Améry and Sartre: The Necessity and Impossibility of Being an Authentic Jew

Abstract

This chapter argues that Améry elaborates his account of Jewish identity in critiquing Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of Jewishness and the ethnic-religious view of Jewishness in Anti-Semite and Jew (1944). It shows that Améry thinks that Sartre’s notions of the authentic and inauthentic Jew are historically insensitive and the ethnic-religious view of Jewishness is too restrictive. His main contention is that both accounts undermine individual agency. His alternative is dignified Jewishness, which consists in preserving the memory of the catastrophe and tragedy of the Holocaust, while resisting and revolting against the oppression of Jewish communities. The chapter concludes with the observation that in positing solidarity and empathy as media to relate to fellow Jews, Améry proposes a take on Jewishness as the humanity of an oppressed and suffering community. This account of Jewishness restores continuity between the humanity of Jewish communities and universal humanity, while preserving the distinctive dimension of Jewishness after the Third Reich.