302 } Notes to Chapter 3
Judaism expressed in the 1821 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and, mutatis mutandis,
in Hegel’s critique of Spinoza, which I analyze below.
11. Hegel’s verb tenses are telling. His supercessionism is evident in his relegation of Ju-
daism to the past: the problem of Trennung that Judaism embodied has ostensibly been over-
come by Christianity. Islam, by contrast, “still” exists as a religion of diremption, presumably
because it is not part of the story of Christian origins.
12. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (hereafter VPW), 86.
13. Although Hegel would reverse this hierarchy in his philosophy of religion lectures of
1827 , in 1822 – 23 he still values Greek over Jewish religion, pagan sensual unity over “sub-
lime” Jewish monotheism. On this reversal, see Peter Hodgson, “ Editorial Introduction,”
1 : 69 – 70.
14. Hegel, VPW, 86.
15. Wolf, “On the Concept of a Science of Judaism,” 143 ; and “Über den Begriff,” 3. Hegel
defines “the universal as such as the identity of what is differentiated” (Lectures on the Phi-
losophy of Religion [hereafter LPR], 1 : 215 ).
16. Michael Meyer, “Introduction to Immanuel Wolf,” in Meyer, Ideas of Jewish History,
142.
17. Ibid., 141.
18. Wolf ’s critical and sometimes ironic distance from Hegel becomes pronounced in his
correspondence with Moser, which I explore at the end of this chapter.
19. There is no critical edition of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy (hereafter
LHP) that indicates which specific remarks on Spinoza date from which course of lectures
(see chapter 2 , note 93 ). Hegel notes, however, that he was involved in Jena with publishing
Spinoza (LHP, 3 : 256 ). He had probably already worked out his basic take on Spinoza in the
Jena lectures, and there is little question that it would have been part of Hegel’s first two Ber-
lin series of lectures on the history of philosophy in summer 1819 and winter 1820 – 21. The
following remark regarding Spinoza’s propositional rather than phenomenological method
exemplifies this aspect of Hegel’s critique of Spinoza: “The whole of Spinoza’s philosophy
is contained in these definitions, which, however, taken as a whole are formal; it is really a
weak point in Spinoza that he begins thus with definitions. In mathematics this method is
permitted... but in Philosophy the content should be known as the absolutely true. It is
all well and good to grant the correctness of the name-definition, and acknowledge that the
word ‘substance’ corresponds with the conception which the definition indicates, but it is
quite another question to determine whether this content is absolutely true.... [E]verything
proceeds inwards, and not outwards; the determinations are not developed from substance,
it does not resolve itself into these attributes” (LHP, 3 : 263 – 64 ). See also similar remarks by
Hegel in ibid., 3 : 260 – 61 and, on the distinction between Hegel’s philosophical method and
propositional demonstration, ibid., 3 : 283 – 85.
20. Hegel remarks, for example, that “the dualism of the Cartesian system Spinoza, as a
Jew, altogether set aside” (LHP, 3 : 252 ).
21. Hegel charges Spinoza with “acosmism” in, for example, LPH, 3 : 282. In doing so,
Hegel means that Spinozan substance has a monopoly, as it were, on true substantiality,
thereby draining the finite world of such substantiality; Spinoza’s world does not possess
substantiality immanently. Hegel borrowed the term “acosmism” from Solomon Maimon,
who first used it to describe Spinoza’s philosophy (see Salomon Maimons Lebensgeschichte,