Goebbels’ infanticide and Sethe’s infanticide share an identical surface structure

Evidence

As I watched the most “monstrous” act depicted in the film, Frau Goebbels’ drugging and then poisoning her children — better this “redemption”, she reasoned, than that they be left in a world without National Socialism — I was struck by the parallel with Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, who kills one of her children rather than let it fall into the hands of the slavers. What is to separate Frau Goebbels’ act of abominable Evil from Sethe’s act of heroic Good? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 386

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Raises the genuinely unsettling question of whether heroic and horrific acts are formally indistinguishable — the whole weight of the chapter rests on this juxtaposition and resists resolution.
• XREF: Resonates with the book’s earlier treatment of sacrifice as stabilizing structure and of the demonic and the righteous both destroying trivial complacency (ch20).
• QUESTION: The point that the same act read as evil-in-one-context and heroic-in-another is a live philosophical knot worth further pursuit.