Franks_Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy

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Paul Franks Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy? German Idealism’s Relationship to Judaism Beinhaltet der Deutsche Idealismus einen „heimlichen Antisemitismus“, wie Michael Mack behauptet, oder ist er einem kabbalistischen Erbe verpflichtet, wie Jürgen Habermas meint? Beide Behauptungen enthalten ein Körnchen Wahrheit. Vom christlichen Anti-Judaismus übernehmen Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Gebrauch des Begriffs „Judaismus“, um zunächst einen maximalen Span- nungsmoment der Dialektik zu bezeichnen – dem geschichtlichen Gipfelpunkt verlockend nahe, aber zugleich frustrierend fern. Erst in zweiter Linie bezeichnet „Judaismus“ eine lebendige post-biblische Religion. Solche Urteile über den Judaismus können einzig und allein auf das Alte Testament gegründet und unmit- telbar auf zeitgenössische Juden angewendet werden. Somit interpretieren auch Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Judaismus mit Hilfe ihres spezifischen Kon- zepts von Dialektik. Während Schelling und Hegel einen Augustinischen, relativ milden Anti-Judaismus vertreten, ermöglicht Kant eine neo-markionistische Eli- minierung des Judaismus – eine Möglichkeit, die Fichte, den Antisemitismus vor- wegnehmend, dann realisiert. Eine aufmerksame Betrachtung des rabbinischen Judaismus lässt die Kritik der Deutschen Idealisten indessen als fragwürdig erscheinen. Ihre Ansicht des Absoluten als einer selbstverneinenden Negativität ist der lurianischen Kabbala verpflichtet. Allerdings werden kabbalistische Ideen in der christlichen Kabbalistik üblicherweise entweder ins biblische Altertum zurück- versetzt oder als christlich vereinnahmt. Philosophen, die sich mit der Tradition des Deutschen Idealismus befassen, sollten auf die Notwendigkeit einer Revision sol- cher Urteile reflektieren, um die Fallstricke des Anti-Judaismus zu vermeiden und die fruchtbare Beziehung der Philosophie zum Judaismus anerkennen. Most contemporary thinkers with an interest in German Idealism are oblivious to the connection between German Idealism and anti-Semitism. To be sure, it has already generated some discussion, mainly from Jewish philosophers but also from some Germans. Indeed, it is a topic that Jewish philosophers can hardly afford to ignore. On the one hand, all Jewish philosophy since the 1790s – from Salomon Maimon to Hermann Cohen, from Franz Rosenzweig to Emmanuel Levinas – has been intimately intertwined with German Idealism (Franks, 2007). Kant and Hegel are to modern Jewish philosophy what Plato and Aristotle were to medieval Jewish philosophy, and Habermas has fittingly titled an essay, “The German Idealism of the Jewish Philosophers” (Habermas, 1985). On the other hand, the title of a recent book by Michael Mack speaks of “the inner anti-Semitism” of German Idealism (Mack, 2003). By “inner anti- Semitism,” Mack evidently means to suggest that the derogatory remarks of the philosophers are not merely extrinsic expressions of prejudice, to be explained

Transcript of Franks_Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy

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Paul Franks

Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy? German Idealism’s Relationship to Judaism

Beinhaltet der Deutsche Idealismus einen „heimlichen Antisemitismus“, wieMichael Mack behauptet, oder ist er einem kabbalistischen Erbe verpflichtet, wieJürgen Habermas meint? Beide Behauptungen enthalten ein Körnchen Wahrheit.Vom christlichen Anti-Judaismus übernehmen Kant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegelden Gebrauch des Begriffs „Judaismus“, um zunächst einen maximalen Span-nungsmoment der Dialektik zu bezeichnen – dem geschichtlichen Gipfelpunktverlockend nahe, aber zugleich frustrierend fern. Erst in zweiter Linie bezeichnet„Judaismus“ eine lebendige post-biblische Religion. Solche Urteile über denJudaismus können einzig und allein auf das Alte Testament gegründet und unmit-telbar auf zeitgenössische Juden angewendet werden. Somit interpretieren auchKant, Fichte, Schelling und Hegel den Judaismus mit Hilfe ihres spezifischen Kon-zepts von Dialektik. Während Schelling und Hegel einen Augustinischen, relativmilden Anti-Judaismus vertreten, ermöglicht Kant eine neo-markionistische Eli-minierung des Judaismus – eine Möglichkeit, die Fichte, den Antisemitismus vor-wegnehmend, dann realisiert. Eine aufmerksame Betrachtung des rabbinischenJudaismus lässt die Kritik der Deutschen Idealisten indessen als fragwürdigerscheinen. Ihre Ansicht des Absoluten als einer selbstverneinenden Negativität istder lurianischen Kabbala verpflichtet. Allerdings werden kabbalistische Ideen inder christlichen Kabbalistik üblicherweise entweder ins biblische Altertum zurück-versetzt oder als christlich vereinnahmt. Philosophen, die sich mit der Tradition desDeutschen Idealismus befassen, sollten auf die Notwendigkeit einer Revision sol-cher Urteile reflektieren, um die Fallstricke des Anti-Judaismus zu vermeiden unddie fruchtbare Beziehung der Philosophie zum Judaismus anerkennen.

Most contemporary thinkers with an interest in German Idealism are obliviousto the connection between German Idealism and anti-Semitism. To be sure, ithas already generated some discussion, mainly from Jewish philosophers butalso from some Germans. Indeed, it is a topic that Jewish philosophers canhardly afford to ignore. On the one hand, all Jewish philosophy since the 1790s– from Salomon Maimon to Hermann Cohen, from Franz Rosenzweig toEmmanuel Levinas – has been intimately intertwined with German Idealism(Franks, 2007). Kant and Hegel are to modern Jewish philosophy what Platoand Aristotle were to medieval Jewish philosophy, and Habermas has fittinglytitled an essay, “The German Idealism of the Jewish Philosophers” (Habermas,1985). On the other hand, the title of a recent book by Michael Mack speaks of“the inner anti-Semitism” of German Idealism (Mack, 2003). By “inner anti-Semitism,” Mack evidently means to suggest that the derogatory remarks of thephilosophers are not merely extrinsic expressions of prejudice, to be explained

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in terms of cultural context. Instead, he wants to suggest, anti-Semitism issomehow internal to the philosophies of the German Idealists, and cannot beexpunged – not, at any rate, without considerable complication. If GermanIdealism is internally anti-Semitic, then is Jewish philosophy’s intimate rela-tionship with German Idealism not a colossal mistake? At the same time, shouldnot anybody who is interested in German Idealism, whether they have a stake in Jewish philosophy or not, want to determine whether it is internally anti-Semitic?

Gershom Scholem famously and furiously rejected the very idea of “Ger-man-Jewish dialogue” as a myth (Scholem, 1976). The passionate Jewish lovefor German culture was not only unrequited, it was rewarded with hatred andmurder. Jewish philosophy’s relationship with German Idealism is one expres-sion of this tragic history. But there are, I believe, more general lessons to belearned here – lessons about the processes of secularization at work in modern-ity, about the possibility of multiculturalism in philosophy and in society ingeneral, and about the future and significance of Jewish philosophy.

I. Christian Anti-Judaism from Augustine to Luther

There is a long-standing dispute, rooted in debates between Left and RightHegelians, about the secularization that seems essential to modernity. Does itconsist in the dissolution of religion, or at least of religion’s claims to authoritywithin the public sphere, hence in the possibility of new developments, unrelat-ed to religion, in the space vacated by religion? Or does it consist in the appro-priation of certain ideas from religion, the liberation of these ideas from thecontrol of religious authorities? The German Idealists seem to engage in secu-larization in the second sense: they appropriate or liberate certain ideas fromChristianity, specifically from the Lutheran Christianity to which they vari-ously affiliate. If there is an “inner anti-Semitism” in German Idealism, this issurely because of the secularization – in this sense – of Christian anti-Judaism.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to deal with some tricky issues concerningthe term “anti-Semitism.” First used by Wilhelm Marr in 1879, in the first de-cade of a unification of Germany that also led to the emancipation of Jewsthroughout the new country, the term drew both upon ancient biblical tradi-tion – the descent of the Jews from Noah’s son, Shem – and upon recent work inphilology. For the term’s antonym, “Semitic,” had been used by August Ludwigvon Schlözer to designate Hebrew and related languages in 1781. Once Marrfounded the “Anti-Semitic League,” the term “anti-Semitic” soon came to sig-nify an opposition to Jewish emancipation, frequently (though not invariably)

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1 For an important version of the debate, see Löwith, 1957, who argues for the appro-priation view, and Blumenberg, 1985, who is closer to the dissolution view.

