essay about indifference

Rhetorical Analysis: The Perils Of Indifference Essay

Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, gave a speech called The Perils of Indifference, to elected officials including the president and the first lady on April 12th, 1999. He claims that being a victim of indifference hurts, but it hurts even more when others don’t help. The author writes in a personable tone to connect with the audience during his speech. Wiesel supports his claim by utilizing many rhetorical devices , including tone, rhetorical questions, and repetition.

Wiesel defines the definition in depth, calls attention to the fact that indifference is more prevalent than acknowledged, engages often with the audience throughout his speech in a personal matter, illustrates the positive and negative accomplishments going on in the world, and delivers a hopeful message for the future in order to warn the audience about the presence of indifference in the world and how damaging it is so future progress can be made. Elie Wiesel defines the definition of indifference in depth in order for the readers to have context and understanding of his speech prior to introducing his message.

Wiesel uses rhetorical questions to point out the definition of indifference very clearly. “What is indifference? “. Wiesel is using a rhetorical question so that the audience thinks about the answer for themselves. He later goes on and says the answer to the audience himselves so they don’t misunderstand his point of view . Using a rhetorical question is a strong device to use because it has a greater effect on the audience than telling them right away because they can form their own opinions and insight.

In addition to using a rhetorical question, he defines his own situation very well by giving his first hand account to the readers as a Holocaust survivor. “… behind the black gates of Auschwitz, of all prisoners were the ‘Muselmanner,” as they were called. … They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it”. The effect of Wiesel giving his first hand account to the audience allows the audience to open their eyes about indifference and what it means in his own situation.

When Wiesel does this, he evokes emotional response from the audience because his encounter with indifference Many may misunderstand indifference, and the benefit of Wiesel giving his own experience helps him and his goal of letting people know what it really means. Elie Wiesel calls attention to the fact that indifference is more prevalent than acknowledged in order to prove to the audience that it is a bigger problem than what people are making it. Wiesel does this by using antithesis. Wiesel talks about extreme situations that people notice, and then states indifference is is a case of blurry lines.

He lists many short phrases in one sentence, “… light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil”. The value of Wiesel explaining indifference using antithesis exposes that most people don’t pay attention to the things in between two extreme cases. Using antithesis is a superb way to shed light on the fact that people usually know of obvious situations. Indifference isn’t obvious, so antithesis is the perfect device to highlight that. For example, in war, people are either going to ask stories about the heroes, or stories about the injured.

They aren’t going to want to know what the photographer or truck driver did. The same thing goes for indifference. Those stuck in between the two extremes suffer because people neglect those who are in the blur. Wiesel is not saying that all negative events have a blur, but indifference causes the blur. As a survivor, Elie personally experienced the neglect indifference causes, therefore it was appropriate to use antithesis. The rest of his family was separated from him, leaving them to die and him to live. In addition, Wiesel also uses a cumulative sentence to enhance his argument that ndifference is more prevalent than realized.

He shares multiple examples of tragic events that “have cast a dark shadow over humanity”. He talks about the assassinations of Martin Luther King , Ghandi along with inhumane events like Hiroshima and Auschwitz. He does this all in one sentence to overwhelm the readers with many different situations when indifference has occurred. He wants to nail his point that indifference is very prevalent by listing so many events when it was involved. The cumulative sentence overwhelms the readers with many situations in which indifference led to tragedy.

This creates a logical argument for the audience, and they understand that indifference is not the innocuous thing they assumed. They realize that Elie, a survivor of Auschwitz, has had a first hand account of the horrors of indifference. This makes his argument exceptionally convincing. Wiesel also engages often with the audience throughout the speech in order to have an emotional connection with them. He uses his tone to connect with the audience on a personal level. “I stand before you, Mr. President… “, “And I thank all of you for being here”. Wiesel’s tone is very personable, and the examples prove that.

He uses words like you, we, and Mr. President to connect with the audience personally. He does this so the audience engages with his speech that he is presenting. Using a personable tone doesn’t only involve the audience, but it reveals Wiesel as a person. He lost his loved ones during the Holocaust, and he paints himself as a humble, civil person. This allows the readers to look at him not as a speaker, but as an average person talking about his personal experience with indifference. His overall goal is for them to take up indifference as a problem the world has.

