Is this anti-semitism?

it's true he is not your standard believer of any of the main religions but dude is def not an atheist

I mean is this a thing an atheist says:

AJ: Another door I opened was mysticism. I’m a mystic. Not in the religious sense, but in the sense that I work with that unnamable entity we call God.

not in the religious sense?

p much, ya

IS: What about God? Does He exist?

AJ: As far as I’m concerned that’s a naive question.

IS: Excuse me for asking.

AJ: Because God is—He cannot exist because He’s beyond existence. Maimonides, a great Jewish philosopher, wrote A Guide for the Perplexed to try to define God. He ended up saying “God is the thing about which we can say nothing.” There are no words for Him; God is unthinkable.

IS: So you do believe.

AJ: I don’t believe in God, but I feel Him. I’d be stupid if I didn’t realize that this vast universe contains life. And it has a creator.

that's a pretty classic mystical-tradition way to define God - that which cannot be defined, beyond language, beyond comprehension etc. and he cites fucking Maimonides.

ur v angry about him being an atheist hey

like I'm glad you atheist guys think everyone who is not a fundamentalist does not actually qualify as a religious person but that is a nonsensical, ahistorical way to think about religion imo

xp

it's wrong! he would be angry!

xp

I re-scanned, and maybe you can call him spiritual, but his ideas are not what I think of when I think of a person that believes in God.

xp: I can understand if you think he is religious, though.

seems p clear that has operating in that ground btwn no god and we don't know everything yet its cool I'm flirting with a few concepts and I'll take that as atheism just not fundamentalist atheism.

we can all claim him I spose which maybe is his point idk

like I'm glad you atheist guys think everyone who is not a fundamentalist does not actually qualify as a religious person but that is a nonsensical, ahistorical way to think about religion imo

xp

This person who does not believe in a theistic God is clearly not an atheist

This is a guy who references God, religious thinkers, and religious themes and imagery constantly in his work, often with reverence and a deeply nuanced understanding of their traditions.

These are not things atheists do ime

I will ask him if he considers himself an atheist. Stay tuned

y/e sems determined not to acknowledge religion's deep and profound impact on all areas of human culture and experience, that seems like a pretty dumb limit to put on atheism and is not m/e

I re-scanned, and maybe you can call him spiritual, but his ideas are not what I think of when I think of a person that believes in God.

"Because God is—He cannot exist because He’s beyond existence. Maimonides, a great Jewish philosopher, wrote A Guide for the Perplexed to try to define God. He ended up saying “God is the thing about which we can say nothing.” There are no words for Him; God is unthinkable." < this is essentially what I and every educated Orthodox Jew I know believes. There's even a term for this theologically: Apophatic theology. So bad news if you think you're an atheist and you agree w/ the statement above - you believe in God, and in a very old tradition that spans multiple faiths + periods of history.

Thx mordy

bad news for u mordy, all of u are in fact atheists &moves rhetorical chess piece&

i don't know why you'd want to blur the lines between theism + atheism when every other god-believer out there has a 'all atheists secretly believe in god' argument in their back pocket

there's a levi of berditchev story:

There is a well-known story about the famous 18th century Chassidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who was well known for his empathy and non-judgmental character. One Rosh Hashanah he invited his neighbor to come with him to synagogue. The neighbor declined, saying, "Rebbe, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in G-d. It would be hypocritical of me to step foot in a synagogue." Rabbi Levi Yitzchak smiled and replied, "The G-d that you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either."

i like the twist here where the atheist replies, "the g-d you believe in, i also believe in."

everytime i read an interview w/ jodorowsky i hear it in my head spoken with his characteristic lisp. it's great.

a cool thing about Judaism is that one Jew might say "I don't believe in God" and another might say "I do believe in God" and mean more or less the same thing! I think that's neat.

Apophatic theology not limited to judaism either! Altho its maybe more widely expressed in judaism

This is a guy who references God, religious thinkers, and religious themes and imagery constantly in his work, often with reverence and a deeply nuanced understanding of their traditions.

These are not things atheists do ime

― Οὖτις

See, I can easily imagine an atheist doing this, because atheist or not, humanity's experience with God/religion informs so much of our culture and behavior.

I will yield to Mordy's point because I am a Catholic who lapsed into atheism at a very young age, and haven't studied religion at all (which makes me supremely qualified to shoot my mouth off about it on the internet).

I mean it's probably worth unpacking what we mean by "atheist" in this context b/c Jews adhering to various kinds of observance could variously have been called atheist, panentheist, etc. based on what they say about God and other Jews purporting to be atheist don't see it as much of an impediment to Jewish observance/practice.

