[Membroj] Mort-al Foot in Mouth

[Ralph Dumain]

Thanks for the info. I should put this book on my reading list, given 
my interest in intellectual history, including the history of 
middlebrow culture and ideological conflict.  It's one more mark 
against Adler as a first-class asshole. However non-literally one 
interprets Adler's expression, it's pretty ridiculous. By 
"Esperanto", even if Adler means not strictly national, he doesn't go 
beyond the bounds of his fetish for what he thinks of as western 
civilization. As for "anti-Semitic", Adler's affinity for 
Catholicism, his hatred of the modern world, and his retrograde 
ideology explains this expression completely. Jewishness has been 
associated with hated modernity, rationalism, liberalism, radicalism, 
and democracy at least since the latter part of the 19th century, on 
the threshold of  a new stage of both capitalism and anti-Semitism. 
That Adler would turn against the progressive ideals of much of the 
Jewish intelligentsia explains his phraseology.  On the other hand, 
the use of "Esperanto" in this way as an adjective is not only 
ungrammatical, it goes contrary to Adler's organic conservative 
ideology, which in his time would likely have abominated Esperanto, 
which is arguably the progeny of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah).

One must look at the role of Adler and his pals at the University of 
Chicago, as well as those who opposed his crowd.  These ideological 
battles were being fought as the world reeled under the blows of 
fascism in the 1930s and '40s-- the modernist, pro-science faction 
(such as John Dewey and the refugee logical positivist philosophers) 
and the reactionary, obscurantist, turn-back-the-clock faction. I 
believe this conflict is documented in:

Reisch, George. How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science. 
Cambridge University Press, 2005.

On the ideological development of anti-Semitism, see:

Bronner, Stephen Eric. A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, 
Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion. New York: Oxford University 
Press, 2003. (1st ed., 2000) 
<http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003048673-d.html>Publisher 
description. 
<http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003048673-t.html>Table 
of contents.

H-Net review: Linda Maizels. 
"<http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=141461079742078>Review 
of Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, 
Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion," H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews, March, 2004.

On the politics of Enlightenment & Counter-Enlightenment:

Bronner, Stephen Eric. Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a 
Politics of Radical Engagement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.


At 08:48 PM 10/29/2008, Jim Ryan wrote:
>Another entry in the long, strange saga of the (mis-)(ab-)use of 
>"Esperanto" by non-Esperantists to mean heaven knows what.
>
>This one is from a book I'm reading, A Great Idea at the Time: The 
>Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books.  Great Books 
>scholar and booster Mortimer Adler is describing his own background 
>and temperament employing various contrasts, including:
>
>"Jewish and German by ancestry but anti-Semitic and Esperanto by nature."
>
>Huh?  In context, and knowing Adler, I think he means "not bound by 
>Jewish or German (or presumably any other) culture or traditions, 
>but rather international and cosmpolitan."
>
>But what a way to put it!  "Anti-Semitic and Esperanto"!  What an 
>ironic turn of phrase, especially given how Zamenhof was 
>intellectually nurtured by Jewish traditions, how he was a Yiddish 
>scholar as well as a general polyglot and linguist, and how 
>Homaranismo began as Hilelismo.  And how the Nazis persecuted 
>Esperanto as being a tool of the Jews, and how Zamenhof's children 
>died in concentration camps, etc. etc.  Esperanto was one of the 
>many gifts of Jewry to the world.
>
>"Anti-Semitic and Esperanto" is the most ridiculous pairing since 
>... well, I'll let you all supply better examples of rhetorical "odd 
>couples."
>
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