Individual moral courage defies class, education, and political determinants

Evidence

In another remarkable sociological study of the Holocaust, Nechama Tec attempted to explore the opposite side of the social spectrum; the rescuers – those people who did not allow the ‘dirty work’ to be perpetrated, who dedicated their lives to the suffering others in the world of universal selfishness; people who, in short, remained moral under immoral conditions. Loyal to the precepts of sociological wisdom, Tec tried hard to find the social determinants of what by all standards of the time was an aberrant behaviour. One by one, she put to the test all hypotheses that any respectable and knowledgeable sociologist would certainly include in the research project. She computed correlations between the readiness to help on the one hand, and various factors of class, educational, denominational, or political allegiance on the other – only to discover that there was none. In defiance of her own – and her sociologically trained readers’ – expectations, Tec had to draw the only permissible conclusion: ‘These rescuers acted in ways that were natural to them – spontaneously they were able to strike out against the horrors of their times.’ In other words, the rescuers were willing to rescue because this was their nature. They came from all corners and sectors of ‘social structure’, thereby calling the bluff of there being ‘social determinants’ of moral behaviour. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 48

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the ‘moral under immoral conditions’ figure that the scaffolding needs as the counterweight to conformity mechanisms.
• XREF: connects to: Moral resistance is personal while immorality requires social production — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 476; Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 499; Political agency depends on human intelligence, skill, and chosen use of freedom (+2 more)

Related

• Moral resistance is personal while immorality requires social production (similarity 0.85)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions (similarity 0.82)
• Socialization manipulates but never produces moral capacity (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Moral resistance is personal while immorality requires social production #corroborates (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 476
• Political agency depends on human intelligence, skill, and chosen use of freedom #expands (0.75)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions #complicates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 499