Dr Julia Ng - A Politics of Inaction: Daoism in German-Jewish Thought

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. Does belonging always require exclusion? This lecture series explores this universal question through the lens of the German-Jewish experience, a community deeply shaped by its complex relationship to inclusion and exclusion. Spanning key moments in modern history, these talks examine German-Jewish thinkers’ responses to the dominant ‘Protestant ethic’, debates over nationalism in interwar Germany and Austria, the warped ideology of Adolf Hitler, and the long struggle of German Jews to reclaim citizenship after the Holocaust. Join us as we situate these experiences within today’s urgent debates about identity and belonging.Lecture recorded at Senate House, London on Thursday, November 27, 2025Images from the lecture, and other streaming links, are available on the Leo Baeck Institute London website: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/ng-25