num_pages: 128
description: Marx said about the petit-bourgeois that he sees in every object two aspects, bad and good, and tries to keep the good and fight the bad. One should avoid the same mistake in dealing with Judaism: the "good" Levinasian Judaism of justice, respect for and responsibility towards the other, etc., against the "bad" tradition of Jehovah, his fits of vengeance and genocidal violence against the neighboring people. This is the illusion to be avoided: one should assert a Hegelian "speculative identity" between these two aspects and see in Jehovah the support of justice and responsibility. Judaism is as such the moment of unbearable absolute contradiction, the worst (monotheistic violence) and the best (responsibility towards the other) in absolute tensionthe two are the same, coinciding, and simultaneously absolutely incompatible. Christianity resolves the tension and introduces a cut: the "Bad" itself (finitude, cut, the gesture of difference, "differentiation," a! s the Communists used to put it"the need for ideological differentiation") as directly the source of Good. In a move from In-itself to For-itself, Christianity merely assumes the Jewish contradiction.
language: English
title: Lacanian Ink 23
titlecomplete: Lacanian Ink 23
ratings_count: 5
publisher: The Wooster Press