. Religious ethics. 2. Human rightsReligious aspects.
3. TechnologyMoral and ethical aspects. 4. UtopiasMoral and
ethical aspects. 5. Holocaust. Jewish (19391945)Moral and ethical aspects. 6. Nuclear
warfareMoral and ethical aspects.
I. Title.
BJ1188.F37 1993
231´.62dc20 92-8118
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Page ix
Appendix: The United Nations Universal Declaration of HumanRights 327
Notes 333
Index 359
Page v
For Gabriel Vahanian
who first taught me to see
the utopian promise of Babel
Page vii
CONTENTS
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Prologue: The Challenge of BabelFrom Alienation to Ethics After Auschwitz and
Hiroshima 1
Part I: The Promise of Utopia and the Threat of Apocalypse
1. Technology and the Dialectics of Apocalypse andUtopia 19
The Coming of the Millennium 19
Language, Technique, and the Utopianism of the Body 30
The Technological City as Utopian Horizon of the Body-Self 34
The Apocalyptic Deformation of Utopianism: Procrustean and Protean
Distortions 37
Doubt and Utopian Transcendence 42
The Dialectics of Apocalypse and Utopia 46
2. The Narrative Ambivalence of a Technological Civilization: Apocalypse or
Utopia? 55
Technopolis: The Secular City as Utopian 55
Auschwitz: The Secular City as Apocalyptic 60
Technopolis: The Sacralization of the Secular City 68
From Auschwitz to Hiroshima: Technopolis and the Abyss of the Demonic 74
3. From Auschwitz to Hiroshima: The Apocalyptic DarkNight 81
Doubling and the Demonic Narrative of Auschwitz: Killing in Order to Heal 81
From Auschwitz to Hiroshima: The Demonic Inversion of the Narrative
Traditions of the HolyEast and West 96
From Trinity to the Bhagavad Gita: Wounding in Order to Heal, Slaying to Make
Alive 100
Page viii
The Apocalyptic Dark Night and the MAD-ness of Planetary Suicide 115
Part II: After Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Utopian Ethics for an Apocalyptic Age
4. The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima to Technological Utopianism 123
Ethics: From Sacred Narratives to UtopianCritique 123
Theology of Culture as the Utopian Critique of Technical Civilization 134
The Dialectics of the Critique of Culture: From the Sacred and Profane to the
Holy and Secular 141
The Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: From Sacred Morality to Alienation
and Ethics 155
5. Utopian Ethics: From Human Dignity to Human Rights and Human Liberation 161
The Utopianism of Job: From the Ethics of Obedience to the Ethics of Audacity 161
Secular Holiness in Defense of Human Dignity: The Commanding Voice from
Auschwitz and the UN Declaration of HumanRights 176
The Convergence of Utopian Narratives: From Abraham and Siddhartha to
Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. 202
6. Beyond Technopolis: The Utopian Promise of Babel 213
The Linguistic and Narrative Poverty of Secularism 214
Welcoming the Stranger as the Utopian Norm of Secular Reason 220
Technobureaucratic Rationality and the "Myth" of Human Rights 231
From Narrative Diversity to the Utopian Promise of Babel 238
7. A Utopian Vision: Narrative Ethics in a MADWorld 247
Beyond the Naked Public Square 247
The Utopian Quest in an Age of Apocalyptic Darkness 276
Utopian Technopoesis and the Limits of Political Realism 285
From Apocalyptic MAD-ness to Utopian Madness: Public Policy Ethics as
Critique of the Narrative Imagination 296
Epilogue: The Secular University, Religious Studies, and Theological Ethics After
Auschwitz and Hiroshima 317
Page xi
PREFACE
This book is dedicated to Gabriel Vahanian, mentor, friend and a theologian's theologian.
