Genocide and Philosophy

It is no longer the case, as Emil Fackenheim argued in 1985, that 'Philosophers have all but ignored the Holocaust.' But whereas historians, sociologists, anthropologists, lawyers and human rights advocates have been at the forefront of a new cohort of genocide scholars, philosophers have been slower to take up the challenge of genocide to philosophy.

A special issue of Journal of Genocide Research seeks to address this gap by focusing on the meaning of genocide for philosophy, on what philosophy can bring to the study of comparative genocide, and on what it can bring to thinking about genocide as a phenomenon.

In her article in this issue, “War rape, natality, and genocide”, Senior Researcher Robin May Schott traces legal and philosophical analyses of sexual violence against women and war. She analyzes the strengths and limitations of the concept of social death for understanding genocidal features of war rape and draws on the work of Hannah Arendt to understand the central harm of genocide as an assault on natality.