Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State { 69

on their own terms, yet at the same time to unearth a rational development in

the historical evolution of spirit that culminates, significantly, in the ability to

perceive and articulate the dialectical trajectory of that very development. In

this way, Hegel grandiosely inscribes his own elaboration of the historical evo-

lution of spirit as spirit’s culminating coming to consciousness.^92 Hegel fulfills

the rational process he discovers and distills. His articulation of the phenom-

enological drama of Geist’s dialectical coming to self-awareness performatively

corroborates the truth of the narrative.

The way Hegel understands his thought to participate in the reason it theo-

rizes throws into relief the presentist thrust of his historical discourse. The ac-

count of the past that Hegel renders is in a sense always en route to the present

of his own utterance: the arc of the erzählte Zeit of his historical narrative bends

always and ultimately toward the Erzählzeit of his narration. It is at the point

when Hegel’s phenomenological analysis of reason’s progress arrives at the

present of its articulation in Hegel himself that absolute Geist finally becomes

fully present to itself. Hegel’s phenomenological historicism is both an analysis

and the Aufhebung of the rational essence of the past. In this way his very utter-

ance becomes the avant-garde of reason’s world-historical drama; world history

happened as Hegel spoke.

The implications of Hegel’s performativity bear crucially on the Vereinler’s

overestimation of the agency of Wissenschaft. If Hegel pulls off his audacious

philosophical tightrope act, he does much more than articulate insights into

the past. He not only analyzes the drama of reason’s historical progression but

performs that drama’s glorious final act. Performance is, of course, always con-

tingent, and Hegel was frequently experienced as awkward and boring in the

lecture hall. Yet the performative dynamics of Hegelian discourse were surely

seductive to his most fervent followers, who must have felt they were witnessing

absolute Geist coming to self-awareness before their eyes.

Hegel’s history of philosophy lectures provide a particularly striking exam-

ple of the intimate connection between performative utterance and substantive

analysis in Hegelian discourse. The standard (composite) text of these lectures

describes the distillation of the past in the self-consciousness of the present in

these terms:^93 “The most recent (letzte) philosophy is the result of all the previ-

ous ones; nothing is lost, all principles are preserved. This concrete idea is the

result of all of the endeavors of spirit (Bemühungen des Geistes) throughout nearly

2 , 500 years... of its most earnest work to become objective to itself, to know

itself.”^94 Even if slowly and at times obscurely, spirit moves inexorably forward.^95

The endpoint of this millennia-long process of spirit’s dialectical advancement

culminates in spirit’s consciousness of itself as spirit—in Hegel’s own discourse: