Zeugenschaft

The figure of the witness, who reports on a past event, embodies a fundamental knowledge practice for the human world. Without testimony, neither jurisprudence, nor science, nor historiography would be conceivable. Surprisingly, philosophers have long discussed this topic only in terms of the epistemological question of whether knowledge through witnesses is truly real knowledge. Yet, the accounts of survivors of the Holocaust raise the question: Is the problem of giving testimony thereby exhausted? This work attempts, with reference to Emmanuel Levinas, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt, to explore the phenomenon in its ethical and political significance and proposes a model for an ethics of testimony.