Sartre: The Jew and the Anti-Semite Free Essay

Communism and Fascism: the Desire for Peaceful and Impartial Rivalry With Its Creator

In history, the twentieth century will remain an era of great discoveries, great upheavals and great madness, which shuddered the world in horror and rapture because insanity infects, while the magnitude of events fascinates. Exploring the past events, it can be said that most of the Eurasian continent was hit by an epidemic of totalitarianism. In the USSR, the sky was drawn down with barbed wire: the people built a “concentration camp” for themselves under the energetic marches. China experienced a slow, but victorious march of the second revolution. In Germany, the heralds of the “new order” raged. In Italy, crowds gathered at fascist rallies. Communism and fascism went on the offensive with the common goal of redrawing and rebuilding the world, secretly and uselessly competing in this with its Creator. The ancient idea of ​​“cleansing” with fire was revived, and the fires of the Middle Ages flared up again. Civilization turned aggression on itself, having begun to selflessly destroy a person. It was a period, when philosophical wanderings and everyday contradictions made of the figure of a French writer and philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most respected and at the same time hated intellectuals of the past century. Thus, the main aims of the assignment are to explore the Jewish question from different angles, and understand the reasons, which forced Jean-Paul Sartre to state that the Jewish man is alone in society.

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To begin the discussion, it is possible to note that existentialism, the “philosophy of existence”, emerged almost simultaneously in several European countries as a response to misanthropic ideologies, when other schools of philosophical thought found their helplessness. It became the rebirth of humanism, a powerful impetus for the development of art and science. The seemingly simple idea of the inseparable unity of the world and man turned out to be as unexpected as it was fruitful. In such a way, most of the representatives of the new trend have appeared in France.

The most active period of Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905-1980) creativity, the founder of French existentialism, came in the 30s – 50s. He saw Europe shaken by the World War I, gripped by fearful forebodings, belligerent sentiments and hysteria of anti-Semitism. Then there was the World War II and the holocaust. The post-war years brought not as much expected repose to society as new social and psychological problems. Thus, Sartre’s book “Anti-Semite and Jew” responds to many issues associated with the role of Jews in those time society, and the people’s attitude to this nation. Moreover, this book can be also considered Sartre’s attempt to analyze anti-Semitism from different perspectives, while it is not a deep academic study, and Sartre did not set this goal. At that time, the author was not familiar enough with Jewish history, but his interest forced him to observe this issue with many unexpected details.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s four categorizations, such as the anti-Semite, the democrat, the inauthentic and authentic, allowed proving a position that the Jew to whom the anti-Semite is aiming is not an abstract object defined in administrative law by its functions, but a person who is observed in the criminal code by its position and deeds. The speech is going about a Jew, who is the son of Jewish parents; he can be distinguished by his appearance, hair color, perhaps, by clothes and by character. Anti-Semitism does not belong to the category of ideas falling under the protection of the right to freedom of opinion. Moreover, it can be said that this is not an idea at all because anti-Semitism is a kind of certain faith.

To continue, having analyzed the main ideas presented in the book, it can be said that for Sartre, anti-Semitism is a person’s refusal of complexity and individuality in favor of deathly wholeness. It even seems that Sartre’s anti-Semite image is deeper and more successful than the Jew’s image, since he saw the former more often than the latter. However, the Jews familiar to Sartre at that time (writers, politicians, intellectual friends) were mostly assimilated from old Jewish-French families and knew not as much about Jewish culture as the author wanted to know.

Demonstrating the position that the Jewish man is alone in society, it can be claimed that according to Sartre, the Jew is just an excuse. In other places, his twin is the Negro or the man with yellow skin. In such a way, Sartre believed that Judaism and Jews exist only because of anti-Semitism, while a Jew is someone whom other people consider a Jew. An anti-Semite creates a Jew. The children of Israel are not united either by the past, or by religion, or by land. They are held together only by the hatred and contempt of other nations. Explaining such a position, Sartre mentioned that people created this category to follow their personal goals, while this category has no sense except of making the Jews victims and blame them for many misfortunes (Sartre, 1944).

