Raimond Gaita on Primo Levi’s ‘If this is a Man’

“One of those books we cannot do without”: Reflections on Primo Levi’s ‘If this is a Man’ – talk by Raimond Gaita. “My title is a quote is form Inga Clendinnen’s book, ‘Reading the Holocaust’. She means that we cannot do without ‘If this is a Man’, if we want to understand the ethical character of the Holocaust. She means also, I think, that humanity needs such ethical understanding if it is to understand itself. At any rate, that is what I believe, and I will try to explain why. In doing so I will explore the criticism, increasingly common and from many quarters, that thinking this way about the Holocaust distorts rather than deepens our understanding of what it means for all the peoples of the earth to share a common humanity. The reason given is, in part, that it has diminished ethical appreciation of other crimes, rightly called crimes against humanity, suffered by non-European peoples.” FREE EVENT.