ABSTRACT
In 1947, Jean-Paul Sartre gave a lecture sponsored by the Alliance Israélite Universelle that summarized the main ideas found in his book, Anti Semite and Jew – a book that one might describe as a long meditation on “La Question Juive.” Levinas (1946) wrote a short response to the lecture, which was then published in the Cahiers d’Alliance, along with passages from Sartre’s talk (Levinas, 1999). Levinas opens with his praise for Sartre, noting how nice it is to hear someone who is not Jewish speak on these themes in this way. However, he is less impressed with Sartre’s sympathetic response than he is with the new “weapon” Sartre deploys to identify the structure of anti-Semitism. Using existentialism and the structures of existence in the modern world on which to base his response, Sartre is able to escape the trap of those who came before him – those who discussed our material condition but then advocated for anti-Semitism, the poets of blood and soil, he calls them. These he links to Nietzsche’s legacy.
