Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

130 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

disappointments, and even their jokes. Briegleb notes Wohlwill’s tendency to

assert himself through what we could call minor declarations of independence

from Hegel, while Moser typically strives ascetically to subordinate individual

concerns to a higher cause for which Wissenschaft frequently does shorthand.^129

The opposition between Wissenschaft and the private self emerges as a recur-

rent motif that mirrors and structures the way Moser and Wohlwill grapple with

how to understand themselves in the bleak political landscape in the wake of the

failure of the Verein’s grand synthetic project.

Moser’s first letter to Wohlwill (of February 2 , 1823 ) exemplifies how closely

the Vereinler associated their mission with Hegelian philosophy. Moser writes

that he appreciates Wohlwill’s vow not to write for three months (that is, until he

had established himself in Hamburg), yet he wonders: “How is it, though, that

one hears absolutely nothing about you by indirect channels? Is the Schlachter-

strasse and its environs such unreceptive ground for Hegelian philosophy?”^130

If nothing had gotten back to him about the impression Wohlwill was making in

Hamburg, Moser reasons, this could only mean that the Hegelian philosophy it

was Wohlwill’s mission to spread had not found fertile ground there.

In an undated letter of early April 1823 Moser contrasts the grandiosity of the

movement of the Weltgeist with the banality of his own quotidian existence: “My

life... is virtually nothing more than the movement of the hand on the clock,

of which nothing more can be said than at which point it stands on the clock

face; and this clock face is not the world spirit in its great circumference [Umfas-

sung], as it really should be, but only the smallest of all the interlocked circles in

the epicyclical system.”^131 The same opposition between Hegelian philosophy

of history and banality could also, however, offer a refuge from the superficiality

of the age. Moser writes of the “urgent need” he feels to improve his grasp of

history by delving into its “primordial ground,” Egypt and the Orient. He also

hopes “to find there a refuge from the insubstantiality and vacuous reasoning

of the present age insofar as it has not yet pushed through to a cultivated form

of consciousness, of which I find the preliminary stage prepared in Hegelian

philosophy, which I likewise strive to penetrate.”^132 Characteristically, Moser

dismisses the dissatisfaction he feels with the meaninglessness of his existence

as a personal failure and momentary self-indulgent caprice: “I am dissatisfied at

most only with myself, and even this is merely the whim of isolated moments.”^133

Wohlwill expresses a different sort of self-dissatisfaction in his reply.

Whereas Moser dismissed his dissatisfaction with the world and his place in it

as an indulgence of a momentary mood, Wohlwill asserts his right, in his self-

disappointment, to be concerned with himself: “For my part, dear friend, I am

less dissatisfied with the world than with myself. The Weltgeist can take care of