Reflexions Sur La Question Juive

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Écrites par Sartre aussitôt que la seconde guerre mondiale s'est terminée, ces réflexions considèrent le problème de l'antisémitisme. Présentation par Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, History, Jewish, Judaism, Religion

163 pages

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Sartre held an open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, 'bad faith') and an "authentic" way of "being" became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L'Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.

Reviews

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few years ago I met a guy at a party and we hit it off while talking about Judaism. Anyway, we went on a date and I brought this book for him to read. He took it and I never saw him again. Moral of the story: Don't give beloved books to people on a first date. Especially if they wear a giant gaudy gold chains and have bad portait tattoos on their forearms. You know who you are.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot in here that seems surprisingly relevant to current American political right-wing pathologies. Change 'Jew' to 'dark-skinned other' and a lot of the book starts to sound like an excellent analysis of the psychology behind the Tea Baggers & the Fox 'News' counter-reality bubble.

Take for example the following passage (written, recall, in 1946):

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.

"The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert." [p. 20]

Substitute 'Anne Coulter' for 'anti-Semite' and you'll see what I mean about the surprising relevance of this book.

As for the substance of his analysis of anti-Semitism & Jews per se, a lot of it is compelling & convincing, some of it is a bit off-center (some reflections on the relations of Jews to their own bodies made me squirm a bit), and the very end sort of falls apart, as he realizes that his analysis calls into question the political efficacy of existentialist social ontology, so he hastens to take shelter in Marxism.

Actually, the book would be of interest to intellectual historians, political theorists, or philosophy students for that tertiary reason alone: it marks one of his first attempts to reconcile existentialism and Marxism with regard to a practical question.

I was planning on reading and then tossing this old, yellowed paperback I picked up 20 years ago for 50¢. Now it's going back on the shelves. I'm very glad I read it.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Jew only serves him as a pretext; elsewhere his counterpart will make use of the Negro or the man of yellow skin. The existence of the Jew merely permits the anti-Semite to stifle his anxieties at their inception by persuading himself that his place in the world has been marked out in advance, that it awaits him, and that tradition gives him the right to occupy it.

Surprisingly relevant to the current climate, a very interesting read for anyone who is interested in historical parallels and who struggles to understand the alt-right. Some other quotes that stood out to me, for my own reference:


Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

The anti-Semite has no illusions about what he is. He considers himself an average man, modestly average, basically mediocre. There is no example of an anti-Semite’s claiming individual superiority over the Jews. But you must not think that he is ashamed of his mediocrity; he takes pleasure in it; I will even assert that he has chosen it. This man fears every kind of solitariness, that of the genius as much as that of the murderer; he is the man of the crowd. However small his stature, he takes every precaution to make it smaller, lest he stand out from the herd and find himself face to face with himself. He has made himself an anti-Semite because that is something one cannot be alone. The phrase, “I hate the Jews,” is one that is uttered in chorus; in pronouncing it, one attaches himself to a tradition and community – the tradition and community of the mediocre.
We must remember that a man is not necessarily humble or even modest because he has consented to mediocrity. On the contrary, there is a passionate pride among the mediocre, and anti-Semitism is an attempt to give value to mediocrity as such, to create an elite of the ordinary. To the anti-Semite, intelligence is Jewish; he can thus disdain it in all tranquility, like all other virtues which the Jew possesses. […] The true Frenchman, rooted in his province, in his country, bourne along by a tradition twenty centuries old, benefiting from ancestral wisdom, guided by tried customs, does not need intelligence.

Thus I would call anti-Semitism a poor man’s snobbery. And in fact it would appear that the rich for the most part exploit this passion for their own uses rather than abandon themselves to it – they have better things to do.

Since anti-Semitism survives the great crises of Jew-hatred, the society which the anti-Semites form remains in a latent state during normal periods, with every anti-Semite celebrating its existence. Incapable of understanding modern social organization, he has a nostalgia for periods of crisis in which the primitive community will suddenly reappear and attain its temperature of fusion. He wants his personality to melt suddenly into the group and be carried away by the collective torrent.

The advantages of this position are many. To begin with, it favours laziness of the mind. We have seen that the anti-Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. […] His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti-Semitism channels extraordinary evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti-Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people.

It is fun to be an anti-Semite. One can beat and torture Jews without fear. At most they can appeal to the laws of the Republic, but those laws are not too rigorous.

The Jew no doubt sets a proper value on the sympathy shown him, but it cannot prevent his seeing anti-Semitism as a permanent structure of the community in which he lives. He knows, moreover, that the democrats and all those who defend him have a tendency to treat anti-Semitism rather leniently. First of all, we live in a republic, where all opinions are free. In addition, the myth of nation unity still exerts such an influence over the French that they are ready for the greatest compromises in order to avoid internal conflict, especially in periods of international tension – which are, of course, precisely those when anti-Semitism is the most violent. Naïve and full of good will, it is inevitably the democrat who makes all the concessions; the anti-Semite doesn’t make any, he has the advantage of his anger. People say, “Don’t irritate him.” They speak softly in his presence.

[the Jew] is nobody’s slave; he is a free citizen under a regime that allows free competition; he is forbidden no social dignity, no office of the state. He may be decorated with the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, he may become a great lawyer or a cabinet minister. But at the very moment when he reaches the summits of legal society, another society – amorphous, diffused, and omnipresent – appears before him as if in brief flashes of lightning and refuses to take him in. How sharply he must feel the vanity of honours and fortune, when the greatest success will never gain him entrance into that society which considers itself the “real” one. As a cabinet minister, at once an “Excellency” and an untouchable. And yet he never encounters any particular resistance; people seem, rather, to be in flight before him; an impalpable chasm widens out, and, above all, an invisible chemistry devaluates all he touches.

This perpetual obligation to prove that he is French puts the Jew in a situation of guilt. If on every occasion he does not do more than everybody else, much more than anybody else, he is guilty, he is a dirty Jew – and one might say […]: To judge by the qualities we demand of a Jew if he is to be assimilated as “true” Frenchman, how many Frenchmen would be found worthy of being Jews in their own country?

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Existentialism and antisemitism? You know I'm on board.

