Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State { 89
senschaft des Judentums in highly political terms. Their understanding of Wis-
senschaft was in no way a retreat from the political aspirations that Moser voiced
in his memo at the Verein’s inaugural meeting and that continued to animate the
Verein throughout the first year and a half of its existence, as Gans insisted on
working out elaborate statutes and petitioning the government for recognition.
On the contrary, Wissenschaft itself enacted a Hegelian politics. The Vereinler’s
ostensible shift from practical to academic pursuits must be read in the context
of the agency that Hegelian theory assigns to scientific thought itself. Hegel’s
rational state would not only admit Jews, but Wissenschaft des Judentums would
pave the way via which its practitioners, and the wider community they pre-
sumed to represent, would enter.