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undergirded by pseudo-scientific views about the racial – and hence inelimin-able – characteristics of Jews. Strictly speaking, it is anachronistic to speak ofanti-Semitism before the struggles over Jewish emancipation in the late nine-teenth century, perhaps before the advent of racial pseudo-science. Yet it hasnow become commonplace to use the term more broadly. On the one hand, toonarrow a usage risks the implication that anti-Jewish prejudice in other contextsor on non-racial grounds is just fine, while obscuring the connections betweenvarieties of opposition to Jews and Judaism. On the other hand, too broad ausage risks trivialization and the obscuring of differences.

I will side-step the issue by speaking, from now on, of anti-Judaism, whileattempting to delineate the pressures under which traditional Christian anti-Judaism can give rise to the discrimination, violence and genocidal tendenciesthat we have come to associate with anti-Semitism.2 By “anti-Judaism,” I meannot merely the criticism or rejection of Judaism but also the specific view thatJews qua adherents of Judaism are uniquely excluded from salvation or fromsome religious or secular equivalent. By “inner anti-Judaism,” I mean anti-Judaism that is not merely an accidental attitude but rather part of the self-definition of the religion or philosophy in question. In this sense, inner anti-Judaism may be called traditional within Christianity because anti-Judaism ofsome kind has been internal to most, but not all, varieties of Christianity sincethe second century. However, there were early Christianities without anti-Judaism,3 and significant advances have certainly been made since the Holo-caust – of which the Second Vatican Council is of course the most monumentalexample.

In order to give a conceptual overview of a long, complicated and torturoushistory, I find it helpful to begin with a brief account of the Augustinian view ofJudaism – the so-called doctrine of witness. Highly innovative when Augustinefirst propounded it in the fourth century, this doctrine became, more or less, theofficial position of the Catholic Church until the thirteenth century, although ithad a certain elasticity, and although it was subject, as I will explain, to pressuresthat could lead to legalized discrimination and murderous violence. Augustinedeveloped his doctrine against the background of the long transformation ofChristianity from a Jewish sect into the established religion of a Roman Empirein which Jews were subject to systematic, legal discrimination. More imme-diately, Augustine’s innovation was the fruit of his own disentanglement from

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2 Anti-semitism is an ontic radicalization of anti-Judaism, focusing on the Jew’s verybeing, thematized in racist or other terms. For influential versions of this distinction,see Langmuir, 1996 and Oberman, 1981.

3 See, e.g., Pseudo-Clementine Homily 8: “For on this account Jesus is concealed fromthe Jews, who have taken Moses as their teacher, and Moses is hidden from those whohave believed Jesus. For, there being one teaching by both, God accepts him who hasbelieved either of these.”

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Manichaeism, which was itself only the most successful in a series of profound-ly anti-Jewish versions of Christianity.

Christian anti-Judaism has typically been articulated in terms of antithesesarticulated by Paul: antitheses between law and gospel, letter and spirit. But, asPaula Fredriksen emphasizes (Fredriksen, 2008), there was a fundamental differ-ence between the context in which Paul wrote his epistles and the context inwhich they were read from the second century on. Paul always identified him-self as a Jew, and he believed that the Second Coming, along with the conversionof all of his fellow-Jews, was imminent. His criticisms of Judaism were alwaysfrom within, and he always understood the exclusion of most Jews from salva-tion was to end imminently. To speak of Paul as anti-Judaic is anachronistic,since he does not contrast his own religion to Judaism, or himself to Jews assuch. However, later, gentile readers of Paul, who did not identify as Jews andwho assumed that the distinction between Christians and Jews was permanent,or at any rate to endure as long as the current state of the world, read Paul in avery different context. Some saw the Jewish scriptures themselves as antitheticalto Christian life. Most notably, Marcion, in the second century, came to thinkthat the law and the gospel could not originate from the same god. There had tobe one god who created the world and gave the law to the Jews; and anotherwhose appearance in the form of Jesus revealed the gospel. Accordingly, Mar-cion sought to purify Christianity of the taint of Judaism. He offered the firstChristian canon, removing all Jewish scriptures and retaining only redacted ver-sions of Paul’s epistles. The Manichaeism to which Augustine subscribed for adecade had its own scriptures, but it agreed with Marcion in its hostilitytowards Judaism and in its thorough rejection of the Hebrew Bible.

Four elements of the Augustinian doctrine of witness can be formulated inthe form of a commentary on a verse that he cited repeatedly. In the Old Latinversion used by Augustine, Psalm 59: 11/12 reads: “Slay them not, lest at anytime they forget your law; scatter them in your might.”4

Applying this verse to the Jews, Augustine argued as follows. First, the keyto the mystery of the survival of the Jews is their preservation of the law –namely, the law of Moses, as specified in the Hebrew Bible. The law of Moses is“your law,” the law of God. Contrary both to Marcion and to his Manichaeansuccessors, the law can be read spiritually, in a way that is not antithetical to thegospel. Moreover, without the letter, there is no spiritual interpretation. With-out the law, which the gospel fulfils, there is no gospel. So the law must be pre-served. In the end, as Paul affirmed, the Jews will come to see the law accordingto the spirit, and they will resume their rightful place in the economy of salva-tion (Romans, 11:26).

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4 This is the Vetus Latina version. Compare Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.“Your law” is omitted in, e.g., the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text, and the Vulgate.

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However, second, the Jews are blind to the law’s spiritual interpretation.They understand and practice the law only according to the letter, and obstina-tely refuse to acknowledge Jesus, just as they refused in his lifetime. The literalinterpretation of the law emphasizes the importance of practices that involvethe body and also construes salvation in corporeal terms. It is important to notehere that, as Christians and Jews became disentangled in the early middle-ages,“Judaism” came to be used as a polemical term within intra-Christian debates.The primary targets of these polemics were other Christians, while Jews wereonly their secondary targets. At the same time, Christians were increasinglyunlikely to have intimate knowledge of the practices and beliefs of living Jews.Consequently, “Judaism” came to signify a literal interpretation of the law thatwas largely a Christian construction. This would have fateful consequences.

Third, God punishes the Jews for their rejection of Jesus. Unlike other non-Christians, the truth lies within their grasp, but they do not seize it. Theirblindness to the spiritual meaning of the law is manifest in their temporal state –in their being “scattered” throughout the diaspora, in exile from the ruins oftheir temple and their devastated homeland. This punishment signifies an exclu-sion from salvation that is unique, though ultimately to be overcome when theJews are converted.

Fourth, the Jews should not be terminated: “Slay them not.” The Jews –with their literal understanding of the law and in their lowly temporal condition –testify to the truth of Christianity. Thus Christians are enjoined not to eliminatethe Jews by violence. At the same time, of course, efforts at conversion areencouraged, insofar as the conversion of the Jews is an essential aspect of theeschatological hope for salvation of the world.

In its opposition to the views of Marcion and Mani, this is an anti-anti-Jewish position. When anti-Jewish violence occurred without official sanction,notably in the Rhineland in 1096, during the First Crusade, the Augustiniandoctrine could be invoked in protection of Jews. When Bernard of Clairvauxsought to prevent a repetition of this violence during the Second Crusade, in1146, he appealed to the very verse cited by Augustine, adding: “The Jews areindeed for us the living letters of Scripture, constantly representing the Lord’spassion” (Cohen, 1999, pp. 235–6, citing Bernard of Clairvaux (1957–77), VIII,pp. 311–17).

Still, Augustine’s position is hardly pro-Jewish. Indeed, when subject to cer-tain pressures, it can be used to justify discrimination and even violence. This isexactly what happened in the late middle ages, and Luther inherited the result-ing, hateful, discriminatory and violent version of anti-Judaism.

