To be or not to be human: Resolving the paradox of dehumanisation

Abstract

Dehumanisation is a puzzling phenomenon. Nazi propaganda likened the Jews to rats, but also portrayed them as ‘poisoners of culture’. In the Soviet Union, the Stalinist regime called opponents vermin, yet put them on show trials. During the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus identified the Tutsis with cockroaches, but nonetheless raped Tutsi women. These examples reveal tensions in the way in which dehumanisers perceive, portray and treat victims. Dehumanisation seems to require that perpetrators both deny and acknowledge the humanity of their victims in certain ways. Several scholars have proposed solutions to this so-called ‘paradox of dehumanisation’ that question the usefulness of dehumanisation as a concept to explain genocidal violence, claim that dehumanisation is characterised by an unstable belief in the non-human essence of the dehumanised, or contend that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of metaphysical human status. The main aim of this article is to present a novel framework for theorising dehumanisation that offers a more straightforward solution to this paradox based on the idea that perpetrators deny their victims’ human standing in a moral sense without necessarily negating their biological human status or human subjectivity. The article illustrates this framework through examples drawn from Primo Levi’s memoirs of Auschwitz.

Introduction

Dehumanisation involves the paradoxical perception, portrayal or treatment of a human being as something that is not (quite) human. In his memoirs on Auschwitz, Primo Levi offers an intriguing perspective of this phenomenon when he recounts his meeting with Dr Pannwitz, the head of the chemical department who was to evaluate whether Levi might be of use to the Nazis as a chemist. Levi recalls how the look Pannwitz gave him suggested that they belonged to different worlds, as if they were members of different species:

Pannwitz is tall, thin, blond; he has eyes, hair and nose as all Germans ought to have them, and sits formidably behind a complicated writing-table. I, Häftling 174517, stand in his office, which is a real office, shining, clean, and ordered, and I feel that I would leave a dirty stain whatever I touched. When he finished writing, he raised his eyes and looked at me. […] that look was not one between two men; and if I had known how completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds, I would also have explained the essence of the great insanity of the third Germany. (Levi, 1991: 111–112)

The insanity that bewildered Levi concerns the question of how Nazi ideology could distort human relations to such an extent that it allowed people to view other human beings as fundamentally different from themselves. Many aspects of the scenario that Levi sketches invoke the human dimensions of the scene taking place: the neat office, Levi’s nervous concern about his dirty state, the objective of assessing the practical value of Levi’s chemical expertise for the Germans. Yet, Pannwitz allegedly considered the subject in front of him as something altogether distinct from himself. As Michael Ignatieff (2001: 3) puts it, ‘[h]ere was a scientist, trained in the traditions of European rational inquiry, turning a meeting between two human beings into an encounter between different species.’

This story speaks to the paradox of a human being who is not considered human. The main aim of this article is to make sense of these puzzling aspects of dehumanisation by establishing a novel framework for theorising dehumanisation that is able to offer a solution for the so-called ‘paradox of dehumanisation’. This paradox reveals tensions that characterise the way in which the dehumanised are viewed, portrayed and treated, and highlights how dehumanisation seems to require that perpetrators simultaneously deny and acknowledge the humanity of their victims in certain ways. This article will contribute to resolving these tensions by developing an account of dehumanisation that distinguishes between three different types of human status, which relate to people’s biological nature, psychological subjectivity and normative standing. The central argument is that while dehumanisers generally (although not necessarily) acknowledge the biological status of their victims and confirm that they have certain psychological characteristics that people typically share, such as a highly developed consciousness, a sense of identity and particular semiotic and moral sensibilities, this does not entail that perpetrators are also bound to recognise the human status of their victims in a normative sense. Dehumanisation thus loses its paradoxical character, given that persons can consider others as less than human in a moral sense without necessarily regarding them as falling outside the human species or lacking human subjectivity.

The theoretical framework that this article presents maintains that dehumanisation consists in denying a particular moral status to people, which may coincide with recognition of their biologically human status and the fact that they have a psychological inner life typical of human beings. This denial of moral status, so I will argue, consists in a complete disregard for the moral significance of the victim’s human subjectivity. What this means is that when people engage in dehumanisation they no longer regard the subjective experiences of their victims as a moral reason that counts against their mistreatment, if only in a minimal sense. Human subjectivity refers here to the distinct way(s) in which people experience their existence as self-interpreting, social and embodied beings (Taylor, 1985), who as such are vulnerable to suffering from bodily, psychological and symbolic harm. ¹ The strength of this framework lies in its ability to make sense of various forms of dehumanisation that are grounded in blindness for the human subjectivity of the victim (as may be expressed in animalising or objectifying forms of dehumanisation), that consist in the failure to attribute moral weight to the subjective experiences of victims (as may be expressed in forms of dehumanisation marked by indifference) or that construe the human subjectivity of the victims as a reason that counts in favour of their mistreatment (as may be expressed in brutalising forms of dehumanisation that are likely to result in the infliction of gratuitous violence).

The first part of the article will introduce the paradox of dehumanisation. The second part considers three solutions that have been proposed by scholars to sidestep or overcome this paradox that question the usefulness of dehumanisation as a concept to explain genocidal violence (Lang, 2010), claim that dehumanisation is characterised by an unstable belief in the non-human essence of the dehumanised (Smith, 2016) or contend that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of metaphysical human status (Steizinger, 2018). The third part will present my theoretical framework of dehumanisation as an alternative solution to the paradox. The fourth part will illustrate the workings of the proposed framework through a discussion of examples drawn from Primo Levi’s memoirs of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

Through the establishment of a novel framework for theorising dehumanisation, this article aims to offer not only a helpful intervention into theoretical debates about what dehumanisation entails and how the paradox of dehumanisation may be resolved, but also important conceptual insights that are relevant to more empirical studies that identify dehumanisation as a facilitating factor in the perpetration of fundamental rights violations, such as genocide (Billias and Praeg, 2011; Stanton, 1998; Staub, 1969), war crimes (Kelman, 1973; Zimbardo, 2007) and torture (Haritos-Fatouros, 1988; Hooks and Mosher, 2005). Since dehumanisation frequently enters into explanations of how such atrocities happen, it is crucial to address the incongruities present in our understanding of this concept. If, on the one hand, this analysis were to indicate that dehumanisation is not a useful notion to account for flagrant rights abuses, this would entail that we need a different theoretical lens to address such abuses. If, on the other hand, the concept of dehumanisation does prove to be helpful for accounting for fundamental rights violations, it is important to understand in what way(s) dehumanisation denies the humanity of victims and thereby contributes to condoning, legitimating or justifying their mistreatment.