I wanted to read this book for the longest time, especially having been familiar with that one paragraph everyone always quotes from it. Once I got a physical copy of it, I read most of this on train rides between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv so I felt like a cute quirky intellectual. Def recommend that.

In 150 pages, Sartre explores the relations between Jews, Antisemites and liberals. Published in 1944, it's absurd how timely are his observations. There were so many sections that I felt could be written today, that resonated so hard.

In particular, the idea of authenticity as Jews. How often have we begged from others to let us in? To see us as human? If you prick us, do we not bleed? Yet, this recognition cannot be poised in liberal terms, because the uniqueness of our identity matters. To be told that we are the same as others is to be told that we do not exist on our own. Such questions, of course, echo in the multiculturalism scholarship, the idea that one must recognize the differences in order to create equality.

However you put it, there is something so quintessentially Jewish about throwing away all that makes us unique in a desperate plea to escape antisemitism. It's never enough for the antisemite but the appeal is so very tempting, the idea that one can simply say the right thing and never experience prejudice. As Sartre says, living authentically is the only way to escape this, to stay true to who we are, no matter it all.

The current political climate, of course, opens the door to discussions about antisemitism. For me, Sartre's words echo with regards to the denial of our narrative. Decry any Israeli policy in the harshest of words but the urge to say that Jews are just Europeans, that our connection to the land of Israel is a lie, made up, reminds me of Sartre. It's easy to live abroad and throw this under the bus so to protect one's self.

I have other words in mind but I truly need to get back to work. It's a bizarre time for me in my personal life but I am so glad that I'm reading again, even if it's short books. Overall, I think this book is a must-read.

What I'm Taking With Me
- I've missed philosophy, just a bit.

- This period of my life feels a bit like a plane, in between landing and take-off. Passengers step out, cleaning crews enter, the engines rev. I'm sure there will be a journey ahead but right now, standing stationary, it's easy to forget what it feels like to fly. I've got to believe that the sky will clear for me when it's right.

- For my future self, more than anyone else: you don't need a degree from a fancy university to prove yourself to anyone. If I have a good book and a cup of coffee over the hills of Jerusalem, I'm content. This is me embracing that I define the borders of my intellectualism, of my curiosity, of my hunger for words and ideas. They can tell me that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity but it's okay to let them slip through your outstretched fingers. It's okay to try your best and still fail beautifully. Perhaps to live authentically also means to recognize that my own meaning cannot be driven by how things appear on paper.

[Isidora Ivanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

„Kako Jevrejin , što se tiče njegove profesije, prava i života, zavisi od mišljenja, njegova situacija je sasvim nepostojana;zakonom zaštićen od napada, on je prepušten na milost i nemilost neke ćudi, strasti stvarnog društva. On vreba napredovanja antisemitizma, predviđa krize, talase s dna, kao što seljak vreba i predviđa oluje: neprekidno računa koje će povratne udarce spoljašnji događaji imati na njegov vlastiti položaj. Može nagomilati zakonita jemstva, bogatstva, počasti, zbog njih je još samo ranjiviji, i on to zna. Tako mu se istovremeno čini i da su mu napori uvek krunisani uspehom, jer poznaje nagle uspone svoje rase, i da ih je neko prokletstvo pogodilo taštinom; on nikada neće steći sigurnost najponiznijeg hrišćanina. To je možda jedno od značenja Procesa Izraelićanina Kafke: kao junak romana, Jevrejin je uvučen u dugu proces, ne poznaje svoje sudije, jedva nešto bolje svoje advokate, nema pojma šta mu se prigovora, a ipak zna da ga smatraju krivim; suđenje je neprekidno odlagano za 8 dana, za 15 dana, on to koristi da bi se zaštitio na 1000 načina ; ali svaka od tih opreznosti, preduzetih nasumice, uvaljuje ga još malo više u krivicu; njegova spoljašnja situacija može izgledati blistava, ali taj beskrajni proces ga potajno izjeda, i događa se ponekad, kao u romanu, da ga ljudi zgrabe, odvuku, tvrdeći da je izgubio svoj proces, i da ga pogube u nekom pustom kraju predgrađa.”

Sartr se u svom polemičkom spisu bavi fenomenom antisemitizma posle ww2, pokušava da predstavi portret jednog antisemita i, sa nešto manje uspeha, jednog tipičnog Jevrejina. Za sve nas koji smo nestrpljivi da saznamo i radoznali da upijamo sve što se tiče Jevreja, njihove kulture, religije, umetnosti, istorije– ostavila nas je žedne, nažalost.

Jalova zamena za Marxa. Dvojčica samo zbog analogije sa Kafkom.

[Michael Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew has been on my “to-read” pile for about six months--sitting, as a matter of fact, just inches from the chair where I do all of my serious (and most of my unserious) reading. But it moved to the top today, October 27, 2018, when the United States suffered the worst anti-Semitic incident in its history. Eleven people were killed today, and many more injured when an avowed anti-Semite attacked the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nothing seemed more relevant to read today.

And I was amazed by the relevance of the first of the book’s four segments, which is devoted to the character of the anti-Semite. Much of what Sartre says is relevant to the anti-Semitism in France during and after World War II. But it echoes far beyond its original context to describe what happened in Pennsylvania today, and to describe how the politics of hatred work generally. The general nature of his argument applies to anti-Islamic discourse, anti-immigrant discourse, racism, and the demonization of any category of people that becomes an ideology or a political strategy. Nothing could be more relevant to the world of 2018.

Sartre begins by asserting, forcefully, that anti-Semitism cannot be considered an “opinion,” as this formulation makes it equal to all other opinions. It is not a taste, like a love of coffee or baseball. It is a destructive passion that relies on the annihilation of language, or, at least, of meaningful communication. To respond to it in the vocabulary of rational discourse immediately grants it a victory. Not only is anti-Semitism irrational, anti-Semites gravitate to it because it is irrational--because rational discourse is one of the things that they are trying to destroy. As Sartre says,

The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. . . . They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. (19-20)

At the core of anti-Semitism (and Sartre expands this to other forms of prejudice) are people at or near the bottom of a social hierarchy who need someone to feel superior to. This feeling is especially keen in a democracy, where (at least in theory) people’s station in life is supposed to correlate somewhat to their intelligence or their work ethic. Just as anti-Semites know they are irrational, they know (or at least suspect) that they are mediocre, and “There is a passionate pride among the mediocre,” Sartre explains “and anti-Semitism is an attempt to give value to mediocrity as such, to create an elite of the ordinary" (23).