According to Sartre’s opinion, if a certain person has an opinion that the misfortunes of the country and his own misfortunes are fully or partially explained by the presence of Jewish elements in society, if he proposes to remedy this situation and to do this by depriving the Jews of certain civil rights, or remove them from certain functions, or to expel them from a particular territory, or to destroy them at all, it is possible to say that this person is an anti-Semite (Sartre, 1944). It means that there are two most common opinions about the causes of anti-Semitism. The first one says that there is no “causes” because the Jews are hated without any justification, and anti-Semites simply invent reasons to justify their attitude towards the Jews. The second one says that the manifestation of racism in people’s minds, is similar to a fear of responsibility for own lives.

Giving some additional explanations, it becomes obvious that anti-Semitism is a kind of “passion” and a prejudice that cannot be confirmed by facts. It seems that the anti-Semite gives out his fear to go deep into the secret corners of his consciousness. Instead of “getting out of himself,” he prefers to hide in cowardice of a welcoming and external reality for him. Therefore, he has no need to confront himself. Such illusory interiorism is reinforced by the cult of tradition, which is opposed by both mind and money. The anti-Semite uses a Jew to achieve the illusion of his identity, to turn himself into an unambiguous object — to objectify and at the same time find peace (identity with another, that is, false identity). In other words, it is the acquisition of negative identity, besides the identity of national, historical and moral. The anti-Semite chooses anti-Semitism for the purpose to ignore the necessity to choose one’s own identity. Thus, the place of the Jews is determined by a social context of their existence.

Observing the ways in which the democrat influences on the Jewish man loneliness in society, it is good to cite the following: “The Jews have one friend, however, the democrat. But he is a feeble protector. No doubt he proclaims that all men have equal rights; no doubts he has founded the League for the Rights of Man; but his own declarations show the weakness of his position” (Sartre, 1944). It follows that this defense saves the Jew as a man, destroying him as a Jew. There are no Jews, according to this position; therefore, the Jewish question does not exist. This means that a democrat wants to separate a Jew from his religion, from his family, from his ethnic community and place him in a democratic retort, from where he will emerge renewed, lonely and naked.

Moreover, “the anti-Semite and the democrat tirelessly carry on their dialogue without ever understanding one another or realizing that they are not talking about the same things” (Sartre, 1944). To explain, the anti-Semite reproaches a Jew with the fact that he is a Jew; while the democrat is inclined to reproach a Jew with feeling that he is a Jew. These two categories, even having different points of view on the Jewish issue, greatly influence on the situation by taking away the Jewish identity.

A Jew, therefore, is one whom society defines as a Jew. However, he should be self-determined in this situation, take this or that position, since he is in any case acting in a given situation, being involved (but not determined) in it. An unauthentic existence (“an unauthentic Jew”) results from a refusal from realizing the situation, not being ready to accept one’s existence as it is, an attempt to act by conditioning oneself from outside. Moreover, here can be seen an attempt to abandon own Jewish roots (often developing into “Jewish anti-Semitism”), and assert own identity as others see the Jews, staying alone, but being wholly determined by existing social context.

In conclusion, we have explored the main ideas presented in Sartre’s book “Anti-Semite and Jew”, and have realized that Sartre is trying to analyze the Jewish question in his own way. He consistently applies two approaches to the problem – the external (the positions of the anti-Semite and the democrat) and the internal (the position of the Jew). Ultimately, he comes to the fact that he overturns the position – external, defined as attitude towards a Jew, and turns it into an internal one. Thus, Sartre demonstrates a society that creates a Jew, and in relation to which one, who is already defined as a Jew, is being eternally stuck in the present and forced to be determined.

Work Cited

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1944.