Franz Baermann Steiner
Encyclopedia
Franz Baermann Steiner (born 12 October 1909 in the town of Karlín
(the later suburb of Karolinethal), just outside Prague
, Bohemia
, died 27 November 1952, in Oxford
) was an ethnologist, polymath
, essayist, aphorist
, and poet
. He was familiar, apart from German
, Yiddish, Czech
, Greek
and Latin
, with both classical
and modern Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish
, Armenian
, Persian
, Malay
, English
, French
, Spanish
, Italian
, Russian
, six other Slavic languages
, Scandinavian languages and Dutch
. He taught at the University of Oxford
from 1950 until his death two years later. His most widely known work, Taboo
, is composed of his lectures on the subject and was posthumously published in 1956. The extensive influence his thinking exercised on British anthropologists of his generation is only now becoming apparent, with the publication of his collected writings. The Holocaust claimed his parents, in Treblinka in 1942, together with most of his kin.
in Western Bohemia
and his father was a small retail businessman
dealing in cloth and leather goods. His mother's family was from Prague. Neither side practiced Judaism
, and his father was an atheist, but Franz received elements of a religious education at school, and from occasional attendance at synagogue
s. He belonged to the last generation of the German, and Jewish, minority in Prague of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, who were to make distinctive contributions to German literature. From his early childhood he was a close friend of Hans Günther Adler
and Wolf Salus, the son of Hugo Salus
. In 1920 he entered the German State Gymnasium in Štepánská Street, where Max Brod
and Franz Werfel
had studied. He joined the Roter Studentenbund (Red Student Union) in 1926. He was attracted to Marxism
early, a fascination that lasted until 1930, and also to political Zionism
. He enrolled at the German
University of Prague
in late 1928 for coursework on Semitic languages
, with a minor in ethnology
, while pursuing as an external student courses in Siberia
n ethnology and Turkish
studies at the Czech language
Charles University of Prague. He studied Arabic abroad for a year, in 1930-31, at the Hebrew University in Palestine
. In Jerusalem, after some time staying with an Arab family, he was forced to move out by the British, and took up digs with the Jewish philosopher Hugo Bergmann
, a key figure in the development of Prague Zionism, a schoolfriend of Franz Kafka's
, and an intimate of Martin Buber
, Judah Leon Magnes
and Gershom Sholem. It was from this circle during his stay that he developed views akin to those of Brit Shalom on Jewish-Arab cooperation, though he remained suspicious of fundamentalist
Islam
.
He obtained his doctorate in linguistics
1935 with a thesis on Arabic word formation (Studien zur arabischen Wurzelgeschichte, 'Studies on the History of Arabic Roots'). He then moved to study at the University of Vienna
to specialize in Arctic
ethnology. With the rise of Nazi
antisemitism, he became a refugee
and moved to London in 1936 to study with Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics
. He returned to Prague in July 1937 and undertook field research on Roma communities for several weeks during a trip in Carpathian Ruthenia
, in eastern Czechoslovakia
. In 1938, he shifted back to Oxford where he pursued his studies in anthropology
, registering for a research degree in the Michaelmas
term for 1939–40 on the subject of 'A Comparative Study of the Forms of Slavery' at Magdalen College
, where Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
held the chair of Social Anthropology
. During his exile
in England he became an intimate of Elias Canetti
, to whom he had previously been introduced, in Vienna
, by Hans Adler. During the war he studied under Evans-Pritchard, while in turn deeply influencing him and many lecturers and students of that circle, including Meyer Fortes
, Mary Douglas
, Louis Dumont
, Adam Curle
, M. N. Srinivas
, Paul Bohannan, I.M. Lewis and Godfrey Lienhardt
. Iris Murdoch
, though she had met him briefly in 1941, fell in love with him in the summer of 1951.
He was appointed Lecturer in Social Anthropology
at Oxford in 1949, a position he held until his premature death three years later. The following year he acquired British citizenship
. He is mainly known for his posthumous collection Taboo
, composed of lectures he delivered on that subject, after being persuaded by Evans-Pritchards to teach this, rather than, as planned, a series of lectures on Marx
.
