and collective needs. The LEGITIMACYof a government,
therefore, depends on its ability to organize social
exchange and secure the happiness of the people. Con-
sistent with the ideals of the ENLIGHTENMENT, Holbach
believed that individual RIGHTSto LIBERTY, security, and
PROPERTYmust also be guaranteed and that church and
state must be separated to avoid the dangers of
TYRANNYand intolerance.
Further Reading
Topazio, Virgil W. d’Holbach’s Moral Philosophy: Its Background
and Development.Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, Les
Delices, 1956.
holistic/holism
A view of society as organic and interconnected.
Applied to philosophy and politics in the ENVIRONMEN-
TA Lmovement and certain social theories (see FASCISM,
COMMUNISM), holistic thought derives from Eastern
cosmology, which focuses on the “whole” or totality of
reality. An image commonly employed by the holistic
perspective is of the single drop of water becoming
part of the whole ocean, or “one,” as it drops into the
sea. So, through meditation, getting in touch with
nature, gaining consciousness of the community or the
nation within the self, an individual can relate to the
“other.” Holistic approaches to the earth, society, and
politics, and are critical of INDIVIDUALISM, CAPITALISM,
private PROPERTY, and monotheism.
The Western intellectual tradition of the Ancients
(ARISTOTLE) and British LIBERALISM(John LOCKE) reject
COMMUNITARIANholism by asserting the importance of
the individual and reason that differentiates among
separate things. The drop of water may become “one”
with the ocean when it falls into the sea, but is ceases
to be a single drop. Fear of the particular being sub-
sumed within and oppressed by the universal state or
community prevents the West from embracing holistic
philosophy for sustained periods. G.W.F. HEGEL’s
DIALECTICprobably brought this Eastern religious slant
to Western politics more than any other Modern
thinker.
Holocaust, The
The Holocaust names the systematic destruction of
European Jewry beginning in the early 1930s with the
German NAZIParty’s identification of and legalized dis-
crimination against Jews and culminating in the Nazi
genocide of Europe’s Jews in the death camps.
The scale of the genocide and its presence in the
heart of European civilization signaled an abrupt set of
questions that postwar thinkers are forced to confront:
How was evil on this scale possible? Where was God?
Where was man? But at the same time as the Holo-
caust demands intellectual attention and thought, in
the words of theologian and Holocaust writer, Arthur
Cohen, “There is something in the nature of
thought—its patient deliberateness and care for logical
order—that is alien to the death camps.” The first
question therefore confronting writers on the Holo-
caust is whether their words, thought, and reflection
can do justice to the irretrievable experience of those
who suffered the events of the Holocaust. Although
the answer to this question is, of course, “no,” some
philosophical, theological and political issues must be
faced nonetheless.
One set of arguments concerns the place of the
Holocaust in history, whether it was a unique event or
another example, albeit on a very large scale, of the
inhumanity of which we are capable. Richard Ruben-
stein, with others, has argued that what makes the
Holocaust unique is its place in modernity. Rather than
being an act of anger, the Holocaust was an industrial
and bureaucratic event that required calculation and
careful planning. It is this connection of the Holocaust
with rationality—that most European of achieve-
ments—that makes it defining of the age of modernity
and signifies, in the words of Hannah ARENDT, the
“banality of evil.”
From a political perspective, the Holocaust changes
our perception of state power and, with it, the limits
and legitimacy of the state’s exercise of coercive force.
The Holocaust brings into possibility an act of geno-
cide as a government policy. In important ways, this
internationalizes the question of government power
and calls into ethical doubt absolute state SOVEREIGNTY.
From a theological perspective, the idea of God as
omnipotent and as benevolent is placed in doubt by
the fact of the Holocaust. Some Jewish theologians
such as Richard Rubenstein have argued that the Holo-
caust is an empirical refutation of the existence of
God. Emil Fackenheim argues that the Holocaust is
compatible with God’s existence and what is required
is an articulation of a proper response to the Holo-
caust. Part of this response is not to be cynical and
despairing, which would, he claims, be a way of com-
pleting Hitler’s work for him. Arthur Cohen has argued144 holistic/holism