All of this leads to an irrational hatred by those towards the bottom of the social spectrum towards those who can be constructed as even lower in the hierarchy--people who, by their very nature, are inferior in everything that they do. Even when Jews do things well, the anti-Semite believes, they contaminate their competence with their Jewishness. So there is no way out of the trap: everything that the hated group does must necessarily be objectionable because they are the ones doing it. This is why Sartre famously says that “if the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him,” (13). Jews are, by definition for Sartre, those who are hated by anti-Semites.

The anti-Semite is the primary villain in Sartre’s drama, but the secondary villain is the democrat--not the American political party, of course, but the believer in democracy. Democracy, Sartre argues, defend the Jews as human beings, but in the process, eliminate their Jewishness. They contend that a person’s race or social situation does not matter--that everybody is equal. And so they force Jews to be something other than Jews. In the end, Sartre argues, the anti-Semite and the democrat are equally destructive. “The former wishes to destroy him as a man and leave nothing in him but the Jew,” he argues, “the latter wishes to destroy him as a Jew and leave nothing in him but the man, the abstract and universal subject of the rights of man and the rights of the citizen” (57).

This is all spiffy as far as it goes. But it really doesn’t go that far, Sartre is, of course, an existentialist and a Marxist. As an existentialist, he sees Jewishnes as a quality enacted between the anti-Semite and the Jew. But as a Marxist, he sees the Jewish people as the product of historical forces and circumstances that have been placed in a certain social space as a result of that history. He spends quite a bit of time in the third part of the essay distinguishing between the “inauthentic Jew” (who attempts to deny his or her Jewishness and assimilate into the capitalist order) and the”authentic Jew” (who accepts all of the historical burdens of Jewishness and lives life accordingly).

What Sartre does not see Judaism as is a religion. He only brings up Jewishness as a belief system a few times, and when he does, he dismisses it as an artifact of history--something that once helped to create a nation but is no longer part of how most Jews see themselves. The only actual Jews that he ever mentions are Kafka, Proust, Chagall, and a few other very secular intellectuals and artists--the sorts of people that he knew in his social circles and went to school with in all the cool places. Such Jews exist, of course, but in 1945 (as today), millions of Jews around the world actually believe stuff, and that belief is important to their identity. This is a huge blind spot for Sartre, and it makes his presentation of Jewishness almost comically bad in the places where he turns his focus away from the anti-Semite and towards the Jew.

But every great work has its blind spots. Nobody should ever turn to Sartre for an understanding of Judaism. But we should look to him for an understanding of anti-Semitism, and of other sorts of prejudice that turn human beings of any description as abstract ideological categories against which a people, or a nation, can be defined. As nationalism resurges in the United States, and throughout the world, parts of Anti-Semite and Jew that I would have once considered history now strike me as an insightful reading of current events, and a glimpse into the mind of a shocking number of people who have risen to some of the most powerful positions in the world.

[Dihia · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Un hombre puede ser buen padre y buen marido, ciudadano escrupuloso, amante de las letras, filántropo y además antisemita. Puede ser aficionado a la pesca y a los placeres del amor, tolerante en materia religiosa, lleno de ideas generosas sobre la condición de los indígenas del Africa central, y además, aborrecer a los judíos. No los quiere- suele decirse- porque su experiencia le ha revelado que eran malos, porque las estadísticas le informaron que eran peligrosos, porque ciertos factores históricos han influido en sus juicio».

Este libro fue escrito en 1944 y publicado en 1946, justo después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, un período en el que la cuestión judía fue fuertemente planteada. Sartre enfatiza el derecho de expresión, porque ser antisemita no puede ser tolerado y protegido bajo la sombra de los derechos de expresión. De su libro, notamos que el escritor tenía mucha experiencia con personas que hablaban libremente sobre el hecho de que odiaba a los judíos con sus disculpas.

Una lectura interesante dirigida a identificar los fundamentos del antisemitismo y destacar las diferentes "causas" de este tipo de racismo. Lo que podemos entender claramente es que no hay causas para ser antisemita, sino pretextos.

«Lo que todos tienen en común no es una naturaleza sino una condición, es decir un conjunto de límites y sujeciones: la necesidad de morir, de trabajar para vivir, de existir en un mundo habitado ya por otros hombres»

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

My God was that a horrible read! Sartre paints the shallowest possible portrait of the Jew, so one-dimensional, so pitiful, and of such generalization that it is hard - nay, impossible! - to take him seriously. Indeed, Sartre himself comes off looking like the supreme anti-Semite, not just holding but airing his childishly simplistic views of the Jew and maintaining himself as their supreme benefactor. Weak, weak, weak, is all that comes to mind: that is, a weak argument, a weak veil for his own anti-Semitism, and a weak mind. I had heard both good and bad things about this laughable French intellectual in the past, but now my mind is set: Sartre is an imbecile. His play No Exist was enjoyable, but his actual attempts at writing non-fiction seem, so far, to be terrible; though, besides this volume, I have only ever read parts of his The Psychology of Imagination.

Not only does his talk of "the Jew" ring utterly false from its insulting and massive generalizations (indeed, the entire book is generalization after generalization for 100 pages) but this work is filled with the most asinine leaps of logic and absurd claims, such as, on one of the final pages, "anti‐Semitism leads straight to National Socialism." How in the world is Sartre hailed as being so significant a thinker?

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sartre’s analysis of anti-semitism is exceptional in its own right. That much is for sure. But where it truly shines is in its universally applicable “aetiology of hate”, through which one can grasp practically all forms of fascistic, exclusionary thinking (or feeling, to be more accurate). Just ask Fanon!

Prejudice is an irrational hatred, practised in bad faith by unremarkable, sadistic creatures desperate to anchor in the Other’s persecution an identity of adamantine superiority. Their privileged community of ressentiment — only truly realised in spontaneous expressions of violence — is fundamentally hostile to all forms of universality (especially in the case of anti-semetism) and terrified of freedom.

