Jewish linguistic tradition predisposed assimilated intellectuals toward dialectical theory and psychoanalysis

Evidence

One important similarity, which is especially crucial for an understanding of Critical Theory, is the old cabalistic idea that speech rather than pictures was the only way to approach God. The distance between Hebrew, the sacred language, and the profane speech of the Diaspora made its impact on Jews who were distrustful of the current universe of discourse. This, so Habermas has argued, parallels the idealist critique of empirical reality, which reached its height in Hegelian dialectics. Although one cannot draw a very exact line from the Frankfurt School’s Jewish antecedents to its dialectical theory, perhaps some predisposition did exist. The same might be argued for its ready acceptance of psychoanalysis, which proved especially congenial to assimilated Jewish intellectuals. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 168

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Habermas’s broader arguments about the Jewish-German Idealist affinities, and to discussions of why assimilated Jewish intellectuals took up psychoanalysis as a cosmopolitan discipline. — connects to: Assimilated Jews’ role-playing bitterness fed radical critique despite claimed non-discrimination — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 166; Ghettoization concentrated and intensified Jewish intellectual life; Assimilation paradoxically produced Jewish chauvinism rather than dissolving it (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Explains the cabalistic priority of speech over image as a root of dialectical critique of empirical reality.

Broader Connections

• Assimilation converted Jewish origin from political fact into a psychological trait #expands (0.80)
• Ghettoization concentrated and intensified Jewish intellectual life #complicates (0.75)
• Assimilation paradoxically produced Jewish chauvinism rather than dissolving it #complicates (0.72)