A writer cannot choose the theme that captivates him; it chooses him. My entire work revolves around the pressing question: Do the roots of the inhuman intertwine with those of high civilization? George Steiner's essays on language, literature, and the inhuman, first published in English in 1967 and then in German translation in 1969, do not attempt to definitively assert the complicity of mass murder and indifference on one hand and civilization on the other. However, Steiner poses the question of whether there is not already a radical failure inherent in classical humanism itself, in its inclination towards abstraction and aesthetic value judgments. He argues along the brutal factuality of National Socialism, with a particular focus on the inner life of the German language.