Under an indiscriminatory universality, the racist would be robbed of the differential between themselves and the Other upon which is enshrined an ossified, manichean system of (anti)values. Through these mechanisms of “inverted liberty”, the racist forsakes personal responsibility so that they might submerge their freedom into the maelstrom of the group’s capricious whims.

Sartre’s insistence on the irrationality of prejudice, on its constitutively, enthusiastically passionate character, leads him to recognise the key role played by jouissance, or the “joy of hating”. Therein lies the ultimate irony of the situation: the racist “is in the unhappy position of having a vital need for the very enemy he wishes to destroy”.

The logic of community as such is always already predicated on exclusion, but what differentiates the fascist community is their structural *obsession* with the excluded other and the fantasy of their destruction. Unlike your friendly neighbourhood book club, opposition to the Other entirely exhausts the fascist’s raison d’etre.

Revealing psychoanalytic insights aside, Sartre is always returns to the social relations underpinning the emergence and maintenance of anti-semetism. For instance, he recognises the insidious role of mob violence in the dialectic of class conflict, arguing that “it represents… a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people”.

In the final analysis, most appeals against racism mistake irrational passion for rational error, reducing the problem of prejudice to a simple calculus of educational procedure, as if the racist were merely “misinformed”. Sartre resoundingly rejects these broad oversimplifications, dismissing the “democrat” (the liberal humanist) who seeks to erase the problem entirely by denying the Jew’s situation, carlessly subsuming them under universal man and in the process admitting an absolute tolerance for the savagely intolerant.

So, what does Sartre propose instead? Why, socialist revolution of course! I know I know - how uncreative… But is it really any surprise that so much social iniquity can be traced back to capitalism? Considering the familiar scapegoating of Jews in times of crisis (not to mention the general social disintegration produced by capitalism), we cannot seriously act surprised that a systemic issue demands systemic change. After all, every supremacist politics is “a passionate effort to realize a national union against the division of society into classes”.

Prejudice is both a distraction from and a product of structural decay. The billionaire demagaogue may bear a striking resemblence to your uncle, but you have infinitely more in common with the immigrant Jew working down the street.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was dated in a major way when it comes to discussing modern Judaism and anti-Semitism. It's not that anti-Semitism has gone away (obviously) or evolved (how could it?), but the qualities of anti-Semitism and Judaism in post-war France only somewhat translate to the 21st-century Jewish experience (in America... I suppose I shouldn't speak for European Jews).

What really spoke to me here was how much of what Sartre describes can be applied to other groups. For the entire opening portion about the Anti-Semite, I kept substituting "immigrant" for "Jew" and getting a different, much more timely reading. Later on, when he discusses the Inauthentic Jew, I kept thinking of the experience of LGBT+ people, which can have many parallels.

So yeah, history moves, but hatred is based on the same tired old crap. Way to go, guys.

[Shakhla · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Если бы евреев не существовало, антисемит выдумал бы их»

[Crito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roughly two thirds of this is dedicated to an existential analysis of the situation of (French) Jewish people living in a world of anti-semites, similar to what you'll see Simone de Beauvoir do for the situation of women a half decade later. What makes this really special I think is the first third, a blistering invective sharpened into a strong analysis of the contradictions which make the anti-semites what they are, how their ideology works, and the ways it exploits liberal democracy to ensure its survival, e.g. the idea that antisemitism is just another "opinion," or that antisemites are just misinformed and silly. Sartre draws his description and your brain immediately flashes to internet discourse, the Charlottesville footage, the GOP candidate dogwhistles; of course Sartre was writing in 1944 France, the talking points and pathology are just that doggedly persistent. Naturally I'm not sure one could write this without the urgency Sartre puts into it, but the urgency coupled with lucidity is what makes this stand out, rare as it is for a philosopher to achieve both let alone one. And I definitely wouldn't miss out on this if you're at all interested in seeing how the technical insights of B&N spin off into surprisingly strong cultural critique alongside works like The Second Sex.

[Michael A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting analysis of anti-semitism that is applicable in a more general way to other hatreds. Chapter 3 is most of the book and I found it kind of meandering, I didn't get much out of these sections, but if you are into Sartre's authenticity and existentialist project more generally you will probably find them interesting enough. It is well-written and pretty lucid as well. A relatively quick and breezy read for a subject that is anything but.

[William Loughridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting—almost stumbling into astute observation. Good, not essential.

[אלכס · Rating 4 out of 5]

Честь и совесть 1967 года никак не мог уйти от той проблемы, которую победили у него на глазах. В свете популизма, реваншизма и нежелания выходить из нового времени в новейшее - антисемитизм, шовинизм и страх перед мигрантами правили балом во всем мире. Политиков с нейтралитетом по поводу Израиля и по сей день меньше, чем с "чисто европейским происхождением". Но вопрос про граждан еврейского исповедания (хотя дело не в нем) и происхождения (и не в нем), перед которыми оказалось грешны все остался. Остались и они в европейских странах, особенно в незатронутых войной районах, и так, вопрос, который так и не подвергся, так называемому, конечному решению встал снова. Но что тужится, я просто сокращу вам книгу в разы.

