The biopolitics of souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato

Political Theory

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 9-32

  Forti, Simona ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN PIEDMONT   (Italy)

Author keywords

Biopolitics; Nazism; Platonism; Race theory; Relationship of body soul; Totalitarianism; Western philosophical tradition

Indexed keywords

EID: 31644437345     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591705280526     Document Type: Review

References (127)

1. A preliminary version of this essay was published as "Biopolitica delle anime" in Filosofia politica 3, 2003. I would like to thank, among others, Professor Adriana Cavarero, Professor Giuseppe Cambiano, and Professor Mario Vegetti (some of the leading Italian scholars on Platonic philosophy) for their suggestions about this new version. I am greatly indebted to Francesco Ingravalle for an exchange of ideas on National Socialist racism. I would also like to thank him for having allowed me to have access to some texts that are in practice unavailable in most libraries.
2. See M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, 1:La volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976)
3. [The History of sexuality, volume I: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Viking, 1978)];
4. R. Hurley Idem, "II faut défendre la société " (Paris: Gallimard, 1997)
5. [Society must be defended, trans. D. Macey, (London: Allen Lane, 2003)];
6. D. Macey, Idem, Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France, 1977-1978 (Paris: Gallimard, 2004);
7. D. Macey Idem, Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978-1979 (Paris: Gallimard, 2004).
8. F. Fehér and A. Heller, Biopolitics (Vienna: European Centre, 1994) was among the first contributions that readdressed the issue of biopolitics, taking Foucault as a starting point, and connecting it to the heritage of Hannah Arendt.
9. See also A. Heller, S. Puntscher Riekmann (Eds.), Biopolitics. The Politics of the Body, Race and Nature (Wien: European Centre, 1996).
10. Among the many who have dealt with biopolitics from this perspective, see G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Torino: Einaudi, 1995);
11. A. Brossat, L'épreuve du désastre. Le XXe siècle et les camps (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996);
12. A. Brossat, Idem, Le corps de l'ennemi. Hyperviolence et démocratie (Mayenne: La fabrique, 1998).
13. A. Brossat, Idem, La démocratie immunitaire (Paris: La Dispute, 2003);
14. J. Butler The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997);
15. R. Esposito, Immunitas. Protezione e negazione della vita (Torino: Einaudi, 2002);
16. D. J. Haraway, The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations of Self in Immune System Discourse (1989) in Haraway, Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature (New York: Routledge, 1991);
17. G. Hottois, Essais de philosophie bioétique et biopolitique (Paris: Vrin, 1999);
18. P. Lecorps J.-B. Paturet, Santé publique. Du biopouvoir à la démocratie (Rennes: Editions ENSP, 1999);
19. V. Shiva, I. Moser (eds.), Biopolitics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
20. See also the references to biopolitics in M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)
21. and in R. Bodei, Destini personali. L'età della colonizzazione delle coscienze (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2002).
22. Foucault emphasized on various occasions that the "so-called totalitarian experiences" were the "problem" that had started off his entire research program on power. Starting from Nazism and Stalinism, Foucault states, it has been demonstrated "without any shadow of doubt" that political power has a totalitarian vocation; that is, it tends to have a total and precise control over everything (M. Foucault, "La sécurité et l'Etat," in Foucault, Dits et écrits II, 1976-1988, [Paris: Gallimard, 2001, 383]). The direction of his research was, in other words, to continue to reflect on the conditions of the possibility of a power that may address totality, in the sense of all and each of us. Totalitarianism has in fact demonstrated once and for all that political power, in its different forms, has managed to penetrate life from side to side. Contemporary political and philosophical thought should therefore address this heritage.
23. See the extremely interesting interview which Foucault gave to S. Hasumi "Pouvoir et savoir" (1977), in Foucault, Dits et écrits II, p. 399.
