Godless Jews and Secular Christians: A Commentary on Gil Anidjar's "Jesus and Monotheism". (1st August 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zakin, Emily
• Is Part Of: Southern journal of philosophy. Volume 51(2013)Supplement 1
• Page Start: 184
• Page End: 195
• Publication Date: 2013-08-01
• Subjects: 105
• DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12018
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0038-4283

Abstract

Abstract: Responding to Gil Anidjar's "Jesus and Monotheism" and its posing of the "Christian Question, " in this paper I return to Freud's Moses and Monotheism and its narrative of Jewish self‐division. In highlighting the retroactive formation of identity, I note both its temporal dimension and the force of exclusivity it generates. This reading suggests a contrast between such theo‐political communities, with their legacies of affiliation, and Christian self‐absolution (the refusal of constitutive self‐division) with its image of a new man. I take a brief detour through Marx and Schmitt to examine the founding structures of secular modernity and the entanglement of liberalism with Christianity. Pursuing a hint offered by Anidjar that Christianity is not quite a tradition, I conclude that for Freud, the "Christian question" emerges as a kind of enigma: the dream of a community divorced from human modes of transmission, unbound by legacies of filiation to the past, and replacing the collective memory of a people with the end of human collectivity.