Любые вкусы возможны и естественны, любые мнения допустимы: о вкусах, цветах и мнениях не спорят. И вот, во имя демократических принципов и свободы мнений, антисемит требует признать его право провозглашать повсюду антиеврейский крестовый поход.
Антисемит — поэт землевладения. Оно преображает владельца и одаряет его особой, конкретной чувствительностью. Разумеется, это чувствительность не к вечным истинам и не к всечеловеческим ценностям: всечеловеческое — это объект умозрительный, это — еврейское. Все, чего можно достичь умом или деньгами, мы им разрешаем, все это ерунда, у нас идут в счет только иррациональные ценности, и вот этих-то ценностей им не видать никогда!
Чтобы антисемит претендовал на индивидуальное превосходство над евреями, таких примеров просто нет. Но не надо думать, что он стыдится своей посредственности, напротив, он доволен ею, он сам ее выбрал, — я говорил об этом. Этот человек боится какого бы то ни было одиночества, будь то одиночество гения или одиночество убийцы. Это человек толпы: уже и так трудно быть ниже его, но на всякий случай он старается еще пригнуться, боясь отделиться от стада и оказаться один на один с самим собой. Он и стал-то антисемитом потому, что не может он существовать совсем одинокий. Фраза: "Я ненавижу евреев", — из тех, какие произносят только в группе; произнося их, говорящий как бы вступает в некие наследственные права, вступает в некий союз — в союз посредственностей. Здесь стоит напомнить, что признание собственной посредственности совсем не обязательно ведет к скромности или хотя бы к умеренности. Совсем напротив, посредственность страстно гордится собой, и антисемитизм — это попытка посредственностей возвыситься именно в этом качестве, создать элиту посредственностей. Для антисемита ум, интеллигентность — признаки еврея, и он может совершенно спокойно презирать их наравне со всеми прочими еврейскими достоинствами: подобными эрзацами евреи пользуются для того, чтобы заменить ту спокойную посредственность, которой им вечно не хватает.
Спросите одного из этих молодых людей, невозмутимо нарушающих закон и собирающихся в стаи, чтобы где-нибудь на пустынной улице избить еврея, — молодой человек вам ответит, что хочет сильной власти (которая избавила бы его от собственных мыслей и непосильной ответственности за них), а республика для него — власть слабая; таким образом, он нарушает закон из любви к подчинению. Но действительно ли сильной власти он хочет? На самом деле он требует сурового закона для других и права нарушать закон, не неся ответственности, — для себя; он хочет поставить себя над законом, ускользнув при этом от сознания своей свободы и своего одиночества. И он прибегает к уловкам: евреи участвуют в выборах, евреи есть в правительстве, значит, законная власть порочна в самой основе, тогда можно считать, что ее больше не существует, и он вправе не обращать внимания на ее декреты — и нету тут никакого неподчинения, какое может быть неподчинение тому, чего не существует?
Антисемитские объединения ничего не хотят изобретать, не хотят брать на себя никакой ответственности; им ненавистна сама мысль о том, чтобы присоединиться к одной из фракций, создающих французское общественное мнение, потому что тогда пришлось бы и поддерживать какую-то программу, и изыскивать возможности для легальных действий. Они предпочитают подавать себя в качестве наипреданнейших и наичистейших выразителей истинного, а значит, неделимого самосознания страны
Быть антисемитом — это развлечение. Можно бить и мучить евреев и ничего не бояться: самое большее — вспомнят о существовании законов Республики, но законы эти окажутся мягкими. Плавая между авторитарным режимом, которого еще нет, и официальным толерантным обществом, которого он не признает, он может позволять себе все что угодно, не рискуя прослыть анархистом — он этого ужасно боится.
Существование еврея просто дает антисемиту возможность подавить в зародыше свое беспокойство, убедив себя, что его место в мире всегда было помечено, и оно его ждало, и он теперь законно имеет право его занять. Антисемитизм, одним словом, — это страх человеческого состояния. Антисемит — это человек, который хочет быть непроницаемой скалой, неистовым потоком, испепеляющей молнией, всем чем угодно — только не человеком.

По сути, это почти весь диагноз для той стороны, что хочет еврея уничтожить, другая сторона(Демократ) хочет его ассимилировать.

У еврея, впрочем, есть друг, а именно — демократ, но защитник из него плохой. Для него не существует ни еврея, ни араба, ни негра, ни рабочего, ни капиталиста — но лишь человек, в любое время и в любом месте равный самому себе. Все соединения он расщепляет на отдельные элементы. Биологический организм для него — сумма молекул, социальный организм — сумма индивидуумов. Таким образом, антисемит и демократ неутомимо ведут свой диалог, не сознавая и даже не замечая, что они говорят о разных вещах. Допустим, антисемит упрекает евреев в скупости. Демократ отвечает, что он знает скупых христиан и не скупых евреев. Но антисемита это не убеждает, ведь он хотел сказать, что существует особая (еврейская) скупость, то есть такая, на которую повлияла эта синтетическая тотальность: личность еврея. И он с легкостью соглашается, что какие-то христиане могут быть скупыми, потому что для него христианская скупость и «еврейская» скупость — не одной природы.
В отличие от антисемита, демократ не боится самого себя, — опасение ему внушают как раз крупные коллективные образования, в которых он рискует раствориться. В связи с этим он боится, как бы у евреев не проснулось "еврейское самосознание", то есть самосознание еврейского сообщества, — точно так же, как он опасается пробуждения у рабочих "классового самосознания". Его защита — это попытка убедить индивидуумов в том, что они существуют изолированно. Евреев нет, говорит он, следовательно, еврейского вопроса не существует. Это значит, что демократ хочет отделить еврея от его религии, от его семьи, от его этнического сообщества и поместить его в демократическую реторту, откуда он выйдет обновленным, одиноким и голым — ни с чем не связанным отдельным зернышком, неотличимым от всех прочих зернышек.

Отрешенность и задумчивость от всего этого, стала отличительным качеством ашкеназов. Им Ж-П тоже выводит четкую характеристику.

У еврея ��роявляется то, что я назвал бы страстным империализмом разума, поскольку ему важно не просто доказать, что он прав, его цель — убедить собеседников в абсолютной и безусловной ценности рационализма. Не случайно иудейский философ Леон Брунсвик ставил знак равенства между прогрессом разума и прогрессом объединения человечества. вечный критицизм, в котором его обвиняют, скрывает наивное стремление к разумному единению со своим противником и еще более наивную веру в то, что насилие совсем не обязательно в отношениях между людьми. В то время как антисемиты, фашисты и им подобные, взяв за исходную точку невыразимую в словах интуицию — такая она им и нужна — с необходимостью приходят к силе для навязывания тех представлений, которые они не могут внедрить иначе, неаутентичный еврей спешит растворить в критическом анализе все то, что способно разделить людей и подтолкнуть их к насилию, — ведь первой жертвой этого насилия будет он.