His thought is characterized by an intense commitment to the right of self-determination
of non-Western peoples. His analytical technique constantly exposed the descriptive biases of the anthropological tradition which, down to his day, had endeavoured to describe these peoples. He included his own ethnic group
, the Jews
, in this category. His influence was informal and vast within the tradition of post-war British anthropology, but is rarely attested in the literature because he published little. His one projected and massive book on the sociology of slavery
, entitled Servile Institutions, remained uncompleted at his death. The huge original manuscript, with his research materials, was lost in the spring of 1942, when a heavy suitcase he left outside a toilet, while switching trains at Reading
, vanished, or, according to one other variation of what became a local tale, someone stole it from a guarded baggage carriage. Steiner had to recompose it from scratch in the succeeding decade. His fanatical dedication to meticulous comprehensiveness meant that much of his work remained in manuscript. As Evans-Pritchard wrote in his introduction to Steiner's posthumous masterpiece Taboo, published in 1956, Steiner was reluctant to 'publish anything that was not based upon a critical analysis of every source, in whatever language.' Others spoke more negatively of his 'ultimately misconceived aspirations to encyclopaedic monumentality'.
, that Jewish character was oriental, and held the view that he himself was 'an oriental born in the West'. Though this perception reflected aspects of his own search for his Jewish identity, it had wider implications. The critique he developed of the imperial cast of Western anthropological writing, and his sympathy for hermeneutic techniques that would recover native terms for the way non-Westerners experienced their world, are grounded in this premise. The approach he propounded allows him to be claimed now as an early theoretical precursor of that mode of critical analysis of ethnographic reports which identified in Orientalism
a structure of cognitive prejudice framing Western interpretations of the Other
. Indeed he considered Western civilization as 'fundamentally predatory, in terms both territorial and epistemic
, upon civilizations that differ from it.'
In his doctoral work on Servile Institutions, he analysed the concept of slavery
in similar terms, affirming that the etymology and use of the word itself (Greek
sklavenoi, adopted into Latin as sclaveni) associated the condition of slavery with alien peoples, the word Slav referring to people north of the Balkans
, an association that still survives in both English and German. The Western construction of 'slavery', in his view, served as an excuse to enslave any other society or group the dominant power in the West might consider as either oriental, savage or primitive.
In his keynote work on the concept and historical denotation
s of taboo
, Steiner pointed out a major difficulty, at once functional and theoretical, in the English tradition of social anthropology. It was, especially under Radcliffe-Brown, who affirmed a key distinction between historical and sociological method in the discipline and practice of anthropology, dedicated to intensive empirical fieldwork on the total social structure
and cultural forms of less developed societies, but was, at the same time, deeply involved in the theoretical elaboration of a science of comparative sociology
. Steiner was particularly interested in drawing attention to the fact that 'the meaning of words appearing in the terminologies of comparative and analytic sociology' had 'drifted apart without our noticing it.'
In earlier times, one had field reports from missionaries
, resident consular officials
and travellers about the customs
, languages and institutions of a people. In the hands of metropolitan
arm-chair specialists
, these variegated materials, collected in such famous compendia as J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough
, were thoroughly studied to elicit theories and concepts of a general descriptive nature about primitive society
and its institutions, such as totemism
, or taboo. Somewhere along the line, the large theoretical baggage that had developed from this division of tasks proved too abstract, unfocused and dysfunctional for carrying out analytical enquiries into specific societies. 'Totemism', for example, was no longer useful in its Victorian
sense of a broad category with universal reach throughout 'primitive societies', though one could examine how a totemic rite
or practice might function in situ, within one society or an other. How then was the modern social anthropologist to face this dilemma, of conducting concrete anthropological analysis in particular societies, with the requirement to further a comparative study of all societies, when the terms of analysis at his disposal were so deeply contaminated by shopworn language and outworn implications? Steiner phrases the issue in the following terms:
In his work he set about to systematically disentangle the problems arising for anthropology from these historic shifts in descriptive traditions and key analytical terminology, focusing particularly on terms like taboo
and magic
. According to Mary Douglas, in his lectures on the subject Steiner argued that, (a) with regard to the comparative study of religion
, one must abolish the established division of religion into a rational, enlightened area dealing with theology
and ethics
, and an exotic or alien sphere where taboo and magic were prominent. He also maintained that (b) religion was a 'total cosmology
, concerned with active principles of all kinds', and finally (c) he analyzed the phenomenon of the sacred in terms of a status of relationship, often being in his view a 'hedge or boundary-marking' circumscribing the idea of divine power
, adducing in this regard the way the Hebrew
qodesh
, the Latin sacer
, and the Polynesia
n tabu which lend themselves to such an approach. Taboos were essentially 'rules of avoidance which express danger attitudes'. This was a considerable advance on the view, commonplace at that time that taboos were emblematic of neurotic trends in primitive society. Robert Parker, paraphrasing Steiner, observes:-
In his dissertation on slavery, he showed how goods with a purely utilitarian value are 'translated' into ritual and ceremonial values which then form the basis of power in several preliterate societies.
