Schindler’s List

Kant believed “the only good thing is the good will”, a reasoned will, operating according to the categorical imperative, out of a sense of duty.  He fundamentally opposed David Hume’s view that “reason is the slave of the passions”.  To submit to the passions was to be like an animal, argued Kant, to be heteronomous or directed by another.  To be free humans needed to exercise autonomy (self-rule) and choose duty rather than pleasure.

But as this extract from Schindler’s List illustrates, don’t moral feelings spur altruistic moral choice?  Here Schindler converts to a life saving his Jewish employees that formed his “list”.

They rampaged through fetid apartments – as a symptom of their rush, a suitcase flew from a second storey window and split open on the pavement.  And, running before the dogs, the men and women and children who had hidden in attics or cupboards, inside drawerless dressers, the evaders of the first wave of search, jolted out into the pavement, yelling and gasping in terror of the Dobermanns.  Everything seemed speeded up, difficult for the viewers on the hill to keep pace with. Those who had emerged were shot where they stood on the pavement, flying out over the gutters from the impact of the bullets, gushing blood into the drains.  A mother and a boy, perhaps eight, perhaps a scrawny ten, had retreated under a windowsill on the western side of Krakusa Street.  Schindler felt an intolerable fear for them, a terror in his own blood which loosened his thighs from the saddle and threatened to unhorse him.  He looked at Ingrid and saw her hands knotted on the reins.  He could hear her exclaiming and begging beside him.

His eyes slewed up Krakusa Street to the scarlet child. They were doing it within half a block of her.  They hadn’t waitied for her column to turn out of sight.  Schindler could not have explained at first how that compounded the murders on the pavement.  Yet somehow it proved, in a way no one could ignore, their serious intent.  While the scarlet child stopped in her column and turned to watch, they shot the woman under the windowsill in the neck, and one of them, when the boy slid down the wall whimpering, jammed a boot down on his head as if to hold it still and put a barrel against the back of his neck – and fired….

At last Schindler slithered from his horse, tripped, and found himself on his knees hugging the trunk of a pine tree.  The urge to throw up his excellent breakfast was, he sensed, to be suppressed, for he supsected it meant all his cunning body was doing was making room to digest the horrors of Krakusa Street.  (Schindler’s List, pages 142-3)

Questions:

1.  What emotions did Schindler feel on seeing the murders in Krakusa Street?

2.  Could these be described as moral emotions?  Why?  What makes an emotion “moral”?

3.  Was Kant right to argue that morality is about reason and duty, rather than feelings?

4.  If Oskar Schindler’s motivation was revulsion at the sight of Krakusa Street and the scarlet child, does this make his action less moral than if he had been motivated by duty to save the innocent?

Note:  you can find the same scene acted out in the film Schindler’s List.  Shot in black and white, the small child assumes a symbolic place, as her red coat is the only colour in the film.  Find the film clip and see if it brings out the intensity of Schindler’s feelings, as expressed here by the author Thomas Keneally.