Resumen
Facing the Extreme is an impressive book: impressive in its ambition, and in the breadth of thinking and observation and analysis by the author. Based on a detailed reading of the literature by camp survivors, mainly Nazi but also Stalinist, Todorov seeks to "use the extreme as an instrument, a sort of magnifying glass that can bring into better focus certain things that in the normal course of human affairs remain blurry". Following Primo Levi, Todorov believes that no human experience, no matter how exceptional, is without meaning and that fundamental values, even if not positive, can be deduced from that experience. Todorov argues that it is possible, "to take the extreme experience of the camps as a basis from which to reflect on moral life, not because moral life was superior in the camps but because it was more visible and thus more telling there".
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