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Horace Kallen Confronts America: Jewish Identity in Discursive Formation

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Horace Kallen Confronts America: Jewish Identity in Discursive Formation HORACE KALLEN CONFRONTS AMERICA: JEWISH IDENTITY IN DISCURSIVE FORMATION BY MATTHEW KAUFMAN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HUMANITIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO JANUARY 2017 © MATTHEW KAUFMAN, 2017 Abstract This study of the life and thought of American Jewish philosopher Horace Meyer Kallen (1882-1974) explores the discursive fields from which American Jewish modernity developed. Through a close analysis of Kallen's writings and relationships, of his engagement with print culture, and of his understanding of science and scientific culture, I describe one trajectory in the American Jewish community's discourses concerning science, religion, and secularism from the early twentieth century to mid-century. I trace how Kallen gained social capital through the popular press, and then used that capital to negotiate a new understanding of the place of Jews in America, becoming an architect of American Jewish ethnicity. I suggest that his importance as a theorist of ethnicity is located, in part, in his anticipation of current theoretical models. I contextualize Kallen within literary modernism, and suggest a new way to interpret his discursive interventions regarding America and democracy. I seek to recover Kallen's centrality to the social circulation of ideas concerning secularism and religion in America, and argue that his significance may be assessed by analyzing his deep and extended engagement with a number of prominent, public discourses. I contend that both the positive and negative responses to Kallen helped to establish the discursive frameworks in which Jewish ethnicity and its relationship to religion were debated. I conclude that Kallen's commitment to Jewish identity, seen as rooted in an evolving and diversified ethno-cultural process, is inextricably intertwined with the formative discourses of twentieth-century Jewish American life. ii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................................... II TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................ III INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 1 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................................................................................... 4 THE POLITICAL BACKDROP ............................................................................................................................................. 7 THE MELTING POT AND ORCHESTRATION ................................................................................................................ 10 ON KALLEN'S LEGACY ................................................................................................................................................... 13 ON SCIENCE AND PRINT CULTURE .............................................................................................................................. 15 RESPONSE TO MODERNITY ........................................................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER 1 HORACE KALLEN IN THE AMERICAN JEWISH PRESS: ON RACE AND HEBRAISM .......................................................................................................................................................................... 20 ON THE AMERICAN JEWISH PRESS .............................................................................................................................. 22 KALLEN ON RACE ........................................................................................................................................................... 28 THE JEWISH PRESS GIVES KALLEN A BOOST ............................................................................................................ 39 THE SCIENTIFIC VINDICATION OF THE HEBRAIC WORLDVIEW ............................................................................ 44 RACE SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE JEWISH PRESS .......................................................... 48 PSYCHOPHYSICAL INHERITANCE ................................................................................................................................. 50 COMPETING FOR SOCIAL CAPITAL .............................................................................................................................. 59 CHAPTER 2 ETHNICITY AS NATIONALITY: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PSYCHOPHYSICAL INHERITANCE .............................................................................................................................................. 61 THE MENORAH ASSOCIATION AND THE HEBRAIC PSYCHE .................................................................................... 65 THE MENORAH JOURNAL: POPULAR DISCOURSE CONCERNING PSYCHIC INHERITANCE .................................. 71 KALLEN AND DANIEL DERONDA .................................................................................................................................. 75 RACE AND RELIGION: ENTER ANTHROPOLOGY ........................................................................................................ 78 INVOKING NATIONALITY: JEWISH IDENTITY AS ETHNICITY .................................................................................. 86 CONTESTING THE LIMITS OF ETHNICITY ................................................................................................................... 98 REVISITING KALLEN'S MODEL OF ETHNICITY ........................................................................................................ 105 CHAPTER 3 HORACE KALLEN AS A MODERNIST: A DISCONTENT OF HOPE ........................ 109 PHILOSOPHICAL DARWINISM ..................................................................................................................................... 116 CULTIVATING A PUBLIC ............................................................................................................................................... 121 THE SOCIAL APPLICATION OF NATURAL SELECTION ............................................................................................ 129 EVOLUTION AND RHETORIC ....................................................................................................................................... 135 On Population Pressure ......................................................................................................................................... 139 On Sexual Selection ................................................................................................................................................. 141 A TIME OF TRANSITION .............................................................................................................................................. 146 THE NEW REPUBLIC AND THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH ............................................................... 150 iii THE DIAL ........................................................................................................................................................................ 153 MODERNISM AS LIFE: KALLEN AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART, SCIENCE, AND PUBLISHING ........................ 158 PRAGMATIC MODERNISM AND JEWISH IDENTITY .................................................................................................. 166 CHAPTER 4 ON SECULAR RELIGION: THE BOOK OF JOB AND DEMOCRACY ........................ 169 CREATION: KALLEN SECULARIZES JOB ..................................................................................................................... 172 REVELATION: PSYCHOLOGY RENARRATES RELIGION ........................................................................................... 180 De-Christianizing and Psychologizing Religion .......................................................................................... 182 Functionalist Psychology Secularizes Religion ........................................................................................... 188 Engaging with Jewish Religious Humanism: Kallen and Cronbach ................................................... 194 REDEMPTION: ON SECULARISM AS RELIGION ........................................................................................................ 202 REDEMPTION: ON JOB AND LIBERTY ........................................................................................................................ 214 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................. 220 THE STRUGGLE FOR IDENTITY ................................................................................................................................... 221 THE NEW PHYSICS, ART, AND BECOMING ............................................................................................................... 223 "THE PLAYING IS THE WRITING" .............................................................................................................................. 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................
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