Language:
English
Year of publication:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
51,2 (2000) 297-312
Keywords:
Horkheimer, Max,
;
Antisemitism Philosophy
Abstract:
Criticizes the theory of antisemitism developed by Adorno and Horkheimer in their "Dialectic of Enlightenment". From their viewpoint, antisemitism and the Holocaust mark the failure of modernity as a whole. Jews are the screen upon which the antisemites project their own resentment of everything which is incompatible with the principles of modernity and Enlightenment. Essentially, the Jews (as a category) stand for unregulated nature and transcendent freedom. Associating the Jews with the sphere of circulation of commodities, Adorno and Horkheimer succumb to an antisemitic myth. More important, the danger of their explanation is that they endow antisemitism with a disproportionally powerful significance. The "Jewish question" becomes elevated to the question of the failure of Western thought, and antisemitism comes to signify something more than anti-Jewish hostility.
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