Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State { 71

to know itself, fulfilling a universal need of both philosophy and the present

age:^98

To know in unity opposition and in opposition unity, this is absolute knowl-

edge; and Wissenschaft is this: to know this unity in its whole development

by means of itself.

This is then the need of the universal age [der allgemeinen Zeit] and of

philosophy. A new epoch has arisen in the world. It appears that the world-

spirit has now succeeded in casting off from itself all alien objective existence

and grasping itself at last as absolute spirit, in producing out of itself what

becomes objective for it, and in expounding it calmly.... The struggle of

finite self-consciousness with absolute self-consciousness, the latter appear-

ing to the former as outside itself, now ceases. Finite self-consciousness has

ceased to be finite; and in this way absolute self- consciousness... has at-

tained the reality it previously lacked. It [absolute self-consciousness] is all of

world history until now in general and the history of philosophy in particular,

which represents only this struggle [welche nur diesen Kampf darstellt]. It

[philosophy] appears to have reached its goal at the point when this abso-

lute self-consciousness, which it represents [dessen Vorstellung sie hat], has

ceased to be something alien, where, that is, spirit, as spirit, really is. For it

[spirit] is such only by knowing itself as absolute spirit; and it knows this in

Wissenschaft.... [O]nly in Wissenschaft does it know itself as this absolute

spirit, and this knowledge alone, spirit, is its true existence.^99

In Hegelian Wissenschaft world spirit comes home to itself and comprehends

itself as a differentiated self rather than as opposed to an Other. All otherness

becomes integrated into absolute spirit’s self-comprehending differentiated

unity, and Hegel can thus claim that Geist now becomes capable of engendering

objectifications (was ihm gegenständlich wird) out of itself (aus sich). Absolute

spirit can calmly propound its own objective products and keep them under its

control (mit Ruhe darlegen, in seiner Gewalt zu behalten) because, at the culmi-

nation point of history, apparent otherness reveals itself to be part of a greater

totality. After history’s dialectic has run its course, opposition—the historical

dialectic’s motor—becomes aufgehoben in absolute self-consciousness. Produc-

tivity no longer requires otherness. In Wissenschaft—and only in Wissenschaft

—absolute spirit now comprehends the place of all its diverse products. The

parallel trajectories of history and the history of philosophy now converge in

their common goal: both reach their culmination point (Ziel) in Wissenschaft,

which Hegel defines as the site of spirit’s profoundest reality (Wirklichkeit), as

opposed to the accidental realm of mere empirical existence. Wissenschaft is