24. On this topic see S. Forti, (ed.), Lafilosofia di fronte all 'estremo (Torino: Einaudi, 2004).
25. See in particular A. Brossat, Le corps de l'ennemi, and the extremely lucid chapter in P. Costa, Il discorso della cittadinanza e la teoria della razza, in
26. A. Brossat, Idem, Civitas. Storia della cittadinanza in Europa. 3. La civiltà liberale (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2001), pp. 405-456.
27. and A. Burgio, L'invenzione delle razze. Studi su razzismo e revisionismo storico, (Roma: Manifesto Libri, 1998).
28. Foucault, while distancing himself from liberal theories of totalitarianism, takes the term to refer to the paradox of total domination that is common to Nazism and Stalinism. On the use and on the history of the concept, see S. Forti, Il totalitarismo (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2001 and 2003).
29. H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), and in particular the part devoted to Anti-Semitism. The bibliography devoted to theories of race and to racism is extremely vast. I would like to refer at least to the work of P.-A. Taguieff, who has been working intensely over the past two decades on the deconstruction of the commonplaces of racism, but also those of a facile antiracism, which in its simple polar opposition to racism reproduces its topoi.
30. See P.-A. Taguieff, La force du préjugé. Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles (Paris: Gallimard, 1987);
31. P.-A. Taguieff, Les fins de l'antiracisme (Paris: Edition Michalon, 1995), which include comprehensive bibliographies on the topic. For a strictly philosophical conceptual discussion.
32. see also the writings of K. A. Appiah contained in K. A. Appiah and A. Gutmann (eds.) Color Conscious. The Political Morality of Race (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996);
33. R. Bernasconi (ed.), Race, (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2001);
34. B. Boxill, (ed.), Race and Racism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001);
35. R. Bernasconi, S. Cook (eds.), Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003);
36. and A. David, Racisme et antisémitisme. Essai de philosophie sur l'envers des concepts (Paris: Ellipses, 2001).
37. Foucault, "Society Must be Defended," p. 256: "The more inferior species die out, the more abnormal individuals are eliminated, the fewer degenerates there will be in the species as a whole, and the more I - as a species rather than individual - can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I will be. I will be able to proliferate"
38. Foucault, "Society must be defended," p. 255.
39. A. de Gobineau, Essai de l'inégalité des races humaines (1853-55) (The Inequality of Human Races [New York: H. Fertig, 1999]), remains a very particular case because it anticipates the future theories of race, but only on the basis of historical and archaeological reflections. His pessimistic conclusions, on the regression and the decline of superior civilizations, were to be rapidly "overtaken" by an attitude that will see in the struggle of races the possibility of a triumph of the fitter races. Darwin's Origin of Species (1858) became an essential text for the biological and social sciences. Late nineteenth-century anthropology of races takes it as its starting point the theory of evolution.
40. For a history of racial theories, see the classic study by G. L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: a History of European Racism (New York: H. Fertig, 1985)
41. and I. Hannaford, Race. The History of an Idea in the West (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996). Gobineau, to some extent, was instead "rediscovered" by the other "current" in racial theories.
42. G. Vacher de Lapouge, Les sélections sociales. Cours libre de science politique (1887) (Paris: Fontemoing, 1896);
43. G. Vacher de Lapouge, Idem, L'Aryen. Son role social (1899) (Bologna: Forni, 1977).
44. In German-language countries the best-known authors are Ludwig Gumplowicz, Grundriss der Sociologie (Innsbruck: 1926);
45. Ludwig Gumplowicz, Idem, Rasse und Staat. Eine Untersuchung über das Gesetz der Staatenbildung (Wien: Manz, 1875).
46. reprinted later as Der Rassenkampf: Soziologische Untersuchungen (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1909);
47. Idem, Die soziologische Staatsidee (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1892);
48. Gustav Ratzenhofer, Die soziologische Erkenntnis, (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1898);
49. Gustav Ratzenhofer, Idem, Soziologie. Positive Lehre von menschlichen Wechselbeziehungen (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1907);
50. Ludwig Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie: eine Untersuchung über der Einfluss der Descendenztheorie auf die Lehre vor der politische Entwicklung der Völker (Eisenach-Leipzig: Thüringische Verl.-Anst., 1903).
