PHILOSOPHY AND JUDEOPHOBIA

Judaism served as a foil in defining Christianity for its key theologians. Philosophers also played an integral role in the shift from religious anti-Judaism to racial anti-Semitism. Christian supersessionism was arguably the model for the dialectical reason that was the signature of Hegelian philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, too, was a powerful critic of modernity, objecting to how mass society eroded the capacity for individuality and creativity. Levinas’s ethical project focuses on the infinite responsibility for the Other, violated by the racism inherent in Western thought. A reconsideration of Western philosophy and the Enlightenment project would continue in the generation of French thinkers grouped together as post-structuralists or postmodernists. The resulting philosophical Judeophobia proves paradoxical. Christianity inadequately failed to recognize its Jewish inheritance, but also ultimately failed to overcome it, with Jews and Judaism presented as pre-Christian holdovers.