Jeffrey S. Librett
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262915
- eISBN:
- 9780823266401
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262915.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern Orientalism. Retracing the path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the eighteenth to ...
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Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern Orientalism. Retracing the path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the book argues that Orientalism and anti-Judaism are inextricably entangled. The book suggests, further, that the violent colonialist assertion of Western “material” power in the East is predicated in the modern period upon a “spiritual” weakness of the West: its panic or anxiety about an absence of absolute foundations and values entailed by modernity itself. Secularization and the critique of arbitrary authority, that is, lead to a crisis of value in the West which Orientalism attempts to deny. In detailed readings of writers from the historicist and idealist period—Herder, F. Schlegel, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer—the book shows how the modern West posits, through disavowal, an Oriental origin as fetish to fill this absent place of lacking foundations. The book argues that this fetish is repeatedly appropriated as Western through a quasi-secularized application of Christian typology, or figural interpretation. In addition, the book reveals that this Western appropriation of the “good” Orient always leaves behind a remainder, the “bad,” inassimilable Orient. The Aryan-Semite opposition illustrates this with painful clarity. Finally, the book demonstrates how certain key modernists—such as Kafka, Mann, Freud, and to some extent Buber—place in question this historicist narrative of modern Orientalism. A number of methodological consequences emerge in the Conclusion, which also indicates how this problematic survives in contemporary German-language cultures.Less
Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern Orientalism. Retracing the path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the book argues that Orientalism and anti-Judaism are inextricably entangled. The book suggests, further, that the violent colonialist assertion of Western “material” power in the East is predicated in the modern period upon a “spiritual” weakness of the West: its panic or anxiety about an absence of absolute foundations and values entailed by modernity itself. Secularization and the critique of arbitrary authority, that is, lead to a crisis of value in the West which Orientalism attempts to deny. In detailed readings of writers from the historicist and idealist period—Herder, F. Schlegel, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer—the book shows how the modern West posits, through disavowal, an Oriental origin as fetish to fill this absent place of lacking foundations. The book argues that this fetish is repeatedly appropriated as Western through a quasi-secularized application of Christian typology, or figural interpretation. In addition, the book reveals that this Western appropriation of the “good” Orient always leaves behind a remainder, the “bad,” inassimilable Orient. The Aryan-Semite opposition illustrates this with painful clarity. Finally, the book demonstrates how certain key modernists—such as Kafka, Mann, Freud, and to some extent Buber—place in question this historicist narrative of modern Orientalism. A number of methodological consequences emerge in the Conclusion, which also indicates how this problematic survives in contemporary German-language cultures.
Walid Saleh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823264629
- eISBN:
- 9780823266821
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823264629.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter offers a comparison of Al-Biqāʿī (d. 1480), a Mamlūk scholar interested in the Hebrew Bible, and his younger contemporary Johannes Reuchlin (d. 1522), a Christian humanist and Hebraist ...
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This chapter offers a comparison of Al-Biqāʿī (d. 1480), a Mamlūk scholar interested in the Hebrew Bible, and his younger contemporary Johannes Reuchlin (d. 1522), a Christian humanist and Hebraist who played a key role in introducing Hebrew study to many European universities. Considering by the profound differences between these contemporary personages, Saleh reflects on the differences between Muslim and Christian engagement with the Hebrew Bible. Beginning with a discussion of what he calls a “difference of emotionality” between their approaches to the Hebrew Bible, Saleh considers the notable lack of engagement with or interest in Christian and especially Jewish scriptures among many Muslim exegetes and intellectuals. Arguing that Islamic exegesis generally avoided explicit confrontation and discussion of the Bible for both theological and linguistic reasons—it neither made theological sense nor was it an important part of early Arabic philological studies—Saleh concludes that this ignorance or indifference was the basis of a practical acceptance of Jews within Islamic societies.Less
This chapter offers a comparison of Al-Biqāʿī (d. 1480), a Mamlūk scholar interested in the Hebrew Bible, and his younger contemporary Johannes Reuchlin (d. 1522), a Christian humanist and Hebraist who played a key role in introducing Hebrew study to many European universities. Considering by the profound differences between these contemporary personages, Saleh reflects on the differences between Muslim and Christian engagement with the Hebrew Bible. Beginning with a discussion of what he calls a “difference of emotionality” between their approaches to the Hebrew Bible, Saleh considers the notable lack of engagement with or interest in Christian and especially Jewish scriptures among many Muslim exegetes and intellectuals. Arguing that Islamic exegesis generally avoided explicit confrontation and discussion of the Bible for both theological and linguistic reasons—it neither made theological sense nor was it an important part of early Arabic philological studies—Saleh concludes that this ignorance or indifference was the basis of a practical acceptance of Jews within Islamic societies.