His anthropological analysis of taboo had larger implications, which emerge in his remarks on the sociology of danger, and extends to the phenomenon of the rise of Nazism
within modern civilization. He defined civilization
, commonly understood in terms of an outcome of historical progress, as rather 'the march of danger into the heart of creation'. Michael Mack remarks that:
in 1946.
The occasion was provided by the publication, in the London Jewish Chronicle, of an abridgement of Gandhi's final remarks on the question of Jewish relations with the Arabs
of Palestine
, which had been printed in his English-language journal Harijan
on 21 July 1946. What complicated Steiner's reply was the fact that, in the meantime, the Irgun
had blown up the King David Hotel
in Jerusalem, and in carrying Gandhi's remarks on 26 July, the Jewish Chronicle took note of the incident to contextualize Gandhi's position on non-violence
.
Gandhi had taken Jews to be a European people. However, for Steiner, 'the Jews as a collectivity constitute an alterity
internalized by the West in the course of its expansion', and he believed indeed that 'the fact of anti-Semitism
is essential for the understanding of Christian Europe; it is a main thread in that fabric'. Therefore Gandhi's view of Zionism
as a matter of 'a European-sponsored people in conflict with an Asiatic (Arab) people', Steiner argued, evinced a failure to perceive the peculiar internal domination of Jews-qua-Orientals, within European civilization. It followed for him that Gandhi's counsel that, in the face of violence, the Jews adopt the tactic of satyagraha
would only function if there were a commitment by the dominant to the survival of the Jewish internal minority whom they had historically oppressed. This commitment, however, was wholly lacking, in Steiner's view, from Western history and Christendom
, and the idea of a policy of 'victorious martyrdom' was out of the question. To the contrary, Steiner deeply admired figures like Yigael Yadin
, as exemplifying the strong, activist Zionist values the historical situation of the Jews demanded.
Yet his Zionism was not that of a secularized state
. It was a mistake, he believed, to endeavour to establish a European state in Palestine, as conceived by Theodor Herzl
, as opposed to the cultural state envisaged by Ahad Ha-Am. To do so would constitute a move tantamount to adopting an 'alien fanaticism' and thus Steiner argued, in Adler and Fardon’s words, that:
Towards the end of his life, Steiner came to embrace strongly the idea that it was necessary to create a theocratic state
in Israel
. Without such a grounding in traditional Jewish values
, the Zionist project was, he thought, doomed to founder.
at the time of his death.
Over recent decades, research has brought to light the extensive influence his person, teaching and writings had on colleagues. David Mills has recently written of him as one of the great 'what ifs' of anthropology, asking, 'What if Franz Steiner, Czech refugee and author of an influential work on taboo, had not died at the tender age of 44?' His preliminary work on the ethnography of Somalia
, for example, inspired his student, Ioan M. Lewis, who inherited his papers on this subject, to specialize in that society, on which he was to become a world-ranking authority. His Taboo had a decisive impact on Mary Douglas, and her recent biographer calls it 'the crucial point of departure' for her early study Purity and Danger (1966).
Norman Snaith argues that Steiner’s work cannot be appreciated if one ignores the personal tragedy that informed his life.
His family was exterminated during the Holocaust. His health in the last decade, due to stress and poverty, was always delicate. He suffered a nervous breakdown
in 1946, and a coronary thrombosis
in 1949. He died of a heart attack, while speaking to an acquaintance over the phone, in 1952, just after Iris Murdoch
had accepted his proposal of marriage. She attributed his death to the effects of the Holocaust, remarking that 'Franz was certainly one of Hitler's
victims'. Peter J. Conradi
wrote that Steiner never recovered from the sadness he felt when his parents were murdered in a concentration camp
. According to Conradi, Murdoch's portraits of such positive figures in her fiction as Peter Saward (The Flight from the Enchanter
, 1956), Willy Jost (The Nice and the Good, 1968) and Tallis Browne (A Fairly Honourable Defeat
, 1970) were inspired by her memories of Franz Steiner.
He is buried in the Jewish cemetery
in Oxford. His books were, by testament, donated to the Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
.
Karlín
Karlín is a cadastral area of Prague, part of Prague 8 municipal district, former independent town . It is bordered by the river Vltava and Holešovice to the north, Vítkov hill and Žižkov to the south, New Town to the west and Libeň to the east.-History:The building of the Karlín district began in...
(the later suburb of Karolinethal), just outside Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, died 27 November 1952, in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
) was an ethnologist, polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
, essayist, aphorist
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
, and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. He was familiar, apart from German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Yiddish, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, with both classical
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
and modern Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, six other Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, Scandinavian languages and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
. He taught at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
from 1950 until his death two years later. His most widely known work, Taboo
Taboo (book)
Taboo is a monograph based on a series of lectures by Franz Steiner, now considered to be a classic in the field of social anthropology. The volume was published posthumously, edited by Steiner's student Laura Bohannan, and the first edition, brought out by Cohen & West in 1956, contained a preface...
