Thursday, April 19, 2012

The 1st Emergence from Hell –the Scholar Lays Intellectual Siege to the Zeitgeist

            The 1st Emergence from Hell –the Scholar Lays Intellectual Siege to the Zeitgeist


            My father had plenty of time, during his two years in prison, to further his intellectual insights into contemporary philosophy. Upon his release, he returned to Austria and  pondered what the future had in store.
            In the meantime, he penned his thoughts into a series of three articles on the position of Judaism as the “ nay-sayer” of civilization, especially in contrast to the most popular intellectual trends of his day: Economic determinism as expressed in Marxism; Genetic determinism as expressed in Nazi Racism; Cultural determinism as expressed in Fascism; and psychological determinism as expressed in the depth psychology schools of Freud and Jung. Finally, in the second and third essay, he attacks the enthronement of instinctual drives in neo-Romanticism as expressed by D.H. Lawrence and Nietsche and culminating in the nihilism inherent in National Socialism—Nazism.