278 } Notes to Chapter 1
15. See Jonathan Hess, “Beyond Subversion.”
16. See Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, 1.
17. See Hess, “Beyond Subversion,” 318.1. Off with Their Heads?
Epigraphs: Johann G. Fichte, Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die
französische Revolution, 115 ; Lazarus Bendavid, ECJ, 55.
- Allen Wood hopes that collecting all of Kant’s ethical writings, especially the often-
neglected Metaphysics of Morals, in one volume “will help correct the false (often grotesque)
images of [Kant’s] ethical theory that have been formed by reading only the foundational
works (the Groundwork and second Critique)” (“General Introduction,” xxxiii). When Ben-
david published Etwas zur Charackteristick der Juden (hereafter ECJ) in 1793 , of course,
only the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and second Critique (Critique of Practical
Reason), but not the Metaphysics of Morals ( 1797 ), had appeared. I have found no evidence of
a direct connection between Bendavid’s and Fichte’s fantasies of Jewish decapitation, though
to judge from the timing of publication, it is possible that Fichte could have read Bendavid
before publishing Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische
Revolution (Contribution toward the correction of the public’s assessment of the French
Revolution). Bendavid’s preface to ECJ is dated March 1793 ; the first part of Fichte’s Be-
itrag (containing his fantasy of Jewish emancipation through decapitation) appeared at the
Jubilatenmesse (that is, in mid-May, Jubilate being the third Sunday after Easter) of that year. - For Fichte’s remarks on Jews in Beitrag, see 114 – 16 ; for his use of the phrase “Staat im
Staat” (state within a state) with regard to the Jews, see 115. - My labeling of Fichte’s Beitrag as a discourse of emergent nationalism requires qualifi-
cation. Strictly speaking, in Beitrag Fichte does not write as a nationalist. As we shall see later
in this section of my text, his argument is about the state and is anchored in the autonomy
of human beings as such rather than in the particular character or rights of an ethnic nation.
Nor does Fichte support his antisemitism with the nationalist opposition of German and
Jew; rather, he relies on the opposition of Jew and Mensch. With the admittedly dubious aid
of hindsight, however, I am tempted to call this opposition “protonationalist” for the reason
that Fichte’s Jews of Beitrag can already be said to embody (quite literally) an incompat-
ibility with the state, into which they can be incorporated only through a fantasy of corporal
mutilation. Precisely when imagining the Jews, Fichte does come close to an ethnic essen-
tialism. Paul Rose makes a similar point in Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from
Kant to Wagner (hereafter RA), 124. For Rose’s assessment of Fichte’s originary role in the
development of “revolutionary antisemitism” in Germany, see ibid, chapter 8. For a critique
of Rose’s reading of Fichte as dubious, see Anthony La Vopa, “Jews and Germans,” 680 – 81. - Baron coined the term in his seminal essay “Ghetto and Emancipation,” which he
ends with a call to “break with the lachrymose theory of pre-Revolutionary woe and to adopt
a view more in accord with historic truth” ( 526 ). See also Salo Baron, History and Jewish
Historians, 64 , 88 , 96. - Joseph II issued a series of edicts—known as the Edicts of Toleration—pertaining to
Jews in different parts of the Habsburg Empire: for the Jews of Bohemia, there was an edict
in October 1781 ; for Austrian Silesia, December 1781 ; for Vienna and Lower Austria, January