The Concept of Learning from the Study of the Holocaust
Author(s)
Pleasants, Nigel
Abstract
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 that they believed this. We need to know how they 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.
