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History: Hamann and Hitler

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Betz sharply, and rightly, dismisses Berlin’s suggestion that Hamann’s “irrationalism” is the deep source of National Socialism: “let is be stated at the outset that Hamann was a friend of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn; that he denounces the persecution of the Jews; that he called Judaism the ‘bodily mother of evangelical Christianity’; and that he passionately defended the election of Israel against what he considered to be the anti-Semitic implications of the natural religion of the Enlightenment.” He concedes that “Hamann’s emphasis upon the senses and the passions against a rationalist aesthetic canon can remotely be connected” to the Nazi movement, but suggests that the Final Solution is ultimately closer to the “arithmetique politique” endorsed by Berlin and the Enlightenment.

Supporting this, Betz quotes from one of Hamann’s letters: “Has Jesus ceased being the king of the Jews. Has the inscription on his cross been changed? Do we not persecute him in his people?”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 3:07 pm

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History: Hamann and Hitler

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