The paradox of dehumanisation

Dehumanisation is a complex phenomenon that has been the subject of extensive study in recent years (see e.g. Bain et al., 2014; Haslam, 2006; Honneth, 2012; Manne, 2017; Mikkola, 2016; Smith, 2012). While this literature presents various relevant issues for analysis, including the relation between dehumanisation, misogyny and sexism (Manne, 2017; Mikkola, 2016), the role that dehumanisation plays in atrocities and extreme violence (Smith, 2012) and the conceptual link between reification and dehumanisation (Honneth, 2012), this article zooms in on the paradoxical nature of dehumanisation, which expresses itself in tensions concerning how perpetrators perceive, portray and treat their victims.

To explain what the paradox of dehumanisation entails, it is helpful to consider the example of animalising forms of dehumanisation. Dehumanisation is often understood as a denial of people’s human status, which usually takes the form of regarding, portraying or treating victims as less than human. ² The most widely known form of dehumanisation presumably consists in denying people’s humanity by identifying them with animals, given that many of the most notorious and paradigmatic cases of dehumanisation in history included the use of animal analogies or metaphors to justify atrocities. For example, the radio channel Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines in Rwanda has become infamous for its insistent use of the word ‘inyenzi’ (cockroaches) to refer to the Tutsis before and during the Rwandan genocide (Tirrell, 2002: 197).

While the view of dehumanisation as consisting in the identification of people with animals is well known, it is paradoxical for a number of reasons. Let us consider first what it means to deny people’s humanity by treating them as animals. There are, at least, two problems with this idea. First, people are a particular type of animals and are therefore in many ways similar to non-human animals. For example, as sentient beings, we are similarly vulnerable to physical suffering. If treating human beings like animals thus meant that we give people food when they are hungry, provide them with water when they are thirsty and take care of them when they are ill, this clearly would not be dehumanising. Not all ways of treating people like animals can therefore be considered a form of dehumanisation. We should thus focus on cases where people are treated like animals where they should be treated like human beings.

This is where the second problem presents itself, namely that in such cases people are often not actually treated like animals, but as if they were animals. Avishai Margalit carefully develops this point in his account of dehumanisation as a special type of humiliation. Reflecting on the way in which the inmates of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps were treated, he argues that ‘[t]he special cruelty toward the victims in the forced-labor and death camps – especially the humiliations that took place there – happened the way it did because human beings were involved. Animals would not have been abused in the same way’ (Margalit, 1996: 112).

Margalit (1996: 85) contends that it would not make sense to abuse animals in the same way because, unlike human beings, animals are not vulnerable to transgressions of their semiotic and moral sensibilities. This observation points to the idea that humiliation requires a certain recognition of the victim as someone who at least shares those sensibilities that allow him or her to experience a sense of symbolic denigration. These sensibilities appear to be distinctively human. Margalit (1996: 109) argues that this aspect of humiliation thus reveals a tension at the heart of dehumanisation, which consists in the fact that it seeks to expressively deny the humanity of the other, but simultaneously acknowledges that humanity in this very act of ceremonial denial.

Similarly, Adam Gopnik (2006) comments on frequent claims that the systematic terror of particular groups within societies is only possible when the members of these groups have first been dehumanised. Yet the treatment to which these allegedly dehumanised victims are subjected shows a certain awareness of their humanity, given that it does not make sense ‘to humiliate vermin, or put them through show trials, or make them watch their fellow-vermin die first’ (Gopnik, 2006). Indeed, these acts speak to a sense of cruelty that derives its meaning from the very fact that the victims are human beings who are sensitive to symbolic mistreatment. David Livingstone Smith (2016: 429) comments on this phenomenon in noting how ‘[t]hose who dehumanize others seem to recognize, often enough, that their victims are rational agents to whom notions of desert apply, and characteristically treat them with the sort of cruelty—not mere callousness—that presupposes their humanity.’

The tension here is thus one between the way in which people are perceived and/or represented, on the one hand, and how they are treated, on the other. The tension is visible in the fact that dehumanisers seek to treat their victims as if they were animals, yet acknowledge in their treatment that there is something human about them. Kwame Anthony Appiah (2008: 144) elegantly summarises this point in his observation that:

[t]he persecutors may liken the objects of their enmity to cockroaches or germs, but they acknowledge their victims’ humanity in the very act of humiliating, stigmatizing, reviling, and torturing them. Such treatment—and the voluble justifications the persecutors invariably offer for such treatment—is reserved for creatures we recognize to have intentions and desires and projects.

The tensions that mark dehumanisation go beyond mere incongruity between perceptions, portrayals and treatment. Tensions are also visible in the conflicting ways in which victims are perceived or depicted. Margalit (1996: 112) notes, for example, how ‘Nazi propaganda frequently compared Jews to rats: rats poison wells, while the Jews were perceived as “poisoners of culture.” Yet a poisoner of culture cannot be a rat, in spite of Nazi propaganda to equate the two.’ While Nazi propaganda sought to deny the human status of the Jewish people in comparing them to rats, the particular type of similarity established between the two actually confirmed the human status of the Jewish people through its tie to culture. Dissonance can also be recognised in the way in which Nazi propaganda simultaneously portrayed the Jews as inferior human beings and as beings excluded from the human race altogether (Margalit and Motzkin, 1996: 71; Smith, 2016: 436–437). These inconsistencies indicate that it seems difficult for people to uphold the belief that the victims they dehumanise are fully less than human. Their perceptions and representations thus often display noticeable incongruities.

