Abstract

How we do philosophy is for Cora Diamond a philosophical question. She characteristically shapes her discussions of ethics by giving works of literature a central place. Thus, she also invites discussion of her reading of the work in question, and more generally of how philosophers engage in literary texts as they shape their philosophical discussions. This article discusses her reading of a certain passage of Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, of which it offers a textual analysis that suggests a more wide-ranging dialogue between Diamond and Levi’s work on an issue that is at the heart of her philosophical concern: the ethical significance of the concept of a human being.