Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

142 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

shape within me and is confirmed with each new occasional conquest that I

make in the sphere of the Idea.^167

Hegel once again sustains the hope for a supra-individual Gemeinschaft that

promises to return individuals to substantiality via the same logic by which it

underscores the meaninglessness of their isolated and superficial existence:

I do not belong to those fortunates for whom life takes shape as a substantial

[gediegenes] and organic whole; for that, the directions of my career [Thätig-

keit] are too scattered, if I can still call this meandering along [Hinschlendern],

to which I am damned by my circumstances, a career. How magnificent a

collaboration would be in a community of like-minded friends!... Every-

thing becomes dispersed in the gaudy, vapid surface appearances in which

life consumes its marrow. I long most inwardly to come out of this distraction

into a true absorption—concentration—so that all the premises [Vorausset-

zungen] according to which one lives, acts, and suffers would become

reality.^168

Precisely the individual’s distance from substantive, ethically meaningful ex-

istence, and the palpable incommensurability of the empty superficies of the

contemporary landscape with such existence, renders the decision to convert

acceptable to Moser. He returns to this issue in response to his friend Daniel

Lessmann’s recent conversion:

There was a time when such a step would have meant a breach of friendship

for me. Now, however, I don’t see anything spiritual in the Jewish commu-

nity that would merit a noble fight. In this general isolation each individual

must see how he will come to terms with the particularities of family ties,

etc. that bind him.—It is a great folly on the part of governments that they

won’t stipulate that the Jews, when they enter into civic life [sofern sie in das

Staatsbürgerleben einschreiten], therewith have immediately become Chris-

tians and [thus] embrace as accomplished what they [governments] try to

achieve by so many means—often, however, as fruitless as they are good. The

Prussian Jews in particular lack the sort of connection [Verband] that could

render them a sect able to continue to vegetate for a long period. The gen-

eral disintegration can also be felt in the provinces. Jewry there continues to

live clearly only out of habit. The chimerical nature of all reformation Jews

[Reformations-Juden] is utterly manifest [lässt sich doch mit Händen grei-

fen]. The Hamburgers are sorely deceiving themselves, but it is a deception

that one can allow them. Why do they need to know that they are themselves

in transition [im Übergange]?^169