Elad Lapidot will present his new book, which examines the role that opposition to anti-Semitism has played in shaping contemporary political philosophy. It argues that post-Holocaust philosophy identified the epistemological evil of anti-Semitic thought not in thinking against Jews, but in thinking of Jews. What philosophy denounced as anti-Semitic is the figure of “the Jew” in thought. This means that, paradoxically, opposition to anti-Semitism has generated a rejection of Jewish thought in post-Holocaust philosophy. Through critical readings of political philosophers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Sartre, Arendt, Badiou, and Nancy, the book contends that by rejecting Jewish thought, the opposition to anti-Semitism comes dangerously close to anti-Semitism itself, and at work in this rejection, is a problematic understanding of the relations between politics and thought—a troubling political epistemology.

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Sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program