Теперь ясно, что скрывается за стремлением еврея к деньгам: если ценность определяется деньгами, то она всеобща и рациональна, следовательно, не имеет каких-то смутных социальных источников и доступна всем, а значит, еврей не может быть исключен из общества и интегрируется в него в качестве анонимного покупателя и потребителя. Его не шокирует, когда его любят за деньги: уважение и лесть, которые приносит богатство, адресованы анонимному лицу, обладающему такой покупательной способностью, а ведь именно этой анонимности он и ищет; ситуация вполне парадоксальна: он хочет быть богатым, чтобы на него не обращали внимания.
И разрушительство, и рассуждения об условиях человеческого существования чужды еврею; он — человек общественный по преимуществу, потому что все его мучения — от общества. Именно общество, а не божественное постановление сделало его евреем, именно оно породило еврейский вопрос, ограничив перспективу его жизненного пространства, и поскольку он принужден совершать выбор своего «я» только в этом ограниченном пространстве, то и сам выбор образа его существования социален и предопределен обществом. Мы создали этот человеческий род, который может быть определен только как искусственный продукт капитализма (или феодализма), произведенный с единственной целью — быть козлом отпущения в сообществе, все еще находящемся на дологической ступени развития. Этот человеческий род, говорящий о человеке больше, чем все остальные, потому что возник в результате вторичных реакций в недрах человечества, этот обездоленный, лишенный корней, без суда приговоренный к неаутентичности или пыткам человеческий вид — квинтэссенция человеческого.
В тот момент, когда он перестает быть пассивным, он отнимает у антисемитизма всю его силу и всю вирулентность потому, что, в отличие от неаутентичного еврея, который бежит от еврейской действительности и которого евреем насильно делает антисемит, аутентичный делает себя евреем сам, из "собственного материала", вопреки всем. Он принимает все, вплоть до мученичества, и обезоруженному антисемиту остается только лаять ему вслед: укусить уже не получается.

Не благодарите.

[August Denys · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is early Sartre. This book has interesting points. This book is an aggregation of many philosophy, but is lost in a haze of confusion due to its many problems.

I have read other review of this book on this site, and I've noticed some that state it is a "Philosophy" book and not a "Sociology"book; however, I do not care for that point because if one wishes to make that the point of difference from a form of Academic Rigor, then we all lose and miss the point. Yes, as a philosopher he is pointing (at least trying) out the ideologies behind the anti-semite and the Jew. However, besides the few good points he does make, and back to the comment about this being earlier Sartre, what we have here is a philosophical mess that comes from his early Existentialism which is itself a misunderstanding of Heidegger's Being and Time (Sein und Zeit). If one wishes to understand where that notion of Sartre failing to understand Heidegger's Metaphysics, listen to the first part of the 2007 lecture on YouTube by Hubert Dreyfus who makes this claim in said video. I believe it is vitally important to recognize this because Sartre's understanding of the Existence behind the Jewish people is in a way reductionary and, it seems, his attempt to work other philosophers into his understanding of the Jewish people. He understands the Heideggerian concept of Being-in-the-world, a sort of just being thrown into the situation; however, for some odd reason, he takes away the historical nature of the Jew and considers, this is in the book, the Jew to be quasi-historical (pg. 145). What Sartre tries to accomplish with this attitude is that the Jew cannot deal with the situation because every move he makes is one that actually goes against himself; every move the Jew makes is one that gives ammunition to the anti-semite.

In other aspects, if one knows the English title and knows one of the three H's of continental philosophy, then one sees a disturbing sort of use of Hegel. In part 3 of the book, which itself is 82 pages long, then one notices Sartre attempting to make the anti-semite and the Jew into a Hegelian Dialectic. It is not the religion or the Historical location that makes the Jew, it is, in Sartre's view, the anti-semite who creates the jew (the Thesis and the Antithesis) in order to explain their lack of self. "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-semite would invent him" (pg. 13). At the end of the first part, we see this in Sartre's statement "Anti-semitism, in short, is fear of the human condition."(pg. 54) Back to the concept of the Hegelian Dialectic, Hegel's most common notion of this comes from the idea of Lordship and Bondage, or in less pretty terms, The Master and Slave. The idea behind this is that the Master and the Slave, being respectively the Thesis and Antithesis, define each other in their actions and interactions. Ultimately, the slave overcomes their being of the slave because they gain the perspective of the actions of the slave and the interaction of the master giving commands and doing them. Sartre uses this concept that the Jew becomes or has a partial Being of being themselves an anti-semite. The Jew does this to try and conquest their "quasi-historical" part in the world.

What Sartre attempts to do, which may be unbeknownst to him, is to be a sociologist in this work without the rigor of it. It needs to be known that I point out this fault from being a Deleuzian in my understanding of the three main ways of understanding the world: Philosophy, Science, and Art; which comes from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's book "What Is Philosophy?" What science is is a way of understanding the world through planes of reference and functives (functives are the elements of functions). Why do I bring this up? Because Sartre's bad points come from his application of functives that are problematic to the plane of reference. In a sense, this is why one should not trust anecdotal reasoning. Today, we have studies and methodologies that can be scrutinized by others in the fields to try to reproduce the results or to critique whether or not the researchers are saying more than what their research states. The functives only work if the reference point is correct. We cannot know the method Sartre used in this book because it comes from his own empirical existence which may itself be biased and most likely is. All of what we know about the Jews that Sartre argues for and about are from what he knows, in other words, there is a Sartrean plane of reference being used and not a sociological plane of reference in order to know whether he is stating conjectures or simply false statements. People may think that this is a Philosophical work, however, back to the Deleuzian idea, Philosophy is the creation of concepts on the Plane of Immanence, and while science uses functives, philosophy can also use functives in the creation of concepts. And what we have in this early Sartre is a conceptual work that is using functives that are not able to be reference and therefore we are unable to trust what is being said.

