Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

132 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

all other endeavors and put all its energies into these. The second volume of the

Zeitschrift will strike a different tone than the first. We are getting ever closer

within ourselves to deciding what we want, and that is: to say what we feel [wie

es uns ums Herz ist], and nothing more. There are no obstacles in this regard,

other than, say, the censor.”^139 What is perhaps most striking about Moser’s re-

alization that the Verein had been reduced to thought and word is its belatedness

(his letter is dated May 31 , 1823 ). The change Moser describes is one in the Verein-

ler’s self-understanding rather than their practice, for despite their elaborate plans

for “productivizing” Jews and other practical interventions, they had never really

ventured beyond the realm of thought and word. Moser’s remark reveals, how-

ever, the extent to which they had previously equated their intellectual labors with

a form of practical intervention. It was this faith that could no longer be sustained.

Moser repeatedly admonishes Wohlwill to turn to Wissenschaft as an anti-

dote to indulging in subjective melancholy. Given the bleak circumstances and

the Verein’s correspondingly pessimistic self-assessment, Moser’s call to Wis-

senschaft has shed most of the political freight it once carried. It now appears

as merely a preferable and more honorable disposition than the sort of sulking

in which he believes Wohlwill is engaging. In a letter of April 23 , 1823 , Moser

recalls Wohlwill’s inability to reconcile himself with Hamburg and hopes spring

will chase away his friend’s dark mood and, above all, will bring about “a wissen-

schaftliche activity, such as your intellect is capable of.”^140 Moser will repeatedly

propose Wissenschaft as the best medicine for self-indulgence.

In a letter of June 6 , 1823 , Wohlwill refers to an earlier moment in their cor-

respondence when Moser believed that Wohlwill had overreacted to an ironic

remark and suggested that Wohlwill might indeed profit by mocking his own

pedantry. Wohlwill responds with a performance of intricate Hegelian humor.

He first declines to mock his own pedantry because, he explains, Moser, with his

Argus eyes, would detect the pedantry at work in the attempt to mock the very

pedantry itself, which, instead of purging himself of his shortcomings, would

only expose new ones. Wohlwill goes on to describe, hilariously, the Hegelian

cast that such an unwittingly pedantic mockery of his own pedantry would take,

were he to pursue it:

I would manage at best to offer a broad deduction of the essence of pedantry

along with a few side digs [Seitenhiebe]; to examine to what extent certain

expressions of the totality of my soul could be susceptible to attack from in-

dividual qualitates occultae of this essence, to what extent, namely, I don’t

exist merely insofar as I am a human being, but this human being, with a par-

ticular developmental history [Bildungsgeschichte] (cf. Gans’s third report