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A Philosopher’s Reaction after Seeing Schindler’s List for the First Time
Robert Lawrence
Yes, the blood seeping
into the snow from the man shot
in the head, the screaming children pulled
from hysterical parents, the naked women
herded into the disinfection room—
powerful, gut-wrenching images;
but one image stuck with me
like a disease that won’t go away:
the towering chimney at Auschwitz
its incessant fire glowing
against the black night sky:
not evil to the nth degree
but absolute evil—
which raises a question that merges
ethics and metaphysics—
if there is an absolute evil,
must there be an absolute good?
The Absolute Good, you say, is God?
Is this the same God you call upon
to heal your surgically repaired knee
to mend your relationship-torn heart
to lead you to a fulfilling career
to console your friends and relatives
(my thoughts and prayers are with you)
but who did not rain fire and brimstone
on the SS or do anything else to stop
the Auschwitz fires? If it is,
I pose for you a philosophical question:
how could Absolute Good have
such warped priorities?
Is your Absolute Good the same God
whose deeds are chronicled in the Bible?
The same God who drowned all on Earth
except one man’s family?
The same God who killed the Egyptian firstborn?
The same God who said,
“I will make my arrows
drunk with blood,
and my sword shall devour flesh”?
The same God who orchestrated the massacres
of the Amalekites, the Aradites, the Midianites?
The same God who killed 14,700 Jews
who complained about his slayings?
The same God who punished David
by wasting away his baby son?
The same God who sent two bears to
tear apart 42 small boys who dared
call the prophet Elisha “baldy”?
The same God of these and numerous other
killings, resulting, according to
a recent examination of the text,
in almost 25 million people dead?
As a rational person, how can you
possibly see this God as Absolute Good.
But, you say, that’s the Old Testament God.
The New Testament God is a God of Love:
Listen: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! . . . It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades!”
“Depart from me you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Simplistic either/or moral judgment,
with the or folk, perhaps billions of them,
tortured for eternity. A rational observer
does not see a convincing makeover:
the new Boss sounds a lot like the old Boss.
But take heart: for all the power of Evil,
The Good does advance,
from the harsh punishments of the Bronze Age
to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
gradually
like evolution or an eroding wind;
not through the laws or whims
of an Orwellian deity who devours
human flesh in the name of love
(may such a being, an apt model
for nations that bomb in the name
of peace, be truly imaginary)
but through the courageous actions of
imperfect men and women. Like
Alice Paul, resisting forced feedings
in jail to help bring women
the right to vote. Oscar Schindler
risking everything to compile his list,
Martin Luther King, resolute in the face
of impending death to fight for racial equality,
an end to war, and economic justice.
Absolute Good, then, is as gossamer
as Plato’s realm of ideas.
Let us look forward to the day when both
become mere footnotes to philosophy.
