Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

60 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

I showed in the case of Bendavid in chapter 1 , Kantian universalism provided

some of the more radical maskilim with a powerful tool to attack rabbinic au-

thority and reconceive the Jews’ place in the polity. Hegel did this and consid-

erably more for the Vereinler. His assertion that history and politics culminate

in cognitive comprehension and self-awareness extended to them an invitation

to inflate the political importance and transformative potential of their wissen-

schaftlich endeavors. In tandem with this effective ascription of political agency

to “scientific” thought, Hegel’s idealization of the Prussian Beamtentum, or civil

service, also provided the Vereinler with a powerful mirror in which to see—or

into which to project—themselves.^63

Bureaucrats play a crucial role in Hegel’s theory of the state, as mediators

between the private interests of civil society and the higher substantive unity of

the state. Hegel understands civil society as a Hobbesian bellum omnium con-

tra omnes. Yet this sphere of unbridled egoism has both internal checks and

complex mediations with the universality of the state. The complementarity of

private interests tends to coalesce into an ironically balanced system of needs:

everyone’s attempt to exploit everyone else works to the advantage of all. There

are also important supra-individual institutions—the family and corporations—

in civil society that check its egoism. Most important, it is the essential function

of the state to reconcile the uninhibited subjectivity of civil society with a higher

substantive unity. The state accomplishes this through three institutions: the

monarchy, the bureaucracy, and the diets (Stände), in which representatives of

the estates confer with representatives of the monarchy and bureaucracy.

Of these three mediating institutions, the bureaucracy alone constitutes itself as

universal solely by virtue of expertise. The monarch transcends private interests

by virtue of his hereditary position. The institution of primogeniture among

the landed nobility similarly lends first-born sons a stable position above the

vicissitudes of personal interest. The corporations of the third estate also in-

troduce a more universal, supra-individual ethical perspective among its mem-

bers. But the universality of professional bureaucrats derives solely from their

competence and integrity of character.^64 In contrast to actual Prussian practices,

Hegel conceived of the bureaucracy as a pure meritocracy in which appoint-

ments should be open to all—including Jews—and made solely on the basis

of the “objective” factors of knowledge and ability.^65 It is not hard to see the

attraction for Gans and his colleagues of imagining themselves as Hegelian civil

servants. For Hegel, intellectual merit and “objective” knowledge alone con-

stitute the universality of the universal class of bureaucrats. Surely not every

member of the Verein understood prowess in the new Jewish Wissenschaft to

legitimate a claim to a universal status as Jewish civil servants, but there is ample