His influence permeates each page. Every book, I am convinced has a surface structure and
a deep structure. The surface structure draws upon the workof various authors in support of
its argument. Their influence will be explicit and obvious. In this book the surface structure
is built around the works of such figures as Jacques Ellul, Paul Tillich, Eric Voegelin,
Bernard Lonergan, Irving Greenberg, John Dunne, Stanley Hauerwas, etc. The deep
structure, however, is much harder to recognize. The deep structure reflects the way a book
is organizedthe types of questions that are asked and the way answers are sought. The
influences on this deep structure will be less obvious but far more profound than those so
obvious in the surface structure. It is not the quotations or references that define the deep
structure but the very thought process through which the argument unfolds. While
references to Gabriel Vahanian can be found in the surface structure, it is at the level of
deep structure that his influence is so pervasive. This book simply would never have been
conceived and would never have seen the light of day were it not for his influence on the
deep structure of my own thought.
It is now a decade and a half since I completed my doctorate under the direction of Gabriel
Vahanian at Syracuse University. I still remember the exhilaration of those graduate years.
The intellectual atmosphere was filled with electricity and excitement. Graduate programs
also have both surface and deep structures. The surface structure is made up of courses and
requirements. Its focus is on content and method. And it is possible to walk away with a
doctorate based on nothing more than that. But if one is very fortunate, as I was, one
studies under a master who teaches far more than the particular contents and methods of a
discipline. I entered Syracuse to study theology of culture and from Gabriel Vahanian I
learned far more than content and method. I came to understand that theology is concerned
not so much with the exegesis of sacred texts and traditions as it is an iconoclastic way of
thinking about our humanity as a linguistic and culturally embodied realitythe word made
flesh. I learned that which cannot be put down on the written page but which affects
Page xii
everything I write. I learned that which can only be absorbed by studying with a master. I
learned to think theologically.
In saying this I do not mean to suggest that Gabriel Vahanian is somehow responsible for
the weaknesses of this book. I am not at all sure that I have lived up to the gift that was
given to me. It may be a weakness to fall short of such a high measure but it is no disgrace.
It is in fact an honor. The deep structure of this book will be quite recognizable to those
who are familiar with Vahanian's books. Many will be familiar with his books in English:
The Death of God, Wait Without Idols, No Other God, and God and Utopia. But some may
not be familiar with his two most recent works in French, which came out just as I was
completing this manuscript: Dieu anonyme(God Anonymous) and L'utopie chrétienne
(Christian Utopia).1 The organizing themes of my own efforts can all be found in these
worksthe human as created in the image of a God without image, the dialectic of the sacred
and the holy, and of technology and utopia vis a vis apocalypse; the experience of God or
transcendence as the questioning of all our answers; the audacious protest against religion
as itself religious; the utopian promise of Babel, etc. Even on those occasions when my
own analysis departs from Vahanian's it is but a permutation which would have been
impossible without his influence. Needless to say, the debt I owe to Gabriel Vahanian is
immeasurable. I hope that in some modest way this book is a down payment on it.
I need to acknowledge a primary indebtedness not only to the living but to the dead. Two
ghosts haunt the pages of this book. The surface structure is deeply indebted to Paul Tillich
who pioneered the field of theology of culture and whose work first motivated me to
consider theology as a profession. But there is another ghost which haunts these pages,
namely, the ghost of Karl Barth. All my life I have been drawn to Tillich and have tried to
escape the influence of Barthbut to no avail. As an undergraduate in Philosophy at the
University of Minnesota my adviser was the distinguished scholar of Medieval Philosophy,
Gareth Matthews. To my dismay I discovered in a conversation one day that he had read
virtually everything Barth had ever written. When I finished my B.A. I went on to Syracuse
University to study with Gabriel Vahanian. By some strange leap of intuitive insight I had
decided Vahanian was a Tillichian. It was a considerable shock to discover that in fact it
was not only Bultmann but Barth who deeply influenced his work. Then it came time to
write my doctoral dissertation and Vahanian steered me toward Jacques Ellulyet another
Barthian. The result is that, although I have quite deliberately read very little of Karl Barth,
I am afraid I have been
Page xiii
unable to keep Barth from influencing my thought. I have absorbed his thought, it seems,
by osmosis. For this I must both praise and blame Gabriel Vahanian above all.