Using a personable tone allows Wiesel to be relatable to the audience so they can have a better understanding of him and his message. He also shows his engagement by repeating the phrase “we” in rhetorical questions. Wiesel says, “Does it mean we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? “. This allows the readers to think about the answer to the questions. Asking the audience questions for them to think about allows them to have a deeper connection, because Wiesel is showing interest in their opinions when he asks questions.

Using rhetorical questions allows him to affirm to the audience that he cares about them and the connection he creates in his speech. He also mentions, “And now we knew, we learned, we discovered… “. The repetition of “we”, includes everybody in progression and change. He is saying that not just a select few are interested in abolishing indifference, he is saying that “we” as a whole want change to occur. He is uniting the audience in order to be more personal and relatable. Wiesel also illustrates the good going on in the world in order to show that accomplishments have been made.

He declares, “… he defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism… ” “… Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland”. All of the events listed are great accomplishments that the world has completed over time. Wiesel inspires the audience by using positive diction to illustrate that the future doesn’t have to be like the past, because many tragic events have come to an end because of bravery or protest from those opposed to indifference. He enhances his argument because multiple examples in a row overwhelm the audience with positivity, which is his goal since he wants to show that progress has been made.

In addition to positive diction, Wiesel uses repetition to illustrate more positivity. He says, “But this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene”. Wiesel repeats “this time”, to show that positive change is increasing as time goes on. He uses repetition to emphasize that the world is accomplishing many events. He still gets his point across when saying “this time”, because that proves that in the past that it wasn’t always like how he explained. The future can be different, it can be more civil, and a safe environment for all.

Wiesel repeats “this time” to promote that the future can has improved and will continue improving. Overall, he lets the audience know that good is being accomplished which impacts the stance of indifference and how prevalent it is becoming. Finally, Wiesel delivers a hopeful message for the future in order to inspire others to initiate change. Wiesel completes his cycle from beginning to end. At the beginning of his speech, he advocates, “He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again”.

Wiesel is talking in third person about himself. He does this to show his rage and struggle that he had as a child. When he was a young boy in the Holocaust, he was scared, and upset about the situation he was in. Using third person to portray his point is very valuable because it allows the readers to put themselves in the little boys shoes, and see why it is relevant that indifference is hurting many. At the end of the speech, Wiesel transitions to a different attitude of positivity to complete the cycle.

His rage and his struggle turned into hope and change as an older man. “And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope”. Throughout the speech, Wiesel refers back to the rage many times, but also looks forward to a future of change in indifference. This completes his message because he wants the audience to take his own experience and commence future change. He also uses an allusion to God to deliver a hopeful message. Wiesel speaks about how God is with you no matter where you are, or what you’re doing.

Wiesel knew that God was with him all through the holocaust, and that gave him hope and strength. He validates that faith can get people through adversity. Using an allusion to God exemplifies Wiesel’s personal beliefs as an individual and verifies that he has had experience himself with God. This evokes both emotional respect for Wiesel along with credibility because he himself has personally been affected by God and His strength. If someone believes in the Lord and has a positive attitude along with hope, Wiesel believes that change can happen.

To export a reference to this essay please select a referencing style below:

Related essays:

• Analysis Of Elie Wiesels Perils Of Indifference Essay
• Essay on Perils Of Indifference
• All But My Life Analysis Essay
• Night By Elie Wiesel Essay
• Elie Wiesel: The Devastation Of The Holocaust Essay
• Night Essay Examples
• Reflection Of Night By Elie Wiesel Essay
• Holocaust Essay Examples
• Night Elie Wiesel Essay
• Father Son Relationship In Night By Elie Wiesel Essay
• Essay on Rhetorical Analysis Of Obamas Acceptance Speech
• Elie Wiesel’s Night

Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night” Essay

Elie Wiesel’s “Night” is a novel that condenses fragments of events, thoughts, and Wiesel’s analysis of the indifference the Jewish populations were subjected to. The book mainly follows Eliezer, an Orthodox Jewish teenager, and Moshe the Beadle, a caretaker of the house of prayer that Eliezer often has conversations with. The story describes the horrific events experienced on the way to the concentration camp as well as in it. The theme of disregard is especially prevalent in the interaction of the Jews on their way to the camps and those that remain in Wiesel’s native Sighet.

