Modernity and Jewish Orthodoxy: Nietzsche and Soloveitchik on Life-Affirmation, Asceticism, and Repentance
Much ink has been spilt over the question of “Nietzsche and the Jews” ever since the distortion of Nietzsche's manuscripts by his sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, forged the links with Nazism that would be further developed by the likes of Alfred Bäumler into a “carefully orchestrated cult....
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2008
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2008, Volume: 101, Issue: 2, Pages: 253-284 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | Much ink has been spilt over the question of “Nietzsche and the Jews” ever since the distortion of Nietzsche's manuscripts by his sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, forged the links with Nazism that would be further developed by the likes of Alfred Bäumler into a “carefully orchestrated cult.” Though it is a portrait long dismissed in the academic world, a combination of Nazi propaganda and some subsequent scholarship has ensured that the picture of Nietzsche as a virulent anti-Semite who provided Nazism with its conceptual underpinnings lingers in the popular mind. Most scholars, however, now accept at worst a more ambivalent picture. Others go beyond ambivalence, with Weaver Santaniello turning the accusation of anti-Semitism on its head by arguing that Nietzsche's contempt for anti-Semitism was one of the driving forces behind his critique of liberal Christianity, which in its use of “conservative theological concepts . . . perpetuate[s] anti-Semitism.” Even Crane Brinton, arguably one of those scholars most responsible for perpetuating the misrepresentation of Nietzsche as an anti-Semite, insisted that he had never maintained “that Nietzsche was a ‘proto-Nazi’.” But whilst Nietzsche is almost universally exonerated from the charge of personal anti-Semitism, Brinton's claim that “occasionally [Nietzsche] comes very close indeed to the Nazi program,” though based on poor use of Nietzsche's writings and rightly dismissed by Walter Kaufmann, continues to find echoes even amongst more careful Nietzsche scholars, who claim that he “did have some responsibility for Nazi crimes.” |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816008001806 |