<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>Your gutter language and your association of my Catholic fath with anti-semitism on a public Esperanto email list does not help the language any more than Adler's dumb use of the word Esperanto. <br><br>Sent from my iPhone</div><div><br>On Oct 30, 2008, at 12:08 AM, Ralph Dumain <<a href="mailto:rdumain@autodidactproject.org">rdumain@autodidactproject.org</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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).<br><br>
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:<br><br>
Reisch, George. <i>How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of
Science</i>. Cambridge University Press, 2005. <br><br>
On the ideological development of anti-Semitism, see:<br><br>
Bronner, Stephen Eric. <i>A Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism,
Conspiracy, and the Protocols of Zion</i>. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2003. (1st ed., 2000)
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003048673-d.html">
Publisher description</a>.
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0614/2003048673-t.html">
Table of contents</a>.<br><br>
H-Net review: Linda Maizels.
"<a href="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</a>," H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews,
March, 2004.<br><br>
On the politics of Enlightenment & Counter-Enlightenment:<br><br>
Bronner, Stephen Eric. <i>Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics
of Radical Engagement</i>. New York: Columbia University Press,
2004. <br><br>
<br>
At 08:48 PM 10/29/2008, Jim Ryan wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite" cite="">Another entry in the long,
strange saga of the (mis-)(ab-)use of "Esperanto" by
non-Esperantists to mean heaven knows what. <br><br>
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:<br><br>
"Jewish and German by ancestry but anti-Semitic and Esperanto by
nature." <br><br>
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."<br><br>
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. <br><br>
"Anti-Semitic and Esperanto" is the most ridiculous pairing
since ... well, I'll let you all supply better examples of rhetorical
"odd couples." <br><br>
<font size="4"><b></b></font><b></b></blockquote>
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