51. See, for example, Brossat, Le corps de l'ennemi, especially pp. 32-138.
52. On the various interpretations of racist totalitarianism as the collapse of European culture, see the final chapter in Forti, Il totalitarismo.
53. For example, G. Lukács, Der Zerstörung der Vernuft (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1954)
54. (The Destruction of Reason [London: Merlin Press, 1980], chapter VII, part iv (on H. S. Chamberlain) recognizes the fact that in the strands that end up in Nazism, the theory of evolution played a minor role.
55. See G. L. Mosse, Masses and Man. Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality (New York, 1980), especially the chapter on the mythical origins of National Socialism.
56. For an approach that is close to my analysis, see especially, P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J.-L. Nancy, Le mythe nazi (La Tour-d'aigues: Éditions de l'Aube, 1991).
57. but also the earlier book by P. Lacoue-Labarthe, L'imitation des modernes (Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1985).
58. P. Lacoue-Labarthe, Idem, La fiction du politique. Heidegger, l'art et la politique (Paris: C. Bourgeois, 1988).
59. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1899) (München: Bruckmann, 1940), vol. I, pp. 271-72. Chamberlain, who was Wagner's son-in-law, was born in Britain, but lived for much of his life in Germany.
60. He refers to Gobineau rather than to Darwin. For him it is impossible to separate the nation from the race. The race is the force that animates the single individualities and that is exalted in the figure of the hero, who expresses the best racial characteristics of a people. Belonging to a race is a fact that is incontestably evident: through intuition, which allows everyone to see one's roots, that puts the individual in contact with the deep forces that forge collective identity. Science is not indispensable, but intuition is. If race can be recognized through intuition, there is no need to have scientific proof and complicated forms of reasoning: Men who belong to a pure race never lose sight of this blood relationship. Race is a destiny from which one cannot escape, a destiny that is all the more perceptible, the purer and more immediate is the original link with the race to which he belongs. The Nordic peoples of "today" are called to revive the heritage of ancient Indo-Europeans. They must oppose "Asiatic" racial promiscuity, first of all the promiscuity that Judaism has brought. The main antagonist of Indo-European peoples, ancient and modern, is, in fact, the Jewish people. Jews are not as passive and inept as Negroes; they represent a threat to European civilization.
61. See A. Rosenberg, Der Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts, Volume II (München: Hoheneichen Verlag, 1933 [1930]), which states that the soul is "race seen from the inside," p. 22.
62. See also Rosenberg's Gestalten der Idee (München: Hoheneichen Verlag, 1936).
63. and Blut und Ehre (München: Hoheneichen Verlag, 1934).
64. Official NSDAP Statements can be found in Ernst Krieck, Völkisch - politische Anthropologie (Leipzig: Armanen-Verlag, 1936).
65. Similar premises can be found in Hitler's Mein Kampf. On the Aryan myth, L. Poliakov, Le mythe aryen (Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1971)
66. (The Aryan Myth, trans. E. Howard [London: 1974]) is essential.
67. Rosenberg, Der Mythus, p. 6.
68. Rosenberg, Der Mythus, quotations from pp. 14, 219. J.-L. Nancy and P. Lacoue-Labarthe are among the rare "philosophers" who recognize the importance of this nonbiologistic version of National Socialist racism that is interested not so much in genetic and naturalistic control, but rather in reproducing Hellas, in a copy that finally creates the truth of the original. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy rightly stress that this obsession for incarnating a type is connected with the absence of a German political identity throughout the lifetime of its modern thinkers.