Consider the third element of the doctrine, which consists in the recognitionof the lowly state of the Jews as divine punishment. During Augustine’s time,shortly after the Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312, Jewswere citizens of Rome, as all inhabitants of the Empire had become a centuryearlier. However, the question quickly arose whether, in light of the Emperor’s

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conversion, Jews were to be considered the equals of Christians within the poli-tical order. Should their status as divinely punished not be reflected here too?Over the next few centuries, a succession of laws gradually deprived, firstJudaism of its equal rights as a religion, then Jews of their equal rights as citi-zens. Discrimination of this systematic, legal variety can easily be seen as a fur-ther expression of the divine punishment of the Jews, manifest in their beingscattered. Augustine never advocates such discrimination, but it is not obvious-ly incompatible with his doctrine of Jewish witness.

Consider, now, the fourth element: the normative conclusion that Jewsshould not be slain. The Jews signify the letters of the law, which are to bepreserved so that both can be read spiritually. However, “the letter kills” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Jews persist, even now, in the very obstinacy with whichthey rejected Jesus in the past. Did the participation of the Jews of the past inthe killing of Jesus amount to homicide or deicide? To what extent are the Jewsof the present to blame for their ongoing obstinacy? Are they simply blind, orwilfully so? And does their continued obstinacy amount to a continued, presentparticipation in the killing of Jesus? Jews came to be perceived as themselvesviolent, in virtue of their very existence, which signified, after all, that theSecond Coming had not yet arrived. In the later middle ages, the fantasy of pre-sent Jewish violence against Jesus took the form of accusations of host desecra-tion and child murder. Then Christian violence seemed justified in punishmentof – or in defence against – an imaginary Jewish attack on Christianity, on thestill imperfect world, on God Himself.

To be sure, Church authorities often rejected these accusations of violence.But the accusations were not straightforwardly contrary to the elements of theAugustinian doctrine. Rather, they drew on longstanding and oft-repeated ideasto which Augustine and his successors were as committed as anyone: theobstinacy and blameworthiness of the Jews, and their role in effecting an unna-tural opposition of the letter to the spirit, thus maintaining – or, at least, signify-ing – the imperfection of the world.

Finally, the Augustinian rationale for the continued survival of the Jews istheir preservation of Mosaic law. But what if they do not preserve the law? Thenthe rationale vanishes. In the thirteenth century, it came to the attention of theChurch that Judaism had not stood still since the time of Jesus. RabbinicJudaism had developed and most Jews had accepted the Babylonian Talmud asauthoritative. With the exception of the anti-rabbinic Karaites, who were notprominent in the Latin West, Jews did not read scripture literally after all. Theyhad their own ways of interpreting and observing the law, and these were verydistant from the spiritual readings of Christians. This discovery led to a drama-tic rebirth of what might be called neo-Marcionite tendencies within theChurch. Jewish law – which is to say, rabbinic or Talmudic law – could not havebeen given by another god, as Marcion had argued, for dualism was heterodox.But this law could hardly have been given by God. Accordingly, it must have

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been given by none other than the devil. Now it could be argued that the Jewshad lost the protection offered by Psalm 59, even that – as followers of a satanicreligion – they were other than human, in fact, demonic (Trachtenberg, 1943).Officially, though, Jewish obstinacy could now be explained as the Talmud’sfault. Thus, beginning in Paris in 1242, with an event that Jews still lamentannually, books were burned. Where the Talmud was not burned, Jews kepttheir books only under the condition of Christian censorship. More severepersecution ensued, against which the Augustinian doctrine of witness offeredno protection. Jewish obstinacy seemed proof of their satanic nature, whichcame close to entailing their immunity to conversion. Anti-Judaism becameontic, while discrimination threatened to turn violent, and violence edgedtowards genocide.

Luther inherits the full weight of late medieval, Christian anti-Judaism, withits misrepresentations of the Talmud, its fantasies of present Jewish violenceagainst Jesus, and its demonization of Jews. First, like so many of his predeces-sors, Luther emphasizes the Pauline antitheses, which he removes from theiroriginal, intra-Jewish context, thus creating a particular Lutheran construct of“Judaism” or legal literalism. Paul is seen as distinguishing himself from arguingwith the Jews as a whole, and the literalist and legalistic Judaism which Paulsupposedly condemns wholesale is to be found as much among papists asamong Jews. Neither can receive the spirit of the gospel, for both are slave to theletter of the law, which is not only the Mosaic law as such, but any doctrine orinstruction that demands human acceptance, without creating a new heart or anew life. Thus the Jews are the secondary target of an intra-Christian polemic.Second, and connectedly, Luther believes at first that, if the legalism of thepapists is removed, the Jews will convert.5 This is similar to the thirteenth cen-tury view that the Jews would convert if only the Talmud were removed. Alsosimilar is the fact that, after the failure of the expected conversion, Luther be-comes increasingly convinced that the literalist obstinacy of the Jews is all butincurable and that Jews are demonic. He clearly believes popular accusations ofJewish violence, including host desecration and infanticide. At the same time, henever excludes the possibility of conversion. Third, contemporary Jews are not,in any event, authentic Jews, since it became impossible even to aspire to obser-ve the law once the temple was destroyed as a divine punishment: “Their wishto be Mosaic Jews must not be indulged. In fact, no Jew has been that for four-teen hundred years” (Luther, “Die Juden und ihre Lügen,” 1543, in WA, I/53, p. 525). Judaism is not only deadening; it is dead.

All this, of course, undermines the applicability of the Augustinian doctrineof witness. Thus, fourth, notwithstanding his respect for Augustine, Lutheradvocates anti-Jewish violence: the burning of synagogues and schools, the

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5 See “Das Jesus Christus ein geborner Jude sei,” 1523, in WA, I/11, pp. 307–336.

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destruction of Jewish houses; the seizure of Jewish books and the prohibition ofJewish teaching; along with the removal of the right to safe conduct. Implicitlyrejecting Augustine’s appeal to Psalm 59, Luther writes, “We are at fault […] innot slaying them” (WA, I/53, p. 522).

II. German Idealism’s Anti-Judaism: Secularization as Appropriation

German Idealism appropriates all four elements of the Augustinian doctrine, oranalogues thereof, and the stresses and strains to which they are subject.

(1) According to Kant, Hegel and Schelling, the law that is central toJudaism can and should be interpreted spiritually. It contains an important fea-ture of Christianity, but without the further feature that makes Christianity areligion of freedom. More specifically, Judaism expresses the sublimity of God,rising above the sensuality of idolatrous religions.

Kant writes:

Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Book of the Law than thecommandment: Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor any liken-ess either of that which is in heaven, or on the earth, or yet under the earth, etc.This commandment alone can explain the enthusiasm that the Jewish people felt inits civilized period for its religion when it compared itself with other peoples, orthe pride that Mohammedanism inspired. The very same thing also holds of therepresentation of the moral law and the predisposition to morality in us. It is utter-ly mistaken to worry that if it were deprived of everything that the senses canrecommend it would then bring with it nothing but cold, lifeless approval and nomoving force or emotion. It is exactly the reverse. (AA, V, p. 274) 6

Like the moral law, the Mosaic law rises above the senses in its conception ofthe highest ground. But the absence of sensual representation deprives neitherof the ability to motivate action. In fact, sublimity generates feelings of reveren-ce that motivate more effectively than sensual representations. Similarly, late inhis career, Hegel emphasizes that Judaism is the “religion of sublimity,” whileSchelling, echoing Augustine against Manichaeism, insists on the importance ofattending to the Hebrew Bible, without which Christianity remains incompre-hensible (SW, VIII, pp. 269–274).

But here lies a crossroads. How is the prohibition of representation relatedto the rest of Mosaic law? Is this prohibition alone sublime and spiritual? Whatis at stake is nothing less than whether Judaism, taken as a whole, prefigures andimplicitly involves the appearance of spiritual freedom, or whether it is merely apre-condition whose destruction must precede that appearance. The formersuggests respectful disagreement along with a claim to supersession; the latter

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6 Translation from Kant, 2000.

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suggests deep hostility and a demand for overthrow. I will call the former thePrefigurationism and the latter Preconditionism.

(2) The Mosaic Law is, according to Kant, but a pale shadow of the morallaw. Whereas the moral law is a law of autonomy, a law one gives oneself in anact of freedom, the Mosaic Law is a law of heteronomy, given by another in anact of domination. Since autonomy is, for Kant as well as Fichte, the philoso-phical equivalent of salvation, it follows that Jews are specifically excluded fromsalvation by their Jewishness. Both Schelling and Hegel agree with this: theJews “excluded themselves from the great course of history” (SW, XIV, p. 151)and “stand immediately before the gates of salvation” (HW, III, § 340) withoutever entering. For them, however, the equivalent of salvation is the realizationof spiritual freedom within the intellectual, ethical, social and institutionalarrangements of modernity.

