Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Locating Themselves in History { 11 7

precisely the sort of subjective parameters that have structured the positions in

the debate.^89 This requires that one think of freedom not merely as an individual

but, above all, as a collective achievement, and that one always theorize the place

of the Jews in the context of a wider social and political life.

Gans effectively summarizes Hegel’s characterization in Philosophy of Right

of the achievement of modern society as having harmonized particular freedom

with organic totality and also follows his mentor in characterizing “today’s

Europe” as the necessary product of a many-millennia-long “effort of rational

Spirit, which manifests itself in world history.”^90 Contemporary Europe’s con-

cept (Begriff) is “the plurality whose unity exists only in the whole,” and its dis-

tinctiveness [Eigentümlichkeit] rests chiefly on “the wealth of its many-limbed

organism.”^91 “There is here [da] no thought that has not come into being or

found its shape; there is here no tendency and no activity that has not achieved

its [full] dimensions. Everywhere are manifest the most fertile variety of social

classes and conditions, the work of spirit moving ever closer to its perfection.

Each of these classes is a self-contained unit, complete in itself, and yet it does

not gain its meaning from itself [von sich], but only from Another; each limb has

its own particular life, and yet lives only in the organic whole.”^92 Ostensibly fol-

lowing Hegel’s periodization at the end of Philosophy of Right, Gans claims that

in order to call forth this totality, the Orient contributed monotheism, Hellas

beauty and ideal freedom, the Roman world the gravity of the state vis-à-vis the

individual, Christendom the treasures of universal human life, and the Middle

Ages its differentiation into sharply delimited estates and segregations (Abteilun-

gen). The contribution of the modern world has been its philosophy, in which

all the previous stages reappear as moments, after their temporal hegemony has

ended. “Europe” is the Gesamtproduct of this dialectical process: “This is the

happiness and significance of the European: that he may freely choose his own

class from among the manifold classes [Stände] of civil society, and yet feel all

other classes of society in the one he has chosen. Take this freedom away from

him, and you have deprived him of his foundation and his meaning [Begriff] .”^93

Although the general world-historical development has culminated in harmony

in contemporary European life between subjective freedom and organic totality,

Gans maintains that Jews have remained largely aloof from the trajectory lead-

ing to Europe’s differentiated unity. If Europe represents the “plurality that

achieves unity only in the whole,” Judentum is “the unity that still has not be-

come a plurality.”^94 Gans echoes Hegel’s characterization of Judaism (in his phi-

losophy of religion lectures and elsewhere) when he identifies the Jews’ defining

feature as “the fertile creativity [Bildsamkeit] by which they gave birth to a new

world without themselves being able to partake of this world [ohne selbst dieser