Description
Jean-Luc Nancy argues that anti-Semitism emerged from the conflictual conjunction of two responses to the eclipse of archaic cultures. The Greek and the Jewish responses both affirmed a humanity freed from myth but put forward two very different conceptions of autonomy: on the one hand, the infinite autonomy of knowledge, of logos, and on the other, the paradoxical autonomy of a heteronomy guided by a hidden god. The first excluded the second while simultaneously absorbing and dominating it; the second withdrew into itself and its condition of exclusion and domination. How could the long and terrible history of the hatred of the Jew, masking a self-loathing, be generated by these intrinsically contradictory beginnings? That is the question to which this short book gives a compelling answer.
About the Author
Jean-Luc Nancy (1940 - 2021) was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg.
Reviews
Drawing from Lacoue-Labarthe s intuition that antisemitism is both historial and spiritual , Nancy offers us a decisive rethinking of the banality of antisemitic hatred and violence situated in light of the historical-metaphysical constitution of the Subject and the specific configuration of Europe and the West.
Philip Armstrong, The Ohio State University
Book Information
ISBN 9781509542734
Author Jean-Luc Nancy
Format Paperback
Page Count 60
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 113g
Dimensions(mm) 191mm * 125mm * 11mm