Underlying Kant’s antithesis between autonomy and heteronomy are passa-ges from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which have frequently been read withinthe context of anti-Judaism. Underlying Kant’s conception of autonomy isRomans 2:14–15: “(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do bynature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, [e ¬autoîv ei ¬sínnómov] even though they do not have the law, since they show that the require-ments of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing wit-ness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)” And under-lying his conception of heteronomy is Romans 7:21–25:

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. Forin my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law [e ¢teron nómon] atwork in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind andmaking me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wret-ched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God –through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’slaw, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

The latter passage has been read – here I set aside the question of Paul’s inten-tion – as contrasting God’s law, the law of freedom in my inner being, with“another law,” the law of sin and slavery in my body. Indeed, this other law hasbeen identified with the law of Moses. When Pope Gregory IX condemned theTalmud to the flames in 1239, he described it as “another law” [aliam legem],using the Vulgate translation of “e ¢teron nómon,” an identification repeated byhis successor, Pope Clement IV in 1267 (Cohen, 1999, p. 322, p. 332, citingSimonsohn, 1988, p. 172, pp. 233–6). My suggestion is not that Kant is explicit-ly aware of this background, but that he repeats, perhaps unwittingly, a long-standing pattern of Christian thought, a pattern according to which the greatestthreat to morality consists in the substitution of a law of slavery for the law offreedom. Judaism may not be Kant’s primary target, but it all too easily be-comes the focal point of the criticism of heteronomy, whether in his or otherhands.

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Certainly, Kant understands Jewish law as heteronomous. Although theprohibition on representing the divine anticipates the moral law’s elevationabove sensibility, Jews “remained attuned in their minds to no other incentiveexcept the goods of this world and only wished, therefore, to be ruled throughrewards and punishments in this life” (AA, VI, p. 79).7 Theirs was a “slavishmind” (AA, VI, p. 80). Indeed, since religion is part of morality, and moralitycan only be autonomous, Judaism is no religion:

The Jewish faith, as originally established, was only a collection of merely statu-tory laws supporting a political state; for whatever moral additions were appendedto it, whether originally or only later, do not in any way belong to Judaism as such.Strictly speaking Judaism is not a religion at all but simply the union of a numberof individuals who, since they belonged to a particular stock, established them-selves into a community under purely political laws, hence not into a church. (AA,VI, p. 126). Judaism is “a delusion of religion.” (AA, VI, p. 128)

As is typical of Christian anti-Judaism, Kant does not have only the Judaism ofJews in mind. For him, “Judaism” is a distortion into which anybody’s moralityand religion can fall. In this sense, Judaism should be eliminated from Christia-nity too. Hence Kant’s retrospectively horrific statement: “The euthanasia ofJudaism is pure moral religion, freed from all the ancient statutory teachings,some of which were bound to be retained in Christianity (as a messianic faith)”(AA, VII, p. 53). Morality and religion can be cleansed of impurity only by thedeath of Judaism, which will signify the entry of humankind into its destinedunity. Of course, the violence portrayed here as euthanasia is figurative only,equivalent to the ultimate conversion that Augustine expected. Yet it is uncom-fortably close to the actual violence counselled by Luther and realized byHitler.

We have returned to the crossroads between Prefigurationism and Precondi-tionism. The language of “euthanasia” suggests that, for Kant, Judaism antici-pates spiritual freedom only negatively, in its overcoming of sensuality. In all otherrespects, it is merely statutory law where it should be moral religion; hence, itsdestruction is a pre-condition for freedom’s realization. Thus Jesus appeared toa people “ripe for a revolution […] as though descended from heaven,” and notas the fulfilment of Jewish messianism (AA, VI, p. 80). To this extent, Kantdeparts from the Augustinian view that Mosaic Law is susceptible to spiritualinterpretation throughout. This prepares the way for a neo-Marcionite position.Regarding Judaism as the antithesis of the Gospel, Fichte does not merely editthe Judaism out of Paul, like Marcion; instead, he edits Paul out of Christianitybecause of his residual Jewishness (GA I/8, pp. 269–72). Recalling pre-Christianroots of anti-Semitism, Fichte sees Judaism as “founded on the hatred of man-kind” (GA, I/1, p. 242), and he retains only the Gospel of John, in which Jesus’

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7 Translations in this paragraph are from Kant, 1996.

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Jewish origins are unmentioned.8 Thus Fichte prepares the way for the re-evaluation of Marcion as the precursor of the Lutheran Reformation.9

Schelling finds a duality, not between Judaism and Christianity, but withinJudaism, expressed by the distinction between the divine names “Elohim” and“YHWH” (SW, XIV, pp. 128–132). The former name signifies the unity of thecosmic powers, or the relative One, who, manifesting residual paganism,demands the sacrifice of Abraham’s son. But the absolute One, manifest as the“angel of YHWH,” frees Abraham from this command, while also blessingAbraham for being prepared to obey Elohim’s command, thus acknowledgingthe relative One as a necessary stage in the absolute One’s manifestation. On theone hand, aspects of Judaism connected to the relative One are mere precondi-tions to be destroyed by Christian freedom, and the law is a “yoke of slavery”(SW, XIV, pp. 146–147n., citing Gal. 5.1).10 On the other hand, aspects connect-ed to the absolute One are prefigurations of Christianity. Indeed, the negationof residually pagan preconditions is itself a prefiguration of Christianity, and itis this prophetic element alone that gives Judaism an edge over contempora-neous paganism, which exhibits many parallels. In general, “Judaism, strictlyspeaking, was never something positive. It can be defined only as shackled paganism, or as potential, still concealed Christianity; and it was just this middleposition that was fatal to it” (SW, XIV, p. 148). Having played out its role in lateantiquity, Judaism has long been both dead and deadening, so that the killing ofChrist, notwithstanding its salvific necessity, expresses Judaism’s inner nature.11

Of all the German Idealists, Hegel alone is unequivocal – in his mature lectures, at any rate – in taking the Prefigurationist route. This makes him closest to Augustine and thus relatively benign in his anti-Judaism. To be sure,

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8 Notoriously, Jesus is reported in this gospel to have said to “the Jews,” “You belong toyour father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire” (John, 8:44). Onthe gospel’s Jewish Christian authorship and the complexities of its “anti-Judaism,”see Reinharz, 2001. There is much to be said elsewhere about the gospel’s complexwithin German Idealism and among twentieth century thinkers such as Eugen Rosen-stock and Franz Rosenzweig.

9 See Harnack, 1921, and his youthful essay of 1870, published in Harnack, 2008.Harnack was no Nazi, but his work was helpful to the Deutsche Christen who tookover many German Protestant Churches during the Nazi period, seeking to removeJewish elements from the Christian canon.

10 In this remarkable footnote, Schelling responds to an auditor’s objection that hisunsympathetic account of Judaism is inconsistent with the “Old Testament,” i.e., theHebrew Bible. He appeals to the insight into Judaism of Paul, whose view of the lawhe interprets in a Lutheran manner.

11 See SW, XIV, p.149 n.: “Christ cannot be understood out of Judaism’s inner resources.It provided the matter of his existence, but he himself is really the potence of paganism, alien to Judaism. Therefore the Jews had to destroy (kill) his matter, andfrom this destroyed [matter] the potence of paganism could arise freely for the firsttime, as he says only at the end: ‘for all the nations’” (Luke 24:47).