, is composed of his lectures on the subject and was posthumously published in 1956. The extensive influence his thinking exercised on British anthropologists of his generation is only now becoming apparent, with the publication of his collected writings. The Holocaust claimed his parents, in Treblinka in 1942, together with most of his kin.
Biography
His paternal family hailed from TachovTachov
Tachov is a town in the Pilsen Region of the Czech Republic. It lies on the Mže River, some to the west from the region capital of Pilsen....
in Western Bohemia
Plzen Region
Plzeň Region is an administrative unit in the western part of Bohemia in the Czech Republic. It is named after its capital Plzeň .- Communes :...
and his father was a small retail businessman
Retailing
Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...
dealing in cloth and leather goods. His mother's family was from Prague. Neither side practiced Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, and his father was an atheist, but Franz received elements of a religious education at school, and from occasional attendance at synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
s. He belonged to the last generation of the German, and Jewish, minority in Prague of the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, who were to make distinctive contributions to German literature. From his early childhood he was a close friend of Hans Günther Adler
H. G. Adler
Hans Günther Adler, who wrote as H. G. Adler was a German-language poet and novelist.Born in Prague to Emil and Alice Adler, Hans Adler was a Jew, though not devout....
and Wolf Salus, the son of Hugo Salus
Hugo Salus
Hugo Salus was a doctor, writer and poet.- Life :Salus studied medicine in Prague and established a practice in gynacology there from 1895 onwards...
. In 1920 he entered the German State Gymnasium in Štepánská Street, where Max Brod
Max Brod
Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...
and Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
had studied. He joined the Roter Studentenbund (Red Student Union) in 1926. He was attracted to Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
early, a fascination that lasted until 1930, and also to political Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
. He enrolled at the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
University of Prague
Charles University in Prague
Charles University in Prague is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1348, it was the first university in Central Europe and is also considered the earliest German university...
in late 1928 for coursework on Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, with a minor in ethnology
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
, while pursuing as an external student courses in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
n ethnology and Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
studies at the Czech language
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
Charles University of Prague. He studied Arabic abroad for a year, in 1930-31, at the Hebrew University in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
. In Jerusalem, after some time staying with an Arab family, he was forced to move out by the British, and took up digs with the Jewish philosopher Hugo Bergmann
Hugo Bergmann
Samuel Hugo Bergman, or Samuel Bergman was a German and Israeli Jewish philosopher.-Biography:...
, a key figure in the development of Prague Zionism, a schoolfriend of Franz Kafka's
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, and an intimate of Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, Judah Leon Magnes
Judah Leon Magnes
Judah Leon Magnes was a prominent Reform rabbi in both the United States and Palestine. He is best remembered as a leader pacifist movement of the World War I period and as one of the most widely recognized voices of 20th Century American Reform Judaism.-Biography:He was born in San Francisco,...
and Gershom Sholem. It was from this circle during his stay that he developed views akin to those of Brit Shalom on Jewish-Arab cooperation, though he remained suspicious of fundamentalist
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...
Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
.
He obtained his doctorate in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
1935 with a thesis on Arabic word formation (Studien zur arabischen Wurzelgeschichte, 'Studies on the History of Arabic Roots'). He then moved to study at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
to specialize in Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
ethnology. With the rise of Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
antisemitism, he became a refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
and moved to London in 1936 to study with Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
. He returned to Prague in July 1937 and undertook field research on Roma communities for several weeks during a trip in Carpathian Ruthenia
Carpathian Ruthenia
Carpathian Ruthenia is a region in Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast , with smaller parts in easternmost Slovakia , Poland's Lemkovyna and Romanian Maramureş.It is...
, in eastern Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
. In 1938, he shifted back to Oxford where he pursued his studies in anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, registering for a research degree in the Michaelmas
Michaelmas
Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel is a day in the Western Christian calendar which occurs on 29 September...
term for 1939–40 on the subject of 'A Comparative Study of the Forms of Slavery' at Magdalen College
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
, where Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of Structural Functionalism.- Biography :...
held the chair of Social Anthropology
Social anthropology
Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...
. During his exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
in England he became an intimate of Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
, to whom he had previously been introduced, in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, by Hans Adler. During the war he studied under Evans-Pritchard, while in turn deeply influencing him and many lecturers and students of that circle, including Meyer Fortes
Meyer Fortes
Meyer Fortes was a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana.Originally trained in psychology, Fortes employed the notion of the "person" into his structural-functional analyses of kinship, the family, and ancestor worship setting a standard...
