Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

120 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

[Alleinherrschaft], its exclusive right; it must become a dependent element

[Moment] among the many others. Those have understood their age and

the entire question very poorly for whom no third alternative exists between

destruction and pronounced demarcation [Abmarkung]; who hold the eter-

nal substrate of the Idea to be more ephemeral than that of matter; who do

not see in each particularity the truth of the whole [and] in the whole the

truth of each and every particularity, but for whom, rather, their momentary

standpoint [ihr jedesmaliger Standpunkt] is the Absolute and the opposing

one [der andere] is a lie. This, however, is the consoling lesson of history

properly understood: that everything wanes [vorübergeht] without vanish-

ing [vergehen], and that everything remains, even when said to be long past.

For that reason the Jews can neither perish, not can Jewry [das Judenthum]

disintegrate [sich auflösen]; in the great movement of the whole it will seem to

have disappeared, and nevertheless live on, as the current [Strom] lives on in

the ocean. Recall, gentlemen and friends, recall on this occasion the words of

one of the most noble men of the German fatherland, one of the greatest theo-

logians and poets; they express concisely what I have said more ramblingly:

“There will come a time in Europe when one will no longer ask who is a Jew

and who a Christian.”^100

Whether we read Gans’s vision of Jewish integration into Hegel’s state as a dis-

turbing call for total Jewish assimilation, a defense of cultural pluralism and the

right to be different, or something in between, we must not overlook how Gans’s

call for Jewish Aufgehen into European life arrives at two addresses.^101 There is

no question that for Gans the Jews must transform themselves; such a transfor-

mation had been at the heart of the Verein’s project from its inception. Insofar

as Judentum’s self-definition or consciousness is anchored in what Gans, along

with Hegel, views as bad subjectivity (“disruptive and self-preoccupied” inde-

pendence), it must be transcended. But some version of Jewish particularity will

have a place in the new substantial totality. In giving voice to this vision, Gans

defiantly, if only implicitly, insists that the Prussian state, too, will have to come

around to the principle of European life as grasped by Hegel; willingly or not,

it must become the sort of entity into which Jews will be able to flow like a cur-

rent into the ocean. Some scholars see a subtle contestation of Hegel in Gans’s

use of “Europe” rather than “the state” or “the Germanic Empire,” the latter

a term by which Hegel designates the modern state’s geographical matrix.^102

Since by “das germanische Reich” Hegel meant France, England, and Ger-

many, however, it is odd to interpret Gans’s use of “Europe” as a jab at Hegel.

Gans is not subtly contesting Hegel’s vision of the state in order to find a place