Margalit, Avishai. “The Moral Witness” in The Ethics of Memory.

In this chapter, philosopher Avishai Margalit puts forth the notion of “the moral witness,” by which he refers to people who not only witness evil but also suffer from its consequences. Margalit places a moral responsibility on the moral witness, whose primary task is to expose the enormity of the crime committed by the perpetrators who probably seek to cover it up. He draws on several cases of witnessing in history to develop the concept of the moral witness, but he sets out its definition primarily by distinguishing it first from the “religious witness” and then from the “political witness”. While religious witnesses witness and, usually as a result, die in hope of an “eschatological expectation” for salvation (155), the moral witness has to “live in order to witness” (151), and their testimony addresses to a secular, “moral community” that helps to preserve the memories of atrocities and sufferings (155). Different from the political witness, who is often adept at disclosing the “factual truth” and the “structure of evil,” the moral witness is more valuable at presenting direct and personal experiences, “telling what it was like to be subjected to” the evil done by perpetrators (168). However, Margalit also tries to avoid the pitfall of limiting witnessing to a solely subjective or personal experience, with an emphasis on the agency of the witness to create relationality. Seeing witnesses and testimonies as “the most crucial way for us to acquire knowledge (181),” he concludes by suggesting the role of the moral witness in sustaining a persecuted, endangered ethnic community by giving voice to it.

Author of this entry: Chihhen Chang

Margalit, Avishai. “The Moral Witness.” In: The Ethics of Memory. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002): 147-182.