69. Rosenberg, Der Mythus, p. 448.
70. For that matter Mein Kampf (München: Lehemans Verlag, 1938 [1925-28]) states: "National Socialism is [seen] as the formation and realization of its own image, weltanschauunlich" (p. 680); it is the creation of a world according to which the idea of the creator of form is precisely the Aryan. "The weltanschauunlich struggle is not just any enterprise of domination: it is a world formation.... The Aryan will have to be much more in a world subjected and exploited by Aryans: it will have to be a world that has become Aryan. The Weltanschauung must incarnate itself absolutely; it therefore requires a total overturning of the entire public life according to its points of view, of its Anschauungen" (p. 506).
71. W. Jaeger, Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1934)
72. Paideia: The Ideas of Greek Culture [New York: Oxford University Press, 1945;
73. see also V. Losemann, Nationalsozialismus und Antike (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1977.)
74. Jaeger, Paideia, pp. 1-20.
75. K. Hildebrandt, Platon. Der Kampf des Geistes um die Macht (Berlin: Bondi, 1933).
76. Between 1932 and 1934 there are many writings which link Plato's philosophy to the National Socialist movement. The most widely read and widely circulated include the following: J. Bannes, Hitler und Platon (Berlin-Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1933)
77. J. Bannes, Idem, Hitlers Kampf und Platons Staat(Berlin-Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1933);
78. A. Gabler, Platon und Der Führer (Berlin-Leipzig: de Gruyter. 1934).
79. In Italy this strand is followed by Julius Evola, Sintesi di dottrina della razza (Milano: Hoepli, 1938)
80. Julius Evola, Idem, Il mito del sangue (Milano: Hoepli, 1942);
81. it was subsequently followed up by F. Freda, Platone. Lo Stato secondo giustizia (Padua: Edizioni di Ar, 1996);
82. I lupi azzurri (Padova: Edizioni di Ar, 2001). Also Evola sees the body as the phenomenological expression of the soul; not of the individual soul, but of the soul of the race (stirpe). For Evola, the supreme value for the race is the perfect form of its somatic features and of its "spiritual" aspect (which must coincide). Keeping in mind this Aryanized Plato, one may understand better Karl Popper's anti-Platonic polemic. His Open Society and its Enemies (1945) appears to take seriously the interpretation of Plato that these authors gave.
83. Hans K. F. Günther was defined by Adriano Romualdi (and even earlier, by Evola) as the most important theoretician of race in the twentieth century, as he who would have reforged in a solid doctrinal organism the early theories of Gobienau. He is, indeed, one of the most widely read authors of the Nazi era, and his works were destined to have extensive success and were often reprinted. In the 1920s, he published many treaties on race: Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (München: Lebemanns Verlag, 1922), reprinted 16 times in more than 100,000 copies (and which was present in almost all German households in an abbreviated version.
84. called the Volksgünther, Rassenkunde Europas (München: Lehemanns Verlag, 1928);
85. Rassenkunde des Jüdischen Volk (München: Lehemanns Verlag, 1929). On the eve of the National Socialist rise to power, Günther's work was already an organic component of the movement. He taught social anthropology at Berlin University. On the role of Günther in the "philosophy of National Socialism".
86. see E. Voegelin, Rasse und Staat (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1933).
87. On his role in the history of eugenics, see P. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism (1870-1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
88. H. K. F. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens (München: Lehemanns Verlag, 1928);
89. H. K. F. Günther, Idem, Humanitas (München: Lehmanns Verlag, 1937). These two books were reprinted, respectively, 17 and 20 times, with print runs of more than 120,000 copies.
90. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, pp. 3-29.
91. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 30.
92. Plato, Phaedo, 78c-80c.
93. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, pp. 22-28. Günther translates both ghenos and ethnos always as Rasse.
94. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 29. The passages quoted by Günther to support his thesis are especially Republic, 415: '"You are all brothers,' our story will tell them, all of you in the city. But when god made you, he used a mixture of gold in the creation of those of you who were fit to be rulers, which is why they are the most valuable. He used silver for those who were to be auxiliaries, and iron and bronze for the farmers and the rest of the skilled workers.
