Emberi méltóság a Tóra és a holokauszt tükrében

Absztrakt

Our conception of human dignity is a value laid down by the constitution, as well as a fundamental premise of humanist thought, which applies to every human being and says: “human dignity is inviolable. Every human being has the right to life and to human dignity.” However, moral thinking based on the Bible grounds this value not in a general consensus, the social contract, that is, but on the divine “image”, or “pattern”: unquestionable, as each individual’s roots in the Transcendent, or respect for God are, by the same token the obligation of basic respect for each individual human being is indisputable. Considering the sequence of events during the Holocaust—and especially remembering it from a distance of decades—we must concentrate foremost on what lessons this most horroristic human tragedy of the twentieth century can teach us. There are many aspects and layers to the lessons, but approaching the question from the analytical point of view, and seen from the perspective of human dignity, one of the most important lessons is hidden in the mystery of how it could happen that these darkest ideas of human history were born within the stronghold of European civilization and the Enlightenment. Contradicting the unconditional human dignity dictated by the Torah and the Bible, Nazi ideology proclaimed a conditional human dignity. Fanaticizing social Darwinism, they considered the principle of human dignity merely the proviso of the social contract, on which the tables could be turned if social demand for termination of the contract arose. In contrast, the Torah, the Bible, does not trace human existence back to a development from a lower order of existence to one of higher rank through a nature-dictated form of selection, but bases it on the creation by the embodiment of absolute good, the Transcendent. The absolute value of the individual human being created thereby, upon these foundations, cannot either be overturned in the service of interests of any kind, or dissolved on grounds of any qualitative or quantitative calculation. Much has been said in recent years about the decay of European values, many have gone so far as to call it an identity disorder. The following question arises, among others: In formulating our fundamental values, are we satisied with a shared, subjective resolve, a temporarily approved social contract, or do we believe that the principles of good and bad, moral and the amoral should be determined on the basis of standards we correlate with the Transcendent?