These tensions point to a paradox, which revolves around the idea that dehumanisation requires perpetrators to simultaneously deny and acknowledge the humanity of their victims in certain ways. Dehumanisers thus seemingly hold their victims to be both human and non-human in a paradoxical manner. Smith (2016: 429) explains this idea by elucidating how the paradox arises from two conflicting beliefs:

Those who dehumanize others appear to be committed to two incompatible attitudes towards them. On one hand, they appear to believe that their victims are subhuman creatures, while on the other they seem to be implicitly aware of their victims’ status as human beings.

This paradox leads to a dilemma, as it suggests the need either to accept that certain cases which we consider paradigmatic examples of dehumanisation do not actually amount to dehumanisation, or to explain how perpetrators can simultaneously uphold seemingly incompatible beliefs in the human and less than human status of their victims. The next section will consider various solutions that scholars have proposed to this dilemma.

Responding to the paradox

In the past few years, several scholars have proposed solutions to sidestep or overcome the paradox of dehumanisation. Let us consider first the answer developed by Johannes Lang, who questions the usefulness of dehumanisation as a concept to analyse excessive violence in genocide and war. In an original and thought-provoking piece, Lang (2010) argues that the concept of dehumanisation is overused in the literature on genocide and mass killings, rejecting the often-made assumption that people need to dehumanise victims in order to be able to kill them en masse. Lang defines dehumanisation as a denial of the victim’s subjectivity and notes how the subjective experiences of the victim(s) often play a central role in the perpetration of mass violence and atrocities. With regard to the abuses inflicted on the inmates of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, he thus claims that ‘it was precisely the human, or intersubjective, qualities of the violent interaction that provided the violence with much of its meaning’ (Lang, 2010: 226).

For Lang, a denial of subjectivity entails an ‘objective (and objectifying) attitude’ (Lang, 2010: 226), marked by emotional detachment through which meaningful social interactions and reactive attitudes, such as anger and resentment (Strawson, 2008), are no longer possible. Dehumanisation of victims therefore ends the interpersonal relationship and leaves only a ‘void’ (Lang, 2010: 228). This does not coincide with the observation that in many cases where perpetrators use excessive force, violence seems to serve as a means for domination (Lang, 2010: 240). He notes how the experience of domination would lose its distinct quality if the perpetrator were to fail to regard the victim as a human being with subjective experiences. In my reading, the key insight here is that dehumanisation would impede the perpetrator from recognising the victim as a person in the relevant sense of the word. Domination would thereby be reduced to mere control, similar to the one human beings hold over objects.

In terms of the paradox of dehumanisation, Lang’s reflections suggest that dehumanisation requires that perpetrators deny the human subjectivity of their victims and treat them accordingly. This entails that dehumanisation is very rare and that many cases we consider paradigmatic examples actually do not involve dehumanisation, but should rather be explained through processes of habituation and desensitisation to violence (Lang, 2010: 232). While this offers a coherent response to the dilemma the paradox poses, it requires us to accept that many, if not most, of the perpetrators of atrocities, such as those committed during the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, the massacre at My Lai and the Rwandan genocide, to name only a few examples, did not dehumanise their victims. This is a lot to ask. It is therefore important to consider alternative accounts, given that a view that runs counter to our most basic intuitions about which cases constitute dehumanisation carries with it the considerable disadvantage that it fails to balance our theoretical understanding of the concept with our recognition of this phenomenon in real-world cases.

Smith (2016) proposes a dualistic account of dehumanisation, which centres around the idea that dehumanisation is characterised by an unstable belief in the humanity and sub-humanity of victims. According to Smith (2016: 436), dehumanisers do not need to consistently deny the humanity of their victims; it suffices that they believe that their victims are less than human in one important sense, namely that they are seen to have a subhuman essence. He argues that dehumanisation allows perpetrators to regard their victims as simultaneously human and less than human, resulting in a perception of dehumanised people as ‘human/subhuman chimeras’ (Smith, 2016: 436).

This antithetical view of the dehumanised results from the fact that the dehumanised generally still have a human appearance, which makes it difficult for dehumanisers to completely blind themselves to the human aspects of their victims, even if the essence they ascribe to them is subhuman. Smith illustrates this account with a discussion of the incongruities that mark the depiction of the Jews in Der Untermensch (1942). In one passage, the text portrays the Jew as ‘only a partial human being’ (as cited in Smith, 2016: 437). Yet the Jewish are considered not human at all in a later description: ‘Not all of those, who appear human are in fact so’ (as cited in Smith, 2016: 437). Smith (2016: 437) draws the conclusion that ‘the seeming incoherency of the text may reflect the incoherency of the dehumanizers’ representation of that person’.

Smith makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of dehumanisation by pointing out how dehumanisation does not require the denial of humanity of the victims in all possible senses. A more complex image of dehumanisation becomes conceivable when we realise that the tensions that characterise the ways in which perpetrators portray and treat dehumanised victims actually mirror deeper inconsistencies in the way they perceive of them. It is important to contemplate, however, if thinking in terms of appearance and essence is the most effective way to capture these tensions.