95. Most of the time you will father children of the same type as yourselves, but because you are all related, occasionally a silver child may be born from a golden parent, or a golden child from a silver parent, and likewise any type from any other type. The first and most important instruction god gives the rulers is that the thing that they should be is the best guardians of, the thing they should keep their most careful eye on, is the compound of these metals in the souls of children. If their own child is born with a mixture of bronze or iron in him, they must feel no kind of pity for him, but give him the position in society his nature deserves, driving him out to join the skilled workers or farmers. On the other hand, any children from those groups born with a mixture of gold or silver should be given recognition, and promoted either to the position of guardian or to that of auxiliary. There is a prophecy, god tells them, that the end of the city will come when iron or bronze becomes its guardian" (Plato, The Republic, Irans. T. Griffith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). These passages confirm for Günther how Plato considered the mixture of "races" differing in inherited values to be the worst calamity for a people and for a polis. He then takes up Republic, p. 535, translating it in the following way: "Because bastards must not deal with it [philosophy], but men of pure ancestry should . . . the toughest, bravest and, to the extent it is possible, the most beautiful should be chosen. One should limit oneself to seeking individuals of a noble and virile character, but also those who have the natural qualities that correspond to the human type we require." The current English-language translation reads as follows: "We didn't want bastard, or illegitimate, philosophers taking it [philosophy] up. We wanted legitimate philosophers" (535b); "We must choose the most steadfast, the bravest and as far as possible the best-looking. In addition, not only must we look for noble and virile character; we also need people with a natural talent for this kind of education" (535a)
96. Plato, Republic, p. 244.
97. Günther then comments on this passage in the following way: "only men of pure blood should philosophise! Plato must have acquired in some way the awareness of a reality which we, trained in racial research, have to accept as true: the fact that through the Sophists men of a Levantine nature have usurped the power of the Hellenic spirit, while the Nordic soul of Greekness died" (Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 36).
98. According to Günther and other "Nazi Platonists," Socrates and Plato faced the democratic chaos that was ultimately due to unregulated breeding. This was the same lack of regulation that "nowadays" dominates the West, that attaches importance to the economy, to the forms of government, to social and educational systems, to "all sorts of points of view," except that of truth: the hereditary qualities of peoples. This is a truth of which Plato was absolutely aware, so much so that in the Republic Socrates and Glaucon spoke of animals and how to breed them in the best manner, but in reality they were talking of how to distinguish one species from another among human beings.
99. The passages used to demonstrate Günther's thesis include especially those contained in Republic, p. 459-460: "the best men should have sex with the best women as often as possible, whereas for the worst men and the worst women it should be the reverse. We should bring up the children of the best, but not the children of the worst, if the quality of our herd is to be as high as we can make it . . . The children of inferior parents, on the other hand, or of any deformed species born to the other group, will be removed from sight into some secret and hidden place, as is right" (Plato, Republic, pp. 157-58).
100. And also Laws, p. 735b-c:
101. "In dealing with a flock any kind, the shepherd or cowherd, or the keeper of horse or any such animals, will never attempt to look after it until he first applied to each group of animals the appropriate purge - which is to separate the sound from the unsound, and the well-bred from the ill-bred, and to send off the latter to other herds, while keeping the former under his own care; for he reckons that his labour could be fruitless and unending if it were spent on bodies and souls that nature and ill-nurture have combined to ruin, and that bring ruin on a stock which is sound and clean both in habit and body - whatever the class of beast - unless a thorough purge be made in the existing herd" (Plato, Laws, ed. R. G. Bury [London: Heinemann, 1951], vol. I, pp. 348-351.