I would say that the only saving grace of this book may be Sartre's Critique, accidental or not, or Liberalism and his identification of the anti-semite. We see this mainly from the first and second parts of the book where the anti-semite is irrational, functions from passions and not reasons, and "Anti-semitism does not fall within the category of ideas protected by the right of free opinion." (pg. 10). According to Sartre, the anti-semite and anti-semitism only seem to exist in the middle class. The working class does not participate as much in anti-semitism because they are too busy determining their identity in their work (a Marxist idea). In regards to critique of Liberalism, one may be confused because this book never uses the word Liberalism, instead it uses the word democrat. This is the first book I have read from Schocken Books, a publisher from New York, but I must wonder if they have ever retried translating this book. The first edition of this book was from 1965 and the translator was George J. Becker who past away in 1989. One can find an obituary to him in the New York Times. But here's the reason I point this out, unlike some other books I have read over the years, this book does not offer the reader any original French for what the word may have been translated from. So, I'm left to wonder what democrat was being translated from and the historical nature the meaning behind the word originally held. This is why I believe democrat to overall mean the word Liberalism because the context of the second part sounds more like the pure ideologies of Liberalism rather than what we know of the nature of being Democratic. To come back from the digression for the explanation of the term, the critique of liberalism can be summed up in a statement Sartre wrote in part 2, "If the anti-semite reproaches the Jew for his avarice, the democrat will reply that he knows Jews who are not avaricious and Christians who are." (pg. 56) The problem of the Liberal is not that they are bad protectors as one may assume from Sartre's words; rather, they are unwittingly supporting the anti-semite for giving them a platform. To understand it from a Wittgensteinian view, the liberal and the anti-semite are not talking to each other they are talking past each other, using the same words with different meanings behind them.

It is for these two last points that I don't give this book the lowest rating. I believe that if this book was updated it could be a handy resource: actually have sources, change part 3 from an 82 page long explanation of the Jew into smaller more succinct sections, and included notes to the translation to whether we are understanding the same meaning. The book is in total 153 pages long, and I think it could be shorter; not by excluding sections, rather, the font size and how much of the page is used could be changed. I felt that I was breezing through the pages with how much space was not being used. Until this book becomes better, one is better reading Hannah Arendt's book On the Origins of Totalitarianism (the first part of this book is labeled anti-semitism). In conclusion, another disappointment from reading Sartre.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting to be this impressed, but the depiction of the antisemite (bigots in general) is meticulous and awfully relevant. The in/authenticity stuff, not so much.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Description: With a new preface by Michael Walzer. Jean-Paul Sartre's book is a brilliant portrait of both anti-Semite and Jew, written by a non-Jew and from a non-Jewish point of view. Nothing of the anti-Semite either in his subtle form as a snob, or in his crude form as a gangster, escapes Sartre's sharp eye, and the whole problem of the Jew's relationship to the Gentile is examined in a concrete and living way, rather than in terms of sociological abstractions.

Opening: If a man attributes all or part of his own misfortunes and
those of his country to the presence of Jewish elements
in the community, if he proposes to remedy this state of
affairs by depriving the Jews of certain of their rights, by
keeping them out of certain economic and social activities,
by expelling them from the country, by exterminating all of
them, we say that he has anti‐Semitic opinions.
This word opinion makes us stop and think. It is the word
a hostess uses to bring to an end a discussion that
threatens to become acrimonious. It suggests that all
points of view are equal; it reassures us, for it gives an
inoffensive appearance to ideas by reducing them to the
level of tastes. All tastes are natural; all opinions are
permitted. Tastes, colours, and opinions are not open to
discussion. In the name of democratic institutions, in the
name of freedom of opinion, the anti‐Semite asserts the
right to preach the anti‐Jewish crusade everywhere.

Lots to think about here, and much to discuss.

The czars, we are told, treated the Polish
Jews well whereas they willingly ordered pogroms against
those in Russia. These sharply different courses of action
had the same cause. The Russian government considered
the Jews in both Russia and Poland to be inassimilable;
according to the needs of their policy, they had them
massacred at Moscow and Kiev because they were a
danger to the Russian empire, but favoured them at
Warsaw as a means of stirring up discord among the
Poles.

[Leo Zeilig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful. Sartre was such a great influence on Fanon. You can feel the passion and tempo of Black Skin, White Masks in Sartre's 1944 essay. Fanon directly borrows the framework, the antisemitic makes the Jew, the question of repressed sexual desire and Sartre's first person style in his own analysis of black lived experience and racism. The necessity of mutual recognition, to free the Jew, to liberate equally the antisemite/racist resounds powerfully in Sartre as it does in Fanon. It all started here.

[Ceris Backstrom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost everything in this book is wrong. Contemporary racism writers riff off of a lot of these ideas in order to disprove them, so it is interesting to see them at the source. What I really can’t get behind, though, is this non-Jewish white man taking it upon himself to write about the Jewish experience (and the experience of racism in general) WITHOUT ACTUALLY CONSULTING JEWISH THINKERS. Is that..... your place, Sartre?????

[Brandon Harwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A-mazing! His arguments are quite applicable to other minority issues. While I was reading it I kept drawing correlations to the homosexual community.

[Abe · Rating 5 out of 5]

His description of the characteristics of a French anti Semite from 70 years ago is eerily close to that of modern internet frog trolls

[justin chustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew is a powerful critique of antisemitism and the failure of the liberal democratic society that allows the ideology to fester. In the book, Sartre utilizes his renowned existential philosophy to paint a portrait of the anti-semite that inauthentically creates an imagined enemy to avoid the horror of the human condition; the democrat whose naiveté makes him complicit with the violence against the Jews; and the Jews that must deal with this tragic situation he is thrown in, authentically or inauthentically. The book is also a call to action. It is a work that calls for gentiles to stand in solidarity with Jews, stating that "what must be done is to point out to each one that the fate of the Jews is his fate."

There are parts of this book that are a little weird and bad. But since I don't wish to do a gentile-splaining to anyone and since Michael Walzer's preface to the book already provides a devastating critique of the worst parts of the book, I will write about the part I like the most in the book: Sartre's characterization of the anti-semite.

Sartre rejects the view that takes antisemitism as an opinion that deserves discussing in a democratic society. He observes that antisemitism is not a conclusion reached through experience, nor is it supported by any real evidence. Antisemitism is an a priori obsession, a passion. He writes, "far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter which explains his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-semite would invent him." Moreover, this antisemitic passion that, manipulated by the ruling class, often emerges from the middle-class milieu stems from a refusal to be moved by reason; from a desire to claim an "us" alongside the ruling class by creating an imaginary "them"; from a will to be impenetrable, to be superior, and to reject all that is valuable in authentic living. "Antisemitism," Sartre writes, "is a fear of the human condition. The anti-semite is a man who wishes to be pitiless stone, a furious torrent, a devastating thunderbolt––anything except a man." I think this view of the anti-semite is useful in understanding not only antisemitism but also all kinds of bigotry, at least on an individual level.