Having said all this, I would like to acknowledge other debts as well. The total environment
during my graduate days was the seed bed for this book. I cannot imagine having written it
without the study of Job under Jim Williams, or Nietzsche and historical consciousness
under Jim Wiggins, or the Bhagavad Gita and the Pali Canon under Dan Smith. Nor should
I neglect to mention the influence of Dick Pilgrim's work in Japanese Buddhism or the
seminars with Stanley Romaine Hopper, David Miller, D. B. Robertson and Ronald
Cavanagh. Later, while I was writing my dissertation, Michael Novak, Huston Smith, and
Alan Berger joined the faculty. Each left their mark and I would not wish it otherwise. To
all of them I am deeply grateful.
There are others I need to thank as well. Bill Shea, my good friend and colleague, with
whom I debated so many of the ideas found here. Also my graduate students: Tracy
Stewart, Alice Hutton, Raul Canizares, James Massey, Diane Smith, Barbara Souders, and
especially Robin Tuthill and Janet Nelson. Both Robin and Janet worked through two
different drafts of this manuscript with me and their serious engagement with these drafts
helped me to write a better book than it would have been otherwise. I am especially grateful
for Janet Nelson's cogent criticisms which led me to significantly reorganize this
manuscript. I also wish to thank two former students, Janet Bank and Susan Segal, for their
careful reading of the manuscript and helpful suggestions which likewise affected the
structure of this book.
I also owe special thanks as well to a former student, Jim David, who was instrumental in
making it possible for me to attend the international conference on the Holocaust,
"Remembering the Future," at Oxford University in the summer of 1988. It was the paper I
prepared for that conference and the conversations I had there, especially with Alice
Eckhardt, Richard Rubenstein, and Marc Ellis, which led me to conceive this book. Indeed,
I drafted the first outline of this book while at that conference. Richard Rubenstein has had
his own special impact upon this book. It is he who points out in his brilliant book, The
Cunning of History, that we live in a world that is "functionally godless"a world in which
human rights and human dignity are reduced to civil rights which can be granted or
withheld as societies choose. No theologian, he argues, has dealt with the fact that no crime
was committed at Auschwitz. Moreover, no theologian has shown how the championing of
human rights on the part of
Page xiv
religious communities in such a politicized world can make the slightest bit of difference.
In this book I have tried to respond to his challenge and address these issues.
I also owe a debt to Max Stackhouse whose review and recommendation of this project
helped make it possible for me to get the sabbatical I needed to complete it. And I would
like to thank Stanley Hauerwas for his willingness to look at a draft of this manuscript in its
earliest stages and offer words of encouragement. Finally I would like to thank Rollin
Richmond, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Florida, for
his support and encouragement which made it possible to complete this book in a timely
manner.
Page xv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to expresss my appreciation for the assistance provided me by the University of
South Florida, for this book was made possible in part by two University grants; a research
grant for the summer of 1989 and a sabbatical grant for the fall of 1989. In addition, I wish
to thank Fortress press for permission to utilize brief sections of my previous book
Narrative Theology After Auschwitz: From Alienation to Ethics (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Fortress, 1992) in order to complete the argument of this sequal. I also wish to thank the
following for permission to adapt materials I have previouslypublished elsewhere:
Soundings, for permission to adapt ''Technology as Utopian Technique of the Human," Vol.
LXII, No. 2, Summer 1980, pp. 135158.
Horizons, for permission to adapt "Can Christian Faith Survive Auschwitz?", Vol. 12, No.
1, 1985, pp. 726.
Pergamon Press for permission to adapt material from "Faith and Ethics After the
Holocaust: What Christians Can learn from Jews," in the proceedings of the Oxford
international conference on the Holocaust entitled Remembering for the Future, Vol. 1,
1988, pp. 598611. This was revised and reprinted in The Journal of Ecumenical Studies
under the title "Faith and Ethics After Auschwitz: What Christian's Can Learn From the
Jewish Narrative Tradition of Hutzpah" Vol. 27, No. 3, Summer 1990, pp. 453479.
