Réflexions sur la question juive (1946)

Anti-Semite and Jew (French: Réflexions sur la question juive, "Reflections on the Jewish Question") is an essay about antisemitism written by Jean-Paul Sartre shortly after the Liberation of Paris from German occupation in 1944. The first part of the essay, "The Portrait of the Antisemite", was published in December 1945 in Les Temps modernes. The full text was then published in 1946.

The essay analyzes four characterisations and their interactions: The antisemite, the democrat, the authentic Jew, and the inauthentic Jew. It explains the etiology of hate by analyzing antisemitic hate. According to Sartre, antisemitism (and hate more broadly) is, among other things, a way by which the middle class lay claim to the nation in which they reside, and an oversimplified conception of the world in which the antisemite sees "not a conflict of interests but the damage an evil power causes society."

The essay deals not with racist hatred of living Jews, but with Judaism and imaginary Jews as a category of fantasy projected in the thought of the antisemite, a phenomenon described as antijudaism by intellectual historian David Nirenberg in citing this essay and its salient observation that "if the Jew did not exist, the anti-semite would invent him."

Summary

Definition of antisemitism

Sartre begins by defining antisemitism as characterized by certain beliefs: attributing "all or part of his own misfortunes and those of his country to the presence of Jewish elements in the community, ... proposes to remedy this state of affairs by depriving the Jews of certain of their rights, by keeping them out of certain economic and social activities, by expelling them from the country, by exterminating all of them ...." He then describes the concept that these antisemitic beliefs are produced by external causes, such as the experience of objective situations involving Jews. Sartre states that these non-contradictory conceptions are "dangerous and false" and refuses to "characterize as opinion a doctrine that is aimed directly at particular persons and that seeks to suppress their rights or to exterminate them."

Sartre argues that antisemitism is not an "idea" in the commonly understood sense of the word: it is not a point of view based rationally upon empirical information calmly collected and calibrated in as objective a manner as is possible. Sartre states that "It is first of all a passion." It is also often a deep passion, "Some men are suddenly struck with impotence if they learn from the woman with whom they are making love that she is a Jewess. It is an involvement of the mind, but one so deep-seated and complex that it extends to the physiological realm, as happens in cases of hysteria."

Sartre tells of a classmate of his who complained that he had failed the agrégation exam while a Jew, the son of eastern immigrants, had passed. There was – said Sartre's classmate – no way that that Jew could understand French poetry as well as a true Frenchman. But Sartre's classmate admitted that he disdained the agrégation and had not studied for it. "Thus to explain his failure, he made use of two systems of interpretation… His thoughts moved on two planes without his being in the least bit embarrassed by it." Sartre's classmate had adopted in advance a view of Jews and of their role in society. "Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter that explained his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." Antisemitism is a view that arises not from experience or historical fact, but from itself. It lends new perspective to experience and historical fact. The antisemite convinces himself of beliefs that he knows to be spurious at best.

Bad faith

Sartre deploys his concept of bad faith as he develops his argument. For Sartre, the antisemite has escaped the insecurity of good faith, the impossibility of sincerity. He has abandoned reason and embraced passion. Sartre comments that, "It is not unusual for people to elect to live a life of passion rather than of reason. But ordinarily they love the objects of passion: women, glory, power, money. Since the anti-Semite has chosen hate, we are forced to conclude that it is the state of passion that he loves." He chooses to reason from passion, to reason falsely "because of the longing for impenetrability. The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may intervene to cast doubt on it." Antisemites are attracted by "the durability of a stone." What frightens them is the uncertainty of truth. "The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith." He has escaped responsibility and doubt. He can blame anything on the Jew; he does not need to engage reason, for he has his faith.