Excluding the Jew Within Us (Paperback)

Sarah Clift

ISBN 10: 1509542736 / ISBN 13: 9781509542734

Published by John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Oxford, 2020

About this Item

Paperback. Why does anti-Semitism seem to be so deeply engrained in our societies, our institutions and our attitudes? To answer this question we need to look beyond our current practices and see that anti-Semitism has much deeper roots that it is woven into the very structures of Western thought. 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. "Originally published in French as Exclu le juif en nous by Jean-Luc Nancy. Copyright A aEditions Galilaee 2018." Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781509542734

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Excluding the Jew Within Us (Paperback)
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1509542736
• ISBN 13: 9781509542734
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Why does anti-Semitism seem to be so deeply engrained in our societies, our institutions and our attitudes?  To answer this question we need to look beyond our current practices and see that anti-Semitism has much deeper roots – that it is woven into the very structures of Western thought.

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.