When the cattle cars are taking the imprisoned Jews to the camps, Mrs. Schächter screams about visible fire and is sure that they are going to die. However, she is beaten into a quietness that is described as her being “mute again, indifferent, absent” (Wiesel 28). This first experience with the unsettling apathy expresses the hopelessness and uncertainty of God that grows more noticeable further into the story.

The impassivity of those working at the camp and the officers is expressed through orders which are “words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion” (Wiesel 29). Similar to his other works, “Night” provides evidence for Wiesel’s primary thesis on such negligent attitudes. He firmly believes that it isn’t hatred that leads to tragedy but apathy that allows it.

There is also detachment found in the Jews that remained in their hometown when Moshe approaches them about the horrors he witnessed in the camps. They simply reply with dismissive statements such as Behind me, someone said, sighing, “What do you expect? That’s war” (Wiesel 4). Wiesel depicts a cycle of apathy expressed by the non-affected populace and the hopelessness of those that have lost everything to their attackers. He frequently cites that while insouciance may be easier to bear, it only paves the way for the abuser and never for the victim.

Wiesel, Elie. Night . Bantam Books, 1982.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, June 19). Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemplation-of-indifference-in-elie-wiesels-night/

"Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”." IvyPanda , 19 June 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/contemplation-of-indifference-in-elie-wiesels-night/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”'. 19 June.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”." June 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemplation-of-indifference-in-elie-wiesels-night/.

1. IvyPanda . "Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”." June 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemplation-of-indifference-in-elie-wiesels-night/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Contemplation of Indifference in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”." June 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/contemplation-of-indifference-in-elie-wiesels-night/.

• Disability Is Not Inability: "Door to Door" by Steven Schachter
• Eliezer's Faith in God - "Night" by Elie Wiesel Literature Analysis
• Holocaust Experience in the Book 'Night' by Elie Wiesel
• The Relation Between Eliezer and His Father in Night by Elie Wiesel
• Eliezer Wiesel: The Theme of Religious Protest
• Night by Elie Wiesel: Eliezer's Changing Relationship With His Father
• Night by Elie Wiesel: Eliezer’s Relationship With His Father
• “Night” by Elie Wiesel: Holocaust and Genocide
• Conceptual Inconsistency in "Night" by Elie Wiesel
• Elie Wiesel - The Holocaust and His Quest for God
• Critical Review of “Reviving Ophelia”
• Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Poe
• Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody: Process of Activism
• Conflict in ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ by Connell
• Key Points in “Hard Core” by Linda Williams

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Sociology

"The Perils of Indifference": a Rhetorical Analysis

Table of contents, ethos: establishing credibility, pathos: emotional appeal, logos: logical argument, repetition and parallelism, call to action.

• Wiesel, E. (1999). The Perils of Indifference. Speech delivered at the Millennium Lecture Series, The White House, Washington, D.C.
• Kopelson, K. (2001). Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership. Temple University Press.
• Kramp, M. A. (2007). Coming to Terms with Indifference: The Rhetoric of Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. Rhetoric Review, 26(2), 165-184.
• Labrie, R. P. (2007). Silence, Postmemory, and the Dialogic Work of Echo in Elie Wiesel's Testimonial Rhetoric. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 40(4), 389-409.
• McCadden, J. (2011). Witnessing and Transcendence: The Ethics of Communicating the Holocaust. Lexington Books.

