Son of Saul, Kierkegaard and the Holocaust

The New York Times, February 28, 2016. The article has been selected a winner in the American Philosophical Association’s 2017 Public Philosophy Op-Ed Contest.

Art often is the subject of philosophy; it is more rare that a work of art becomes philosophy, pursued by means other than language. In its cinematic way, Son of Saul,  a Hungarian film by László Nemes about the Holocaust, engages with the same set of problems that the nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote about.

In Hungarian

Élet és Irodalom, Vol. LX, No 13, April 1, 2016.

In German

Hohe Luft, under the title “Der Holocaust, die Kunst und das Kino” Issue #1, 2017, pp. 56-60 (translation: Korbinian Nida-Rümelin).

Also published in the cultural magazine Human Factor under the title „Innerlichkeit sichtbar gemacht: Kierkegaard, der Holocaust und der Film “Son of Saul””