Johannes Steizinger argues that a more helpful way to account for these incongruities would be by perceiving of dehumanisation as a denial of metaphysical human status. Drawing from an analysis of Nazi ideology, Steizinger (2018: 152) argues that Nazi propaganda proposes a dividing line between people who are human from a naturalistic perspective only and those who are human in a metaphysical sense as well. Nazi ideologues thus held that:

only some groups of people meet the metaphysical criterion of being human. Members of these groups are considered as essentially and hence fully human. However, other groups of people are reduced to the biological sense of being human. They simply lack the metaphysical essence of humanity and thus are characterized as mere human animals. (Steizinger, 2018: 152)

To be human in a metaphysical sense means that one belongs to a category of people that has transcended the mere naturalistic sense of being human by having developed a higher form of humanity, as tied to morality, culture and art. Steizinger (2018: 153) explains that ‘[t]he Jews lack, on my reading of Hitler and Rosenberg, not the natural features of humans, but their metaphysical essence, i.e. spiritual dispositions which account for the higher developments of humanity such as morality, culture, art and so on.’

Steizinger offers a sophisticated account of dehumanisation that sets out how it is possible to think of people as being human to varying degrees. Whereas all human beings are human in a naturalistic sense, only some are fully human, in that they have developed the human potential for spiritual, cultural and moral progress. Nazi ideology held, however, that not all human beings equally share this potential, given that spiritual essence is linked to belonging to a particular category of people, like the Aryans or the Jews. Therefore, according to Nazism, some people are unable to reach full human status due to their inferior nature as members of a lower natural class of human beings.

Steizinger argues that his account of dehumanisation can deal more easily than Smith’s with the seeming contradictions in the ways in which the dehumanised are regarded, depicted and treated, given that these mixed views are the logical consequence of the functioning of ideology. Since an important function of propaganda is to mobilise the masses, a flexible doctrine is needed to appeal to different audiences. The view of the Jews as human in a naturalistic sense, but less than human in a metaphysical sense, offered the needed flexibility to allow Nazi ideologues to present them as lower humans on some occasions and less than human on others. Steizinger (2018: 153) points out, furthermore, that Smith’s account sits uneasily with the observation that the Nazis ‘attribute features to the Jews which presuppose not only the appearance of being human, but the biological and psychological nature of humans.’ For example, the accusation that the Jews are ‘clever liars, greedy egoists and shameless frauds’ suggests that the dehumanised share with human beings not only an outward appearance, but that there is also something in their psychological build-up that is identical, or at least very similar, to the subjectivity of human beings (Steizinger, 2018: 153).

In defence of Smith’s view, one could argue that his arguments do not tie him to the position that only the appearance of the dehumanised may seem human. On my reading, the key point of his account is that the dehumanised have a subhuman essence. It would therefore be possible to claim that they have a psychological constitution identical, or very similar, to that of human beings, even if the essence they are attributed is less than human. In fact, Smith could even respond to Steizinger’s criticism by allowing that the subhuman essence that the dehumanised are ascribed may consist in the less than human metaphysical status that Steizinger considers central to dehumanisation, which reduces the status that the dehumanised hold in the eyes of the perpetrator(s) to that of mere human animals. If this offers a plausible re-conceptualisation of Smith’s account, it is important to consider, however, what the elements of ‘essence’ and ‘appearance’ add to our understanding of dehumanisation. ³

While, in my view, all three authors offer significant contributions to our understanding of the paradox of dehumanisation, each of the presented accounts has certain disadvantages. In the case of Lang, the key lesson I draw (even though it goes against his own argument) is that dehumanisation should not be seen as necessarily ruling out all engagement with the subjectivity of the victim(s), for if it was, many interactions that appear to be dehumanising could no longer be understood to be so. The main issue with Lang’s account is that it suggests that many of the most paradigmatic cases of dehumanisation actually do not involve dehumanisation.

Smith’s account is especially helpful in theorising how dehumanisation does not require a consistent denial of humanity in all its senses. Smith opens up space for developing a more intricate understanding of dehumanisation by arguing that a belief in the less than human essence of the victim can coincide with recognition of his or her human appearance. It seems, however, that the concepts of ‘essence’ and ‘appearance’ do not necessarily offer the most effective theoretical lenses to analyse the tensions involved in dehumanisation.

Steizinger develops the idea of a dual notion of dehumanisation further by conceptualising dehumanisation as a denial of metaphysical human status. While his view provides an insightful account of dehumanisation in Nazi ideology and propaganda, I doubt that a denial of metaphysical status is central to dehumanisation as such. On my understanding, the denial of metaphysical human status, which Steizinger’s account methodically explains, constitutes a particular form of denying people’s human status in a moral sense, which is at the heart of dehumanisation. It is therefore important to analyse the idea that dehumanisation is defined by a denial of moral status in greater detail.

An alternative response to the paradox

The solution this article proposes to the paradox concentrates on the idea that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of human status in a moral sense, rather than human subjectivity, human essence or metaphysical standing. On my understanding, dehumanisation consists in denying a particular moral status to people, which may coincide with recognition of their biologically human status or the fact that they have a psychological inner life typical of human beings. The idea that dehumanisation revolves around failing to recognise a particular moral status of victims is not new. Important works on this issue include, for example, those of Herbert Kelman (1973), Susan Opotow (1990), Richard Rorty (1998) and Anne Phillips (2015), as well as Honneth (2012), Mikkola (2016) and Manne (2017), mentioned previously. ⁴

The account of dehumanisation I propose displays important similarities especially with the work of Opotow, who argues that dehumanisation entails a process of moral exclusion through which people are placed ‘outside the boundary in which moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply’ (Opotow, 1990: 1). In particular, it mirrors her view of dehumanisation as an extreme form of moral exclusion through which people are perceived as ‘nonentities, undeserving, or expendable’, who can be harmed and exploited without concern because they fall outside the circle of persons whom we care about, if only in a minimal sense (Opotow, 1990: 1). The account of dehumanisation presented here seeks to spell out in more detail what this type of exclusion entails and how it can help us overcome the paradox of dehumanisation.