, Mary Douglas
Mary Douglas
Dame Mary Douglas, DBE, FBA was a British anthropologist, known for her writings on human culture and symbolism....
, Louis Dumont
Louis Dumont
Louis Dumont was a French anthropologist. He was an associate professor at Oxford University during the 1950s, and director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris...
, Adam Curle
Adam Curle
Adam Curle was a British academic and Quaker peace activist. His full name was Charles Thomas William Curle; he was known as "Adam" after the town where he was born, L'Isle-Adam, north of Paris.-Background:...
, M. N. Srinivas
M. N. Srinivas
Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas was an Indian sociologist. He is mostly known for his work on caste and caste systems, social stratification, Sanskritisation and Westernisation in southern India and the concept of 'Dominant Caste'.- Career :...
, Paul Bohannan, I.M. Lewis and Godfrey Lienhardt
Godfrey Lienhardt
Ronald Godfrey Lienhardt was a British anthropologist.-Life and field work:Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, of mixed Swiss and Yorkshire parentage, he went up to Cambridge University in 1939, where he read English under F. R. Leavis until he was called up and became a transport officer,...
. Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
, though she had met him briefly in 1941, fell in love with him in the summer of 1951.
He was appointed Lecturer in Social Anthropology
Social anthropology
Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...
at Oxford in 1949, a position he held until his premature death three years later. The following year he acquired British citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
. He is mainly known for his posthumous collection Taboo
Taboo (book)
Taboo is a monograph based on a series of lectures by Franz Steiner, now considered to be a classic in the field of social anthropology. The volume was published posthumously, edited by Steiner's student Laura Bohannan, and the first edition, brought out by Cohen & West in 1956, contained a preface...
, composed of lectures he delivered on that subject, after being persuaded by Evans-Pritchards to teach this, rather than, as planned, a series of lectures on Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
.
His thought is characterized by an intense commitment to the right of self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
of non-Western peoples. His analytical technique constantly exposed the descriptive biases of the anthropological tradition which, down to his day, had endeavoured to describe these peoples. He included his own ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
, the Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, in this category. His influence was informal and vast within the tradition of post-war British anthropology, but is rarely attested in the literature because he published little. His one projected and massive book on the sociology of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, entitled Servile Institutions, remained uncompleted at his death. The huge original manuscript, with his research materials, was lost in the spring of 1942, when a heavy suitcase he left outside a toilet, while switching trains at Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
, vanished, or, according to one other variation of what became a local tale, someone stole it from a guarded baggage carriage. Steiner had to recompose it from scratch in the succeeding decade. His fanatical dedication to meticulous comprehensiveness meant that much of his work remained in manuscript. As Evans-Pritchard wrote in his introduction to Steiner's posthumous masterpiece Taboo, published in 1956, Steiner was reluctant to 'publish anything that was not based upon a critical analysis of every source, in whatever language.' Others spoke more negatively of his 'ultimately misconceived aspirations to encyclopaedic monumentality'.
Ideas
From the early 1930s, Steiner embraced the idea, a commonplace of the 18th century and theorized in the work of the sociologist Werner SombartWerner Sombart
Werner Sombart was a German economist and sociologist, the head of the “Youngest Historical School” and one of the leading Continental European social scientists during the first quarter of the 20th century....
, that Jewish character was oriental, and held the view that he himself was 'an oriental born in the West'. Though this perception reflected aspects of his own search for his Jewish identity, it had wider implications. The critique he developed of the imperial cast of Western anthropological writing, and his sympathy for hermeneutic techniques that would recover native terms for the way non-Westerners experienced their world, are grounded in this premise. The approach he propounded allows him to be claimed now as an early theoretical precursor of that mode of critical analysis of ethnographic reports which identified in Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
a structure of cognitive prejudice framing Western interpretations of the Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
. Indeed he considered Western civilization as 'fundamentally predatory, in terms both territorial and epistemic
Epistemic community
An epistemic community is a transnational network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers to define the problems they face, identify various policy solutions and assess the policy outcomes. The definitive conceptual framework of an epistemic community is widely accepted as that of Peter...
, upon civilizations that differ from it.'
In his doctoral work on Servile Institutions, he analysed the concept of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
in similar terms, affirming that the etymology and use of the word itself (Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
sklavenoi, adopted into Latin as sclaveni) associated the condition of slavery with alien peoples, the word Slav referring to people north of the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, an association that still survives in both English and German. The Western construction of 'slavery', in his view, served as an excuse to enslave any other society or group the dominant power in the West might consider as either oriental, savage or primitive.