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both early and late, Hegel sees Judaism as exemplifying the bondsman’s relationto the lord. But Hegel’s view of Judaism becomes increasingly nuanced andappreciative as his view of that relationship develops.12 Especially in the 1824and 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion, he comes to see Jewish serviceas liberating labour: Judaism is liberation from all earthly domination (VPR, II, p. 344); taken as a whole, it is submission to divine wisdom, as expressed in Job, but enacted as absolute faith in God’s covenant with Israel (VPR, II, pp. 345–352, p. 573). Consequently, Hegel’s view of Judaism is more positivethan Schelling’s: Mosaic law-governed practices do not merely pre-figureChristianity; they do what Christianity does, effecting a reconciliation between God – understood as “infinite subjectivity” – and humans (VPR, II, pp. 351–2).Nevertheless, Christian reconciliation is superior to Jewish reconciliation.Indeed, Hegel’s late appreciation of Judaism does not require him to abandonhis earlier critique of Judaism, which he never drops, and which he reiteratesforcefully in 1827 and 1831. Judaism is now seen to involve not only humanliberation but also purposeful, divine particularization (VPR, II, p. 563), butthey do not become one. God initiates and oversees the development, but itremains external, abstract mediation and never becomes self-mediated, concretedevelopment; similarly, the Jews remain frozen at the developmental stage oftheir election, as one people – at its root, one family – among others (VPR, II,pp. 575–7n.). Thus Judaism fails to become genuinely universal, and becomeshighly resistant to change in even its most contingent elements. Self-excludedfrom history, it never becomes true freedom (VPR, II, pp. 574–9).

What is most striking is that, for each of these thinkers, “Judaism” is prim-arily the penultimate moment in the dialectic that culminates in salvation,secondarily the religion of the ancient Israelites reflected in the Old Testament –i.e., the Hebrew Bible read through the lens of the New Testament, especiallyPaul’s epistles – and only thirdly the religion of actual, living Jews. More de-tailed consideration would show, I believe, that each philosopher’s view ofJudaism is closely correlated with his view of this dialectic. Thus, Kant’s viewmust be situated within the moral dialectic of humiliation and respect: Mosaiclaw anticipates the moral law in its prohibition of sensual representations of theunconditioned, but it is in all other respects a guise of the false law, the principleof happiness, which must be struck down if autonomy is to be achieved (AA, V,pp. 73–5). Fichte’s neo-Marcionism reflects his general tendency towardsantithetical and impatient – non-dialectical – thinking with respect to rivalsystems and approaches, which expresses itself in his rhetorical annihilations of“dogmatists.” For both Schelling and Hegel, “Judaism” names the maximallytense moment in the dialectic’s progression towards salvation, the stage that

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12 On Hegel’s struggle with the “dark riddle” of Judaism (Rosenkranz, 1844, p. 49), seeRotenstreich, 1963; Fackenheim, 1968; Poggeler, 1974; Hodgson, 1987; Yovel, 1998;and O’Regan, 1997.

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anticipates salvation to the highest degree but fails to realize it.13 Indeed, theirdifferent judgments of Judaism may arise from their different understandings ofthe dialectic. Hegel’s necessitarian dialectic of the concept requires eachmoment to contain all the elements of its successor, although these momentscannot be fully realized without further negation; while Schelling’s contingency-laden dialectic of the will portrays moments, not as emerging directly from theirpredecessors, but as produced – thanks to some contingent act of will – in res-ponse to their predecessor’s shortcomings. Hence, it may be argued, Hegel mustconceive of Judaism as containing all the elements of Christian salvation – as yetrealized only in abstracto – while Schelling must conceive of Judaism as lackingat least one element necessary for salvation – the incarnation – that Christianityalone supplies through a volitional and revelatory intervention.

(4) Schelling and Hegel both regard the stateless and lowly condition of theJews as a divine punishment for their self-exclusion from history, which hasadvanced from the stage of Judaism to that of Christianity. Thus Hegel, in thePhenomenology, calls the Jews “the most reprobate of peoples” (HW, III, § 340),14 and Schelling sounds a familiar note: “They had to cease to be a peopleand were dispersed and scattered among the other peoples” (SW, XIV, p. 149).

More ominously, neither Kant nor Fichte recognizes the condition of theJews in Christendom as disadvantaged at all. Kant points out – correctly enough– that the Jewish diaspora pre-dates the destruction of Jerusalem. Then, ignor-ing both popular prejudice and discriminatory laws, he concludes that, “theirdispersion throughout the world, with their unity of religion and language,must not be attributed to a curse inflicted upon this people, but rather to a bless-ing, especially since their wealth, estimated per capita, probably now exceedsthat of any other people of the same number” (AA, VII, p. 206n.).15 Going fur-ther still, Fichte asserts that Jews have the advantage over all other nations,because they constitute a global “state within a state” that is “more secure andpowerful” than other states. (GA, I/1, pp. 291–2).16 Here is a secular version ofthe medieval fantasy of Jewish violence, in defence against which, Christiandiscrimination is justified. To arrive at the full-blooded anti-Semitism of the late

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13 Both tend to treat Greek or pagan religion and Judaism as equally one-sided pre-decessors of Christianity, but ultimately place Judaism higher insofar as it is closer toChristianity. For Schelling (SW, XIV, 131), the angel of YHWH is not yet the ap-pearance of A2, but rather B – the inverted potency – determined to appear by A2. ForHegel, Judaism corresponds to abstract negativity, which remains separated from theprocess of its own constitution, hence “fixed” or dead, which is not yet concrete, self-negating or “living” negativity.

14 In this noteworthy passage, the Jews are adduced, as it were, out of nowhere, to illuminate a moment in spirit’s appearance.

15 Kant provides no basis for this economic conjecture, presumably grounded in pre-judice.

16 Hitler alludes to the passage in his speech at Munich on July 28, 1922. See Jäckel andKuhn, 1980, p. 659.

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nineteenth century, one needs to add two further elements: the ontologizationof Jewish nature expressed by the pseudo-scientific concept of race – in whosedevelopment Kant plays an early role – and the demonization that would de-prive the Jews even of human rights.

(5) Positions on the emancipation of the Jews are largely determined by thegeneral views sketched above: Kant is somewhat equivocal, Fichte is opposed,and Schelling and Hegel are clearly in favour. Underlying the debate is theunexamined yet universal assumption that Judaism is, in its current state, bothdegraded and degrading to its practitioners.

Endorsing a proposal for the reform of Judaism by the adoption of “the reli-gion of Jesus” – which he mistakenly ascribes to his former student, LazarusBendavid17 – Kant remarks that this “is the only plan which, if carried out,would leave the Jews a distinctive faith and yet quickly call attention to them asan educated and civilized people who are ready for all the rights of citizenshipand whose faith could also be sanctioned by the government” (AA, VII, pp. 52–3). But this is ambiguous: are the Jews already ripe for citizenship andofficial recognition as a religious community, so that the proposal’s implemen-tation would merely “call attention” to this fact? Or would the reform renderthem ready?

On just this question, Fichte divides from Schelling and Hegel. Driven byhis prejudiced view that Jewry constitutes a misanthropic, global state, he writes:

Human rights [the Jews] must have, even if they do not grant them to us; for theyare human beings, and their injustice does not justify us in treating them with in-justice […] But to give them civil rights, I see no way, except to cut off all theirheads in one night and replace them with others in which there is not a singleJewish idea. In order to protect ourselves against them, I see once again no way,except to conquer their beloved land for them, and to send them all there. (GA, I/1,p. 293n.)18

The Jews will be fit for civil rights, in addition to the human rights that theyalready possess, only if they give up Judaism – or perhaps render it Judaism inname only, without “a single Jewish idea. The violence is, once again, metaphor-ical, yet still disturbing.

In contrast, both Schelling and Hegel think that Jews are uncivilized becau-se of discriminatory laws that isolate Jews from the rest of humanity. In an 1848memo, Schelling recommends emancipation on the grounds that the exclusion

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17 Kant perhaps conflates Bendavid with David Friedländer, who proposes religiousreform in exchange for emancipation. However, neither suggests adopting “the reli-gion of Jesus.” See Bendavid, 1793, and Friedländer, 1799. Kant can understand themodernization of Judaism only as conversion to some approximation of Christianity.

18 The first sentence earned Fichte a reputation as a principal enemy of the Jews. SeeAscher, 1794. Later, the second sentence made him a hero to some Zionists. See Voigts,2003.

