Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

166 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

torical materialism, Bauer was an important figure against whom Marx defined

himself—both in terms of Bauer’s theoretical positions and his posture, or his

social self-positioning as a radical intellectual. In addition to working out his

conceptual differences with Bauer in response to Bauer’s writings on the Jewish

Question, Marx was also working out, on a performative register, a counter-

model of how socially to position himself as a radical critic. Their works on the

Jewish Question were key moments for both Bauer and Marx, through which

they changed not only their theoretical positions but also their postures and al-

legiances as radical intellectuals.

Bauer abruptly changed his critical posture at this moment, and not least in

and through his writings on the Jewish Question. Bauer’s dismissal from the

University of Bonn for heterodoxy in March 1842 became a cause célèbre, and

Bauer launched a campaign to mobilize liberal support for, as the title of his

book put it, “Die gute Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene Sache” (the good

cause of freedom and my own case).^75 It was in part in response to the failure of

this campaign that Bauer adopted a more stridently elitist and antiliberal orien-

tation. Moggach notes that the “immediate consequence” of the publication of

Bauer’s two essays on the Jewish Question “was that Bauer forfeited his leading

position in the opposition movement, as he was seen to reject one of its central

demands.”^76 Bauer’s antagonizing of his erstwhile allies was, however, by no

means inadvertent.

The version of Bauer’s Die Judenfrage to which Marx responds in “Zur Ju-

denfrage” was the pamphlet that appeared in 1843 , but Bauer had first published

the essay in November 1842 in Ruge’s Deutsche Jahrbücher (except for the con-

clusion, which the censor suppressed).^77 Bauer’s remarks in a letter to Ruge of

October 27 , 1842 , accompanying the manuscript of Die Judenfrage merit being

quoted at length for the light they shed on his strategic intentions in writing the

essay, as well as on his pronounced antipathy for Jews, including baptized Jews.

He writes Ruge that the essay is the result of a study with which he has been oc-

cupied the entire summer, noting that it is

complete, exhaustive; everything is new, yet correct—the only solution to

the problem about which so much has been written—yet about which not

a single accurate word has until now been produced. I’ve gone through the

entire literature from Dohm and Mirabeau that has been written on the topic.

They will be astonished, scream mightily, but we will thereby progress infi-

nitely, and be done with the empty, disgusting theories that have circulated

even in the Rheinische Zeitung.... We must break with all half-measures, all

hypocrisy or unconsciousness, and on the Jewish Question up to now, only