Anti-Semitism Appeals to Intellectuals Because It Feels Like an Idea

Gary Saul Morson’s characteristically learned and insightful essay on Dostoevsky raises the question of how a writer with such a profound understanding of good and evil could fall prey to such a rudimentary moral failing as Jew-hatred. As Morson says, the implications of this question go far beyond Dostoevsky himself. His example reveals one of the most troubling qualities of anti-Semitism, here and now as in 19th-century Russia: its shamelessness. Many people who congratulate themselves on their benevolence, and would be deeply ashamed of being exposed as racist or homophobic, take a certain pride in hating Jews.

This is not simple hypocrisy. Rather, it is a sign that anti-Semitism is differently constituted from other kinds of prejudice, so that to those who harbor it, it doesn’t feel like a prejudice at all. Instead, it feels like an idea.

Dostoevsky expresses this distinction in the letter to a Jewish correspondent quoted by Morson. The novelist complains about being “placed among the haters of Jews as a people,” protesting that “there was never any such hatred in my heart.” This is no doubt true: intellectuals are seldom governed by heart-hatred, which operates on the level of instinct and so is unable to give a rational account of itself. Racism and homophobia belong more to this category, and it is their essential unreasonableness that makes these prejudices exemplary targets for enlightenment.