Full Description
Universalism shows two faces to the world: an emancipatory face that looks to the inclusion of the other, and a repressive face that sees in the other a failure to pass some fundamental test of humanity. Universalism can be used to demand that we treat all persons as human beings regardless of their differences, but it can also be used to represent whole categories of people as inhuman, not yet human or even enemies of humanity.
The Jewish experience offers an equivocal test case. Universalism has stimulated the struggle for Jewish emancipation, but it has also helped to develop the idea that there is something peculiarly harmful to humanity about Jews - that there is a 'Jewish question' that needs to be 'solved'. This original and stimulating book traces struggles within the Enlightenment, Marxism, critical theory and the contemporary left, seeking to rescue universalism from its repressive, antisemitic undertones.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.
Contents
Introduction: universalism and the Jewish question
1 Struggles within Enlightenment: Jewish emancipation and the Jewish question
2 Marx's defence of Jewish emancipation and critique of the Jewish question
3 Antisemitism, critical theory and the ambivalences of Marxism
4 Political life in an antisemitic world: Hannah Arendt's Jewish writings
5 The Jewish question after the Holocaust: Jürgen Habermas and the European left
6 The return of the Jewish question and the double life of Israel
Index