JAI Press for permission to adapt portions of two articles: "The Dialectics of Apocalypse
and Utopia in the Theological Ethics of Jacques Ellul," which appeared in volume 10,
1990, pp. 149165 and "Mass Media, Ethical Paradox, and Democratic Freedom: Jacques
Ellul's Ethic of the Word," in volume 11, 1991, pp. 77103 ofResearch in Philosophy and
Technology.
The Journal of the American Association of Rabbis, for permission to adapt material from
"Ethics after Auschwitz and Hiroshima: The Challenge of the 'Other' for Jews, Christians,
Buddhists, and Other Strangers in a Technological Civilization," Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer,
1990, pp. 1020.
Page xvi
Method, for material adapted from "Theology and Public Policy: Reflections on Method in
the Work of Juan Luis Segundo, Jacques Ellul and Robert Doran," Vol. 5, No. 1, March,
1987, pp. 4191.
I would also like to thank the following publishers for permission to use copyrighted
material:
The Journal of Ecumenical Studiesfor excerpts from "Hutzpa K'lapei Shamaya: A
Christian Response to the Jewish Tradition of Arguing with God," by Belden Lane, from
Vol. 4, Fall 1986, pp. 567586.
HarperCollins Publishers Inc., for excerpts from The Cunning of History by Richard
Rubenstein, (New York: Harper, copyright 1975). Introduction copyright 1978 by William
Stryon.
Crossroad/Continuum Publishing Group for excerpts from The Tremendum, by Arthur
Cohen, (New York: Crossroad, copyright 1981).
Basic Books for excerpts from The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of
Genocide (New York, Basic Books, copyright 1986) and The Future of Immortality and
Other Essays for a Nuclear Age (New York, Basic Books, copyright 1987), both by Robert
Jay Lifton. Basic Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. for excerpts from The Naked Public Square by
Richard Neuhaus, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., copyright 1984) and for the
reproduction of figure 1 from page 18 of Creeds, Society and Human Rights: A Study in
Three Cultures by Max L. Stackhouse, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., copyright
1984.)
Macmillan Publishing Co. for excerpts from The Secular City by Harvey Cox (New York,
Macmillan, copyright 1965).
University of Notre Dame Press for excerpts from After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre.
(Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, Revised Edition).
Beacon Press, for excerpts from Ethics After Babel (Boston, 1988) by Jeffrey Stout.
Word Books for excerpts from Nuclear Arms: Two Views on World Peace (Dallas: Word
Inc., 1987) by Myron S. Augsburger and Dean C. Curry.
Orbis Books for excerpts from The Emptying God: A Budhist-Jewish-Christian
Conversation (Maryknoll N.Y., Orbis Books, 1990), edited by John Cobb Jr. and
Christopher Ives.
Page 1
PROLOGUE:
THE CHALLENGE OF BABELFROM ALIENATION TO ETHICS AFTER
AUSCHWITZ AND HIROSHIMA
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from
the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to
one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick
for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city,
and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise
we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The Lord came down to
see the city and the tower which mortals had built. And the Lord said, ''Look, they are
one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they
will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossiblefor them. Come, let us go
down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's
speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and
they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord
confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad
over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:19 1
The story of Babel is a tale for our times. It is a parable through which we might come to
understand our situation. The citizens of Babel, it seems, sought to build a perfect city, a
utopia whose technological prowess would make their name known throughout the earth.
These citizens, we are told, sought to seize control of transcendence through the ideology
of a single language and the common technological project of building a tower to heaven.
