Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Moses Hess { 253

Spinozan substance left no room for dynamism or particularity.^47 Hess reverses

the Hegelian charge and argues that Hegel never manages to move beyond

the bubble of subjectivity and consciousness to achieve the unity of Spinozan

substance.^48 Hess repeatedly characterizes Hegel’s philosophy as subjective

thought that, in insisting on its own absoluteness, suffers from a sort of delu-

sion of grandeur: “As absolute, Hegelian philosophy would see no alienation

of itself in the substantial act. However, because this philosophy is merely the

highest manifestation of the thinking spirit, it thinks it loses itself in substance

[in der Substanz], and it will never admit that the absolute subject... can

be exceeded.”^49 Hess charges that, in understanding his own limited and subjec-

tive philosophy as absolute, Hegel was guilty of philosophical hubris:

Hegelian philosophy cannot be faulted for anything but illegitimately en-

croaching upon foreign territories. It does not know its limits, does not know

when to make self-sacrifice [weiß sich nicht aufzuopfern]. Hegelian philoso-

phy gives the thinking spirit the most concrete, most correct concept of itself,

but it [Hegelian philosophy] expects too much from the same (from itself ) if

it demands from it [thinking spirit] anything more than that it comprehend

its own self (the absolute subject). For all genuine knowledge is only a knowl-

edge of self [ein Wissen von sich]. However, to the extent that Hegelian-

ism wishes to grasp more than its concept [Begriff], it blunders [macht er

Mißgriffe].^50

Hegel’s philosophy of consciousness selfishly refuses to acknowledge its own

limits, to sacrifice itself in the service of the truly absolute unity that it errs in

identifying with itself.

Hegel, the diagnostician of bad subjectivity, remains, according to Hess’s

critique, within the confines of subjective consciousness. Instead of following

Cieszkowski in finding a post-theoretical synthesis in proprietary subjectivity,

however, Hess appeals to Spinoza’s understanding of the parallelism of thought

and extension as different attributes of the same single substance to reveal the

errors of the subjective mindset. Hess faults Hegel for believing that, because

human consciousness progresses through mediation, substance itself requires

mediation. Hegel had faulted Spinozan substance for not engaging in the drama

of mediation that animates world history; Hess counters that Hegel’s concept of

mediation presumes and perpetuates the false dualistic hierarchy that is Hess’s

consistent target:

Not only God, as the unity of nature and spirit, is above every mediation, but

the eternal attributes of God are too. Hegelianism places spirit over nature