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of Jews from political office has not prevented them from attempting to under-mine the state, while inclusion in the life of the state will make Jews feel increas-ingly connected to that life. Since Judaism is incompatible with the Germanprinciple of “higher honour,” this will eventually lead to their conversion toChristianity.19 Hegel argues in the Philosophy of Right that, although it wastechnically right to deny civil rights to the Jews as members of another nation, itwas nevertheless “the height of folly”. This is because patriotism is not only anantecedent condition but is actively created by the sense, reinforced in ordinarylife, that the national community is the substantial basis and end of one’s life, sothat emancipation would bring about “the desired assimilation,” while continu-ed exclusion would bring reproach, not only to the Jews, but also to the state(HW, VII, § 209, § 270).20 Indeed, it may be Hegel’s view that emancipating theJews would mark the culmination of modernity, since the “infinite pain” of theJews in pre-modern Christendom expressed its still-to-be-overcome divisionbetween heaven and earth and its as yet unrealized embodiment of spirit, of “theprinciple of the unity of divine and human nature” (HW, VII, § 358).21 WhetherHegel’s “desired assimilation” is supposed to consist in conversion, in the adop-tion of “the religion of Jesus”, or in the renewal of Judaism from its own sour-ces, remains unclear. But, however well-intentioned Hegel may have been, onemay be forgiven for worrying that, as in Luther’s case, the stiff-necked Jew’srefusal to meet the expectations of self-styled benefactors could lead to a back-lash. Civil rights should flow, not from an assessment of beneficial conse-quences, but from the demands of justice.

The basis for these views consists of a specific understanding of the dialecticculminating in salvation, along with more or less serious study of the HebrewBible – always read through the lens of the New Testament, especially Paul’sepistles and their history within Christian anti-Judaic tradition – and anunhealthy dose of prejudice. Developments of Judaism since the life and deathof Jesus are simply ignored, with the important exception of kabbalah, to whichI will attend in the next section. Yet rabbinic Judaism develops its own concep-tion of spiritual freedom as constituted through the human activities of inter-pretation and innovation. On the kabbalistic version that has long been main-stream, the salvific process is even internal to God, just as Hegel requires, sincethe covenant with both Israel and humanity in general places God’s destiny inhuman hands.22 To understand this, however, one must examine the Torah in

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19 See Cahnman, 1974. Schelling ends Lecture XXIX of his Philosophie der Offenbarungwith Anti-Pope John XXIII’s words to the Jews of Constanz: “May Almighty Godlift the veil from your eyes” (SW, XIV, p. 151). This appears to have been a papal ritual. See Linder, 2009. Compare the pre-Vatican II Roman Missal for Good Friday,based on 2 Cor. 3: 13–16.

20 See Avineri, 1953; Smith, 1991; Fischer, 2006.21 See Fackenheim, 1973, p. 120.

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both its written and oral dimensions, which Kant and the German Idealists –including Hegel at his most sympathetic – never do. Mendelssohn pioneers thephilosophical articulation of this oral dimension in his Jerusalem, portrayingTorah as “a kind of living script that arouses the spirit and heart” (JA, VIII, p. 169), and preparing the way for, among other things, Franz Rosenzweig’sinsistence that Judaism conceives Torah, not as law, but rather as commandment(mitzvah), and that the task of Jewish life is to transform the impersonal strict-ures of law into personal commands issuing from God’s loving presence.

Jewish philosophy has risen to the Kantian and German Idealist challenge toexplain how Judaism can be an expression of freedom. Indeed, this has beenfruitful because terms drawn from Kant and German Idealism are particularlywell-suited to the task. But this does not detract from the fact that Kant andGerman Idealism perpetuate Christian anti-Judaism. Indeed, just as the Refor-mation, by casting off the centralized Church authority that had generallyrestrained anti-Judaism in accordance with Augustine’s doctrine, threatened tounleash unprecedented violence against Jews, so Kant and German Idealism, byappropriating anti-Judaism in a secular form, threatened to unleash an evenmore unrestrained violence. The fulfilment of the threat was far from inevitable.But, when it was fulfilled, the Kantian and Fichtean fantasies of a servile andmisanthropic Judaism making war on the world would play their parts, and theHegelian and Schellingian hopes for an emancipation that would lead to Jewishassimilation and conversion would offer little protection.

III. German Idealism’s Kabbalistic Legacy: Secularization as Tsimtsum

What, then, of the other side of German Idealism’ relationship to Judaism? Isthere also a positive relationship that explains the intimate relationship betweenJewish philosophy and German Idealism? Responding to the residual anti-Semitism of unnamed colleagues, who still maintained that Jews could be at bestsecond-rate philosophers, Jürgen Habermas argues, not only that this is false,but that Jews are particularly attracted to German Idealism because GermanIdealism is itself Jewish! There is much to criticise in Habermas’ essay, which hehimself calls reportage rather than serious scholarship. In particular, much of

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22 Hegel is aware of kabbalah, but knows little or nothing of its biblical and midrashicroots, and he discusses it in his lectures on the history of philosophy, not in hislectures on the philosophy of religion. Thus, he can say, amazingly, that Judaism acknowledges no internal development of God and never develops the story of theFall (VPR II, 627). When he discusses kabbalah, it is within the ancient context ofPhilo of Alexandria and Neo-Platonism, and without any recognition of kabbalah’scontinuing vitality.

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the essay is vitiated by the fact that Habermas adopts, for the sake of rebuttal,his anti-Semitic opponents’ racist criterion of who counts as a Jewish philoso-pher. Nevertheless, there is an important grain of truth here.

He writes: “It remains astonishing how productively central motifs of thephilosophy of German Idealism shaped so essentially by Protestantism can bedeveloped in terms of the experience of the Jewish tradition. Because the legacyof the Kabbalah already flowed into and was absorbed by Idealism, its lightseems to refract all the more richly in the spectrum of a spirit in which some-thing of the spirit of Jewish mysticism lives on, in however hidden a way”(Habermas, 1985, pp. 21–2). This strange-sounding claim is made out byHabermas on the basis of a second-hand – and now somewhat outdated –knowledge of kabbalistic traditions. Yet the claim can be reconstructed.

By “the legacy of the Kabbalah,” Habermas means to refer to a complex ofideas associated with the sixteenth century kabbalist, Isaac Luria, who initiateda transformation, not only of kabbalistic thought, but also of Jewish practice.Most importantly, Habermas invokes the concept of tsimtsum or contraction:“In Lurianic mysticism the idea is developed of the universe’s arising in virtueof a process of shrinkage and contraction; God withdraws into an exile withinhimself” (Habermas, 1985, p. 39). Habermas’ 1954 doctoral dissertation alreadyfollows Franz Rosenzweig’s suggestion that Schelling’s philosophy employsLurianic concepts (Rosenzweig, 2000, p. 57).

Indeed, long before Schelling’s 1810 Stuttgart lectures, in which he speaksexplicitly of tsimtsum, the kabbalistic impact on German Idealism may alreadybe seen in the publication that instigated the rise of German Idealism, in Fried-rich Heinrich Jacobi’s letters to Mendelssohn.23 According to Jacobi, Lessinghad confessed to him that his Enlightenment rationalism had led him inexorab-ly to Spinozism – the ultimate impiety. This bombshell is intended to explodethe reputation of supposedly moderate rationalists such as Mendelssohn whomaintain that they are theists who can comfortably inhabit their religious com-munities. But Jacobi also reports that Lessing was fascinated by the concept oftsimtsum, which he discussed in an irreverent and naturalistic manner (Jacobi,1785, pp. 34–5).

In Jacobi’s reported conversation, there are three options. The first two,which are portrayed as having the virtue of consistency, are Spinozism and kab-balism. Jacobi distinguishes these two options, but he also identifies them, as ifto say that the distinction is without a difference.24 Since neither allows for indi-viduality and personhood, both amount to what he later calls nihilism, which isthereby identified as Jewish. At the same time, Jacobi himself speaks for thekabbalah “in the strict sense,” which he perhaps understands as Christian.

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23 On Jacobi’s significance for German Idealism, see Franks, 2005.24 See Jacobi, 1785, p. 170. The identification of Spinozism with kabbalah is most fa-

mously associated with Wachter, 1699 and 1706.

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Lessing and Jacobi can speak of tsimtsum because of the astonishingly ambi-tious translation project directed by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth and hisassociates. The resulting volumes (Knorr von Rosenroth, 1677–84) containtranslations of parts of the Zohar, and of published works deriving in variousways from the teaching of Luria, including some Lurianic traditions recordedby Haim Vital, which were still passing among kabbalists in manuscript, as wellas various treatises discussing the Christian significance of kabbalah. It is acrowning achievement of the Christian kabbalism originating with the Christi-an discovery of the kabbalah in the Renaissance (Schulte, 1997). But it also sha-res the limitations of Christian kabbalism: motivated by the desire to convertthe Jews, it views everything spiritual in kabbalah as Christian rather thanJewish; it takes at face-value the kabbalistic claim to antiquity, thus continuingthe conceit that Judaism has not developed creatively since the time of Jesus;and it neglects the intimate linkage between kabbalah and other aspects of rab-binic Judaism, notably midrash and Talmud.