In his keynote work on the concept and historical denotation
Denotation
This word has distinct meanings in other fields: see denotation . For the opposite of Denotation see Connotation.*In logic, linguistics and semiotics, the denotation of a word or phrase is a part of its meaning; however, the part referred to varies by context:** In grammar and literary theory, the...
s of taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
, Steiner pointed out a major difficulty, at once functional and theoretical, in the English tradition of social anthropology. It was, especially under Radcliffe-Brown, who affirmed a key distinction between historical and sociological method in the discipline and practice of anthropology, dedicated to intensive empirical fieldwork on the total social structure
Social structure
Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
and cultural forms of less developed societies, but was, at the same time, deeply involved in the theoretical elaboration of a science of comparative sociology
Comparative sociology
Comparative sociology generally refers to sociological analysis that involves comparison of social processes between nation-states, or across different types of society ....
. Steiner was particularly interested in drawing attention to the fact that 'the meaning of words appearing in the terminologies of comparative and analytic sociology' had 'drifted apart without our noticing it.'
In earlier times, one had field reports from missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
, resident consular officials
Consul (representative)
The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries...
and travellers about the customs
Custom (law)
Custom in law is the established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. A claim can be carried out in defense of "what has always been done and accepted by law." Customary law exists where:...
, languages and institutions of a people. In the hands of metropolitan
Metropolis
A metropolis is a very large city or urban area which is a significant economic, political and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections and communications...
arm-chair specialists
Armchair theorizing
Armchair theorizing is an unofficial term for the approach which economists are perceived to mostly use for coming up with a new economic theory....
, these variegated materials, collected in such famous compendia as J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer . It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes...
, were thoroughly studied to elicit theories and concepts of a general descriptive nature about primitive society
Primitive culture
In older anthropology texts and discussions, the term "primitive culture" is used to refer to a society that is believed to lack cultural, technological, or economic sophistication/development...
and its institutions, such as totemism
Totemism
Totemism is a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant...
, or taboo. Somewhere along the line, the large theoretical baggage that had developed from this division of tasks proved too abstract, unfocused and dysfunctional for carrying out analytical enquiries into specific societies. 'Totemism', for example, was no longer useful in its Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
sense of a broad category with universal reach throughout 'primitive societies', though one could examine how a totemic rite
Rite
A rite is an established, ceremonious, usually religious act. Rites in this sense fall into three major categories:* rites of passage, generally changing an individual's social status, such as marriage, baptism, or graduation....
or practice might function in situ, within one society or an other. How then was the modern social anthropologist to face this dilemma, of conducting concrete anthropological analysis in particular societies, with the requirement to further a comparative study of all societies, when the terms of analysis at his disposal were so deeply contaminated by shopworn language and outworn implications? Steiner phrases the issue in the following terms:
If we strip out vocabulary of these significant terms of the comparative period, what are we going to put in their place, not only as labels for pigeon-holes, but also as expressions indicating the direction of our interest? We do retain them and, sooner or later, each of us in his own way makes the unpleasant discovery that he is talking in two different languages at the same time and, like all bilinguals, finds translation almost impossible.
In his work he set about to systematically disentangle the problems arising for anthropology from these historic shifts in descriptive traditions and key analytical terminology, focusing particularly on terms like taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
and magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
. According to Mary Douglas, in his lectures on the subject Steiner argued that, (a) with regard to the comparative study of religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...
, one must abolish the established division of religion into a rational, enlightened area dealing with theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, and an exotic or alien sphere where taboo and magic were prominent. He also maintained that (b) religion was a 'total cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, concerned with active principles of all kinds', and finally (c) he analyzed the phenomenon of the sacred in terms of a status of relationship, often being in his view a 'hedge or boundary-marking' circumscribing the idea of divine power
Divinity
Divinity and divine are broadly applied but loosely defined terms, used variously within different faiths and belief systems — and even by different individuals within a given faith — to refer to some transcendent or transcendental power or deity, or its attributes or manifestations in...
, adducing in this regard the way the Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
qodesh
Q-D-Š
Q-D-Š is a common triconsonantal Semitic root form used in various ancient and modern languages since at least the 3rd millennium BCE. The meanings expressed by this root are "Holy", "Sacred", "Divine Power", "To Set Apart", and "Sanctuary"...
, the Latin sacer
Sacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
, and the Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
n tabu which lend themselves to such an approach. Taboos were essentially 'rules of avoidance which express danger attitudes'. This was a considerable advance on the view, commonplace at that time that taboos were emblematic of neurotic trends in primitive society. Robert Parker, paraphrasing Steiner, observes:-
'The system of taboo is not, as it has seemed to some observers, the product of a cultural neurosis
NeurosisNeurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
, but a way in which 'attitudes to values are expressed in terms of dangers'.'
