Resistance Is Not Futile

 A short post, probably muddled by having read James A. Diamond's The Devastation of Philosophy: Nazi Jurisprudence, the Shoah, and Fackenheim's Transcendental Wonder of Resistance, a review of James A. Diamond on Kenneth Hart Green's The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim: From Revelation to the Holocaust, after having awakened from 6 hours asleep thanks to my muscle relaxers.

I admit the review goes into deep water and should be read in full. One stray thought came to mind, a reminder of an old Usenet discussion about why Stalin's murderous regime did not get as much attention as Hitler's, when the review mentioned the philosophers arrayed against Fackenheim. They were all German. There is the difference between Stalin and Hitler: Hitler attacked German philosophy and its humanistic metaphysics. 

Resistance is, however, the subject here. I have also been reading about Albert Camus, so the following struck home:

Green refers to concrete paradigms cited by Fackenheim of resistance mounted during the Shoah, which he considered so powerful as to provide an antidote to the ‘diabolical’ evil they confronted. A heroic act of resistance is “a novum of inexhaustible wonder, just as the Holocaust itself is a novum of inexhaustible horror.” Resistance reaches its crescendo on a national scale in the establishment of the State of Israel as the supreme fulfillment of that 614th commandment, redemptive not only for all Jews, both orthodox and secular, but universally so. As Green concludes, the resistance embodied in the heroic successes of the Zionist project flow directly from resistance effected during the Holocaust, “offering hope of survival not only to the Jews but to all mankind and hope also for restoring (belief in) God.” This idea closes the circle in the span of Fackenheim’s struggle with the fraught nihilistic implications of the Holocaust since its impetus was the Six Day War of 1967 and its looming possibility of another Holocaust that roused his theology “from its dogmatic slumber and quickly turned him toward an unyielding focus on the Holocaust.” But this transcendent notion of resistance leads to what I believe is Fackenheim’s most important legacy, not only for Jews but for a world that seeks to make sense of evil all around us, of human rights violations around the globe. Such a philosophy goes beyond mere survival of circumstance because it asserts the human right to dignity and freedom from oppression, it provides a reason; resistance is the assertion of tzelem Elohim, it is brandishing a living flame in the face of every force that seeks to obliterate the divine spark.

What else can we do except resist our worst impulses? That is part of free will - to do good or do evil.

 There is also an interesting view of Israel as an act of resistance. This gives another perspective on anti-Zionism.

Fackenheim’s philosophical theology identifying tikkun, or mending of the world, veritably with “Israel itself” is now, in the face of the growing herd of voices seeking to dismantle it, more urgent than ever. I do not refer to legitimate criticism of state policies—to which Israel is not immune—but rather anti-Zionism. What this amounts to is no less than the sole call in the world to relinquish political sovereignty of a nation that is the sole historical victim to near total extinction made possible by its very statelessness, and of the sole ancient people to reclaim its indigenous roots. Only ‘diabolical’ antisemitism can account for such animus.

Which raises the question if one can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic? 

I still hold that one can be anti-Netanyahu without being either anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic.

sch 10-13