Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Locating Themselves in History { 101

the manner of the pure speculative thinking, i.e., purely scientifically. This

was in the system of Benedict de Spinoza, a man whose subtlety and profun-

dity were centuries in advance of his time, whose highly significant influence

on the more consistent and profound philosophies of the present day is un-

mistakable, who did indeed renounce the external rites of Judaism, but who

had understood all the more its inner spirit.^39

One of the central tenets of Wolf ’s essay is that throughout their existence,

Jews—contra Hegel—have exercised a profound influence on the human spirit.^40

The fact that even at the purported nadir of Jewish historical development, Ju-

daism’s “unique, vital, and eternal idea” could be articulated so purely, freely,

and with such scientific rigor bears witness to its power and abiding relevance.

Indeed, Spinoza’s articulation of the Jewish idea has profoundly influenced

Hegel (creator of the most salient among “the more consistent and profound

philosophies of the present day”).^41

The relationship between a remark that Heinrich Heine, some twenty years

after the fact, recalled Hegel having made, and a passage in Wolf ’s Zeitschrift

essay immediately following his remark on Spinoza presents us with an intrigu-

ing puzzle that bears on how we understand the relationship Wolf establishes,

via Spinoza, between the Verein’s Wissenschaft des Judentums and Hegel. In

an essay on Michelet in Lutezia ( 1843 ), Heine relates this anecdote: “My great

teacher, the blessed Hegel, once said to me: if the dreams that people had

dreamed during a given epoch had been recorded, a very true image of the spirit

of that epoch would emerge from reading these collected dreams.”^42 No one has

been able to link Heine’s anecdote to a passage in any text by Hegel, and Heine’s

language (“sagte mir einst,”or “said to me”) suggests that he is recalling a com-

ment that Hegel made orally.^43

The existence of a parallel passage in Wolf ’s essay, just after his remark on

Spinoza, however, complicates the question of what comment by Hegel Heine

might be referring to—and it even raises the question of whether he is referring

to Hegel at all. Wolf takes issue with those who measure historical development

only in external events, without perceiving the inner workings of Geist. Only

this error, he maintains, could lead one to the erroneous view that Judaism has

not made a profound contribution to world history, for Judaism’s contributions

have played out in the realm of spirit, not of battle and conquest. Wolf contends

that the dreams of the greatest men of each age would be as fully indicative of

its Geist as would their deeds:

Thus Judaism shows itself to be for most of the history of the world an im-

portant and influential factor in the development of the human spirit. The