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Abstract
The intellectual history determined by the 1968 students' revolt sometimes appears as a ghost scene, emerging from the strong identification of the radical students with Jews and Judaism. This essay wishes to demonstrate the inner connection between the messianic political theology of the movement and the psychological effects of this over-identification, leading to a leftist anti-Semitism. While the revolutionary students saw themselves as the true successors of Jewish revolutionary messianism, they accused the real Jew, the one who settled in Israel, of being an imperialist traitor. The essay reconstructs the metamorphosis of these ghosts in a “phenomenology of the spirits” as a “Geistergeschichte” behind the official “Geistesgeschichte.” Against this pathological path the essay presents Jürgen Habermas's reflections on the ethics of memory as its best therapy.
Notes
1. Clausen, Theodor Adorno, 23.
2. Adorno, Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?, 566.
3. Kant, “Traeume eines Geistersehers erlaeutert durch Traeume der Metaphysik.”
4. Heine, Die Harzreise, 102ff.
5. Ascher, Germanomania. See Grab, “Saul Ascher.” There have been a couple of studies which have rediscovered this almost forgotten radical liberal as a source of anti-nationalism. See Hacks, Ascher gegen Jahn, and Puschner, Antisemitismus im Kontext der politischen Romantik.
6. Hegel, Phaenomenologie des Geistes, 590.
7. Scholem, “Zum Verstaendnis der messianischen Idee im Judentum,” 74.
8. See Kraushaar, Die Bombe im juedischen Gemeindehaus, 89. See also Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke.
9. Kraushaar, Die Bombe im juedischen Gemeindehaus, 98.
10. Marcuse, “Triebstruktur und Gesellschaft,” 142.
11. Marcuse, “Versuch ueber die Befreiung,” 250.
12. Dutschke, Wir hatten ein barbarisches schoenes Leben, 220.
13. Ibid, 142.
14. Bloch, Thomas Muenzer als Theologe der Revolution.
15. Kraushaar, Die Bombe im juedischen Gemeindehaus, 48.
16. Meinhof, “Die Aktion des schwarzen Septembers,” 151ff.
17. See Aust, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, 280.
18. See Taubes, “Der Messianismus und sein Preis.”
19. Agamben, Homo Sacer, Ch. 2.4.4.
20. See Walser, “Auschwitz und kein Ende.”
21. Vesper, Die Reise.
22. Schneider, Vati.
23. See Strauss, “Anschwelleneder Bocksgesang.”
24. Sloterdijk, Kritik der zynischen Vernunft.
25. Sloterdijk, Weltfremdheit.
26. Von Harnack, Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott.
27. See the two works by Hirsch, Deutsches Volkstum; Christliches Bekennen.
28. This phenomenon has been brilliantly described by Grass, Im Krebsgang.
29. Fischer, Von gruener Kraft und Herrlichkeit, 27.
30. Habermas, “Keine Normalisiserung der Vergangenheit.” See also Habermas,“Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit heute.”
31. Habermas, “Vom oeffentlichen Gebrauch der Geschichte,” 140.
32. Ibid., 93. In his essay “Geschichtsbewusstsein und posttraditionale Identitaet––Die Wertorientierung der Bundesrepublik,” the author suggests that the specific forms of young Germans' avoidance of dealing with the past could be compared to Kierkegaard's interpretation of the self in flight from itself. The difference is that Habermas is not interested in the theological interpretation of this existential phenomenon, but in a rather profane understanding of its consequences for a political concept of historical responsibility.
33. Benjamin, “Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,” 250.
34. Benjamin,“Politisch-theologisches Fragment,” 203.
Additional information
Christoph Schmidt is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main fields of research are political theology and the phenomenology of religion. His latest publications (in German): Hugo Ball: The Apocalypse of the Subject (Aisthesis, 2003); The Theopolitical Hour (Fink, 2009); The Return of the Dead Souls (forthcoming, Vandenhoek Rupprecht).