Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Locating Themselves in History { 14 1

Jews and Christians could meet on a secular plane of European culture. In the

subsequent years the Weltgeist seemed at best to have been moving sideways,

crablike, and at worst at a backward slant. The original project of cultivating

a collective ethical consciousness in the Jewish community that could harmo-

nize with the totality of the state had therefore been reduced to a matter of how

each former Vereinler individually could best do justice to the Verein’s ideals.

Free consciousness “will, however,—and this is particularly important—also

be articulated through the organ of the individuals.”^166 Even Moser’s Hegelian

apology for Jewish conversion, however, is complex: the former Vereinler still

want the essence of what they had always wanted, and they could still want it

even if they all converted (which, incidentally, neither Moser or Wohlwill would

do). This implies that Christianity would no more provide the truth they seek

than would Judaism. Moser locates this truth beyond institutionalized forms of

both Judaism and Christianity. To be sure, he now draws on Hegel to defend a

position—conversion—that he had earlier deployed a Hegelian logic to impugn.

The Verein’s vision of harmonizing Jews with the state through a transforma-

tion of Jewish collective consciousness guided by science had been dashed, in

Moser’s eyes, both by the Prussian state and the incorrigible bad subjectivity of

the Jews. Although Moser came to regard conversion as one available option,

however, he did so not because he thought it would represent a philosophical

advance but because the question of conversion had for him lost its philosophi-

cal and political relevance.

Moser continues to negotiate the personal and political disappointment of

Restoration Prussia through recourse to a Hegelian interpretation of history

that amplifies the vacuity of the age and individual existence, and the distance of

both from the grand design of world spirit, yet also offers a philosophical refuge

from just such lived banality. His formulation in a letter of September 11 , 1824 ,

implies that the individual can take perverse comfort in the incommensurability

between her bleak personal existence and spirit’s deeper, distant workings:

Individual circumstances make precious little difference in the current state

of things. It is such that there is everywhere an astonishing incommensu-

rability between one’s personal existence and influence [Wirkens] and

the inner volition of spirit, and no one lives in a really peaceful dwelling.

... I think... that we are living in a very great time, and the authentic transi-

tion out of the Middle Ages can be accomplished by returning into them.—

That is a lot of nonsense for the Hamburg philosophers, but, as I said, I don’t

count you among the natives there.—Are you studying Hegel diligently? I

have not read in his works for a long time, but his system continuously takes