Abstract
The Holocaust's extreme character, which makes it different from other historical events, can arguably by associated with the help of philosophy, with its ‘negative radicality.’ This radicality emanates from those elements of the cataclysm that seem to lack any apparent meaning when approached by means of ‘normal’ historical experience and understanding. Hence it is hardly surprising that the Shoah poses some of the biggest challenges to our capacities to comprehend, conceive, and represent, not only historical events, but history and historicity. It turned out to be more and more a ‘radical counter- testimony’ to traditional philosophy; as philosophy has a lot to do with the historical circumstances in which it is written, we must ask how the Holocaust's radicalism forces a re-examination of philosophical categories. This does not mean we will find no meaning of the Holocaust: but if we want to deepen our understanding of it, we have to treat it as a philosophically- historical and cultural problem, subject to philosophically-historical and cultural answers11A shorter version of my discussion of philosophical-historical concepts associated with the memory of the Holocaust was included in my paper entitled Paradoxes of symbolic encryptions of memory in Holocaust memorialization presented on the 9th of November 2012 at the ESSACHESS-ORC IARSIC International Conference on Communication of the symbolic and the symbolic of communication in the modern and postmodern societies, ITIC, Paul Valéry University of Montpellier 3, Beziers, France. The paper will be published in the Conference's proceedings volume.
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