Language:
German
Year of publication:
2003
Titel der Quelle:
Arendt und Adorno
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2003) 97-129
Keywords:
Adorno, Theodor W.,
;
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Antisemitism History 1933-1945
;
National socialism
;
Antisemitism Philosophy
Abstract:
Despite very different points of departure (Arendt's historical, Adorno's Marxist-psychoanalytic), Arendt and Adorno present similar analyses of the function of antisemitism in National Socialism. Both see it as a product of increasing abstraction, in which the place of real, existing Jews is taken by projections and stereotypes. Totalitarianism requires an Other as enemy and victim, but the choice is arbitrary; it could just as well have been any other group of outsiders. Nazis such as Eichmann organized the extermination of Jews not out of hatred, but as a bureaucratic task. When Nazism collapsed, antisemitism no longer existed. Notes that this conclusion of Arendt and Adorno is anti-factual, but that their theories are still fruitful.
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