Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

74 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

only different forms of the same spirit thus manifest themselves in religion as

different things (Daher fällt in der Religion als verschiedenes auseinander,

was nur verschiedne Form desselben Geistes ist).^105

From its limited subjective perspective, religion wrongly imagines itself to be

substantially different from—and higher than—ethical life (“ethical spirit as

real, manifest,”—that is, as the state). Philosophy, however, mediates between

religion and ethical spirit by showing them to be substantially the same. Hegel

argues further that religion wrongly opposes outward action to its own inner

spiritual life (he alludes to the retreat from political life by monks and Quak-

ers). For the state, such piety (Gotteseligkeit) and the “retreat of the individual

into himself ” is not sufficient, for “the state is not concerned with the salvation,

the interiority of the individual, but rather with his actions (Tu n).” Hegel now

articulates one of his formulations of the need for religion to serve as a founda-

tion for the state: “The state must be built upon religion, the latter founded on

substantial spirit (diese gegründet auf den Geist, der der wesentliche ist).—On the

other hand, religion must acknowledge (zugeben) that the other form is just as

essential, not the degradation but rather the realization, animation of spirit.”^106

The state must be founded on religion, but only insofar as religion, in turn, is

founded on substantial (wesentlich) spirit; only, in other words, to the extent that

religion already embodies the rationality that philosophy identifies as religion’s

essence. To serve as a foundation for the state, moreover, religion must acknowl-

edge that the state is not the degradation but the realization of this spirit.

The fact that religion and philosophy are different articulations of a common

rational substance is a major theme in Hegel’s philosophy of history and reli-

gion. Philosophy of Right § 270 and the corresponding passages in the lectures

underscore the political import of both the continuity of and the distinction

between religion and Wissenschaft. In the necessary but potentially fraught rela-

tion between state and religion, Wissenschaft acts as intermediary and arbiter.

Closely aligned with the state, Wissenschaft distinguishes between the wrong

(subjective, polemical) and the right sort of rational religion that must serve as a

foundation for the state. Hegel acknowledges that at times in history, the church

has been the bastion of higher spirituality while the secular powers embodied

pure barbarism, yet he sees the historical trajectory of the principle of universal

freedom as tending toward the actualization and self-consciousness of rational-

ity in the form of the state, not the church.^107 “In contrast with the faith and au-

thority of the Church in relation to ethics, right, laws, and institutions, and with

its subjective conviction,” he writes, “the state possesses knowledge. Within its

principle, the content is no longer essentially confined to the form of feeling and