Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

110 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

Hegelian key. Before analyzing the dynamics of this reimagining, it bears un-

derscoring that it is indeed Jewish communal bonds that Gans undertakes to

theorize. However drastically Gans’s Hegelian paradigm led, or enabled, him

to rethink traditional Jewish ties, this paradigm not only allows, but in fact re-

quires, that Jews be thought as a collectivity and not merely as so many indi-

viduals. Working within a Kantian conceptual framework, Bendavid, as we saw

in chapter 1 , located the malady of Judaism in its collective character and the

cure for this malady in the moral autonomization of Jewish subjects. Hegel’s

intersubjective conception of ethical community and corresponding critique of

epistemological and ethical subjectivism, in contrast, allowed the Verein Hege-

lians to imagine ways of being woven into the ethical fabric as a collectivity. My

point is not that the particular ways Hegel privileges the political and ethical sa-

lience of extrasubjective loyalties and identifications make his thought attractive

(or unattractive) for theorizing Jewish community, only that Hegelian theory in

fact allows and requires Jewish identity to be thought in collective terms. Rather

than demanding the radical depoliticizing and confessionalizing of Judaism or

the dissolution of Jewry into so many autonomous individuals, Hegel opens up

ways to grant the collective aspect of Jewishness political significance.^66

Gans attempts to reconcile the dual loyalty felt by Verein members—to their

Jewish brethren and to the state—by presenting it as analogous to the dual loy-

alty of someone who is both a Bürger and a Familienvater. One’s loyalties as cit-

izen and paterfamilias are so compatible and mutually reinforcing, Gans claims,

that, as a rule, only the good Familienvater is a good Bürger and vice versa:

Just as the loyal citizen reverently devoted to his duty is nearly always also

the better, more loving paterfamilias; just as vigorous zeal and devotion

for the state, which is the greater family [die größere Familie], cannot can-

cel the particular [zeal and devotion for] wife and children and for the wel-

fare of every individual [und jedes Einzelnen Wohlfahrt]; just as enthusi-

asm for the whole is grounded in love of the particular and vice versa; so

we could not be called genuine sons of the fatherland, loyal citizens of the

state, if we lacked a loving disposition toward our coreligionists who lag

far behind; if we did not endeavor to make this newly won fatherland the

homeland of their yearning, and also procure for the fatherland a not insig-

nificant number of loyal citizens and reverent subjects [fromme Untertanen],

including insofar as their inward journey and cultivation [Bildung] are

concerned.^67

Norbert Waszek notes how in this passage state and family are correlated in a

Hegelian sense.^68 Indeed, Gans here borders on paraphrasing Hegel’s theoriza-