Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 35

terms of Margalit’s suggestion in the context of the Holocaust? Does such
thinking produce new knowledge on these wars? What can we learn about
the artist as a witness? What, then, does Margalit write about being a witness
and, in particular, how does he understand the moral witness?
In his most rigorous definition, Margalit (����:���) defines the (paradigmatic)
moral witness as a person with “knowledge-by-acquaintance of suffering.” ��
Knowledge-by-acquaintance refers to both personal experience and actual
experience of “suffering inflicted by an unmitigated evil regime” (p. ���).
Being a moral witness refers to the experience of suffering, not just the
observation of suffering. If this were all Margalit had to say about the moral
witness, then I could stop my investigation here. However, an observer can
be a moral witness on condition that he or she is “at personal risk.” This risk
can come in two variations: the one defined as “belonging to the category
of people toward whom the evil deeds are directed” and the other defined
as attempts “to document and record what happens for some future use”
(p. ���). �� The use of the present tense here links Margalit’s definition to
the conventional understanding of being a witness with its emphasis on
contemporaneity discussed earlier just as does his emphasis on the eye
witness; indeed, “the authority of a moral witness comes from being an eyewitness”
(p. ���). �� Artists documenting or recording the suffering of others
for some future use would seem to qualify as moral witnesses but, again,
there are two conditions: first, their “testimonial mission has [to have] a
moral purpose” (p. ���) and, secondly, they have to take risks. “To be a moral
witness … is all about taking risks” (p. ���). The idea that the risk-taking
observer documenting what happens “for some future use” qualifies as
moral witness thus needs specification: the future use cannot be separated
from the testimonial mission’s moral purpose. But the very idea of a future
use is hard to reconcile with Margalit’s emphasis on the “intrinsic value”
of testimony, its noninstrumentality: testimony is not a means to an end
and this is especially true with regard to the paradigmatic moral witness
(p. ���). Ultimately, the subject position of moral witness cannot be thought
of without “hope: that in another place or another time there exists, or will
exist, a moral community that will listen to their testimony” (p. ���).
��
The following page references in the text are for this book.
��
As will become clear shortly, the issue here is not for “some future use” but is a very specific one.
��
Such a strong focus on the eyewitness might be irritating given the notorious unreliability of
eyewitness reports observed by, for example, Levi (����:��). The moral witness, however, is not
primarily interested in the factual truth (see below).
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