In the early twentieth century, German-Jewish thinkers converged upon Daoism as a means to criticise state power and the dominance of economic productivity in modern society. Figures like Moses Mendelssohn, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin explored how Daoist ideas could inspire alternative ways of organising social and economic life, thereby challenging stereotypes of ‘China’ as passive or non-productive. This talk examines how their engagement with Daoism offered a vision of religion’s role in everyday life that moved beyond racialised notions of activity and inactivity, and the mercantilist-salvational paradigm then dominant in Western societies.
Julia Ng is Reader in Critical Theory and founding Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths, University of London. A specialist in the work of Walter Benjamin, whose essay ‘Toward the Critique of Violence’ she recently translated for a critical edition she co-edited for Stanford University Press (2021), she is currently completing a book on Daoism and Capitalism with support from a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.