*minimum deadline

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below

• Panopticism
• Sexual Orientation
• Discourse Community
• Culture and Communication
• Community Violence

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

The Perils of Indifference

27 pages • 54 minutes read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Essay Analysis

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Analysis: “The Perils of Indifference”

By opening his speech with his own story, Wiesel presents at once the devastating effects of indifference and the impact achievable by those who reject indifference. Wiesel is speaking at the White House on the 54th anniversary of his liberation from the Nazis’ death camp Buchenwald. He states that, at the time of his liberation, despite his freedom, he felt no joy: “He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again” (Paragraph 2). This observation makes clear the severity of the effects of the Holocaust, which was enabled by indifference, on this child’s psyche. Yet in this same paragraph, Wiesel introduces the theme of The Interconnectedness of Humanity —though he felt no joy in that moment, he did feel gratitude. With this emotion, which he believes “is what defines the humanity of the human being” (Paragraph 3), Wiesel suggests some restoration of what was stolen from this boy.

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

Hope, Despair and Memory

Never Shall I Forget

The Forgotten

Featured Collections

Common Reads: Freshman Year Reading

View Collection

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

July 11, 2016

Reflections on Indifference and Human Rights

Eric A. Friedman Global Health Justice Scholar

Elie Wiesel speaks at a UN General Assembly special session in 2005 commemorating the Holocaust.  © Jeff Zelevansky/Reuters/Corbis

Indifference. In a word, that was the enduring evil against which Elie Wiesel – the Nobel Peace Laureate and Auschwitz survivor who died earlier this month – struggled, indifference to avoidable anguish. In a 1999 White House address raising the perils of indifference , Elie Wiesel offered these reflections:

Of course, indifference can be tempting – more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction….

[I]ndifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor – never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees – not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

The depth of the harm of indifference comes from how easy, and thus how pervasive, it is. I expect that is why other great advocates for human rights have emphasized the danger of indifference. In a 1965 speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. , called “the greatest tragedy of this period…not the vitriolic words and other violent actions of the bad people but the appalling silence and indifference of the good people.”

Perhaps the greatest cause of indifference in today’s world, the normalization of terror – whether the terror of another terrorist attack, another mass casualty bombing, or the terror of a mother and her family as she hemorrhages uncontrollably after childbirth, soon to become one of a quarter million-plus women who die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related complications every year, with almost all such deaths preventable.

We read on the front pages of our newspapers about the world’s indifference to ISIS attacks in Baghdad that slaughter hundreds of people. Gun violence, with more than 30,000 Americans per year  lost to gun homicide and suicide, fails to stir Congress to act. The normalization of suffering means that inequities can continue to be responsible for more than one in three deaths globally without producing global outrage, despite the monstrous toll of the epidemic of health inequity – 17-20 million people per year.

The normalization of terror, the seductiveness of indifference, and the ever-present need to struggle against it demands that we constantly, actively rouse our consciousness. And so Rep. John Lewis and his colleagues took the dramatic step of holding a sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives to try to force a vote on meaningful legislation to address gun violence. In a memorable 2005 editorial , the New York Times reported, “Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty.”

Indifference is both individual and societal. It is being transfixed by last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris while moving on after reading a headline last week about an even deadlier marketplace attack in Baghdad. It is knowing that thousands of people die every day of easily avoidable causes, but living your life as though oblivious to that reality, except perhaps an occasional gift to charity. It is walking past a homeless person asking for help without even acknowledging her presence.

It is also systematically underfunding health systems – and foreign assistance – such that there is no doubt there will be too few health workers, too few medicines, too few ambulances, too little accountability to significantly cut the toll of mothers dying and robustly respond to the innumerable other causes of death and disability. It is allowing millions of children and adults with mental and physical disabilities to languish in mental institutions around the world, hidden away and forgotten, dying prematurely and living directionless lives, when love, attention, and proper care could transform and extend their lives, infuse them with purpose, and enable people with disabilities to be full members of society. It is giving little thought to prisoners who languish in squalid, abusive, inhumane conditions because they broke the law (or did they?), because they are criminals (and what combination of poor education, abuse, violent neighborhoods, economic hardships, contributed to their plight?).

Banishing indifference requires, I believe, recognizing that beyond being “troublesome…to be involved in another person’s pain and despair,” it is also beyond our capacity to give all the world’s ills, all people who suffer avoidable pain and despair, due attention. There is altogether too much of it. If we acknowledged each of those mothers, each of those victims of terror, of guns, each of these victims of indifference, we would have no emotional energy or time left for anything else, and still our task would be very much incomplete.

So at an individual level, we cannot do it all, though most of us could do more. I know that I could. To honor the humanity of others and of ourselves, to let the victim know that she is not forgotten, we could each develop our own plan of action against our own indifference. We may not be able to acknowledge every homeless person, but we can acknowledge that homeless person whom we pass by on the sidewalk, at the very least giving a nod, a recognition of their existence and humanity, and if possible, do more. If we find a way to show solidarity with the people of Paris after more than 130 people are killed there, we could take similar action after Baghdad’s marketplace attack. We can be more conscious of the how the food we eat, clothes we wear, and electronics we purchase are produced. We could take a little time out of each day to do something about unconscionable national and global health inequities, writing, emailing, calling our presidents and prime ministers, national and local legislators, about the need to create health systems that serve everyone equally, to address homelessness, to establish and fund policies that enable people with disabilities to reach their full potential, and so forth.

Collectively, if we each took such actions, even if we did not ourselves address every wrong, and every person wronged, every case of indifference – for this we cannot do – none of those wrongs will go without attention. None of the people who now suffer in silence will be forgotten, will have their humanity effectively dismissed by the rest of us.

Yet while acknowledging the humanity of people who are homeless is important, that will not in itself secure them roofs over their head. Giving the dead in Baghdad as well as Brussels, Pakistan as well as Paris, our respect will not end the bombings and other attacks. Our purchasing decisions will not in themselves change how corporations produce their products. Our emails and calls will make a difference only if our elected officials respond.

The ultimate answer to indifference is at the societal, structural level. And that answer, I believe, is human rights. If we structure our society around these rights, then we can truly be a society where indifference no longer reigns, where we do not with our silence tell millions of people – by failing to speak to their needs, their lives, their pain – that they do not matter, that their humanity is not really of concern to us. If we spend the maximum of available resources towards fulfilling people’s human rights, if we infuse equity throughout our policies, if we ensure people the opportunity to be part of the processes of crafting the policies that will affect their lives, if we ensure that none of our policies undercut people’s rights, if we provide avenues to people to challenge policies that people believe are tilted towards indifference to their plight rather than an abiding concern for their humanity – if we do all this, then we will be beginning a grand new chapter in the book of humanity.

Yes, there will still be questions. What is the best way to stop the carnage in Syria? How to raise sufficient resources and divvy up spending between health care, education, social safety net programs, equal access to justice….? How to balance the desire to save as many lives as possible with the fact that the lives of some of the most marginalized and underserved people in terms of access to health care, because of their remote location, may cost more money to save?

Even under a human rights approach, our solutions will be imperfect, and difficult questions such as these will persist. But in at least posing, struggling with these questions, we will no longer be a society of indifference. We will not be hiding from suffering, but confronting it. Elie Wiesel called love the opposite of indifference . A society that grounds its actions in human rights will be a society of love. It is for us to build.

The Neglected Pandemic: Efforts (and Lack Thereof) to Develop Vaccines Against Cholera

Sanjana Mukherjee

FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine: Recapping the Supreme Court’s Oral Argument

Suhasini Ravi Rebecca Reingold

Examining the Correlation Between States’ LGBTQIA+ Policy Landscape and PrEP Uptake: How States Can Incentivize Usage

Jeremy Glick

The Nature and Ethics of Indifference

• Published: 10 March 2016
• Volume 21 , pages 17–35, ( 2017 )

Cite this article

• Hallvard Lillehammer 1  

1183 Accesses

9 Citations

2 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Indifference is sometimes said to be a virtue. Perhaps more frequently it is said to be a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper presents a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically significant forms of indifference in terms of how subjects of indifference are variously related to their objects in different circumstances; and how an indifferent orientation can be either more or less dynamic, or more or less sensitive to the nature and state of its object. The resulting analysis is located in a wider context of moral psychology and ethical theory; in particular with respect to work on the virtues of care, empathy and other forms of affective engagement. During the course of this discussion, a number of recent claims associated with the ethics of care and empathy are shown to be either misleading or implausible.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Same duties, different motives: ethical theory and the phenomenon of moral motive pluralism

F.H. Bradley’s Conception of the Moral Self: A New Reading

Moral Agency

The language of indifference as unimportance naturally raises the question whether indifference thus understood is essentially comparative, or whether there is such a thing as being absolutely indifferent. The relevant distinction here is that between something that matters less than everything else on the one hand, and something that matters not at all on the other. I take no view on this matter here.

