Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Moses Hess { 25 7

per se can only ever be negative freedom, freedom from “outside” forces. True

freedom, however, is positive and takes the form of conscious activity, or deeds.

Rather than merely providing a defense against negative external threats to sub-

jective integrity, true freedom permits the fullest possible participation in the

world. The achievement of true freedom involves overcoming the dualism—the

self-world dichotomy in its various guises—to which the self owes the illusion

of its sovereignty: “Only in its organic union with active and real freedom does

the freedom of the spirit become a positive one. Freedom is always of a merely

negative nature wherever it appears one-sidedly, be it in extrasensual abstract

spirit or in undetermined, unlimited will, or, finally, in bad reality [schlechten

Wirklichkeit], severed from spirit and soul.”^58 The dynamic movement of the

universe constantly generates and destroys particularities. True activity and

freedom derive from an understanding of one’s participation in that broader

dynamic process, not from the delusion that one remains immune to it.

Again, however, this does not imply that particularities lack positivity or pur-

pose. They have these, yet not by virtue of an illusory autonomy but rather to

the extent that they participate in the wider dynamic process:

Just as the speculative consciousness must not rest with freedom of spirit

[Geistesfreiheit] but must proceed out of it to the free deed, to ethical free-

dom, it likewise cannot rest with this freedom. It is true that the ethical deed

is an end in itself and gratifies and delights [beseligt] wholly irrespective of

its results. But freedom of spirit is also an end in itself, as everything has its

positive side. A thing’s positive side cannot, however, ward off its destruc-

tion. Thus we see at every moment, in nature as in spirit, positive creations,

which manifest the divinity of their origin as truth or beauty, appear and per-

ish. Yet it is not what is positive, but only its one-sidedness and particularity, thus

only the negative, that is negated in these manifestations of God. We see this

process, in which reason [Vernunft] sits in judgment of one-sided under-

standing [Verständniß] in matters from the smallest to the largest. The all-

encompassing, the unitary always holds up to what is one-sided and peculiar

their opposite and thus causes collisions, contradictions, and doubts that

finite understanding [Verstand] cannot, but only eternal reason [Vernunft]

can, engender and resolve.^59

From Hess’s Spinozan vantage point, the relationship of subjectivity and free-

dom results in a paradox of the nonfreedom of the individual who imagines

himself or herself free. Hess addresses the issue of fatalism and loss of subjective

freedom directly: