Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Becoming Citizens of Hegel’s State { 45

Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon at Jena in 1806 , including Prussia’s 1812 Jewish

Emancipation Edict, which greatly expanded Jewish civil rights (though many

of the advances would be rescinded in Restoration Germany). Even after the

Carlsbad Decrees, Germany’s political and intellectual future, and the place of

Jews in each, remained very much open questions. The Jewish Emancipation

Edict had been ambiguous about whether Jews would be permitted to hold aca-

demic appointments, and the question lingered until the Verein’s president, Ed-

uard Gans ( 1797 – 1839 ), who was seeking an appointment to Berlin University’s

law faculty, pressed the issue a full decade later. Friedrich Wilhelm III’s cabinet

order—the so-called Lex Gans of August 18 , 1822 —definitively excluded Jews

from state teaching positions.^3

One of the key components of the political and intellectual landscape in

Berlin that infused the Verein members—or Vereinler—with optimism during

the heady years of the late 1810 s and early 1820 s was the philosophy of Georg

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Given Hegel’s great admiration for Protestantism (or,

at any rate, for his philosophical version of it), negative view of Judaism’s ac-

complishments (evident in both harsh criticism and silent disregard), and the

secularized supersessionism basic to his thinking, scholars have expressed legit-

imate skepticism about the compatibility of Hegel’s thought with Jewish com-

mitments and historical narratives, whether religious or secular. Michael Meyer,

for example, writes:

Hegel’s veneration for the state as the highest embodiment of the World

Spirit created an atmosphere of political quietism, which stifled prophetic

morality. For about a generation before midcentury, Hegel’s influence in

Germany was enormous. Jewish thinkers could not help but be affected by

his grand system and its cherished goal of freedom. Yet like Spinoza, Hegel

left no room in his thought for significant individual responsibility. And that

was essential to any conception of Judaism, especially for the Reformers,

who dwelt on Judaism’s moral imperative. Although thoughtful Jews had to

grapple with Hegel’s philosophy, ultimately they all rejected some of its most

basic elements.^4

The lingering but erroneous view that Hegel’s veneration of the state was politi-

cally quietist vis-à-vis the Prussian Restoration state, which indeed worked to

roll back rather than advance gains in Jewish civil rights, has contributed to the

widespread image of Hegel as bad for the Jews. One scholar has gone so far as to

contend that Hegel’s narrative of world spirit—with its orientalist, Eurocentric

geocultural orientation and tendency to level alterity in the name of the universal

—culminates in the “European, Christian State.”^5 There has been a critical con-