The term ‘indifference’ has also been employed, in common parlance or in the academic literature, in ways that will appear only at the margins of my discussion in this paper. Among these may potentially be counted ‘religious indifference’ in the sense of loving acquiescence of a Divine Will; ‘sacreligious indifference’, in the sense of adopting an irreverent attitude towards recognized ethical and religious codes; ‘sublime indifference’ in the sense of the ethical significance of something being so great that it transcends the human capacity of comprehension; ‘cosmic indifference’ in the sense of the apparent lack of concern showed by God or the Universe towards the human condition; and ‘undifferentiated indifference’ in the sense of some aspect of reality being considered as pre-ordered, non-conceptualized, indeterminate or unconnected. Although none of these additional senses of ‘indifference’ are the focus of my analysis in this paper, some of them are obviously connected with it.

Although each aspect of indifference can be separately identified in theory, in practice they are obviously related. Thus, you cannot be indifferent to your investments unless you are located in a society with an economy that makes it possible for you to have them. Nor can you cultivate indifference to physical pain unless you are embodied in an organism where physical injury is registered in first person consciousness. When I define the four different aspects of indifference as I do here, I do not mean to presuppose that any of these aspects can be subtracted from the others in a given scenario while leaving all the others unchanged.

Another question relevant here is the fact that someone could be indifferent to something under one mode of presentation (e.g. ‘The person over there’) but not under another (e.g. ‘My long lost friend’). This fact is of particular significance to the attribution of indifferent orientations conceptually articulable contents. (See e.g. Salmon and Soames 1988 .)

It might also be tempting to define a ‘basic’ sense of ‘indifference’ in terms of some ‘standard’, ‘paradigm’, or ‘canonical’ case: e.g. that someone is indifferent to someone or something if and only if they are actually aware of that someone or something (or could easily become aware of that someone or something); and they actually show no significant attitudinal response to that someone or something (or would not (easily) show any significant attitudinal response to that someone or something were they to become aware of it). The employment of such a definition (or something even more precise) could certainly be useful for a range of practical or theoretical purposes. It would also go someway to address the worry (if it is a worry) that on the account just described everyone will strictly speaking be indifferent to everything in at least some respect. I nevertheless resist the temptation of pursuing this definitional project further, given the expository purposes of this paper.

I apply this fourfold distinction to the ethical evaluation of different kinds of indifference in Lillehammer ( 2014a , b ).

The point is controversial. (See e.g. Baron-Cohen 2011 , 126 ff.)

Baron-Cohen, S. 2011. Zero degrees of empathy . London: Allen Lane.

Google Scholar  

Empiricus, Sextus. 1994. Outlines of scepticism . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Foucault, M. 1991. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison . Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Held, V. 2006. The ethics of care: Personal, political and global . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lillehammer, H. 2014a. Who is my neighbour? Understanding indifference as a vice. Philosophy 89: 559–579.

Article   Google Scholar  

Lillehammer, H. 2014b. Minding your own business? Understanding indifference as a virtue. Philosophical Perspectives 28: 111–126.

List, C., and P. Pettit. 2011. Group agency: The possibility, design and status of corporate agents . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Rawls, J. 1971. A theory of justice . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Salmon, N., and S. Soames (eds.). 1988. Propositions and attitudes . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Slote, M. 2007. The ethics of care and empathy . London: Routledge.

Vetlesen, A.J. 1994. Perception, empathy and judgement: An inquiry into the preconditions of moral performance . University Park: Pennsylvania University Press.