In his dissertation on slavery, he showed how goods with a purely utilitarian value are 'translated' into ritual and ceremonial values which then form the basis of power in several preliterate societies.
His anthropological analysis of taboo had larger implications, which emerge in his remarks on the sociology of danger, and extends to the phenomenon of the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
within modern civilization. He defined civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
, commonly understood in terms of an outcome of historical progress, as rather 'the march of danger into the heart of creation'. Michael Mack remarks that:
In contrast to Norbert Elias
Norbert EliasNorbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later became a British citizen.-Biography:...
, Steiner did not depict the movement of civilization in terms of a development that grew out of the West and progressively enriched the developing world. Rather, Steiner conceptualized Occidental history in terms of an ever-increasing demolition of social structures that sets limits to danger and violence. He focused on what he saw as civilization’s ambivalenceAmbivalenceAmbivalence is a state of having simultaneous, conflicting feelings toward a person or thing. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having thoughts and/or emotions of both positive and negative valence toward someone or something. A common example of ambivalence is the feeling of...
: on the one hand, the progress of modern history helps expand the limits of society; on the other, this expansion opens the door to unlimited forms of power and destruction. The limitless violence perpetrated in the Nazi genocideGenocideGenocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
coincides with the absolute identification of power with danger.
Zionism and the letter to Mahatma Gandhi
Steiner's struggle to define his Jewish identity, especially as that was inflected by the shock of the Holocaust, and his relation to the Zionist project, were given extensive expression in a letter he wrote to Mahatma GandhiMahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
in 1946.
The occasion was provided by the publication, in the London Jewish Chronicle, of an abridgement of Gandhi's final remarks on the question of Jewish relations with the Arabs
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
of Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, which had been printed in his English-language journal Harijan
Harijan
Harijan was a term used by Gandhi for Dalits. Gandhi said it was wrong to call people 'untouchable', and called them Harijans, which means children of God...
on 21 July 1946. What complicated Steiner's reply was the fact that, in the meantime, the Irgun
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
had blown up the King David Hotel
King David Hotel bombing
The King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by themilitant right-wing Zionist underground organization Irgun on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946...
in Jerusalem, and in carrying Gandhi's remarks on 26 July, the Jewish Chronicle took note of the incident to contextualize Gandhi's position on non-violence
Satyagraha
Satyagraha , loosely translated as "insistence on truth satya agraha soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma...
.
Gandhi had taken Jews to be a European people. However, for Steiner, 'the Jews as a collectivity constitute an alterity
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
internalized by the West in the course of its expansion', and he believed indeed that 'the fact of anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
is essential for the understanding of Christian Europe; it is a main thread in that fabric'. Therefore Gandhi's view of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
as a matter of 'a European-sponsored people in conflict with an Asiatic (Arab) people', Steiner argued, evinced a failure to perceive the peculiar internal domination of Jews-qua-Orientals, within European civilization. It followed for him that Gandhi's counsel that, in the face of violence, the Jews adopt the tactic of satyagraha
Satyagraha
Satyagraha , loosely translated as "insistence on truth satya agraha soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma...
would only function if there were a commitment by the dominant to the survival of the Jewish internal minority whom they had historically oppressed. This commitment, however, was wholly lacking, in Steiner's view, from Western history and Christendom
Christendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
, and the idea of a policy of 'victorious martyrdom' was out of the question. To the contrary, Steiner deeply admired figures like Yigael Yadin
Yigael Yadin
Yigael Yadin on 21 March 1917, died 28 June 1984) was an Israeli archeologist, politician, and the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.-Early life and military career:...
, as exemplifying the strong, activist Zionist values the historical situation of the Jews demanded.
Yet his Zionism was not that of a secularized state
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
. It was a mistake, he believed, to endeavour to establish a European state in Palestine, as conceived by Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
, as opposed to the cultural state envisaged by Ahad Ha-Am. To do so would constitute a move tantamount to adopting an 'alien fanaticism' and thus Steiner argued, in Adler and Fardon’s words, that:
this fundamental struggle between emulation and withdrawal will depend on struggles between East and WestEast-West dichotomyThe East-West dichotomy is a sociological concept used to describe perceived differences between Western cultures and the Eastern world. Cultural rather than geographical in division, the boundaries of East and West are not fixed, but vary according to the criteria adopted by individuals using the...
in a triple sense: between Eastern and Western Jewry, the Jews and Europe, and between solidarity with other Asian nations 'against the European ideologyIdeologyAn ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
in us'.
Towards the end of his life, Steiner came to embrace strongly the idea that it was necessary to create a theocratic state
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Without such a grounding in traditional Jewish values
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, the Zionist project was, he thought, doomed to founder.