Habermas speaks, understandably, of the impact on German Idealism of“Lurianic mysticism.” But tsimtsum is not exclusively Lurianic. It has midrashicroots – to which I will turn shortly – and is found in pre-Lurianic kabbalistictexts, sometimes under the name of tsimtsum, sometimes not (Scholem, 1941;Idel, 1992). Over several centuries, Luria, whose legacy was not only un-published but also mainly unwritten, became a screen on which complex conca-tenations of kabbalistic ideas – some with prior histories – could be projected,reformatted, and rearranged. Although Luria’s principal disciple, Haim Vital,insisted on a vow of secrecy, the doctrine of tsimtsum, among others, made itsway into print with remarkable speed.

Here is one version of Vital’s exposition of tsimtsum, published only recent-ly, after circulating among select kabbalists in manuscript for centuries:

When the supernal Emanator decided to create this material cosmos, it withdrewits presence in the manner described by our rabbis, of blessed memory, [when theysaid] ‘He concentrated His presence between the two staves of the Ark,’25 for priorto this the infinite [Ein-Sof] filled everything. […] At the beginning of creation,when the Blessed One withdrew its presence all around in every direction, it left anempty space in the middle, surrounded on all sides by the light of the infinite,empty precisely at the centremost point. (Vital, 1985, p. 17)

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25 See Midrash Shir ha-Shirim, Parshah 1.13: “‘My beloved is to me as a bag of myrrh,lodged between my breasts.’ (Song of Songs, 1:13) Of all the spices, none is sweeterthan this myrrh. Similarly, the Holy One Blessed be He is the most fitting thing in theworld. And why does he compare the Holy One Blessed be He to a bag? Because it iswritten of the Holy One Blessed be He, ‘For I fill heaven and earth’ declares theLORD.’ (Jeremiah 23:24) And He contracts His in-dwelling between the staves of the Ark, as it says, ‘resting between my breasts.’” Compare Bereshit Rabbah 4:3; Tan-huma Vayakhel 7.

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To understand this concept, we must examine its roots in midrash, in the oraldimension of Torah. Vital alludes to these roots when he compares the creativetsimtsum to the tsimtsum of the shekhinah between the staves of the Ark – inother words, the Ark in the Holy of Holies within the Sanctuary or Temple,containing the tablets brought by Moses, where God dwelt “in the midst” of thepeople of Israel. An ancient tradition, found in both rabbinic and non-rabbinicsources, views the construction of the Temple as an image of the creation of theworld. And several late ancient or early medieval midrashic texts use variants ofthe term “tsimtsum” to describe God’s contraction into the midst of His people.

In a much cited passage, Gershom Scholem stresses the discontinuity be-tween this midrashic tsimtsum and its kabbalistic relative: “Here we have theorigin of the term Tsimtsum, while the thing itself is the precise opposite of thisidea: to the Kabbalist of Luria’s school Tsimtsum does not mean the concentra-tion of God at a point, but his retreat away from a point” (Scholem, 1941, p. 260).

Notwithstanding Scholem’s point, there is a significant continuity betweenthe midrashic and kabbalistic notions, as the following midrash illustrates:

Elihu said: The Almighty, we cannot find Him, excellent in power. (Job, 37:23) Hethat hears this verse may exclaim: ‘Perhaps, heaven forfend, this is blasphemy!’ Butthis is what Elihu meant: We will never find God’s strength displayed towards anyof His creatures, for He does not visit His creatures with that which is burden-some, but comes to each one according to his strength. For know that if God hadcome upon Israel with the full might of His strength when He gave them theTorah, they would not have been able to withstand it, as it says, If we hear thevoice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die (Deut. 5:22). God, however, cameupon them according to their individual strength, for it says, The voice of the Lordis with power [ba-koah. ] (Ps. 29:4). It does not say ‘with His power’ [be-koh.o] but‘with power’, that is, according to the power of each individual. Another explana-tion: when God said to Moses, ‘Make a tabernacle for Me’ (Ex. 25:8), he exclaimedin amazement, ‘The Glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, fills heaven and earth,and yet He commands: Make a tabernacle for Me!’ […] God said, ‘Not as youthink do I think; twenty boards on the north, twenty on the south and eight in thewest [suffices for Me]; moreover, I will descend and even contract [va-atsamtsem]my Shekhinah within one square cubit.’ (Shemot Rabbah, 34:1)26

This midrash shows that we are dealing with three instantiations of the samestructure: the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the divine in-dwelling in the sanc-tuary, and the creation of the world. In each case, the following features appear.(1) Divine infinity is understood, not as essentially positive, but rather as nega-tivity that brooks no external limitation. It is a power that would seem to leaveno room for anything other than itself to exist, and that is immensely dangerousto anything other than itself that comes into existence. This is why Sinai must befenced off, and why only Moses is to be allowed to ascend. This is why the Ark

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26 Novak, 1992, brought this midrash to my attention.

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must be kept in the Holy of Holies, which is also out of bounds, except to anadequately prepared High Priest at the holiest time of the year. And this is whythere can be no creation without tsimtsum. (2) In order to maintain divine infi-nity while enabling finitude and otherness, God’s negativity must be self-limit-ing. God forgoes thoroughgoing and universal immanence, forgoes annihilationof the other. (3) What this manifestation of divine self-limiting calls forth isindividuality: a finite image of divine, self-limiting negativity.

Once the logic of the idea of tsimtsum is appreciated, it can be discernedindependently of any suggestion that the philosopher in question was acquaint-ed with kabbalistic texts.27 Here I want to adduce the case of reciprocal recogni-tion, which continues to be central both to post-Kantian philosophy of mindand ethics, and to contemporary political philosophy.

Introducing the theme, Fichte seeks to solve two problems with a singlestroke. First, what is the source of our consciousness of ourselves as rationalagents, and in particular as instances of a concept of selfhood that is both first-personal and such as to allow for instantiation by a plurality of beings? Second,what is the source of the normativity of ethical principles, and in particular ofethical principles that are compatible with a plurality of individual conceptionsof the good? Fichte’s solution is that self-consciousness originates in an eventthat he calls the summons. This occurs when one rational agent, already con-scious of herself as such, recognizes another being as a rational agent by invitinghim to do something. Insofar as the second being recognizes the recognition ofthe first, he thereby recognizes and becomes aware of himself, both as a memberof a plurality and as an individual capable of taking a first-personal perspective.

Despite his neo-Marcionite anti-Judaism, Fichte’s conception of naturalright as a form of heteronomous rationality with its own end, the developmentof individuality, along with its development by Hegel, is one of the best GermanIdealist resources for Jewish philosophy.28 Indeed, Fichte’s summons exempli-fies the structure of tsimtsum. First, it seeks to avoid problems arising from theinfinity of rational agency – not in God, but in the human being, considered asthe image of God – an infinity that threatens to brook no limitation. The striv-ing to overcome limits is essential to rational agency as Fichte understands it,and it is accordingly hard to see how a rational agent can come to conceive hers-elf both as an overcomer of limits and as someone who can acknowledge – andwho, indeed, ought to respect – the limits set by the existence of other rationalagents. Hegel makes explicit what is implicit in Fichte: that rational agency is tobe understood as negativity. And Hegel makes the destructive power of agencyvivid with his parables of the life-and-death struggle and of lordship and bondage,

Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy? 273

27 On Schelling, see Schulte, 1992 and 1998. On Hegel, see O’Regan, 1994, and Magee,2001.

28 Also significant are Schelling’s conceptions of narrative and myth.

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as if to say that I cannot conceive myself as a rational agent among others with-out ascribing to myself the power to annihilate the other, either physically orspiritually. Second, the summons involves a contraction or self-negation thatmakes it possible for the summoner to preserve infinity while acknowledgingothers and the limits they represent. As Fichte puts it, “only the moderation offorce [die Mässigung der Kraft] by means of concepts is the unmistakable andexclusive criterion of reason and freedom” (GA, I/3, p. 45). Foregoing violence,the summoner accords the other a normative status, and invites the other toenter a communicative realm beyond the use of force (Bernstein, 2007, p. 189).Third, the other is summoned, not as a particular falling under a universal con-cept, but as an individual.

