Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Off with Their Heads? { 39

Fichte argues against the very possibility of Jewish inclusion in the civil com-

munity of the state. He views Jews as already constituting a state apart, a “state

within a state,” and thus as ineligible for inclusion in the civil contract. Fichte

infamously concludes that the only means he can see for including Jews in

the civil contract would be to cut off their heads and replace them with differ-

ent heads totally free of Jewish ideas.^67 Not only is Fichte’s statement alarming

but it also—a point that has seldom been appreciated—abruptly turns against

the philosophical defense of the French Revolution that the philosopher has

been preparing for more than a hundred pages and that amounts essentially

to a defense of the right of free individuals to form states within states. From

Fichte’s point of view there is no moral justification for prohibiting autonomous

individuals from forming states within states.^68 This is because there can be no

fundamental incompatibility between different states. The moral law defines

the sphere within which all possible civil contracts, including those that found

states, must exist; the space defined by the moral law—internally harmonious,

by definition—is the only space that states can inhabit. Since the human Sit-

tengesetz is the ultimate source of authority for all the various states in the human

community, it does not so much adjudicate between as obviate the very need for

adjudication between states.^69

What, then, is so problematic about the Jewish state within a state? Although

Fichte’s use of the term to refer to the Jews is highly memorable and can in-

deed be said to inaugurate the modern, antisemitic career of this slogan (which

had long been used to refer to various non-Jewish groups), it tends to obscure

what is actually at stake.^70 If the issue were really one of Jewish adherence to

a Jewish state, there would be no problem. Fichte’s Jews are problematic not

as Bürger, however, but as Menschen. If Jews pose a threat to Fichte’s political

philosophy—and the rhetorical violence with which he assaults them suggests

that they do—it is not by constituting a state within the state but by testing the

very limits of the human community on which Fichte predicates the legitimacy

of all states. What is deeply troubling about Fichte’s Jews is the doubt they cast

on the ineluctability of the logic governing the would-be universal moral sphere.

It is not difficult to see why one must locate the problem that Fichte has with

the Jews and Jewish subjectivity (and the inseparability of collective and subjec-

tive Jewish identity is indeed one way of stating the problem) in their human

rather than merely civic status, for this limit is the only truly significant border

in Fichte’s moral and philosophical topography. As we have seen, the mere ex-

istence of a Jewish state based on a Bürgervertrag among Jews would present

no philosophical problem to Fichte. His Jewish state, however, is not merely

another example of a civil contract between freely reasoning human beings who