The Ordeal of Civility Freud Marx Strauss & Jewish Struggle with Modernity- John Cuddihy Part 1

"The Ordeal of Civility" (1974) examines how Jewish thinkers like Freud, Marx, and Strauss responded to modernity and Western cultural norms. Cuddihy argues these intellectuals developed theories that functioned as critiques of Western "civility," which they experienced as exclusionary. The book analyzes how Jewish intellectual traditions confronted and adapted to modern secular society, suggesting their revolutionary theories partly emerged from the tension between traditional Jewish culture and European bourgeois standards.