The Ordeal of Civility : Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss & the Jewish Struggle with Modernity

by John Murray Cuddihy

The ordeal, says Cuddihy, is the "unconsummated social courtship of Gentile and Jew," focused on the predicament of the Jew, caught between his rough, loving community (Yiddishkeit) and the Gentile "host culture/etiquette" that he wants to assimilate. Cuddihy calls it the trauma of culture shock for a decolonized people. National Book Award finalist (Philosophy), 1975.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Sociology, Politics, Religion, Psychology, Cultural

291 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 1974

Reviews

[Murtaza]

This book argues that the problem of a people moving from the shtetl into European emancipation was at the core of most Jewish intellectual thought at the dawn of modernity. Becoming modern comes with a price, but for those of Protestant Christian extraction the price is considerably less because modernity is mostly experienced as a secularized form of their own religion. For Catholics there was a small trauma (the separation of Church and State) but for Jews the trauma was much greater, the differences between the old world and the new for more jarring. Even if they did not actually have to attest to Christ as their Lord and Savior in order to be emancipated citizens, Jews from the shtetl had to embrace social norms, values, and practices that effectively made them into cultural copies of Christians whose assimilation they had resisted for centuries. This was the price of admission into modern Western society as full citizens, and it was a steep one.

Cuddihy argues that the fundamental cultural norm of modernity is the politeness with which one must deal with strangers. It is a sense of distance, formality, restraint, and what some, like Freud, might say hypocrisy, that is the expected behavior of a person living in a modern society. As eastern European Jews moved out of the shtetl, where everyone was connected by some degree of social informality by virtue of shared tribal affiliation, into an alienated modern society full of total strangers with whom formality was expected, they encountered great difficulties. We are distant from these debates today, but at the time that Marx, Freud, and Levi-Strauss wrote, the allegation that Jews were uncouth and coarse was one consistently levelled at them by the broader society. There was alleged to be an overfamiliarity and crudeness that Jews out of the shtetl evinced, which they were encouraged to rid themselves of in order to be known as civil, and thus civilized. Defending their people from charges of backwardness, or at least explaining them, was a common task of Jewish intellectuals during this perioid. They did so by acting as spokespeople for their not-yet-civil brethren, but also by dissecting the alleged shortcomings of the prevailing post-Christian culture. Freudianism, Marxism, and Structuralism were in some sense products of this situation.

The suppressed id that Freud wrote about was, according to Cuddihy, actually the suppressed "Yid," who had to deny their true easygoing selves in order to put on a repressed, hypocritical facade for the broader gentile society. In this way, culturally specific problems of double consciousness under assimilation were universalized as part of a general theory of how human beings experience modern Western society. The condemnation, exposition, and often ingenious ridicule of that society was part of a Jewish attempt to ameliorate the pain of their own assimilation into it. Marxism too was an attempt to recreate a seamlessly whole society, like the shtetl, from one that had been carved into individualist pieces, where economy and culture had been painfully separated. The anti-Semitic allegations made against European Jews that they were usurious and economically exploitative were displaced onto his own counter-criticisms that the entire modern society was thus, yet masked it with their hypocritical bourgeoise culture. There was a dual process of radical criticism and compromise, by which Jews gradually changed their mores and beliefs and acculturated themselves into the norms expected by the modern West. These are interesting arguments from Cuddihy, not quite falsifiable, that Freud and others were using their philosophies as ways of dealing with their own angst over assimilation. I think it's true regardless that no one can totally be divorced from the influence of their background, intellectuals included.

Cuddihy was a product of the New York Jewish intellectual scene, though he was of Irish-Catholic background. In this book he turned their own analytic tools on them and dissected the roots of Freud, Marx, and Levi-Strauss's thoughts in a provocative but respectful manner, arguing that their Jewish backgrounds and the problem of assimilating out of the shtetl, the problem of civility, was at the core of much of their thought. In this way he sort of tries to cut them down to size, in the same way that Freud seemed to take modern Western society down a peg by implying that everyone was merely sublimating their desires to engage in incest with their mothers. The arcane style of this strange and obscure book was not quite to my taste, to be honest. After I got what I felt to be the main point I concluded my reading, though I might return to it later on. I'm not really sure what I think about it yet, but I will reflect further.

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

8/10.

Edit: a few weeks after reading this and quoting it and using the theory for real-world application and explanation, I'm upgrading it to 9.5/10 without a re-read. Unlike Modernity and Cultural Decline or The Culture of Critique, this book doesn't have such immediate force, but it sticks with you and keeps you thinking and using it. It is a theory that explains much.

Excellent book.

[Rutger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Cuddihy tries to explain in what way Jewish intellectuals struggled with modernity.

The title seemed weird to me, but after finishing the book, I decided it could not have been chosen more aptly. Cuddihy sees civilization as civil society: a community of "strangers" who act civil to each other, i.e. good manners, etiquette, politeness, sportsmanship, etc. If you're not raised to "keep up appearances", it takes effort to become part of it -- that's where the "ordeal" comes in. Cuddihy's focus is on the US, but many of the principles he explains also hold for most of Western Europe (mainly before the WWII, of course).