E.g. I would call myself a "religious atheist Jew who forgets or doesn't get around to most forms of observance lately, also I don't mean I am a New Atheist" if anyone asked me, maybe that's for another thread

every other god-believer out there has a 'all atheists secretly believe in god' argument in their back pocket

i used to take these v seriously & wld pride myself on being able to evade all these arguments w/ my hyper-atheism. i def think the more trad nature of Judaism is attractive in that it seems to sidestep the modern redefinition of & obsession with belief in its post-enlightenment epistemological form

http://fathomjournal.org/antisemitism-and-oren-ben-dor/

ugh so creepy, vile

a lot of horribly & idiotically misused heideggerian language in those quotes, which makes it even creepier

otoh is it really shocking that Heidegger is perfectly compatible w/ horrific antisemitism?

well-

the way you put yr question is somewhat tendentious & i find it difficult to answer

easy answer of course is no, it's not shocking, but this guy's love of heideggerian language has more to do with heidegger the man's nazi affiliations in life than heidegger's philosophy per se

the words are hollowly heideggerian without heideggerian content; those quotes are horrific but also stupid

tbh i've avoided thinking v deeply about implications/relationship of heidegger's nazism to his philosophy

avoided thinking much at all, really :(

i was thinking a bit about it today bc of that article. i hadn't really looked at the black notebooks that had such a fuss about them until today and it is interesting how on some level (tho hardly totally) his philosophical project was related to his beliefs about jewishness

also read some of adorno's critique of hedeigger for the first time today in 'jargon of authenticity'

on some level (tho hardly totally) his philosophical project was related to his beliefs about jewishness

find myself resisting this characterization. but have to think on proper answer. & gotta leave computer rn (lol avoidance)

find it staggering and sad that such antisemitism could come from a jewish man

^yes :(

mordy, really do have to think (& read) about this more, but don’t agree with e.g. guardian headline ("antisemitism at core of his philosophy")

adorno’s critique is another v complicated thing, which i think not so much about antisemitism but (adorno’s) marxism vs (heidegger’s) existential phenomenology

don’t know adorno as well as i should, started ‘jargon of authenticity’ last night

there's a quip i like that (which I'm having trouble googling for attribution or exact wording) that went something like 'this antisemitism enterprise could really take off if the jews were in charge of it." alas, it's not so uncommon. i was just reading this yesterday: "Let us call these perjurious specimens Theobald-Jews. According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations." so this has been going on for quite a while.

re heidegger, i'm not prepared to make as sweeping a claim as that guardian headline that antisemitism lies at the core of his philosophy, but i don't think it's controversial to say that his philosophy turned out to be ultimately compatible with his antisemitism + nazism, that it wasn't a paradox in that he was articulating some kind of humanist vision and somehow overlooked its implication for treating jews as humans as well. cf http://www.critical-theory.com/7-new-translated-excerpts-on-heideggers-anti-semitism/ - it is not hard for me to read some of these excerpts and at once a) see how they fit seamlessly into Heidegger's broader projects of history, Dasein, etc and b) where Ben-Dor got it from

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/11/spain-law-citizenship-jews

and it only took half a millennium

http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/02/chapter-3-anti-minority-sentiment-not-rising/

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/07/a-body-blow-for-turkeys-ruling-party-election-erdogan-hdp-akp-kurdish-party/

AKP leaders have argued that an array of “lobbies” are aligned against them and bolstering the campaigns of their rivals. The claims have at times played off anti-Semitic tropes.

“There’s an economic lobby in the world, which is under the hand of the Jewish lobby, and these are the ones who want the AKP to fall,” Muhammed Akar, chairman of the AKP’s Diyarbakir branch, told Foreign Policy. “Not only the Jewish lobby, there is another movement — the Crusaders. Because the AKP government is the voice of the Muslims in Turkey, and all the world.”

fp tends to have better comments than other sites:

The best comment I have seen so far was from Ekaterina Shulman "Today's election results saved him from the gallows, although he does not yet understand". https://www.facebook.com/catherine.schulmann/posts/10207100498781821

Because the AKP government is the voice of the Muslims in Turkey, and all the world.”

ha! try telling that to any muslims not in turkey.

i like the point about erdogan's electoral defeat saving him from himself

the derangement of conspiracy theories need to be calibrated to the actual political conspiratoriality of a country

'no planers' would be towards the normcore end of things in turkey

Writing of Violence in the Middle East: Inflictions
https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1441106308
Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh - 2012 - ‎Philosophy
... where intellectual plurality falls to schizoid conspiratoriality, where knowing goes too far (becoming catastrophic), where enlightenment lasts too long (leaving ...

ftr

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/06/diane-rehm-asks-bernie-sanders-about-alleged-israeli-208583.html

Bern discussed on the 2016 prez thread

it's definitely anti-semitism though maybe not rehm's