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to audiences at Cambridge, Hertfordshire, Birkbeck (Cumberland Lodge) and Sussex for questions and comments aspects of this paper, and to James Laidlaw, Fabian Freyenhagen, Maike Albertzart, Christine Tiefensee and Dónall Mc Ginley for some helpful suggestions at an early stage.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

Hallvard Lillehammer

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hallvard Lillehammer .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Lillehammer, H. The Nature and Ethics of Indifference. J Ethics 21 , 17–35 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9215-z

Download citation

Received : 03 November 2015

Accepted : 24 February 2016

Published : 10 March 2016

Issue Date : March 2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-016-9215-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Indifference
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Passover’s Radical Message Is More Vital Than Ever

By Shai Held

Rabbi Held is the president and dean of the Hadar Institute, which he co-founded, and the author of “Judaism Is About Love,” from which this essay is adapted.

What do we do with our pain? What, if anything, can we learn from it?

The Bible offers a startling and potentially transformative response: Let your memory teach you empathy and your suffering teach you love.

This week, Jews around the world will mark the beginning of Passover. We’ll gather for Seders, in which we’ll re-enact the foundational story of the Jewish people, the Exodus from Egypt. For Judaism, a religion preoccupied with remembering the past, no memory is more fundamental than the experience of having been slaves to a tyrant and having been redeemed from his murderous clutches by God.

Such a memory, for some, may seem impossible to summon now, in a time of so much trauma and devastation. But it is critical to remember the Exodus precisely at moments of horror and pain because it is the ultimate reminder that the present moment need not be the final stage of history. The status quo, no matter how intransigent, can and must be overturned. Further, we are meant not just to remember our suffering but also to grow in empathy as a result.

The Bible’s emphasis on empathy is particularly poignant in this agonized moment, when Israelis and Palestinians, two utterly traumatized peoples, are so overcome with grief and indignation that they can barely see each other at all. And yet if there is to one day be a different sort of future in the blood-soaked Holy Land, both peoples will need to do precisely that: to hear each other’s stories and histories, to listen to and bear witness to each other’s suffering. The revolution in empathy I am describing is urgently necessary to remember precisely now, when it seems so utterly out of reach.

The recollection of slavery and redemption has important theological and spiritual ramifications. We are meant to live with a sense of gratitude and indebtedness to the God who set us free. We are asked to recall — year after year — that we moved from serving a cruel human master who sought only to humiliate and tear us down to worshiping a loving divine master who blesses us and seeks our well-being. We are called to empathize with those who are exposed and endangered in the present, having ourselves been defenseless in the past.

“You shall not oppress a stranger,” the Book of Exodus teaches, “for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” You know what mistreatment feels like, Exodus says, and therefore you should never inflict it upon anyone else.

Leviticus takes this further. “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens,” it tells us. “You shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus envisions something radical: a society that actively loves and seeks the welfare of its most vulnerable members.

There are longstanding debates in the Jewish tradition about precisely what loving our neighbor entails, but one thing is clear: The love we owe to our neighbor we owe to the stranger among us, too.

There is nothing obvious about this teaching, particularly in a moment when fear and anger threaten to suppress any hint of compassion.

Suffering can teach us love, but all too often we let it teach us apathy and indifference — or, worse, unbridled rage and hostility. Our afflictions harden us, turn our focus stubbornly inward, make our most aggressive impulses seem both necessary and justified. We come to feel entitled: I was oppressed, and no one championed my cause; I don’t owe anything to anyone. But the Bible encourages us to take the opposite tack: I was oppressed, and no one came to my aid; therefore I will never abandon someone vulnerable or in pain.

Many people who have suffered terribly, whether personally or politically, hear both voices in our heads and have both impulses in our hearts. One voice tells us that the pain we have endured (or are enduring) frees us from responsibility to and for others — justifies our fixating on ourselves — while another voice insists that our suffering must teach us to care more and more deeply for others. Through the mandate to love the stranger, the Bible commands us to nurture the latter impulse rather than the former, to let our suffering teach us love.