On the one hand, the summons invites the other to discover his or her free-dom of choice. On the other, the summons invites the other to discover his orher membership in a norm-governed community of communicators: I may ormay not do what you ask me to do, but whatever I choose counts as a response,even if I do nothing; and I am summoned to perform my own, reciprocal act oftsimtsum, forgoing violence in my responsiveness. Thus, in summoning me, theother gives me the law – or, better, like Moses, the summoner enables me toreceive the law. No wonder that Fichte says, “The summons to engage in freeactivity is what we call education [Erziehung]” (GA, I/3, p. 39). Similarly, thePiaseczno Rebbe, who was murdered in the Holocaust after guiding Jewish lifein the Warsaw Ghetto, emphasizes the role of tsimtsum at the very heart of theeducational process (Shapira, 1931; Friedman, 2003).

In addition to its promise with respect to creation, ethics and education, theconcept of tsimtsum also offers the resources for an account of secularization –an alternative to both the abolition and appropriation models. Already in somebiblical and rabbinic traditions, the human being is strikingly empowered bythe covenantal relationship with God. Abraham argues with God about the fateof Sodom and Gomorrah in the name of divine justice (Gen. 18), which alreadysuggests a relationship transcending servility. In a well-known Talmudic discus-sion, Rabbi Yehoshua goes even farther. He argues against God that the Torah“is not in the heavens” (Deut. 30:12), which he takes to mean that human argu-mentation about the law should prevail, even if God were to disagree with itsconclusion, so that, once the Torah has been entrusted to humans, God has nostanding in the argument about its meaning (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metsiah59b). The concept of tsimtsum goes even further, or rather it allows us to under-stand these traditions in a still more radical manner: in both creation and revela-tion, God contracts, enabling the other not only to exist, but also to emulatedivine creativity and revelation. Thus, the responsiveness constituted by con-traction, along with the power to constitute society and its norms, passes to thehuman being.

This has given rise to a kabbalistic interpretation of pluralism within Jewishlaw. It is a constitutive feature of the Mishnah, the first written record of oral

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Torah, that it includes non-binding as well as binding opinions; and it is a con-stitutive feature of the Talmud that it seeks, not only to decide which opinionsare binding, but also to preserve, through argument and analysis, the differencesbetween recorded views. In a well-known Talmudic passage concerning thenumerous disagreements between the schools of Hillel and Shammai, a divinevoice declares both that the school of Hillel is normative and that “[t]hese andthose are the words of the living God” (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b). Inexplanation, Solomon Luria, the sixteenth century halachist, invokes themidrashic idea encountered above: that revelation is attuned to the power ofeach individual. Citing unnamed kabbalists, he explains that, “Each perceived inhis own way, and in accordance with his intellectual capacity, and received inaccordance with the stature and unique character of his unique soul” (Luria,1615, 2a-b). The thought is that, in revelation, which occurs by means of divinecontraction, each individual receives the ability to constitute Torah in a uniquemanner. By the nineteenth century, this approach would give rise to an empha-sis on human creativity – h. iddush – in Torah, understood as an image of divinecreativity.29

On this model of secularization, divine revelation necessarily involves con-traction, which both enables and calls for the empowerment of the humanbeing. In twentieth century thinkers – such as Ernst Bloch, Franz Rosenzweig,and Walter Benjamin – the tsimtsum model of secularization is radicalized evenmore, so that divine contraction empowers the human being even to the pointof atheism. For Rosenzweig, this means that atheism must be understood froma theistic point of view. For Bloch and Benjamin, it means that atheism shouldempower itself by drawing on religious concepts. This is not the occasion for anexploration of the fruitfulness of the tsimtsum model of secularization forthinking about modernity. But it is important to note that Jewish philosophyhas given rise to such a model, not least because neither the Left Hegelian con-ception of secularization as the dissolution of religion nor the Right Hegelianconception of secularization as the appropriation of religious content, havebeen able to find room in modernity for Jews, not only as human beings, butalso as Jews.30

Inner Anti-Semitism or Kabbalistic Legacy? 275

29 Whereas the first tablets brought from Sinai were wholly produced by God, thesecond tablets were hewn by Moses at God’s command, signifying – on this viewdeveloped by several leading Lithuanian Torah scholars – the essential role of humancreativity in constituting Torah. The second tablets are housed in the Ark where divine tsimtsum occurs. See Berlin, 1879–80 on Exodus 34: 1 and Deuteronomy 4:14;and Soloveitchik, 1863, Derush 18. See also Haim of Volozhin, 1837, who groundsTorah study in the divine image, discussing tsimtsum between the two staves of the arkin Sha’ar 3.

30 See Fackenheim, 1973, pp. 4–5: “One question, at least, has already been answered byhistorical events. When the men of the French Revolution emancipated the Jewishpeople they proposed to give to Jews ‘as men’ everything, and to Jews ‘as Jews’

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IV. Conclusion

I have argued that German Idealism inherits the Christian anti-Judaic tradition.To be sure, it does so, not as authorized by the Church, but as a secularizer.However, this means that Church constraints are loosened, enabling a return topre-Constantinian inclusion of Jews in civil society and the state, as well as areturn to long-rejected Marcionite possibilities of divorcing Christianity fromits Jewish roots, and even the development of new justifications for Christianviolence in defence against new versions of old fantasies of Jewish aggression.Not even Hegel departs from the anti-Judaic tradition by considering Judaismin its vitality, after the advent of Christianity and, indeed, up to the present day.

Furthermore, this anti-Judaism is “inner” to the extent that each philoso-pher’s anti-Judaism, ignoring actual Jewish life, correlates with his view of thepenultimate moment in the dialectic leading to salvation. This gives rise, notmerely to a historical scandal, but to a present danger. For anti-Judaism remainslatent within Kantianism and German Idealism, and we should have learned bynow that such latencies can never be consigned comfortably to the past; theycan all too easily be activated.

To this situation there are two remedies, whose comparative merits deservediscussion elsewhere. Minimally, contemporary philosophers who engage withKantianism and German Idealism should take pains to emphasize that the anti-Judaic portrayal of Judaism is based on prejudice and ignorance, and theyshould familiarize themselves with more accurate – which is not to say uncriti-cal – accounts of Judaism’s character and contribution to philosophy. Moreradically, Kantianism and German Idealism may require revision – more or lesssignificant – in order to render them capable of recognizing Judaism’s role inmodernity and compatible with a pluralistic society that includes more than onereligious community.31

At the same time, German Idealism has, from its very inception, inherited akabbalistic legacy. The idea, as central to German Idealism as any theme, of theinfinite as self-limiting negativity that calls forth its finite other, owes much tokabbalah, though certainly to other sources as well. This legacy is rich in itsimplications, not only for Jewish philosophy, and not only for an assessment of

276 Paul Franks

nothing. This proposal had two hidden assumptions. One was that Jews were an ana-chronism as Jews, and on trial as men. The other was that the faith of Jews could fairly be judged, and their humanity properly be put on trial, by a civilization that hadoppressed them for nearly two millennia […]. If modern philosophy failed to questionthe two assumptions of the Emancipation era, modern Jewry, until quite recently, failed as well […]. Modern philosophy must reject the false assumptions of the Eman-cipation era if it is to preserve its integrity. Modern Jewish thought must reject them ifit is to find its way to a modern liberty.”

31 On the question whether Hegelianism needs revision, see Doull and Fackenheim, 2003.

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Judaism’s contribution to general philosophy, but to philosophical thoughtabout a broad range of topics, from metaphysics to philosophy of mind, fromethics and philosophy of education to reflection on modernity and seculariza-tion. Here too, however, the anti-Judaic tradition has dominated. As Habermasputs it, “the legacy of Kabbalah […] was absorbed by Idealism.” In a familiarpattern, whatever seemed positive in Judaism was expropriated. Once again, aremedy is called for: acknowledgment, not only of historical facts, but also ofthe possibility – to which Kant and the German Idealists remain, if I dare usethe word, blind – that Jewish life and thought remain vital, and are still capableof challenging and enriching philosophy.32

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II. Rezensionen

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