Brian Carroll

Holocaust Paper 3 -

Ethical Egoism and Subjectivism in the Holocaust.

Shooting an innocent child in the head is the hard but noble duty of the German soldier. Men able to perform this difficult deed for their country should be congratulated and hailed for their courage and loyalty. So goes the rhetoric told to the German soldier and so begins the ethical dilemma imposed on ordinary men in the times of the Holocaust. These people were fairly regular citizens, not particularly vicious people, who committed some of the worst atrocities the world has ever seen. Something must have compromised their ethical standards in a time of social strife. And so the questions arising from these ordinary men of the Holocaust are these: how can we arrive at our moral decisions in such a time of crisis and what standards can we use to differentiate right and wrong conduct? Philosophers throughout the ages have proposed various answers to these questions- answers ranging anywhere from functional utilitarianism to divine command theories. However, one model in particular, that of rational egoism, accounts very specifically for the atrocities committed by members of Battalion 101. Rather than trying to explain the historical or psychological forces at work in the minds of the perpetrators, this paper will examine instead how a model for ethical conduct functions in a moral crisis. The end result of Battalion 101's actions is hardly questionable - clearly the slaughter of 83,000 innocent people is morally impermissible. However the question that remains to be asked is whether a person using the standard of rational egoism would reach the same conclusion. This paper contends that the answer is no; that Holocaust perpetrators evaluating their conduct under the lens of moral egoism would find no fault in their behavior.

To apply this thesis to the Holocaust's perpetrators, one must first understand generally how rational egoism functions as a model for moral analysis. Rational egoism builds upon the basic notion that everyone is selfish, everyone is doing what he believes will make himself happier. With this assumption in mind, the rational egoist proceeds to show that moral norms of behavior are simply generalized guidelines designed to bring about long-term happiness. Or in the words of libertarian philosopher Harry Browne: "Morality's purpose is to keep you aimed in the direction you most want to go. Personal morality is an attempt to consider all the relevant consequences of your actions." Thus, to the rational egoist, the standards of conduct established by morals can be described as an extension of the principle of self-interest. A person may benefit from stealing a candy bar in the short term, but his long term self-interest is best protected by adhering to the moral principle that theft is wrong.

With this understanding of ethical egoism as a model for evaluating conduct, one can conceptualize how a member of Battalion 101 might justify his behavior. First, the model for self-interested behavior is highly dependent upon context. The decision whether to kill depends upon the consequences of that behavior, both short and long term. Egoism forbids murdering a human being in the context of normal society simply because it leads to imprisonment or even execution - consequences no doubt incompatible with self-interest. However, even independent of short term punitive action, egoism forbids murder using the logic that if we feel free to kill anyone on a whim, others will certainly feel no hesitation to do the same to us. Thus in normal circumstances with normal consequences, ethical egoism as a standard is more than adequate to prevent murder.

The trouble arises when the ethical code is separated from the context for which it was designed (normal society) and placed into circumstances that no longer reflect the same consequences (Nazi occupied territories). In the Einsatzgruppen, not only was punitive action not taken against persons murdering Jews, it was even occasionally applied to those who didn't kill. Furthermore, the context of the war, as members of the racially superior majority, the Einsatzgruppen officers had no reason to suspect they might themselves be targets of racial purification - thereby neutralizing the perpetrator's fears that in the long run, killing other people might erode their restraint of killing you. In the long run, there would be no Jews to retaliate. Thus when the context changes, a person who creates his values by the standard of ethical egoism will find no objection to killing innocents- especially when he finds rewards in both the short and long term.

Secondly, ethical egoism provides no limits or mandates as to what one may set as his moral guidelines. A moral guideline constructed under the egoistic model may range anywhere from "don't have casual sex" to "always put ten percent of income into savings." Because the source of morality must be created by each individual (as opposed to derived from the law of God, tradition or anything else), what that individual chooses as his morality may infringe the rights of another. The individual man himself acts as both the object and creator of his moral system; whether he takes the rights of others into account or not is a matter of personal preference rather than a moral mandate. This poses no concern when the interests of individuals coincide or can be mutually beneficial. The problem arises when protecting one's own best interest first and foremost directly clashes with the interest or rights of others. For example, Browning indicates that Einsatzgruppen members with aims in the future of the new world order will set their goals and moral guidelines congruent to their career ambitions. If a reliable way to prove your loyalty to the Nazi cause is to actively participate in the slaughter of Jews, the egoist can find little objection to doing so (or at least no objection arising from the strict tenets of self-interested behavior). Thus simple benign self-interested behavior can result directly in the death of another human being.

Members of Battalion 101 found themselves in circumstances widely divergent from those in which ethical egoism can be practically applied. In the solitude and chaos of war, they saw their old system of ethics crumble in the face of the brutal reality they saw around them. In an attempt to realign their moral guidelines and account for the new set of consequences and rewards for behavior under Hitler, many ordinary men accepted a system of values emphasizing loyalty to peers, obedience to authority and simple career ambition. And this revised set of ethical constraints opened the door to an orgy of killing and atrocity that could be nothing short of abhorrent to modern standards of decency. Thus the ethical standards of analysis provided by rational egoism and moral subjectivism were clearly inadequate for individuals seeking to define ethical conduct in the face of the chaos of the Holocaust, and if anything allowed perpetrators to justify their cruelties to themselves.