Final years and legacy
Shy by nature (one student recalled that he 'lived in a world of abstract clarity, where people were an irrelevant clutter'), whimsical, and endlessly curious, he was regarded by many of his contemporaries as an ‘intellectual's intellectual' for the extraordinary multidisciplinary erudition he had at his fingertips. He was apparently engaged in teaching himself to read ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
at the time of his death.
Over recent decades, research has brought to light the extensive influence his person, teaching and writings had on colleagues. David Mills has recently written of him as one of the great 'what ifs' of anthropology, asking, 'What if Franz Steiner, Czech refugee and author of an influential work on taboo, had not died at the tender age of 44?' His preliminary work on the ethnography of Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
, for example, inspired his student, Ioan M. Lewis, who inherited his papers on this subject, to specialize in that society, on which he was to become a world-ranking authority. His Taboo had a decisive impact on Mary Douglas, and her recent biographer calls it 'the crucial point of departure' for her early study Purity and Danger (1966).
Norman Snaith argues that Steiner’s work cannot be appreciated if one ignores the personal tragedy that informed his life.
‘He was a victim of Nazi tyranny. When Hitler overran Czechoslovakia, Steiner escaped with nothing but his life. He lost family, property, and all the results of earlier research. He never recovered from his privations and his sense of isolation, and he died at the age of 44. Oxford is the home of lost causes; during the years of Nazi horror, she proved herself also to be the home of lost men. She provided a home for him, and a lectureship, but she could not give him life.’
His family was exterminated during the Holocaust. His health in the last decade, due to stress and poverty, was always delicate. He suffered a nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
in 1946, and a coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis
Coronary thrombosis is a form of thrombosis affecting the coronary circulation. It is associated with stenosis subsequent to clotting. The condition is considered as a type of ischaemic heart disease.It can lead to a myocardial infarction...
in 1949. He died of a heart attack, while speaking to an acquaintance over the phone, in 1952, just after Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
had accepted his proposal of marriage. She attributed his death to the effects of the Holocaust, remarking that 'Franz was certainly one of Hitler's
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
victims'. Peter J. Conradi
Peter J. Conradi
Peter J. Conradi is a British author and academic.-Career:He is known as a biographer, having written Iris Murdoch: A Life, an official biography of his friend Iris Murdoch, and also a life of Angus Wilson...
wrote that Steiner never recovered from the sadness he felt when his parents were murdered in a concentration camp
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
. According to Conradi, Murdoch's portraits of such positive figures in her fiction as Peter Saward (The Flight from the Enchanter
The Flight from the Enchanter
The Flight from the Enchanter is a novel written by Iris Murdoch and published in 1956.Principal Characters:*Mischa Fox*Rosa Keepe*Hunter Keepe *Annette Cockeyne*Peter Saward*John Rainborough*Calvin Blick...
, 1956), Willy Jost (The Nice and the Good, 1968) and Tallis Browne (A Fairly Honourable Defeat
A Fairly Honourable Defeat
A Fairly Honourable Defeat is a novel by the British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch.-Plot summary:The lives of several friends are thrown into disarray by the machinations of Julius King...
, 1970) were inspired by her memories of Franz Steiner.
He is buried in the Jewish cemetery
Jewish cemetery
A Jewish cemetery is a cemetery where members of the Jewish faith are buried in keeping with Jewish tradition....
in Oxford. His books were, by testament, donated to the Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
.
Endnotes
| i. | An incident similar to Steiner losing his manuscript on a train is recounted in Iris Murdoch's much later novel, An Accidental Man, where the son of the central figure, Austin Gibson Grey, loses the manuscript of his novel when his suitcase is misplaced, or, he suspects, stolen from the baggage carousel Baggage carousel A baggage carousel is a device, generally at an airport, that delivers checked luggage to the passengers at the baggage claim area at their final destination. Not all airports use these devices... after a flight from New York to London. |
| ii. | In Iris Murdoch's novel, The Flight from the Enchanter The Flight from the Enchanter The Flight from the Enchanter is a novel written by Iris Murdoch and published in 1956.Principal Characters:*Mischa Fox*Rosa Keepe*Hunter Keepe *Annette Cockeyne*Peter Saward*John Rainborough*Calvin Blick... , the figure of Peter Saward, who is thought to be modeled on Franz Steiner, is depicted as a scholar deeply engaged in trying to decipher an obscure ancient language without the assistance of a bilingual Bilingual inscription In epigraphy, a bilingual is an inscription that is extant in two languages . Bilinguals are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems.Important bilinguals include:... . The last scene in The Flight from the Enchanter especially is said to evoke, under disguised form, his proposal of marriage to Murdoch, though there it is the woman who proposes, and Saward who turns the idea down. |