At a moment like this, the mandate to love the stranger can seem to be speaking to broad and intractable geopolitical conflicts, and in fact, it is, but it also addresses us personally, at the most intimate levels. I know both these voices only too well. Having lost my father as a child and been left alone with a mother who lacked the emotional tools to parent any child, let alone a grieving one, I struggle at times with feeling entitled to ignore other people’s pain and care for just my own. And yet — having experienced aloneness, abandonment and abuse — I also feel an intensified sense of empathy for and responsibility toward those who are alone, abandoned or abused. It is this impulse that the Bible seeks to nurture in me and in each of us.

This week, when we retell the Exodus story, we must remember its implications: Since we know vulnerability, the plight of the vulnerable — whether among our own kin or among those who do not look or pray or speak like us — makes an especially forceful claim on us.

The commandment to do this work is both individual and communal; it is, on the one hand and at various points in the Bible, very much specific to Jews. But on the other hand, it is fundamental to the heritage of human civilization, and thus it addresses every person and every people who hear it. Perhaps, having suffered, you are tempted to learn indifference or even hate. Refuse that temptation. Let your memory teach you empathy and your suffering teach you love.

To tell the story of our past is always also to internalize an ethical injunction for our present and our future: to love the stranger, for we know what it feels like to be a stranger — we know the vulnerability, the anxiety and the loneliness — having ourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.

Shai Held is the president and dean of the Hadar Institute, which he co-founded, and the author of “Judaism Is About Love,” from which this essay was adapted.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — The Perils of Indifference — Rhetorical Devices in The Perils of Indifference by Ellie Wiesel

Rhetorical Devices in The Perils of Indifference by Ellie Wiesel

• Categories: Elie Wiesel Rhetoric The Perils of Indifference

About this sample

Words: 1747 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1747 | Pages: 4 | 9 min read

In Elie Wiesel's powerful and poignant speech, "The Perils of Indifference," he masterfully employs a range of rhetorical devices to convey his message about the dangers of apathy in the face of human suffering. Through the strategic use of ethos, logos, pathos, rhetorical questions, and repetition, Wiesel succeeds in not only condemning indifference but also compelling his audience to take action.

Ethos plays a crucial role in Wiesel's speech, as he draws upon his own harrowing experiences as a Holocaust survivor to establish credibility and connect with his audience. Logos, while less dominant in the speech, is still present as Wiesel weaves historical facts and references to tragic events of the 20th century into his narrative. Pathos, however, is the emotional heart of Wiesel's speech. He skillfully employs vivid and heart-wrenching anecdotes, such as the starving children and refugees, to elicit a deep emotional response from his audience. Rhetorical questions serve as a powerful tool in engaging the audience and prompting them to reflect on their own beliefs and actions. Repetition, carefully employed by Wiesel, underscores the importance of his message. Key phrases and words are repeated to emphasize the significance of topics related to indifference.

Table of contents

Introduction, “the perils of indifference”: rhetorical analysis, rhetorical questions.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: History Literature Sociology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1019 words

3 pages / 1484 words

6 pages / 2680 words

6 pages / 2555 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on The Perils of Indifference

People choose to ignore Injustice and tragedies, but Elie Wiesel takes a stand to give a speech pointing out how people just look the other way. Giving a speech to people trying to persuade them to take action against [...]

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, delivered his powerful speech "The Perils of Indifference" on April 12, 1999, at the White House. In the speech, Wiesel reflects on the consequences of indifference [...]

Elie Wiesel delivered a powerful and poignant speech titled "The Perils of Indifference" on April 12, 1999, at the White House. This speech was part of the Millennium Lecture series, which aimed to address significant issues [...]

In a world plagued by the horrors of war and genocide, Elie Wiesel's powerful speech "The Perils of Indifference" resonates as a poignant reminder of the consequences of apathy in the face of injustice. As a Holocaust survivor [...]

Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Boston University Professor, spoke during Millenium Reading Series in the White House on April, 12 1999. The speech, “The Perils of Indifference”, was given by Elie Wiesel. Wiesel, a [...]

Death penalties, also known as capital punishments, are a type of punishment that have been used throughout history to ensure the prevention of further attempted crimes from the convicted criminals. This type of punishment is [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free