Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

104 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

deeds (Handlungen), Wolf prepares the gesture of transcending history in ce-

rebral Wissenschaft, which, as the secularly messianic culmination of his essay

would have it, is destined to unite all humanity. In Wolf it is the Jewish idea of

unity, the Jewish ur-idea, that reaches its apotheosis in Wissenschaft, and Spi-

noza, who first articulated the Jewish idea wissenschaftlich, proves both this

idea’s modern relevance and its ability to do without the mediation of Christian-

ity. Far from being insignificant for the progress of world history, Judaism’s es-

sential idea as first unlocked scientifically by Spinoza and now, differently, by the

new Wissenschaft des Judentums has always been the telos toward which world

history was moving.^48 Wolf pushes theoretical possibilities that Hegel’s account

of historical progress opens up for the interpretation of Jewish history in direc-

tions that contest Hegel’s Christian-centric version of the Jewish contribution to

world history. In other words, Wolf is not merely repeating after Hegel but writ-

ing Hegelian history in a Jewish key, elaborating not only a Jewish Hegelianism

but also a Jewish Hegelianism.

Here Hegel’s version of Judaism—the religion of division that must be over-

come by Christianity’s unifying thrust—unravels. Although Hegel’s Spinoza

very much needs Hegel, Wolf ’s Spinoza does not. By affirming Spinoza as the

purest, wissenschaftlich articulation of the essential Jewish idea, and not imme-

diately calling for this idea to be perfected, mediated, dialectically overcome, or

anything of the sort, Wolf deploys a Hegelianized Spinoza against both Hegel’s

version of Spinoza and Hegel himself. Wolf ’s alternative interpretation and em-

plotment of Spinoza contest Hegel’s supercessionary logic precisely because

Hegel had set himself up as the Christian fulfillment of Spinoza’s abstract Jew-

ish philosophy. Wolf ’s programmatic vision of Wissenschaft des Judentums

grasps not only Judaism as a wissenschaftlich concept but also Wissenschaft as

a Jewish one. It is in Wissenschaft that Judaism’s “inner spirit” finds its most

perfect expression, as Spinoza demonstrated “centuries in advance of his time,”

and as the new Jewish Wissenschaftler now aimed to demonstrate to their con-

temporaries. Wolf rejects Hegel’s itinerary that routes spirit’s path to science

necessarily through Christianity, even as he borrows from Hegel the performa-

tive discursive mode whereby the elaboration of a scientific argument about

history itself becomes historic, makes history. The note of wissenschaftlich

messianism on which Wolf concludes does not embrace Hegel’s secularized

Protestantism but fulfills the original Jewish idea of unity. Like Judaism’s core

idea of living unity, science unites diverse phenomena under the sign of their

fundamental concept.^49 The essay ends in an unmistakably Hegelian apotheosis

of Wissenschaft as the fulfillment of absolute spirit, but Wolf ’s embrace of Hegel

is not straightforward. Rather, Wolf theorizes Wissenschaft as Judaism’s ulti-