The denial of moral status that is central to dehumanisation, I argue, consists in a complete disregard for the moral significance of the victim’s human subjectivity. ⁵ What this means is that when people dehumanise someone, they no longer regard the subjective experiences of the victim as a factor that counts against his or her mistreatment, if only in a minimal sense. This idea can be illustrated through the work of Eve Garrard, who examines the difference between wrongful and evil acts. In the case of wrongful acts, Garrard (1998: 53) notes how:

the wrongdoer sees that, say, the suffering of his victim tells against his killing her. But for him, the attractions of the wrongful act—the increase of power, the material gain, the removal of a threat to him, outweigh (wrongly, of course) the importance of her suffering. So he goes ahead and, a little reluctantly, kills her anyway.

Evildoing works differently. Garrard (1998: 53) notes how in the case of a person who commits an evil act, ‘[the victim’s] suffering counts for nothing. It isn’t outweighed by the advantages to [the evildoer] of killing her—for him there is nothing to be outweighed.’

Garrard’s analysis of the difference between wrongdoing and evildoing, in my view, hints at what is distinctive about dehumanisation. Dehumanisation revolves around blindness to the fact that the victim is a human being whose subjective experiences, particularly in terms of suffering, should be a matter of at least minimal concern to us. Dehumanisation, on my view, involves a failure to attribute the human subjectivity of people any positive moral value. The moral significance of people’s human subjectivity can be denied, in practice, in two ways. The first is by failing to recognise that people have such human subjectivity to begin with. The second is by failing to consider this subjectivity as a factor that counts against mistreating them. My account of dehumanisation thus draws from Garrard’s distinction between wrongdoing and evildoing but applies it to dehumanisation, rather than evil, and modifies the central idea in an important way by claiming that dehumanisation does not necessarily entail that the victim’s suffering counts for nothing. On my account, perpetrators may also consider their victims’ suffering but perceive of it as a factor that counts in favour of their mistreatment. After all, if the suffering of victims is seen as a reason that makes their mistreatment more, rather than less, appealing to the perpetrator, the latter also completely disregards the moral significance of the victims’ human subjectivity. Dehumanisation is thus characterised by the fact that the human subjectivity of people does not count as a moral reason against mistreating them. ⁶

This view can account for the paradox of dehumanisation because it clarifies why dehumanisation does not require a denial of humanity in all its senses. While dehumanisation denies the human status of the victim in a moral sense, it does not demand that the dehumanised are regarded as less than human in a naturalistic sense or that they are considered to lack human subjectivity. This possibility becomes conceivable when we comprehend that people do not automatically consider everyone who is a member of the human species or who has a psychological constitution typical of human beings to be human in a moral sense.

It will be helpful to consider some examples here. The tension between biological and moral standing is perhaps best illustrated through the use of dehumanising propaganda in war that depicts enemies as animals. In war propaganda, enemies are often represented as disgusting and loathsome animals, such as vermin (Smith, 2012). On my understanding, these depictions do not usually serve to literally deny the biological human status of enemies, but to encourage moral disengagement that contributes to a lowering of the restraints that people normally feel in committing atrocities against other human beings. This reading is supported, for example, by Aldous Huxley who observed in 1936 that dehumanising propaganda seeks to reduce the natural inhibitions that people generally have against the severe mistreatment of others:

Most people would hesitate to torture or kill a human being like themselves. But when that human being is spoken of as though he were not a human being, but as the representative of some wicked principle, we lose our scruples. […] All political and nationalist propaganda aims at only one thing; to persuade one set of people that another set of people are not really human and that it is therefore legitimate to rob, swindle, bully, and even murder them. (Cited in Smith, 2012: 21)

Huxley persuasively argues that dehumanising propaganda aims at convincing the audience that certain people do not deserve to be included in the moral category of humanity, as this lessens the restraints that people normally feel in committing atrocities. This effect has also been observed in experiments carried out by Albert Bandura, Bill Underwood and Michael Fromson (1975), which demonstrate that dehumanisation can indeed function as a mechanism of moral disengagement that renders violent conduct permissible in the eyes of perpetrators. While people who internalise such animalising war propaganda thus come to deny the human status of their enemies in a moral sense, they do not necessarily believe that their opponents no longer belong to the human species.

The idea that people can deny the moral sense of humanity of people who are attributed human subjectivity is suggested by cases where people treat others in cruel ways to denigrate and humiliate them. As pointed out earlier, for dehumanisation to be effective as a form of humiliation, perpetrators need to acknowledge certain distinctively human traits in their victims, namely those semiotic and moral sensibilities without which they would be unable to suffer from symbolic forms of denigration. Gopnik’s example of political regimes that use terror against their opponents, discussed above, can serve as an illustration here. While the representation of victims as vermin denies their biological human status in a verbal sense, the humiliating way in which they are treated demonstrates that they are still attributed human subjectivity.

It is important to note that the authors who have dealt with this paradox have also commented on the moral dimensions of dehumanisation. Lang (2010: 225–226) claims, for example, that dehumanisation ‘implies a tendency on the perpetrators’ part to see members of the targeted group as radically different “others” whose subjective experiences need not be taken into account.’ In this formulation, Lang’s account comes close to the one presented in this article. Yet, in the elaboration of his view, Lang takes dehumanisation to entail that the subjective experiences of the victims of dehumanisation cannot be taken into account. He explains that dehumanisation impedes interpersonal interactions, given that ‘[i]t would involve a unilateral denial of subjectivity in the other in a way that would disqualify the victim as someone who could engage with, or affect, the perpetrator’s own subjectivity’ (Lang, 2010: 228). The consequence of this failure to recognise the human subjectivity of the victim is a ‘detached and objectifying attitude’ (Lang, 2010: 241). For Lang, the moral implications of dehumanisation are thus that it leads to an attitude of indifference towards the dehumanised. When we think of dehumanisation as a failure to attribute any positive moral weight to the human subjectivity of victims, as I suggest, it follows that dehumanisation might indeed lead to detachment and indifference, but can just as well draw from hate, contempt or the will to dominate.

