A review by pergolesi
At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities by Jean Amery

5.0

Améry writes with brutal clarity of the realities of living through and after the Holocaust. I'm in no position to judge or pass critique, but I will offer a response anyway: I don't think the Holocaust lays any more claim to fundamental truths of human existence than pre- or post-Holocaust society. I think Améry is more sick of the intellectual speculation and rationalization than he is seriously arguing that evil is absolute, but I think that something being terrible does not make it more immutably a part of us than, say, humanity's demonstrated capacity for goodness. But I'm just some modern intellectual playing communication games. I think there is no meaningful disagreement to be made with Améry.