• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.119
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• pp.129-159
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• 2017

The study of Freud's Moses and the background of the establishment of monotheism has become a subject of attention in the new atmosphere of the spreading of political theology and the recent rediscovery of Egyptology. This paper examines the publishing background and intentions of Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism. And it will emphasize the fact that the Moses-Egyptian theory and his criticism of monotheism hid political theological intentions to prevent the spread of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. According to the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, there is a difference in that Moses' Judaism is monotheism, but Akhenaten's Aton-religion is a cosmotheism, and while Freud emphasizes Moses the 'historical figure' of that name, Assmann refers to Moses as a 'mnemohistorical figure.' Just as Freud said that the source of Jewish hatred is in Moses himself who established monotheism, Assmann argues also, monotheism is based on the so-called "Mosaic distinction" that distinguishes between true religion and false religion, thus it is possible to dismantle oppression and violence through the abolition of the Mosaic distinction. Assmann estimates that Freud had a clear stance to stop the spread of anti-Semitism as "the most explicit opponent of the Mosaic distinction." While anti-Semitic hatred spread to Christians in the Nazi era, Freud regards the real founder of Christianity, a jew Paul, as both a "Judaism destroyer" and a "successor to Judaism." At this point, Taubes began to see Paul's theology from a political theological point of view, and Assmann succeeded it. The "historical Moses" described by Freud are not "Prophet Moses" but "Moses as lawmaker and political reformer", and Jewish hatred has arisen in his distinction. Thus, Freud's monotheistic criticism as "disintegration by historical reduction"(Nietzsche) has political theological power. Just as Taubes interpreted Paul as a political theologian, Assmann found political theological elements in Freud's criticism of monotheism.