History 427/527: Modern German Intellectual History (McCole)
Reading Questions: Buber and Schorske
Martin Buber, “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism” (1916)
1. How does Buber describe the world of the “Orient?” How does he
contrast it with the Occident (the West, or Europe)? Does anything here remind
you of Nietzsche’s contrast between the Apollonian and the Dionysian?
2.
What does Buber see as distinctive about the Jews within the “Oriental” world?
In particular, what is Teshuvah (67, 70)?
3. According to Buber, what can the
Jews contribute to the culture of Europe? Why are they in a position to do this?
4. Buber asserts that even in Europe, “the Jew has remained an Oriental” (75-76).
Why is this point so important for him? Who is he addressing? Who else, at
the time, might have made a similar point?
5. What is Buber’s point about the
Eastern European Jews (76)?
6. Buber hopes that the Jews will re-establish contact
with “the continuity of life in Palestine” (77). Why is this necessary?
7. Buber concludes by referring to his own time as “the era of the Asiatic
crisis” (77). What is this crisis? What role can the Jews play in resolving
it?
Carl Schorske, “Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio”
1. Why
were the three movements Schorske describes so disturbing to Austrian liberals?
What view of Austrian liberalism does he give us? Were all three movements
disturbing in the same way? What does he mean by describing them as pursuing
politics in
a “sharper key” (119)?
2. Von Schönerer advocated a program
based on “radical democracy, social reform, and nationalism” that
Schorske likens to populism in the U.S. around the same time. Von Schönerer
also became a pioneer of modern political anti-Semitism (126ff). How did all
these things fit together?
3. According to Schorske, Lueger represents “the
murky transition from democratic to protofascist politics” (138-139). What
is “protofascism?” How and why did Lueger make this transition?
4.
Schorkse sees in both von Schönerer and Lueger a move “from the politics
of reason to the politics of fantasy” (134). What does he mean by a politics
of reason, and who represented it? What is the significance of this shift?
5.
Do you find it odd that Schorske groups Herzl, a Zionist, with two of the pioneers
of political anti-Semitism? Why does he do so? Beneath the obvious differences,
what is the “deep kinship with Schönerer and Lueger” that
Schorske sees in Herzl (160ff)?