Conceived by Susan Neiman, Potsdam
with Mosche Halbertal, Jerusalem; Carey Harrison, New York; Stephen Holmes, New York; Peter Stephan Jungk, Paris; Philip Kitcher, New York; Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Hamburg; David Shulman, Jerusalem; Karolina Wigura, Warsaw; James Wood, Cambridge, Mass.

No one wrote more profound or penetrating essays on survival in Auschwitz, torture, ageing, and suicide than Jean Améry, born Hans Mayer in Vienna. Yet along with the–often despairing–works that made him famous, he also wrote the 20th century’s most passionate defenses of the much-maligned Enlightenment. Are these works in conflict with each other, or must they be read in tandem? The conference will explore this question while focusing on those aspects of Améry’s work that have received scant attention.