Fackenheim is scandalized by previous responses to the Holocaust, which he considers either derisory, misguided, or partial. Hannah Arendt’s assessment of Eichmann, for example, adopted a “stance of ‘clinical’ detachment – and lapsed into irony,” and this Fackenheim judges gravely deficient. At the other end of the spectrum, Terence Des Pres adopts an “archaic, quasi-religious vocabulary” in his effort to understand the unique characteristics of “the survivor,” but tells only half the story, for he could not write about the perpetrators, on the grounds that “for a writer to identify with them would be his ultimate corruption.” Fackenheim offers his own approach as a badly needed correction. He believes that the full truth about the Holocaust cannot be comprehended without recognizing its unprecedented evil as historical fact. This imposes what he sees as a duty and a challenge to reassess all previous conceptions of evil, and all previous responses to evil in human history, because he finds them inadequate to deal with the Holocaust.