For a detailed account, see Jacob Toury, Die politischen Orientierungen der Juden in
Deutschland. For a briefer overview, see Michael A. Meyer and Michael Brenner, German-
Jewish History in Modern Times, 2 : 262 – 67 , 280 – 91.
See Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution.
Classic studies of the treatment of Jews and Judaism in German philosophy include
Nathan Rotenstreich, Jews and German Philosophy: The Polemics of Emancipation, and
Emil Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern Philosophy. More recent studies
include Francesco Tomasoni, Modernity and the Final Aim of History, and Andrée Lerous-
seau, Le judaïsme dans la philosophie allemande, 1770 – 1850.
See Michael Mack, German Idealism and the Jew, and Paul Rose, Revolutionary Anti-
semitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner.
See Mack, German Idealism and the Jew, 4 , 10.
To be clear, Rose is nuanced in his assessment of Hegel’s treatment of Judaism and
the Jews (see P. Rose, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany, 109 – 16 .) He sees the roots of
“revolutionary antisemitism” much more in Kant and Fichte. Mack reads Jews as the Other
of Kantian transcendental philosophy and Hegelian dialectics alike.
For an excellent study of Maimon, see Abraham Socher, The Radical Enlightenment
of Solomon Maimon.
Hess’s letter to Auerbach of September 2 , 1841 , appears in Moses Hess, Moses Hess
Briefwechsel, 79 – 80.
See Warren Breckman, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social
Theory.
On Germany, see, for example, Lenore O’Boyle, “The Problem of an Excess of Edu-
cated Men in Western Europe ( 1800 – 1850 ) ,” 473 – 78. O’Boyle cites a wide range of observ-
ers who commented on the perceived surfeit of university-educated men in Germany in the
1820 s, 1830 s, and 1840 s.
On the Young Hegelians’ exclusion from the academy and its impact on the move-
ment, see Wolfgang Eßbach, Die Junghegelianer, 124 – 31.
Although Marcus Herz ( 1747 – 1803 ) studied and eventually carried on an important
correspondence with Kant well before Bendavid ( 1762 – 1832 ) began lecturing and publishing
on Kant’s critiques in the 1790 s, Herz never meaningfully engaged with Kant’s thought after
his critical turn.
See Scott Spector, “Beyond Assimilation.”
“Subjectivity refers to the intricate, complex, and self-contradictory ways in which
subjects experience their place in the world, in contrast to how they are perceived by others,
how they are ordered within relatively rigid external systems” (ibid. , 97 ).