Friedrich Nietzsche and Jakob Wassermann: Brothers in Spirit?

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Haberich
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Charismatic Leader ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Positive Assessment

AbstractOf Jewish origin, Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934) has been labelled a nationalist and reactionary author, even a precursor of fascism. The opposite is the case. Wassermann and Nietzsche have three crucial ideas in common: First, both thinkers off er a thoroughly positive assessment of ‘the Orient’. Second, both believed that the European Jews had the potential to overcome rigid, outdated moral structures and establish a more humane society. Nietzsche held that the Jews managed to preserve the classical heritage of Ancient Greece more authentically than Christian cultures. Finally, Wassermann conceived of the ‘Orientale’, a charismatic leader figure of Jewish origin, - heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s ‘Übermensch’ - who would overcome anti-Semitism, and eventually reconcile the German and Jewish cultures. Both figures are essentially aesthetic answers to very real social and cultural problems. When it comes to the dilemma of German-speaking Jews, it appears that Wassermann and Nietzsche not only had a general outlook, but also certain philosophical aspects in common.

Jakob Wassermann: A Jew in the Nationalist Avant-Garde?

transversal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-89
Author(s):  
Max Haberich
Keyword(s):  
Urban Life ◽  
Charismatic Leader ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Decisive Evidence ◽  
Key Aspects

Abstract Of Jewish origin, Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934) has been labeled a nationalist and reactionary author, even a precursor of fascism. The opposite is the case. Nicole Plöger (2007) argues convincingly for Wassermann’s modernism by examining the literary style of his early novels. This article seeks to complement her approach by concentrating on two key aspects of Wassermann’s thought: First, there is his critical attitude to modern industrial and urban life, exemplified in his “Volksromane.” Second, Wassermann conceived of the “Orientale,” a charismatic leader figure of Jewish origin-heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s “Übermensch”-who would overcome anti-Semitism, and eventually, reconcile the German and Jewish cultures. These two elements of his early work, which may appear reactionary from the modern viewpoint, are in fact decisive evidence that Wassermann was at the height of his time.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-184
Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Slavoj Zizek ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The Way

Paul is a figure through whom Jacob Taubes can discern his true disagreement with his intellectual opponents, such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The Pauline epistles provide some perspectives for Taubes to reconsider the Christian culture that shaped his identity as a German-speaking Jew in a post-Holocaust Europe. These texts are useful for this particular reader to reconsider history without ever fully separating it from philosophy. The contemporary philosophical turn to Paul, considered by taking Taubes as its prime example, can partly be explained by these philosophers’ (Taubes, Badiou, Agamben, Žižek) attraction to Paul as an antinomian figure, a figure of lawlessness and freedom from law that can lead to apocalyptic violence (for Taubes) or pave the way for an existential and political break with the domain of law, as in the philosophies of Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. While these two continental philosophers draw upon other readings of the apostle than Taubes’s, Giorgio Agamben bases his readings of Paul on several aspects in Taubes’s works. Nonetheless, the call from Taubes to reinterpret Paul through Freud and Nietzsche is more consistently followed in the recent work of Ward Blanton.

Heidegger’s Radical Antisemitism

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Jeff Love ◽  
Michael Meng
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Narrative Framework

With the publication of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, it has become impossible to avoid Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. There has been the expected controversy with Heideggerians on the defensive and the philosopher’s detractors condemning his work outright. But there has been little serious exploration of the matter aside from several recent works. This article builds on this literature on Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and concludes that an anti-Semitic narrative lies at the heart of Heidegger’s history of the oblivion of Being as nihilism. Moreover, Heidegger adopts the narrative framework set up by Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morality. In the end, we assert that Heidegger advocates a kind of war against Judaism that seeks to eradicate the Jewish influence in the western tradition. Heidegger’s ‘metaphysical’ anti-Semitism aims to overcome the nihilism of the ‘Jewish Christian’ revenge [ Rache] against death, a nihilism that has evolved into the technological effort to make everything secure.