Cuddihy highlights Marx, Freud and Levi-Strauss. Cuddihy explains how the intellectual legacy these three men left behind can't be decoupled from a) their Jewish background and b) their struggle (and resistance) to become part of gentile life. Most people are part of the majority and never think of the sense of loss it takes to assimilate into the majority. Sometimes it creates resentment and reaction, in this case through intellectual critique or analysis. Cuddihy tries to disentangle how (the three mentioned) Jewish intellectuals were driven by these impulses -- though, sometimes a bit too speculative. I'm not sure, for example (as Cuddihy argues), if Freud rejected Western concepts such as romantic love, because he couldn't handle the implication that the arranged marriage customs of the shtetl were more primitive. But Cuddihy does convincingly argue that Freud's Jewish identity played a significant role in his philosophy -- and why wouldn't it? It makes perfect sense. You can't separate a person from his background, even if they're intellectuals -- maybe even *especially* if they're intellectuals.

This book gives an empathetic view of Jewish intellectuals, it never goes into antisemitism or philosemitism. Cuddihy could just as easily have written this same book about Irish or Chinese intellectuals.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s easy to dismiss sociology as mystifying quackery until you read a book like this. Cuddihy is old school, a student of Durkheim and Parsons. He brilliantly reads between the lines into the lives of “latecomers to modernity” and the ensuing philosophies and ideologies that stem from the trauma of modernization. One sees therapy, protest, political extremism, “trad” e-grifters, and general cultural degradation by the intellectual class in a whole new light. The rot is deep - subversion at every turn. An extended meditation on the philosophy of the longhouse. An all-time classic, completely necessary for knowing where we are. Modernity is not the enemy!!!

[Aaron Liebman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read years ago but still remembered. An unapologetic look at the process of "Americanization" that Jewish immigrants faced and its profound impact on them.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is civility a prerequisite of law and political order? It’s a tougher question than you might at first think, but if your gut reaction is “Yes,” you’re correct. For a sophisticated proof, however, look no further than Cuddihy’s book, which examines this question by looking at the experience of Jews in modernity. While he’s wrong about basic facts, for example claiming that Jews were thrown unprepared into city life in the modern era, when they were actually among the most urbanized groups in Europe, his feeling for what modernity has wrought is unerring. What makes this book such a trip to read is that, for reasons that could be explained only by applying to the author the same sociology-of-knowledge approach he himself uses, he draws the exact opposite conclusions of what his own evidence and analysis reveal. Read this book against the grain and you will have a nearly flawless grasp of our current predicament.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The chapters on Freud were quite compelling, especially the analysis of the origin of the Oedipus complex. Isn't nearly as much on Marx and Levi-Strauss as the title implies, and the latter chapters feel like an afterthought accumulation of extraneous evidence.

Not nearly as controversial as it's made out to be, but the thesis about Freud in particular is pretty convincing.

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly the most important book I’ve read this year. I can see why it’s so strongly recommended. The analysis of Freud, and the motivation-nexus behind his thought, is particularly masterful. Brilliant.

[Ziggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great account of the failure of Jewish Emancipation, its causes and consequences (especially the ideologies of diaspora Jews which developed in reaction to the failure of assimilation).

Never feels disjointed or lacking in focus despite covering an amazing range of subjects from Freud to the falseness of modern Jewish characters in novels to the sociology of modernity to Jewish inter and intra ethnic conflicts to the theodicy of Jewish victimhood and how it is used in status competition to the myth of "judeo-christianity" to ethnic narcissism and the parallels between Jewish interaction with modernity and how intellectuals of backwards countries respond to the painful interaction with more advanced cultures to etiquette and manners

Practically every page introduces new insights. There is no filler or pointless repetition. It's all revelatory gems the whole way through

[Jasper]

Cuddihy indicates an aspect of modernity which functions as the ultimate gate to integration, which he calls civility. Civility is living within bourgeois custom and polite etiquette. Minorities, Eastern European Jews in this book, have a protracted ordeal with this more demanding aspect of modernity. Civility’s demands appear unreasonable, excessive and divisive.
He convincingly argues that ordeals of civility motivated Marx and Freud as archetypal ideologues. According to this book, ideologies may excuse co-ethnics for incivility (Freud and Herzl), undermine modernity as hypocrisy (Marx and Levi-Strauss) or claim customary moral superiority for the minority group (‘Hebraism’).

The hagiography of modern saint Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the very end was a highlight.

[Lukasz]

recommendation: [Zero HP Lovecraft - Women & Men in the Age of Acceleration - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dyS...)

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating

[Aleks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cuddihy's style of writing is incredibly dense and he packs layers of meaning, cultural references and sociological theory into every page. So when embarking on this book I accepted I would not be reading it with too much attention to detail...

The book could lose a star from me for being so challenging to read, but it wins all five for its intellectually daring probe into everyday manifestations of cultural conflict between pre-modern, familial cultures and the 'courteous' behavioural code mandated by modern civil society. And despite being an ordeal (ha) to read it is quite well structured as a whole.

Also, the book is definitely unapologetic and I can see how more politically correct types could easily dub him as problematic - not least by the offense that could be taken from a non-Jew calling their work a 'midrash' - but that does not mean it is not respectful, insightful and well worth reading. I would recommend it to anyone intellectually curious and interested in Jewish emancipation, Christian-Jewish relations, intra-Jewish conflict and the intricacies of modernity.