Jayne Svenungsson
Researcher
Enlightened Prejudices : Anti-Jewish Tropes in Modern Philosophy
Author
Editor
- Hans Ruin
- Andrus Ers
Summary, in English
In the last section of the article, attention is drawn to the recurrence of this troubling dialectic in still more subtle fashion, namely, when the universalist heritage of Christianity is invoked as a resource in contemporary philosophical debate, e.g. in the efforts by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek to formulate a new political universalism. What is striking about these efforts is how “Jewishness” is once more invoked as a signifier of particularity. However, it should be clarified immediately that “Jewishness”, less even than for Kant and Hegel, here refers to particular Jewish individuals. Rather, it is used as a rhetorical marker which is interchangeable with any particular predicate that obstructs a truly universalist political order. Nevertheless, it is a good question as to whether the use of these longstanding anti-Jewish tropes does not reveal the lasting tensions generated by a universalist legacy that is dialectically reliant upon eliminating conflicting claims on definitions of the universal.
Publishing year
2011
Language
English
Pages
279-290
Publication/Series
Rethinking Time : Essays on History, Memory and Representation
Volume
9
Full text
- Available as PDF - 152 kB
- Download statistics
Document type
Book chapter
Publisher
Södertörn Philosophical Studies
Topic
- Religious Studies
- Philosophy
Keywords
- Zizek
- Badiou
- Hegel
- Kant
- Enlightenment
- reason
- Judaism
- anti-Jewish stereotypes
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1650-433X
- ISBN: 978-91-86069-32-2