God, however, upset their efforts by confusing their tongues, so that they could not
understand each other. They became strangers to one another and so could not complete
their task. They had to abandon all "final solutions" and settle for an unfinished city. The
popular interpretation of this story is that the confusion of tongues was a curse and a
punishment for the
Page 2
human sin of pride. But I am convinced that this is a serious misunderstanding of its
meaning. For this story must be interpreted within the tradition of stories that make up the
canon of the Tanakh (Old Testament), where the command to welcome the stranger appears
more often than any other commandment. 2 In the light of that emphasis, I would suggest
that the point of the story is that human beings misunderstood where transcendence lay, and
God simply redirected them to the true experience of transcendence, which can occur only
when there are strangers to be welcomed into our lives. The moral of this story, as I read it,
is that utopian transcendence is to be found not in a "finished world" of technological and
ideological conformity but in an "unfinished world" of diversity, a world that offers us the
opportunity to welcome the stranger. Indeed, our attempts to define a world through
technological prowess and ideological uniformity have led us, more than once, to the brink
of MAD-ness (mutually assured destruction)the brink of an apocalyptic nuclear
annihilation. Our hope lies in seeing the utopian possibilities of a world of diversitythe
latent possibilities that can be actualized through an ethic of welcoming the stranger.
This book follows upon and expands the argument of my previous book, Narrative
Theology After Auschwitz: From Alienation to Ethics (Fortress, 1992). It is intended to be
an experiment in theology of culture as an approach to comparative religious ethics through
narrative. In Narrative Theology After Auschwitz I attempted to restructure the Christian
narrative tradition in the light of Auschwitz through a dialogue with that strand of post-
Holocaust Jewish theology and ethics that draws on the Jewish narrative tradition of
chutzpah.3 That volume culminated in an ethic of personal and professional responsibility
proposed as a strategy for restraining the human capacity for the demonic.
This volume, The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Apocalypse or Utopia?
continues the narrative ethics approach but extends the ethical focus of the discussion to
encompass religion, technology, and public policy in a cross-cultural perspective. In this
work, I attempt to do what narrative ethicists have said cannot be done; namely, construct a
cross-cultural ethic of human dignity, human rights, and human liberation that is rooted in
and respects the diversity of narrative traditions. Moreover, I have tried to do this without
succumbing to either ethical relativism or ethical absolutism, even as I seek to directly
confront the dominant narrative of our technological civilization. That narrative, I am
convinced, is the Janus-faced myth of "Apocalypse or Utopia." This mythic narrative tends
to render us
Page 3
ethically impotent, for, mesmerized by the power of technology, we become trapped in the
manic-depressive rhythms of a sacral awe; that is, of fascination and dread. When we are
caught up in the utopian euphoria created by the marvelous promises of technology we do
not wish to change anything. And when, in our darker moments, we fear that this same
technology is out of control and leading us to our own apocalyptic self-destruction, we feel
overwhelmed and unable to do anything. The paradox is that the very strength of our literal
utopian euphoria sends us careening toward some literal apocalyptic "final solution." In
Narrative Theology After Auschwitz I argued that the demonic narrative theme that
dominated Auschwitz was "killing in order to heal." In this book I argue that this theme
became globalized when it was incorporated into the Janus-faced technological mythos that
emerged out of Hiroshima. This mythic narrative underlies and structures much of public
policy in our nuclear age. In response to this demonic narrative, I propose a cross-cultural
coalition for an ethic of human dignity, human rights, and human liberation at the
intersection of those holy communities whose narrative traditions emphasize the
importance of welcoming the stranger. My goal is to construct a bridge not only over the
abyss between religions, East andWest, but also between religious and secular ethics.
The total project, then, is about religion, ethics, and public policy after Auschwitz and
Hiroshima. It is about (a) rethinking the meaning of civilization and public order in an
emerging pluralistic world civilization as we approach the end of a millenniumthe year
2000 C.E.; (b) the need for a cross-cultural ethic in a world wracked by ethical relativism
and ideological conflict; and (c) sacred and secular public narratives in a technological
civilization and the appropriate role for religion in the shaping of public values in a
"secular" world.
The perspective from which this book is written is that of theology. However, it is not
"Christian" theology, although it is most certainly theology written by a Christian. It is not
"confessional theology," but theology understood as an academic discipline within the
humanities, whose purpose is the illumination of the human experience (individual and
communal) of transcendence as self-transcendence. Needless to say, the same subject