Steizinger (2018: 152) reflects on the moral dimensions of dehumanisation in noting how moral indignation frequently accompanies dehumanisation. Dehumanisation is often characterised by a sense of moral outrage based on the idea that some people, in spite of their naturalistic human status, do not develop the higher qualities that define people as human in the metaphysical sense. Following this logic, Steizinger (2018: 153) reflects on the common depiction of the Jewish people as shameless. The ‘shamelessness’ of the Jewish people points to their lower nature in a metaphysical sense, which signals their alleged moral inferiority. It is interesting to observe here that the examples Steizinger provides of qualities that demonstrate the notion of metaphysical human status map onto moral classifications: the terms used, such as ‘liars’, ‘greedy’, ‘egoists’, ‘shameless’ and ‘frauds’, directly link to moral judgements. This suggests that the attribution of moral status is intricately tied up with dehumanisation. In my view, this is no coincidence. The denial of metaphysical human status, which Steizinger’s account insightfully explains, constitutes a particular form of denying people’s human status in a moral sense. What is central to dehumanisation is not the denial of metaphysical human essence (which is but one way of ‘justifying’ why the human subjectivity of victims need not be attributed moral weight), but the denial of the moral significance of the human subjectivity of the victims that this denial of metaphysical human status entails.

In the work of Smith, the link with morality is made even more explicit. Smith (2016: 424) argues, for instance, that ‘[d]ehumanized people are considered to be less than human—as subhuman—in a specifically moral sense. When we dehumanize others, we think of them as having less intrinsic value than human beings.’ It will come as no surprise that I concur with this description of dehumanisation. Here, Smith captures the idea that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of people’s moral status. In my view, it is not necessary, however, to tie this sense of moral devaluation to essentialist thinking, as Smith’s account does. In some cases, dehumanisers may indeed consider the people they dehumanise to be essentially less than human, in the sense that they attribute them a moral essence below that of human beings. However, in others, it is conceivable that dehumanisers fail to attribute moral relevance to the human subjectivity of their victims without tying this to any notion of essence.

It is important to realise that if we restricted our understanding of dehumanisation to attributing people a less than human essence, this would entail that people who do not believe in essentialist thinking could not engage in dehumanisation, no matter how they view or treat other human beings. For example, if a person were to regard and treat others as if their life, experiences, suffering and death did not matter in any morally relevant sense, but failed to engage in essentialist thinking and therefore did not attribute his or her victims a less than human essence, this would not amount to dehumanisation. This does not seem correct, because this person regards and treats people as if they do not matter as human beings. The human subjectivity of the victims is discarded as a moral reason that should be taken into account in decisions on how to treat them and they are therefore dehumanised, irrespective of whether the perpetrator attributes them the moral essence of vermin, waste or some other subhuman entity, or simply does not consider their supposed essence at all. What is central to dehumanisation is thus the denial of moral human status, rather than human essence. The next section will elaborate on this account of dehumanisation through a discussion of witness testimony of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, which helps illustrate key distinctions and insights that follow from this account.

Dehumanisation in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps

Before turning to witness accounts of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, it is important to reflect briefly on the issues involved in this choice of source. While witness accounts provide valuable material to analyse dehumanisation, the use of these accounts can be considered problematic for various reasons. Concerns have been raised about perpetrator testimonies. Few testimonies exist and those that do are controversial due to the evident interest perpetrators have in minimising responsibility for their actions (see Browning, 2003: 3–36; Mann, 2000: 333; Szeynmann, 2008: 46). The accuracy and representativeness of victim accounts have been called into question as well. First, these testimonies are vulnerable to ordinary issues related to memory, which may be exacerbated in the case of the recollection of traumatic events (Greenspan, 2010; Langer, 1991; Felman and Laub, 1992; Wieviorka, 2006). Second, most of the inmates of the camps, and particularly those who were subjected to the most severe forms of abuse, did not live to tell about their experiences. The available testimony is therefore always significantly incomplete.

While these reflections indicate that we should be cautious about the use of witness accounts of the Nazi camps, disregarding these testimonies would entail losing potentially valuable insights into the extreme social processes that unfolded there. In my view, the use of these sources should not be dismissed altogether, but it is important to critically engage with them as accounts that present uniquely informed viewpoints, some of which may be considered more reliable and others of which should be treated with suspicion. The discussion here will therefore draw predominantly from the memoirs of Primo Levi, given that his testimony is considered one of the more reliable accounts of the camps (Carter-White, 2012). Although this source selection does not allow for direct engagement with the perspective of the perpetrator, it offers unique insights into the mechanisms that were at play from a victim’s point of view. ⁷

In the previous section, I defined dehumanisation as the failure to attribute even minimal positive moral value to the human subjectivity of people. Levi’s account of the camps helps demonstrate the diverse ways in which this process can work out in practice. A key insight that can be illustrated through his writings is that the failure to consider people’s subjective experiences as morally relevant can follow either from blindness to the fact that victims have human subjectivity in the first place or from the failure to attribute this subjectivity any positive moral weight. The idea that people may dehumanise others by failing to recognise their human subjectivity is borne out in Levi’s description of his first encounter with the SS, which occurred in a processing camp in northern Italy:

We immediately realised, from our very first contacts with the contemptuous men with the black patches, that knowing or not knowing German was a watershed. With those who understood them and answered in an articulate manner, the appearance of a human relationship was established. With those who did not understand them, the black man reacted in a manner that astonished and frightened us: an order that had been pronounced in the calm voice of a man who knows he will be obeyed, was repeated word for word in a loud, angry voice, then screamed at the top of his lungs as if he were addressing a deaf person or indeed a domestic animal, more responsive to the tone than the content of the message. (Levi, 1986: 70)