THE ART OF TRAGEDY

Think ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (28) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Daniel Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Basic Features

In this essay, I want to provide an introduction to Aristotle's theory of the Greek Tragedy, which he outlines in his book, the Poetics. Many philosophers since Aristotle, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin, have analysed tragic art and developed their own theories of how it works and what it is for. What makes Aristotle's theory interesting is that it is as relevant to art today as it was in Ancient Greece because it explains the features of not just tragic art, but of the films and stories that we enjoy today. I will explain the features that Aristotle says make a good tragic play and give examples of them from popular culture. The examples I give will be from tragedy, but also from romance, crime and fantasy to demonstrate how he has outlined, not just the features of Greek Tragedy, but also the internal workings of the drama that we enjoy today. The contemporary relevance of Aristotle's theory is in the fact that the features he outlines are basic features of great stories, which I think is best illustrated by applying Aristotle's analysis to popular Hollywood movies.

scholarly journals Violence in Reflection of Austrian and German Intellectuals of Jewish Origin (H. Arendt, E. Voegelin, L. Strauss)

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-49
Author(s):  
A. M. Davletshina
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
The Political ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Second World

The paper discusses the reflection on violence by Austrian and German intellectuals of Jewish origin, in particular, H. Arendt, E. Voegelin, L. Strauss. It is shown that such phenomena as war, anti-semitism, violent actions during the First and the Second World Wars and interwar period had a significant effect on thinkers who had to reflect on the nature of violence, relying not only on historical, political and philosophical thought, but also on personal experience. As a result, the article presents an attempt to consider intellectual reflection of these thinkers in two ways – the political in violence and violence as a daily routine.

Aryans, Semites, and Jewish Scholars

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Near Eastern ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
German Speaking

The awareness of the proximity of Judaism and Islam to Christianity was nearly lost in the secularization process. Christian affinities with Judaism and Islam ceased to be a matter of evidence, immediately recognizable. More and more, literati started perceiving Christianity as a (or rather the) European religion, while its Near Eastern roots were trimmed far back, or even, in some cases, pulled up entirely. In German-speaking lands, in particular, the Romantic movement and the “discovery” of Sanskrit brought to the perception of “Indo-Europeans,” or Aryans and Semite peoples, throughout history, in contradistinction and opposition to one another. Within a climate of growing racist anti-Semitism, Jewish scholars started to develop modern scholarship on Judaism.

scholarly journals NOWOCZESNOŚĆ W LUSTRZE HISTORII: JACOB BURCKHARDT I FRYDERYK NIETZSCHE WOBEC KULTURY DAWNEJ I WSPÓŁCZESNEJ

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-70
Author(s):  
Michał Kruszelnicki
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Elite Group ◽  
European Culture

The text explores the connections between the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt regarding past and contemporary culture. The focus here is on both thinkers’ highly negative assessment of modernity as an era which does not match the great past times of European culture, especially the noble civilizations of ancient Greece and the Italian Renaissance. The lamentable state of modernity is seen and analyzed in confrontation with those sublime past epochs, with their ethos of individuality, immorality, violent passions and common ambition for greatness. The article ends with a conclusion that although both thinkers were disappointed with times they lived in, it was Nietzsche who pushed his critique of modernity to the extreme, calling for a radical and imminent breach with the failed history and founding a new one, one which would create place only for an elite group of outstanding individuals, while Burckhardt was much more reserved. Although a pessimist too, he kept a desperate faith in the autotelic value of European culture’s spiritual continuum and did not negate its heritage.

scholarly journals Austrian Refugee Social Scientists1

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Fleck
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The City

This chapter presents an overview of one sub-group of Nazi refugees: social scientists from Austria, and Vienna in particular. After a deft sketch of the constraints and opportunities for scholars, especially Jewish scholars, in 1930s Austria with its economic decline, political turmoil, and rampant anti-semitism, it compares the number of Jews in Vienna, the size of the educated class in the city, and the number of Austrian émigré and refugee social scientists with the equivalent figures for Germany. These statistics provide some explanation for the ‘disproportionally large group of former Austrians’ among the émigrés and refugee scholars in the 1930s. The chapter then illustrates the often lowly occupations of many later famous social scientists and the remarkable intellectual milieu they were part of in Vienna. The final section examines the personal and social factors that influenced their fate in exile. It concludes that, within the larger group of German-speaking refugee scholars, the Austrians who later became sociologists had characteristics that enabled them to succeed after their traumatic experiences.

scholarly journals „Szloma Korkociąg przed sądem”, czyli humor na łamach tygodnika „Pod Pręgierz”

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 277-291
Author(s):  
Milena Wojtyńska-Nowotka ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The World ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
The Subject

The subject of the article is a series of humorous works “Szloma Korkociąg przed sądem”, which was published in the anti-Semitic weekly “Pod Pręgierz”. The author focuses on describing the linguistic comedy, the means of which was the stylization of the Polish language for Jews. She also draws attention to situational comedy. The results of the analysis showed that contrast was the essence of the comedy in the pages of selected works. It reflected the dichotomous vision of the world presented by the sender and recipient of the texts; a world in which Poles of Jewish origin were negatively evaluated. The presented comic texts, by spreading anti-Semitism, and harming representatives of the ethnic minority, are part of the phenomenon of linguistic aggression.

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