Towurdi a Sociological Theory nf Moralit)

route is sometimes taken: refusal to admit the evidence into the discursive universe of the discipline, and proceeding as it the event had not taken place.

All three stratagems have been deployed in the sociological reaction to the Holocaust, an event of, arguably, the most dramatic moral significance. As we have noted before, there were numerous early attempts to narrate the most horrifying of genocides as the work of a particularly dense network of morally deficient individuals released from civilized contraints by a criminal, and above all irrational, ideology. When such attempts failed, as the perpetrators of the crime had been certified sane and morally normal' by the most scrupulous historical research, attention focused on revamping selected old classes of deviant phenomena, or constructing new sociological categories, into which the Holocaust episode could be assigned, and thus domesticated and defused (for instance, explaining the Holocaust in terms of prejudice or ideology). Finally, by far the most popular way of dealing with the evidence of the Holocaust has so far been not to deal with it at all. The essence and historical tendency of modernity, the logic of the civilizing process, the prospects and hindrances of progressive rationalization of social life are often discussed as if the Holocaust did not happen, as if it was not true and even worth serious consideration that the Holocaust bears witness to the advance of civilization',¹ or that civilization now includes death camps and Muselmanner among its material and spiritual products'.¹

And yet the Holocaust stubbornly rejects all three treatments. For a number of reasons it posits a challenge to social theory which cannot be easily dismissed, as the decision to dismiss it is not in the hands of social theorists, or at any rate in theirs alone. Political and legal responses to the Nazi crime put on the agenda the need to legitimize the verdict of immorality passed on the actions of a great number of people who faithfully followed the moral norms of their own society. Were the distinction between right and wrong or gixjd and evil fully and solely at the disposal of the social grouping able to principally co-ordinate' the social space under its supervision (as the dominant sociological theory avers), there would be no legitimate ground for proffering a charge of immorality against such individuals as did not breach the rules enforced by that grouping. One would suspect that if it had not been for the defeat of Germany, this and related problems would never arise. Yet Germany was defeated, and the need to face the problem did arise.

There would be no war criminals and no right to try, condemn and

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execute liichmann unless there was some justification for conceiving ot disciplined behaviour, totally conforming to the moral norms in force at that time and in that place, as criminal. And there would be no way to conceive of the punishment of such behaviour as anything more than the vengeance ot the victors over the vanquished (a relationship that could be reverted without impugning the principle of punishment), were there no supra- or non-societal grounds on which the condemned actions could be shown to collide not only with a retrospectively enforced legal norm, but also with moral principles which society may suspend, but not declare out of court. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, legal practice, and thus also moral theory, faced the possibility that morality may manifest itself in insubordination towards socially upheld principles, and in an action openly defying social solidarity and consensus. For sociological theory, the very idea of pre-social grounds of moral behaviour augurs the necessity of a radical revision of traditional interpretations of the origins of the sources of moral norms and their obligatory power. This point was argued most powerfully by Hannah Arendt:

What we have demanded in these trials, where the defendants had committed legal' crimes, is that human beings be capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own judgement, which, moreover, happens to be completely at odds with what they must regard as the unanimous opinion of all these around them. And this question is all the more serious as we know that the few who were arrogant' enough to trust only their own judgement were by no means identical with those persons who continued to abide by old values, or who were guided by a religious belief. Since the whole of respectable society had in one­way or another succumbed to Hitler, the moral maxims which determine social behaviour and the religious commandments -'Thou shall not kill!' ~ which guide conscience had virtually vanished. These few who were still able to tell right from wrong went really only by their own judgements, and they did so freely, there were no rules to be abided by, under which the particular cases with which they were confronted could be subsumed. They had to decide each instance as it arose, because no rules existed tor the unprecedented.^