Levi describes the dehumanisation that followed from the inability to speak German by observing how the inmates who were unable to understand and converse in German were considered and treated like animals. This perception made communication, or the attempt to communicate, futile:

For those people we were no longer men; with us, as with cows or mules, there was no substantial difference between a scream and a punch. For a horse to run or stop, turn, pull or stop pulling, it is not necessary to come to terms with it, or give it detailed explanations. (Levi, 1986: 71)

Levi thus claims that the inability to communicate led to dehumanisation, as the inmates ‘were no longer men’ in the eyes of the SS. He explains how this form of dehumanisation, sustained by the inability to challenge the attribution of this less than human status through discursive means, drew from Nazi ideology, which considered German the only human language. Levi notes how, for the SS, the inability to understand and speak German in itself was a sign of the subhuman status of some prisoners:

It had been driven into the young Nazis’ heads that in the world there existed only one civilisation, the German; all others, present or past, were acceptable only insofar as they contained some German elements. Thus, whoever did not understand or speak German was a barbarian by definition; if he insisted on expressing himself in his own language, indeed, his non-language, he must be beaten into silence and put back in his place, pulling, carrying and pushing, because he was not a Mensch, not a human being. (Levi, 1986: 71)

Levi’s reflections suggest that the members of the SS at times failed to recognise the human subjectivity of the inmates. The inability of some prisoners to speak German excluded the possibility for discursive interaction, which was necessary to uphold at least the ‘appearance of a human relationship’ (Levi, 1986: 70). Their moral standing, in the eyes of the SS, was reduced to that of cattle. Levi thus provides support for my argument that people can fail to recognise the human subjectivity of others, and helps flesh out this notion by indicating how blindness for people’s human subjectivity can be sustained by potent ideological influences that distort the perpetrators’ views of the victims, coupled with severe impediments on the side of the victims to challenge this denial of human subjectivity. It is important to highlight, however, that there is no need to assume that all SS members necessarily denied the human subjectivity of inmates who were unable to speak German. Some might have treated them like cattle in order to humiliate them, precisely because they did recognise their human subjectivity. What is central to the argument this article presents is that Levi’s account lends credibility to the idea that people may dehumanise others by failing to recognise their human subjectivity. ⁸

Following the account of dehumanisation that this article proposes, the failure to recognise people’s human subjectivity is not the only way in which people can be dehumanised, however. What defines dehumanisation is complete disregard for the moral significance of a person’s human subjectivity as a factor that counts against his or her mistreatment, if only in a minimal sense. Dehumanisation can therefore also occur in cases where the human subjectivity of victims is recognised, but not attributed any positive moral weight. An example of a practice that follows this logic is the tattooing of a number on the inmates’ forearms upon arrival in Auschwitz. This practice followed the logic of humiliating acts of dehumanisation that require recognition of the human subjectivity of the victims, given that these acts draw their meaning from the transgression of people’s semiotic and moral sensibilities. In line with this logic, Levi (1986: 95) notes how:

[i]ts symbolic meaning was clear to everyone: this is an indelible mark, you will never leave here; this is the mark with which slaves are branded and cattle sent to the slaughter, and that is what you have become. You no longer have a name; this is your new name. The violence of the tattoo was gratuitous, an end in itself, pure offence.

The practice Levi describes constitutes a form of dehumanisation that cannot be fully understood without recognition of the fact that the victim’s human subjectivity is acknowledged. What makes this practice particularly morally problematic is the symbolic denial of people’s right to their own name, which is effected through the imprint of an identifying number on their bodies. The humiliating logic behind this practice thus acknowledges the victims’ human subjectivity but demonstrates utter disregard for the moral significance of their subjectivity by gratuitously causing them suffering through the denigration the tattoo symbolised. ⁹

The gratuitousness of the suffering indicates that in this case no positive moral weight was attributed to the subjectivity of the victims. To see why this is the case, it is important to note that it is often difficult to assess whether perpetrators of mistreatment fail to regard the subjective experiences of their victims as a factor that holds moral weight in their considerations about how to treat them. After all, it could be that they attribute limited moral weight to the human subjectivity of their victims, but not enough for it to outweigh the interests the perpetrators have in mistreating them. Cases where people are gratuitously made to suffer present evident examples of dehumanisation, then, since these cases present no reasons that can outweigh the suffering caused, except for the pleasure the perpetrators take in the suffering of the victims, which in itself demonstrates utter disregard for the moral significance of their subjectivity.

This logic plays out in cases where perpetrators go to pains to inflict suffering on their victims where this mistreatment serves no further purpose. Levi presents an example of this type of practice in his discussion of the Nazi round-ups of elderly Jews. He wonders:

why, during the furious round-ups in all the cities and villages of their boundless empire, violate the houses of the dying? Why go to the trouble of dragging them on to their trains, take them to die far away, after a senseless journey, die in Poland on the threshold of the gas chambers? (Levi, 1986: 96)

Levi argues that the only logic that could be discerned in this practice is that the enemy must be made to suffer:

In my convoy there were two dying ninety-year-old women, taken out of the Fossoli infirmary: one of them died en route, nursed in vain by her daughters. Would it not have been simpler, more ‘economical’, to let them die, or perhaps kill them in their beds, instead of adding their agony to the collective agony of the transport? One is truly led to think that, in the Third Reich, the best choice, the choice imposed from above, was the one that entailed the greatest amount of affliction, the greatest amount of waste, of physical and moral suffering. The ‘enemy’ must not only die, but must die in torment. (Levi, 1986: 96)

Levi’s testimony provides support for my claim that in cases of dehumanisation the subjective experiences of the victims often are seen to matter, although in a different way from what is usually is the case. Cynically, the subjective experiences of the victims matter in this case as a reason that counts in favour of their mistreatment, rather than against it. This demonstrates that the attitude of the perpetrators is marked by disregard for the human subjectivity of the victims as a moral reason that counts against their mistreatment, if only in a minimal sense.