(Idk where else to say this but Michael Walzer's critique of this book in the preface is just so hilariously brutal. How can any Marxist recover from having "indeed, he is a liberal, for all his Marxizing sociology" in THE PREFACE OF THEIR OWN BOOK LMAO??? It's a great preface tho)

[Joseph Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sartre's "Anti-Semite and Jew" is not a statistics-driven sociological exploration, nor could it have been, written in France after the occupation, apparently as an attempt to make sense of one of the animating passions of his oppressors. Qualitative and impressionistic as it is, the overall narrative of the "etiology of hate" the essay sets out to anatomize is highly plausible. And, if taken as true along its broad contours, it is also possessed of explanatory power for phenomena beyond anti-Semitism.
Three of Sartre's points rang especially true:
i.) Resentment plays an active role in prejudice; the moral shortfalls of the bigot, or even circumstances beyond the control of anyone, are blamed on the objects of prejudice.
ii.) Prejudice is enacted through the projection of metaphysical essences (e.g. "Jewishness")which filter down onto every level of the hated person's being. (A Christian may act altruistically, but if a Jew commits the same apparently selfless act, he must, by virtue of his Jewishness, have an ulterior motive.)
iii.) Prejudice is a form of "snobishness" which insists there is only one good, correct or valid way to be a good citizen, Frenchman, etc., and that the victim of prejudice is analytically excluded from meeting the snobbish standard.
The three points more or less interlock. For example, the snobishness of the anti-Semite insists the Jew, no matter how long their family has lived in France, and no matter what sacrifices they might make on behalf of their country; only one of "good blood" can be a "true" Frenchman, and this quality can never be lost; therefore, Frenchness is essential and metaphysical. And as I said above, the three points can be generalized to make sense of other hate-driven populist movements. Hutu nationalists blamed the metaphysically repulsive "cockroach" Tutsi for the socio-economic turmoil of Rwanda. The Klan insisted that "one drop" of African blood could infect a person's entire essence, and that only a certain very specific type of American could "Keep America American."
However, my most valuable take-away from the book is different. Sartre lead me to understand the appeal of an approach to civil discourse now called "identity politics." I was not necessarily convinced by his arguments for the approach, but I now understand the power of its appeal, and some of the shortfalls of my own stance, which resembles positions Sartre variously identifies as "liberal," "democratic," or "humanistic." If he had been American, he might have also called it the "melting pot" doctrine of diversity. Under the humanistic vision, there is a human nature, more or less operative underneath or behind the contingencies of personalities, and more or less universal across nations and history. This bare same-ness does not have to be thick; it can be the human capacity to reason and reach the same conclusions given the same axioms, or the fact that all humans have certain interests or objective conditions for flourishing. The humanist says that because we are possessed of human nature, we are capable of tolerating each other and engaging in shared enterprises, so long as we sublimate or privatize those things which conceal our nature: religious, cultural, racial identities.
When applied to Jews, Sartre characterizes the humanistic approach as a liberalized anti-Semitism. The humanist can, so to speak, love the man but hate the Jew. The Jew's affirmation of his own Jewishness is an impediment to his realization of his humanity qua humanity; he cuts himself off from the democratic community by insisting on a tribal identity. Where Sartre and I agree is that the liberal humanist temperament is rare, and goes against the grain of most persons' temperaments.[1] In my own vocabulary, I would say that humans are social animals, and most people identify with the society in which they were raised--both their genetically and geographically immediate kin, the historic past of their tribe, and the future well-being of that tribe. (Even many secular Jews who take the Torah to be a human document insist on a bris for their son, to honor their ancestors and to extend their traditions into the future.) Sarte says something closer to the effect that the humanist makes an abstraction of the individual Jew, stripping away many of the things most important to the Jew's construction of his own identity and values. (I am paraphrasing massively here.) By way of a solution, Sartre says as humanists, we must learn to affirm individuals given their vast differences from us, instead of denying those differences exist, or tolerating them *in spite of* their differences. This must also be done while cultivating common national enterprises. How both projects are to be balanced is left sketchy.
This line of argument could be construed as a predecessor to multiculturalisms, which call for moving beyond "mere tolerance" and appreciating persons not as fellow humans or citizens, but as their own communities. Again, after Sartre's arguments, I am more sympathetic to such lines of thought, but am not sure how or if this could work in practice. Sartre's prescriptions as to how we might cultivate democratic empathy are thin, but I found them to be a rich starting point in that essential line of inquiry.


[1] This, in of itself, is not necessarily a mark against humanism. A century ago, misogyny on a legal and cultural scale was all-pervasive, but far from facilitating the irrelevance of feminism, this fact heightened the moral necessity of feminism. That said, as an atheist, after initial enthusiasm for the doctrine, I have been finding more and more problems with secular humanism in both its theoretical and actually-existing forms. But that is irrelevant for the purposes of this review.

[Braden Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional. The Anti-Semite is not that which hates the Jews, but the one who hates himself. Hiding from his own lack through the scapegoating mechanism issued by the essential "Evil" "Jewishness" that he projects into the Other. The anti-semite is in this way the inventor of the concept of "the Jew" as the opprobrium and pejorative that it became, but not only that, as the "idea" of the Jew as something innate and not lived in full responsibility and decision. Sartre is doing something irrefutably existential and individual here. The anti-semite is fueled by the veil of the crowd, hidden from the responsibility that would come along with good faith; a good faith found in reality often in the Jewish people.

[michal k-c · Rating 2 out of 5]

usual Sartrean bits on authenticity and false reasoning dressed up in a bit of post-war philosemitism. i think the take that has aged the worst is obviously claiming that minority populations would love to assimilate if only the racists would let them

[Shane Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read ....trying to follow Sartre's unique take on antisemitism requires one to pay close attention at all times.

[Juniper · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty good but my man jean paul did not do his research and got kinda stereotypey at the end

[Yente Austerlitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him."

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

An shockingly relevant essay despite its year of publication. It is a gripping read, and empowering to the reader, the only depressing part is that it feels as though it could have been written yesterday