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Freud and Monotheism

Moses and the Violent Origins of Religion

Edited by Gilad Sharvit and Karen S. Feldman

Contributor(s): Jan Assmann, Richard Bernstein, Willi Goetschel, Ronald Hendel, Catherine Malabou, Gabriele Schwab, Yael Segalovitz, Gilad Sharvit and Joel Whitebook

Berkeley Forum in the Humanities

Pub Date: June 5, 2018

ISBN: 9780823280032

Page Count: 248

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Price: $31.00

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Description: Over the last few decades, vibrant debates regarding post-secularism have found inspiration and provocation in the works of Sigmund Freud. A new interest in psychoanalysis's relation to society has emerged, allowing Freud’s account of the interdependence of religion, ethics, and violence to gain currency in recent debates on modernity. In that context, the pivotal role of Freud’s masterpiece, Moses and Monotheism, is widely recognized.

Freud and Monotheism critically examines a range of discourses surrounding Freud and Moses, taking as its entry point Freud’s relations to Judaism, his conception of tradition and history, his theory of the mind, and his model of transgenerational inheritance. Highlighting the broad impact of Moses and Monotheism across the humanities, contributors from philosophy, comparative literature, cultural studies, Jewish studies, psychoanalysis, and Egyptology come together to illuminate Freud’s book and the modern world with which it grapples.
Reviews: There really is nothing new about anti-Semitism in the age of today’s white ethno-nationalism. Freud and Monotheism brings the debate about Sigmund Freud’s last work on the origins of anti-Semitism up to the present day. Gilad Sharvit and Karen Feldman have compiled a brilliant selection of essays examining the historical and philosophical underpinnings of Moses and Monotheism by the leading specialists on this complex and eternally engaging text. They illustrate quite well the complexity of understanding anti-Semitism from the standpoint of the victim of the Nazis in the 1940s or of the alt-right today. A must-add to any library on the history of anti-Semitism.---Sander Gilman, Emory University
Table of Contents: Introduction
Karen Feldman and Gilad Sharvit

“Why [the Jews] have Attracted this Undying Hatred”
Richard Bernstein

“Geistigkeit”: A Problematic Concept
Joel Whitebook

Heine and Freud: Deferred Action and the Concept of History
Willi Goetschel

Freud’s Moses: Murder, Exile, and the Question of Belonging
Gabriele Schwab

A Leap of Faith into Moses: Freud’s Invitation to Evenly Suspended Attention
Yael Segalovitz

Freud, Sellin, and the Murder of Moses
Jan Assmann

Creating the Jews: Mosaic Discourse in Freud and Hosea
Ronald Hendel

Is Psychic Phylogenesis only a Phantasy? New Biological Developments in Trauma Inheritance
Catherine Malabou

Moses and the Burning Bush: Leadership and Potentiality in the Bible
Gilad Sharvit

Notes

List of Contributors

Index
Details: ISBN-13 9780823280032
Published: 2018-06-05

Trim: 6.000in x 9.000in x 0.000in
Contributors: Contributions: Jan Assmann
Contributions: Richard Bernstein
Edited: Karen S. Feldman
Karen S. Feldman is Associate Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Binding Words: Conscience and Rhetoric in Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger.
Contributions: Willi Goetschel
Contributions: Ronald Hendel
Contributions: Catherine Malabou
Catherine Malabou, holder of Visiting Chairs in numerous North American universities, teaches philosophy at the CRMEP (Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy) at Kingston University (UK). The most recent of her books are, Changing Difference: The Feminine in Philosophy, and, with Judith Butler, You Will Be My Body for Me.
Contributions: Gabriele Schwab
Contributions: Yael Segalovitz
Contributions: Gilad Sharvit
Gilad Sharvit is a Townsend Fellow at the Townsend Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley.
Contributions: Joel Whitebook