Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

78 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

tianity. The danger he saw in Catholic thinkers like Friedrich Schlegel and

Protestant thinkers like Friedrich Schleiermacher, Fries, and Friedrich Hein-

rich Jacobi is that they privilege forms of Christian subjectivity and faith over

uni versal rationality. Even as Hegel can rightly be said to equate the state with

the actualization of the principle of rationalized Protestantism to which he sub-

scribed, he considered many forms of Protestantism (and, more vehemently,

Catholicism) willfully uninformed, irrational, and politically corrosive.^117 It is

indeed only a highly philosophical and secularized form of Protestantism—that

is, the essence of Protestantism as understood by philosophy or Wissenschaft—

that is contiguous with the rational freedom actualized in the state.

By making compatibility with rational totality the principle that distinguishes

true religions from polemically subjective ones, Hegel leaves open the possibil-

ity that non-Christian religions can likewise harmonize with the state, provided

they can be reconciled with the state’s actualized ethical freedom. A Hegelian

Judaism seemed possible to the Vereinler as long as Wissenschaft could discover

in it an abiding rational principle that would integrate Judaism into the broader

ethical unity.

In their aspirations to harmonize Jews and Judaism with the state by ex-

plaining Judaism to itself from the objective vantage point of science, the Ve r-

einler probably also drew encouragement from Hegel’s theorization of the role

of pedagogy in inculcating rational freedom in the minds of individuals. In his

1819 – 20 lectures on the philosophy of right, Hegel remarks: “To the extent that

the state has laws that bear on the reality of freedom, and to the extent that it is

its concern that the universal manifest itself in the consciousness and will of in-

dividuals, pedagogy also falls within its realm. Religion, if it remains of a genuine

nature, cannot come into conflict with the state. Religion can, however, cling to

its principle according to a one-sided form and consider the form of subjectiv-

ity to be the essential one. It thereby enters into opposition and contradiction

with the state.”^118 In aligning the pedagogical enterprise (das Lehrgeschäft) with

the state, in contrast to narrowly subjective forms of religion that oppose and

contradict the state, Hegel insists that education not be left to religious authori-

ties. He can furthermore be read to suggest that a Lehrgeschäft founded on the

rational principles of the state could serve as a corrective to religion’s polemical

excesses by explaining to religion what constitutes genuine religion (echter Art).

Such a reading of a Lehrgeschäft as an extension of the state and a corrective to

religion squares perfectly with how the Vereinler understood their pedagogical

mission. By discovering as Judaism’s essence the principle of unity and totality,

they sought to inculcate in the consciousness of their fellow Jews the principle

that would bring them into harmony with the Hegelian state.