Ethically clean answers to catastrophe may not exist as formulated.
Evidence
To the question what is to be done with defeated Germany, I could say only two things in reply. Firstly: at no price, on no conditions, would I wish to be an executioner or to supply legitimations for executioners. Secondly: I should not wish, least of all with legal machinery, to stay the hand of anyone who was avenging past misdeeds. This is a thoroughly unsatisfactory, contradictory answer, one that makes a mockery of both principle and practice. But perhaps the fault lies in the question and not only in me. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 70
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The refusal to resolve the revenge-versus-justice antinomy, ending with ‘perhaps the fault lies in the question’ — an exemplary Adorno move where the question itself is shown to be the damaged category.
- XREF: Connects to the negative-dialectic insistence that barbarism cannot be answered within barbarism’s own alternatives; echoes Arendt on radical evil and the inadequacy of judgment categories. — connects to: Ethics can act against destruction without aiming at any final harmony — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 669; An ethical ideal can remain inspiring even when impossible to follow — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 860; Refusing to weigh lives against future threats can itself be a moral evasion. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 775
- SEED: Potential essay: ‘the unsolvable question as moral category’ — how legitimate moral positions can be structurally contradictory because the situation itself is false.
Broader Connections
- Ethics can act against destruction without aiming at any final harmony
#qualifies(0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 669 - An ethical ideal can remain inspiring even when impossible to follow
#qualifies(0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 860 - Refusing to weigh lives against future threats can itself be a moral evasion.
#complicates(0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 775