Ethics

What role does our thinking of such atrocities as the holocaust play in forming a political notion of life, and therefore ethical notions of a good life? That is to say, in what way does it follow that the primary aim of the political should be the elimination of suffering (and the often unspoken promotion of 'comfort')? Is it so straightforward to move from a recognition of the horror of genocide to the demand that 'this must never happen again', with this demand entailing a renunciation of violence used for political ends. Must this be so?
And perhaps you say this is all very simplistic - you would be correct. I have not attempted to think the 'fallout' from the holocaust before.
And yet this view seems to be prevalent in popular discourse, in the sense that what was horrific was precisely that, in Nazi Germany particularly, it was people like you or me who were evicted from their homes and sent to their deaths , shorn of their culture, our culture - their books, their music, our thought, our art.
And yet this point doesn't quite express the problematic that interests me (since it might be challenged in very different ways from those which I am eager to explore).
Rather what has captured my imagination is the possible connection between thinking the evil of the holocaust and the trend in western society which might be called 'health fascism'. This will be difficult, I hear you laugh, since I know nothing about either.

Postscript: Alain Badiou's Ethics has provided me with an interesting starting point to an enquiry, though I don't think he would agree with my categorisation of Jews in Germany as Same (ie, their victimhood designates them as Other - thus he might say that I am dining on the "ethical dish" history has served up to me). This work nevertheless resonates with issues I have raised above, eg: "The very idea of a consensual 'ethics', stemming from the general feeling provoked by the sight of atrocities, which replaces the 'old ideological divisions', is a powerful contributor to subjective resignation and acceptance of the status quo. For what every emancipatory project does, what every emergence of hitherto unknown possibilities does, is to put an end to consensus." (Alain Badiou, Ethics p32)

'About Warwick and everything connected with Warwick, with special attention to the Cone'

"Instead of committing suicide, people go to work."

— Thomas Bernhard, Correction p224.

"...there are some who if they were tied to the whipping post - and could but get one hand free would use it to ring the bells & fire the cannon to celebrate their liberty."

— Henry David Thoreau, Journal 26 April 1851.

A chance meeting

I came in from the cold, out of the blasted icy blasts, and we began to talk about judgements of taste and judgements of the agreeable. I have this idea, which I believe to be mistaken, but which - surely - cannot be wrong, that since pleasure in the beautiful arises from the play of understanding and imagination, pleasure in the merely agreeable cannot involve cognition (but must be 'bodily', given that what is required for this pleasure is the material existence of this object). We were thinking of this because SF is pursuing a line of thinking tangentially related to - but not necessarily supported by- mine.
Beside us, a man was growing restless. He deployed that universally recognised tactic for announcing one's interest to strangers: "........ Wittgenstein(?)", where the missing words are mumbled, producing the ambiguous result of either a question or a statement. The key word is enunciated clearly. Thus it could be that he said "Have you read much Wittgenstein?" or "I have read a little Wittgenstein" or "this problem was (dis)solved by Wittgenstein".
It is always a pleasure to meet someone like this under these circumstances. He had studied philosophy thirty years ago, and still tries to think things through thoroughly in his current situation (as an economist). We spoke of various matters, but, as is often the case when talking to Wittgensteinians, the discussion reached its peak with mutterings of conspiracy. Something about Wittgenstein's secret communist activity (I didn't hear, because the man really was muttering. I think he may have said "Wittgenstein was the third gunman on the grassy knoll" but I don't think the dates are right.) I would venture the thesis that Wittgenstein acolytes have a troubled and problematic relationship to the unknown, to the infinite. But I am not in a position to say.

The danger of a singular path

I almost knocked Charles Kennedy over yesterday. No, he wasn't drunk, and no, it wasn't my fault. He always seemed to me the kind of man who wills his own destruction. He was walking outside parliament on the road side of the terrorist barriers, striding along, heading no doubt for a hearty and important lunch. I came straight at him, since I was riding on the left of the traffic. Luckily I recognised his red hair and more-florid-by-the-day face...I swerved and braked to avoid him.
The look on his face at this moment secured my everlasting love. He was thoroughly irritated by the whole scenario, and my manoeuvre appeared to leave him particularly nonplussed.