Language:
English
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
New German Critique
Angaben zur Quelle:
85 (2002) 3-31
Keywords:
Freud, Sigmund,
;
Kant, Immanuel,
;
Antisemitism Philosophy
Abstract:
Analyzes how Freud interprets Judaism in terms of his revision of Enlightenment thought, involving a polemic with Kant. Notes that Freud interprets certain aspects of both Christian theology and Kant's moral philosophy in the light of an avoidance of reality. According to Freud, antisemitism results from a state of illusion. Judaism is a doctrine that encourages the conscious remembrance of traumatic events, while Christianity and Kant project human shortcomings onto the Jews. Freud inverts a Kantian philosophy that stigmatizes the Jews as superstitious and depraved. If Kant depicts rabbinic Judaism in terms of the primitive within the modern and stigmatizes European Jews as regressive Orientals "in our midst, " Freud finds Kant's categorical imperative a primitive remnant of "taboo, " and Judaism a manifestation of "totemism, " which is a higher stage of social development.
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