Werner Sombart on the Jewish Character
(left, The distinguished German sociologist Werner Sombart, 1863-1941, was an informed and generally sympathetic observer of the Jewish people.)
In the excerpt below (from pp. 183-7) he explores the Jewish character which he describes as being overly intellectual and goal-oriented.
by Werner Sombart
The intellectuality of the Jew is so strong that it tends to develop at the expense of other mental qualities, and the mind is apt to become one-sided.
The Jew certainly sees remarkably clearly, but he does not see much.
he has lost the true conception of life, of its oneness, of its being an
organism, a natural growth. In short, he has lost the true conception of
the personal side of life. General experience must surely support this
view; but if other proofs are demanded they will be found in the pecu-
liarities of Jewish law, which abolished personal relationships and replaced them by impersonal, abstract connections or activities or aims.
Hence the [Jewish] lack of sympathy for every status where the nexus is a
personal one. The Jews’ whole being is opposed to all that is usually
understood by chivalry, to all sentimentality, knight-errantry, feudalism, patriarchalism. Nor does he comprehend a social order based on relationships such as these. “Estates of the realm” and craft organizations are a loathing to him.
The conception of the universe in the mind of such an intellectual people must perforce have been that of a structure well-ordered in accordance with reason. By the aid of reason, therefore, they sought to understand the world; they were rationalists, both in theory and in practice.
Now as soon as a strong consciousness of the ego attaches itself to
the predominating intellectuality in the thinking being, he will tend to
group the world round that ego. In other words, he will look at the world
from the point of view of end, or goal, or purpose.
find in it this teleological tendency, which has sometimes been called
extreme subjectivity. Whether or no the Indo-Germanic races are objec-
tive and the Semitic subjective,certain it is that the Jews are the most
subjective of peoples. The Jew never loses himself in the outer world,
never sinks in the depth of the cosmos, never soars in the endless realms
of thought, but, as Jellinek well puts it, dives below the surface to seek
for pearls.
He brings everything into relation with his ego. He is for ever asking why, what for, what will it bring? Cui bono? His greatest interest is always in the result of a thing, not in the thing itself. It is un-Jewish to regard any activity, be it what you will, as an end in itself; un-Jewish to live your life without having any purpose, to leave all to chance; un-Jewish to get harmless pleasure out of Nature.
a tachlis; life itself, whether as a whole or in its single activities, must
have some tachlis, and so must the universe. Those who assert that the
meaning of Life, of the World, is not tachlis but tragedy, the Jew will
reckon as foolish visionaries.
How deeply the teleological view of things is embedded in the nature of the Jew may be seen in the case of those of them who, like the Chassidim, pay no attention to the needs of practical life because “there is no purpose in them.” There is no purpose in making a living, and so they let their wives and children starve, and devote themselves to the study of their sacred books.
When this attitude of mind that seeks for a purpose in all things is
united with a strong will, with a large fund of energy (as is generally the
case with the Jew), it ceases to be merely a point of view; it becomes a
policy. The man sets himself a goal and makes for it, allowing nothing
whatever to turn him aside from his course; he is determined, if you like,
stiff-necked. Heine in characterizing his people called it stubbornness,
and Goethe said that the essence of the Jewish character was energy and
the pursuit of direct ends.
2013-01-15 11:52:42
Source: http://www.henrymakow.com/werner-sombart-on-jewish-character.html
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