Editing Max Nordau (section)

=== Failure of emancipation ===

Nordau's work as a critic of European civilization and where it was heading certainly contributed to his eventual role in Zionism. One of the central tenets of Nordau's beliefs was evolution, in all things, and he concluded that emancipation was not born out of evolution. French rationalism of the 18th century, based on pure logic, demanded that all men be treated equally.  Nordau perceived Jewish Emancipation the result of "a regular equation: Every man is born with certain rights; the Jews are human beings, consequently the Jews are born to own the rights of man."  This Emancipation was written in the statute books of Europe, but contrasted with popular social consciousness. It was this which explained the apparent contradiction of equality before the law. Yet the existence of antisemitism, and in particular 'racial' antisemitism, was no longer based on old religious bigotry.  Nordau cited England as an exception to this continental antisemitism that proved the rule. "In England, Emancipation is a truth … It had already been completed in the heart before legislation expressly confirmed it." Only if Emancipation came from changes within society, as opposed to abstract ideas imposed upon society, could it be a reality. Nordau's rejection of the accepted idea of Emancipation was not based entirely on the Dreyfus Affair. It had manifested itself much earlier in ''The Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation'' ''(Die konventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit)'' (1883), and in reviling 'degenerate' and 'lunatic' antisemitism in ''Degeneration'' ''(Die Entartung)'' (1892).