102. In addition to proclaiming himself a Platonist, Günther also proclaimed himself a neo-Kantian. See H. F. K. Günther, Mon Témoignage sur Adolf Hitler, (Puiseaux: Editions Pardes, 1990; French translation of Mein Eindruck von Adolf Hitler, 1968). This was his last work before his death, on September 25, 1968 (to my knowledge, unpublished in the original). In this book he remarked that after 1933, Hitler betrayed the true Hellenic values of humanitas: "'Classical' human dignity of fundamental human values cherished by peoples of Indo-European languages - which is expressed in self-assurance, a sense of measure and of reflection - no longer mattered for Hitler. Indeed, I would say that he held these values in contempt. He was interested in swaying crowds; he expressed himself with a burning, almost oriental fanaticism. Even though he may have been appropriate for the present situation of urbanised masses, he had to adapt to this situation: how else could he have saved the German people from the mass fanaticism that Lenin had inflamed?"
103. Günther, Mon Témoignage sur Adolf Hitler, p. 40
104. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 70 (italics added).
105. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 72.
106. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, pp. 40, ff.
107. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 56.
108. For a detailed analysis of the Jewish race, with a Levantine character, see Günther, Rassenkunde des Jüdischen Volk.
109. L. F. Clauss, Rasse und Seele, eine Einfuerhrung in den Sinn der leiblichen Gestalt (München: Lehmanns Verlag, 1933).
110. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 80.
111. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, Ibidem.
112. Plato was precisely the one to have suggested to us that it is necessary to practice a selection between men who may be part of the Idea or archetype, and men who will never be able to be so, even if their bodily appearance may mislead us. Precisely as an "idealist and educator," Plato's thought has been a thought of selection: "a selection that prevents unregulated mixture, but allows the expression of the idea of the complete man, in which body and soul are one thing." The "pure conforming" is an expression of that virtue that makes up an ethical order in harmony with the cosmos. See Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, p. 88.
113. Günther, Humanitas, pp. 10, ff. As is well known, this is a thesis that is widely shared during that period and that returns in many of Günther's other books. This is the mythic-historical reconstruction of Indo-European: Indo-Europeans (or Indogermans or Aryans), originating from a region between the Rhine and the Vistula and extending north up to Oslo around 2000 B.C., who moved through the Danube valley and into Italy, Greece, and Anatolia. These peoples of course considered themselves as the dominating caste in relation to the indigenous populations of the invaded countries. From this emerged the Indo-European language: from Latin to Greek, from Germanic to ancient Indian, all related to one another. Then, over the centuries, in Greece and Italy, through interbreeding with Asian and African slaves (who represented a majority of the population by the beginning of the Roman Empire) the Indo-European stock of Northern race was replaced increasingly by Mediterranean and Levantine types, which represent the greater part of the current population of Greece and Italy.
114. Günther, Humanitas, p. 24.
115. Günther, Humanitas, p. 24.
116. "When the idea of humanitas was coupled, in Rome, with the Stoic conception of the world, this gave rise to the rigid scholar who remained celibate to preserve his seriousness and his severity, an ideal which in the Middle Ages and in the Modern age contributed to the extinction of many hereditary, vital and brave energies." Günther, Humanitas, p. 22.
117. Günther, Humanitas, p. 30.
118. Günther, Humanitas, p. 30.
119. Günther, Humanitas, p. 18.
120. Günther, Humanitas, p. 37.
121. These interpretations appear to be discussed (polemically no less than ironically), both by P. Sloterdijk, Regeln für den Menschenpark (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999)
122. and J. Laurent, La mesure de l'humain selon Platon (Paris: Vrin, 2002).
123. E. Levinas, "L'actualité de Maïmonide" (1935), now in Levinas, Traces, vol. V (1982), pp. 97-100, in which we read: "In this world - which suffices to itself, which is self-sufficient -the pagan is trapped."
124. Levinas, "L'actualité de Maïmonide, p. 99
125. E. Levinas, L'essence spirituelle de l'antisémitisme (1938), now in Levinas, Traces, vol. V (1982), pp. 109-111.
126. Quoted in J. Billig, L'Allemagne et le génocide. Plans et réalisations nazis (Paris: Paris Editions du Centre, 1950), p. 28.
127. Text quoted in Billig, L'Allemagne et le génocide, p. 31 (italics added).