Antisemitism and the left : : on the return of the Jewish question / / Robert Fine, Philip Spencer.

• VerfasserIn: Fine, Robert, 1945-; Spencer, Philip,
• TeilnehmendeR: Spencer, Philip,
• Place / Publishing House: Manchester, UK : : Manchester University Press,, 2018.; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Manchester Political Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (135 pages) :; 1 illustration; digital, PDF file(s).
• Notes: First published: 2017.

Universalism has always shown two faces to the world: one emancipatory and inclusionary, the other repressive and exclusionary. Jewish experience of universalism has been correspondingly equivocal. Antisemitism and the left provides an original and stimulating study of modern antisemitism, tracing the intellectual and political struggles between these two opposed perspectives. At times, universalism has acted as a stimulus for Jewish emancipation, for civil, political and social inclusion. But it has also been used to justify hatred of Jews, depicting them as hostile to the entire human race, in ways even more sinister than those found in pre-modern and largely Christian traditions of anti-Judaism. A key feature of this repressive and exclusionary universalism and the distinctly modern form of antisemitism it has generated has been the construction of a putative 'Jewish question', which somehow needs to be 'solved'. This book provides conceptual analysis of the struggles waged within the Enlightenment, Marxism, critical Jewish thought and the contemporary left, engaging with such key authors as Mendelssohn, Marx, Adorno and Horkheimer, Arendt and Habermas, to critique the very notion of the 'Jewish question' and rescue universalism from the antisemitic morass into which it has too often fallen. Antisemitism and the left will appeal to students, lecturers and the general reader interested in antisemitism and/or in principles of universalism, spanning the fields of politics, sociology, history, philosophy and Jewish studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Universalism and the Jewish question -- Struggles within Enlightenment : Jewish emancipation and the Jewish question -- Marx's defence of Jewish emancipation and critique of the Jewish question -- Antisemitism, critical theory and the ambivalence of Marxism -- Political life in an antisemitism world : Hannah Arendt's Jewish writings -- The Jewish question after the Holocaust : Jürgen Habermas and the European left -- The return of the Jewish question and the double life of Israel.