Before turning to the conclusion, it will be helpful to consider here a case discussed by Lang that revolves around a deadly encounter between a construction supervisor, two Jewish inmates and a Polish prisoner in Buchenwald, which illustrates the points set out above:

The construction supervisor ordered two Jews whose strength appeared to be waning to lie down in a pit. He then commanded a Pole to fill it in and to bury the two men alive. When the Polish prisoner refused, the supervisor beat him with a shovel handle, ordering him to lie down next to the two Jews in the pit. The two Jews were then commanded to cover the disobedient Pole with earth. When all that could be seen was the Pole’s head, the supervisor halted the operation and had the man dug out. The Jews had to lie down once more in the pit, and the Pole was told once again to cover them. This time he obeyed. […] When the pit was filled in, the supervisor, laughing, stamped the ground solid. Five minutes later, he called over two prisoners to dig the Jews out again. One was already dead; the other still showed weak signs of life. Both were transported to the crematorium. (Solfsky, 1997: 239, cited in Lang, 2010: 241)

The Jewish inmates who were commanded to lie in the pit, and then ordered to cover the Pole, do not seem to be attributed much human subjectivity. It is interesting to note that Lang does not discuss their role at all. While it is difficult to say based on the available information, it seems conceivable that the construction supervisor did not ascribe them human subjectivity. In that case, they would be dehumanised because this failure of attribution entails that the supervisor did not consider their human subjectivity a moral reason that counted against their mistreatment. It is also conceivable that he recognised that the Jewish prisoners had subjective experiences as human beings but simply did not consider this a relevant factor in deciding on how to treat them. In both cases, it is clear that they were dehumanised.

Lang’s discussion focuses, instead, on the interaction between the construction supervisor and the Polish prisoner. He concludes that ‘[t]he victim is instrumentalized, but not dehumanized; he becomes an instrument in the hands of the perpetrator, but an instrument whose humanity—or, more precisely, subjectivity—is a centrally important element of its instrumentality’ (Lang, 2010: 241). The central importance of the subjectivity of the Pole is recognised, according to Lang, in the fact that he is made complicit in the murder and abuse of the Jewish prisoners by undermining his ‘courage and moral fortitude […] by reframing the situation in terms of revenge’ (Lang, 2010: 241).

On my reading, the Polish prisoner was dehumanised given that his human subjectivity was not attributed any weight as a moral reason that counted against his mistreatment. The fact that the way he was treated aimed at eliminating his moral resolve not to partake in the abuse and murder of the Jewish inmates demonstrates that the supervisor disregarded the moral relevance of his subjectivity. The burying alive of the Jewish prisoners was a gratuitous form of violence, as demonstrated by the fact that they were dug up and sent to the crematorium afterwards. The gratuitous nature of this act indicates that there were no reasons that could outweigh the stress, suffering and pain caused to the Polish prisoner as moral grounds that should count against involving him in the affair. The only apparent reason to involve him seemed to have been the amusement it provided to the construction supervisor. Yet the fact that causing suffering is seen as a form of amusement itself shows that the human subjectivity of the victim is not recognised as a moral reason that counts against their mistreatment.

In my view, the construction supervisor thus dehumanised both the Jewish inmates and the Polish prisoner. The Jewish victims were dehumanised because the supervisor failed to recognise either their human subjectivity or its moral relevance as a factor that counted against their abuse and murder. Contrary to Lang, I maintain that the Polish prisoner was dehumanised as well, given that the supervisor considered his human subjectivity as a factor in favour of mistreating him. In both cases, the construction supervisor therefore did not value the human subjectivity of the persons involved as a moral factor that counts against their mistreatment.

Conclusion

This article has presented a solution to the paradox of dehumanisation by distinguishing between different types of human status, which relate to people’s biological nature, psychological subjectivity and normative standing. Dehumanisation, so I have argued, consists in complete disregard for the moral significance of a person’s human subjectivity. What this means is that when people engage in dehumanisation, they no longer consider the subjective experiences of the victim as a reason that counts against their mistreatment, if only in a minimal sense. Dehumanisation thus loses its paradoxical character, given that persons can consider others as less than human in a moral sense without necessarily regarding them as falling outside the human species or lacking human subjectivity.

The practical upshot of this analysis is that dehumanisation is a concept that can help account for atrocities and other fundamental rights abuses, even if it is not necessarily easy to adjudicate when dehumanisation takes place. Since dehumanisation is defined by complete disregard for the moral relevance of the human subjectivity of the victim, the views, beliefs and concerns that perpetrators hold regarding their victims are central to determining whether dehumanisation takes place. Knowing the views, beliefs and concerns of others is a considerable epistemic challenge, but it may be possible to tell something about how perpetrators regard their victims from the way they treat and speak about them. Especially, when perpetrators inflict gratuitous suffering on their victims it is evident that the human subjectivity of the latter is attributed no weight as a moral reason that counts against their mistreatment.

Another important implication of this research is that ideologies, propaganda and discriminatory representations which deny the existence of human subjectivity in certain persons or the moral relevance of their subjective experiences should be challenged and countered, as they promote dehumanisation. Dehumanisation, as complete disregard for the moral relevance of people’s human subjectivity, allows for severe forms of mistreatment and it is therefore crucial to stand up against representations and narratives that depict human beings as lacking typical subjective human experiences or that portray these experiences as devoid of moral significance. This suggests that the conclusions of this analysis are relevant not only for research on genocide, war crimes, torture and other atrocities, but may also be pertinent to studies on exclusionist attitudes towards disenfranchised groups in society, such as criminals, homeless people and asylum seekers.