Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Locating Themselves in History { 95

preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit ( 1807 ) and his critique in Lectures on the

History of Philosophy of Spinoza’s propensity for formal, propositional exposi-

tion.^19 The Vereinler would have been familiar with Hegel’s critique of Spinoza

from the Berlin lectures on the history of philosophy of summer 1819 and winter

1820 – 21 as well as from Science of Logic, both volume 1 ( 1812 – 13 ) and 2 ( 1816 ).

Indeed, it is because Hegel had already had so much to say about Spinoza that

Wolf could say so much about Hegel by saying relatively little about Spinoza.

Hegel’s critique of Spinoza condenses his narrative of philosophical superses-

sionism and posits an implicit analogy between his relationship to the Jewish

philosopher from Amsterdam and Christianity’s relationship to Judaism. By

proposing a different vision of Spinoza’s philosophical relevance Wolf signifi-

cantly revises the supersessionist thrust of Hegel’s narrative of the dialectic of

spirit and the place of Jews—and Hegel—within it.

In Lectures on the History of Philosophy Hegel emphasizes Spinoza’s Judaism

and sees in his concept of unity a Europeanized version of Eastern thought.^20

Like Judaism, Spinoza conceives of the absolute but removes it from the con-

crete world. In this way the charge of “acosmism” that Hegel levels at Spinoza

rehearses his diagnosis of Jewish remoteness from an infinitely distant God.^21

Hegel interprets Christianity as responding dialectically to Judaism’s alienation

from the absolute, grasped only as abstract unity. In Hegel’s philosophical al-

legory of Christianity, the absolute achieves mediated self-differentiation in the

trinity, and actualization in Christ. Although one can hardly read an entire cri-

tique into Wolf ’s brief remark, he is clearly having none of this. Wolf sees Spi-

noza as articulating the essence of the Jewish idea—unity—and, in this, antici-

pating Hegel and Wissenschaft.

The status of subjectivity is a key concern in Hegel’s treatment of Spinoza, as

well as of thinkers Hegel considered vulgar critics of Spinoza, such as Friedrich

Heinrich Jacobi. If what Hegel faults in Spinoza is a deficit of universal subjec-

tivity and concretion (the inability of substance to differentiate itself into the

particular forms of spirit capable of propelling spirit’s dialectic), what he faults

in Spinoza’s vulgar critics is a surfeit of narrow subjectivity. Hegel charges that

Jacobi and others critique Spinoza for the wrong reasons, and that their par-

ticular criticisms of Spinoza reveal more about themselves than about the sage

from Amsterdam: those like Jacobi who accuse Spinoza of atheism are not out

to protect God but rather themselves, in all their narrow subjective finitude.^22

Hegel sees in Spinoza not atheism but rather “too much God”: only God has

true existence, the world none (the charge of acosmism). Spinozan substance

thus leaves no room for subjectivity defined as the unity of the finite and infinite.

What those who charge Spinoza with atheism in fact “cannot forgive Spinoza