Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

22 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

of diseases of the psyche (Seelenkrankheitslehre).^22 In 1786 Moritz recast tradi-

tional moral flaws such as jealousy, avarice, vengefulness, and vanity as so many

psychological afflictions, or “Krankheiten der Seele,” a move Bendavid would

echo in Etwas zur Charackteristick der Juden.^23

The Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde explored phenomena at the mar-

gins of rational Enlightenment culture: trauma, melancholy, paranormal experi-

ences, and eccentric behaviors of various types. It pursued the psychology of

language in studies of deaf-mutes, included studies of the blind, and so forth.

The journal occupied a place at the social margins as well. Many contributors

recorded the damage they and others had suffered through social forces. Mor-

itz’s magnum opus, Anton Reiser: ein psychologischer Roman (Anton Reiser: a

psychological novel), is a searing portrait of the experience of abject poverty and

social violence. The novel—parts of which first appeared as case studies in the

Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde —is essentially an autobiography written

in the third person, or a case study of the self. It is not accidental that Maimon

became the first Jew to edit a German-language journal when he joined Moritz

at the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde. In fact, a part of Maimon’s famous

autobiography likewise first appeared in the journal, not as a first-person nar-

rative by Maimon but as a third-person case study called “Fragmente aus Ben

Josuas Lebensgeschichte” (Fragments from the life of Ben Joshua).

Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg has written on the large number of Jewish con-

tributors to the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde. (It was Moses Mendels-

sohn, for example, who convinced Moritz to organize the journal according to

medical categories, and Marcus Herz—along with several other, lesser-known

Jewish figures—also contributed to it.) Wieckenberg speculates plausibly that

the journal was attractive to socially marginal individuals, including many

Jews, in part because of its emphasis on the possibilities for self-enhancement

and self-liberation through self-analysis, and especially the analysis of the so-

cially conditioned nature of one’s pain and suffering. As Wieckenberg notes,

Maimon’s autobiography is structured as a pursuit of truth intended to lead out

of all inhibiting social entanglements. His life story takes the form of the libera-

tion of a purely rational self from its own history.^24

In 1792 Bendavid published a pair of case studies in the Magazin zur Erfah-

rungsseelenkunde, each dealing with psychologically disturbed Jews. The first

of these, “Selbstmord aus Rechtschaffenheit und Lebensüberdruß” (Suicide

out of honesty and life-weariness), describes a man who harbors a death wish

and ultimately commits suicide. What makes his case noteworthy, according to

Bendavid, is that his wish to die is not born of a momentary passionate im-

pulse but rather of sustained reflection on a structural contradiction in his life.