Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:18:51 -0500
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: GERMAN IDEALISM & THE JEW [1] [was: [HAB:] Backside of the


I've had a chance to survey several chapters of this book, though I don't 
own it, and will report in more detail as the chance arises.  I was 
entirely wrong in my initial presuppositions before even looking at the 
book (quoted below).  There is no hidden agenda as I suspected.  Curiously, 
when I merely mentioned the book to some Hegel scholars, one fellow got 
apoplectic and assumed this was part of some Zionist agenda.  I kicked his 
ass to the curb.

My introduction to this book coincided with a discussion of Hegel's view of 
religion.   I had expressed my doubts about possible equivocations here, 
including an equivocation as to the means by which religion surpasses 
itself in the process of rationalization.  Protestantism may well have been 
in the advance position on the road to modernity, but it proved to be as 
vicious and oppressive as all the rest.  Secularized, rationalized, and 
even departicularized versions of it do not indicate a fundamental 
overcoming of its social and philosophical limitations.  And the historical 
and symbolical particularism of this path to secularization seems to assume 
an inherent intrinsic dynamic based on the logic of concepts rather than on 
a historical materialist perspective, and overlooks alternative routes to 
secularized modernity, such as the Jewish Enlightenment or the Dalit 
(Untouchable) Enlightenment in India (though it could be argued that those 
as well piggybacked off the Protestant precedent).

I've just read the first few chapters of part 2, covering Mendelssohn, 
Heine, Hermann Cohen, and others, and I find some very important 
intellectual puzzles contained in this material from which we may extract 
some very important theoretical issues.  More on this later.

I'll just recap summary information from my earlier posts on various lists, 
and add a few new details.  As I did not take written notes, I am relying 
on a highly imperfect memory.

The first part covers German figures, mainly e.g. Kant, Hegel, Wagner, but 
there are mentions of other figures who made dubious remarks, including 
Feuerbach.  Wagner expresses a romantic anti-capitalism.  Hegel said 
something about the Jews as an historical
phenomenon, something about the gate being barred toward further progress 
toward the Absolute.  I'll have to check this again.  Kant was an
explicit anti-Semite.

Having read several chapters into part 2 now, I really think that the 
quarrel of the Jewish Enlightenment with anti-semitism essentially boils 
down to a quarrel with Kant.  And it is fundamentally Kant's dualism that 
sets up the equation of the Jews with heteronomy and evil matter.

If so, I think there are larger implications to this study.  One that comes 
immediately to mind is the big lie that informs Marcuse's REASON AND 
REVOLUTION, i.e. that fascism is the logical outcome of positivism rather 
than irrationalism (i.e. Marcuse's heroes like Nietzsche and 
Heidegger).  Marcuse claims also that German idealism is completely 
incompatible with fascism, and that essentially it is based on the spirit 
of negation, meaning freedom and opposition to things as they are.  Marcuse 
also makes parallel claims for Platonism (traditional metaphysics) as well 
as the reactionary lebensphilosophie that forms the backbone of his 
philosophy.  In other words, Marcuse is a philosophical reactionary through 
and through.  Now Kant is hardly an irrationalist or a traditional 
metaphysician.  Indeed, as a philosopher of Enlightenment he is liberal and 
progressive; the problem however is his dualism, which was subsequently 
attacked from a number of different angles, from Hegel, from materialism, 
and from the Jewish Enlightenment.  Keep this in mind, as this will figure 
prominently in forthcoming posts.

The book is not meant as a documentary record of bad things said about 
Jews; it is an attempt to analyze the conceptual structures of contrasting 
conceptions of Enlightenment, and the nature of idealism itself. The 
material world is heteronomous; ideality is the site of autonomy. Jews are 
seen as wholly material and thus heteronomous. Hence they constitute the 
Other of what German idealists consider their supreme value.

While I think there are important issues embedded in this material, I am 
more reluctant to claim that anti-semitism is a cornerstone of German 
idealism in se, because I view anti-Semitism as a symptomatology rather 
than a causal or sui generis explanation.  I will have more to say about 
this later as well.

Mack introduces the concept of "pseudotheologies"--the geistig form of 
racism (which is distinguishable though later converges with biological 
racism)--attributing permanent essences to ethnic/racial/national groups. 
This was Kant's doing, for example. The book is interesting inter
alia for its analysis of secularized demythologized Protestantism, which 
proves to be as suspect as the original.

The second part comprises the Jewish response: Mendelssohn et al. I wrote 
before that Marx is seen as delivering a death blow to the philosophical 
premises of German idealist volkishness, but I don't recall now where I got 
this from.

Now that I've read some chapters of part 2--the Jewish response--I have 
many more thoughts on this subject for next time.

At 01:00 PM 1/5/2004 -0500, Ralph Dumain wrote:
>I've been curious about this book, but I couldn't get a look in the 
>bookstores because it comes shrink-wrapped.
>
>At 09:30 AM 1/5/2004 -0800, Gary E Davis wrote:
>>While many have read
>>German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack
>>instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental
>>Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's
>>conception of universal reason.
>
>I think one has to beware claims such as this.  It is true that Jews were 
>seen in an "orientalist" framework, but the phraseology "cornerstone of 
>German idealism" is suspect.  This looks like yet another postmodernist 
>slur on the Enlightenment.  Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.  Jewish 
>Enlighteners such as Saul Ascher, who argued with either Kant or Fichte, I 
>can't remember which, also accepted the thesis of the backwardness of the 
>Jews, but viewed this as a product of oppressive circumstances, not an 
>innate, irredeemable situation, as opposed to the German 
>anti-Semites.  The Enlightenment did have a paradoxical effect on 
>anti-Semitism, in some cases intensifying it, as Jews--especially in 
>eastern Europe were seen as backward (as they were by German Jews as 
>well).  However, this "cornerstone" business, redolent of au courant 
>accusations that the Enlightenment was racist, thus justifying the 
>postmodern current of irrationalism sweeping the Western and especially 
>American intelligentsia, is not to be trusted.
>
>>In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, 
>>Franz
>>Rosenzweig and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and 
>>Jewish.
>>Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees,
>>while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern
>>Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened - a concept that differed
>>substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and Wagner.
>
>I would be very interested in learning more about their alternative 
>conception.  As often happens with outsiders, many Jewish thinkers did not 
>suffer from the inhibitions of their goyischer counterparts, and thus did 
>not attempt to reign in the implications of Enlightenment in deference to 
>established religious and political institutions.  Hence we got one of the 
>two-three greatest philosophical radicals of all time--Spinoza.  And now 
>we have Chomsky.
>-


_______________________________

"You can fool some of the people all of the time
and jerk the rest off."
      -- Robin Williams




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