However, according to an alternative Jewish reading, the awe-inspiring law initiates a sublime trans-
gression
and hospitality.
Hegels Philosophy of the Historical Religions
god creates the world ex nihilo.
However, creation at this stage is still relatively 'externally' connected to its creator.
Creation is not yet that what is eter- nally and immanently developing within the idea of god.
god is the ini- tiator of creation, not the result (creation is not this divine subject itself ).
god can be known only to a certain extent, namely through his goodness and justice, the specific moments of his wisdom.
(l2 27, 675/567) god is good in his relations to the world, in determining himself by creating a free and relatively autonomous world.
"Justice in turn is the manifestation of the nullity or ideality of this finite [being], it is the fact that this finite being is not genuine independence.
" (l2 27, 675/567) god is justice in that he does not abandon the world but maintains his relation to creation by means of a divine purpose.
The world ought to be, and likewise it ought to transform itself and pass away.
in this sense, 'the one' distinguishes Him- self from his determinations, or from His world; this is His justice.
This is indeed a major step within the development of the spirit.
god is 'in' the world, but this identity does not take shape in a 'cheaply obtained' sensible form. Nature is in fact divested of divinity. (l2 27, 676/567) "god's appearance is at once grasped as sublimity that is supe- rior to appearance in [ordinary] reality. " (l2 27, 677/569) With regard to the greek god, human beings relate to the divine by relating themselves to nature. This identity of the ideal and the real leads to a blunting of differences. To Hegel the invaluable contribution of the Jewish Religion is that it 'liberated' god out of nature and beauty in this all too simplistic form. His determinations are merely independent natural objects. "Nature is submissive and manifests only god, but in such a way that god subsists at the same time outside this manifestation. " (l 1827, 366) god's purpose is to become known by consciousness. and the more determinate pur- pose is that the world should 'subjectively' manifest the divine by ethically proclaiming the glory of god, and by actively testifying to the holiness of god. (l2 27, 679/571) This legality or right is what is divine; it is something worldly within finite consciousness; that is, at the same time, decreed by god.
according to Hegel, god's purpose in creation, his wisdom, is in this stage still only abstract. The Jewish wisdom is merely abstract universality.
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The wisdom and self-determining of god does not yet include god's development. This development in the idea of god is first found in the religion where the nature of god is open and manifest. The defect of this idea at the present stage is that god is indeed the one, but yet is within himself only in the determinacy of this unity; he is not what is eternally self-developing within itself. This is still not a developed determination; to this extent, what we call wisdom is an abstraction, it is abstract universal- ity. (l2 27, 683/575)
The divine purpose of creation is that it conforms to divine law, both moral commandments and ceremonial laws. That is the service of the lord:
Because the purpose is still in fact abstract, the consequence is that the commandments, both those in force as properly religious and those of the cultus, appear only as something given by god, as something prescribed and immutable, something eternally and firmly posited. The purpose is still abstract; and when we speak of 'abstraction' in the purpose, we are referring to something immediate in its determinate being or existence--something subsisting in just this one way, something immutable. (l2 27, 686/578)
a human being is supposed to obey and do right, although in itself (in a more developed understanding) cultus involves the requirement that religious activities, like the carrying out of the divine law, be understood, and that their wisdom be known. "[Cultus] demands the insight that these activities are rational, that they have a connection with the particular- ity of human life and sensibilities (indeed, with its legitimate particular- ity). " (l2 27, 686/578) However, in the Jewish religion this wisdom has not been developed and recognized. in comparison to the god of the Con- summate Religion the god of the Jews is still insufficiently developed and 'revealed' within creation (god is still too sublime). The laws are simply to be obeyed and forever immutable: "the divine commandment is only an abstract precept of wisdom; in this mode it is not understood, it is done as something external. Because god is absolute power, the activities are intrinsically indeterminate, and for that reason they are external, being determined quite arbitrarily. " (l2 27, 687/578)
To Hegel the message of love seems to contain the solution to the abstract externality (the sublimity) of the Jewish ethos, the negation of which is (supposedly) implied in the spirit of Christianity and in the phi- losophy of history. as we have seen in the early Writings, love aims at an absolute reconciliation of opposites: individuality and universality; duty and inclination; god and man; subject and object. god has become man in His son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy spirit, we, as a people, can
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participate in His divine nature, which is love. The 'method of love' is already dialectical, although still in a non-logical sense, in the form of feeling. and although love as a feeling deploys unification, it does so in a merely restricted sense. and Christian love itself (love in a primitive, non- rational interpretation) has its share in developing new forms of separa- tion and demarcation.
in contradistinction to love, reflection seems to lead only to logical oppositions. That is why the early Hegel thinks it is only in spiritual terms that the divine can be spoken of. But he already recognizes the possible dangers of the merely spiritual form of religion. love and enthusiasm can also become an impediment to unification as they are confronted with the 'cold' and 'hard' world of (for instance) private property and prop- erty rights of unloving and selfish individuals. one cannot possibly deny these aspects of reality, and if unification is to be realized in the world, it has to be a unity that encompasses this impersonal sphere of negativity. Because it cannot accommodate this world (because it cannot account for this 'negative' dimension of life), spiritual love (love in unreflected, irra- tional form) eventually degenerates to the otherworldly 'positive religion' of a privileged sect that accordingly brings unity only to a certain extent, and beyond this to a new disunity and discord. This also is part of the fate of Christianity, that precisely in trying to present a direct alternative to it, unknowingly and involuntary shares in the fate of Judaism. it is only by passing through a logical and reasonable mediation of opposites, and not through bypassing these oppositions in sense of this immediate and unreflective love, that unity and freedom can be realized (which still is what the spirit of Christianity promises to do). Reconciliation is the truth of religion, but it only attains this truth in philosophy.
There is no truth in abstract law. laws are merely strange, transcendent, untimely and unchangeable. in his early work Hegel aims at saving the truth of the law by eliminating it; by means of a 'pantheism of love' that fulfils the law through a religious, non-logical synthesis of duty and incli- nation. in these early texts reflection necessarily means 'estrangement'. Nevertheless, love as a mere feeling is also restricted in its potential of bringing unity and life. Christian religion develops the message of Christ into an exclusive and even sectarian belief. in the hands of the apostles, the spirit of Christianity becomes a 'positive religion', an otherworldly enthusiasm that does not fit in with reality, and--in particular--comes into conflict with the order and the laws of the state. mere Christianity remains too 'subjective'. and it belongs to the fate of Christianity that it breathes new life into the spirit of Judaism, an enemy that supposedly
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was already defeated. left to itself, the spirit of Christianity deteriorates into a dogma and a codified belief that divides the world instead of unit- ing it. The purpose of Jesus' moral teaching (absolute reconciliation) can- not possibly be realized within the immediate boundaries of Christian religion. a purely feeling or 'aesthetic' religion of love eventually leads to disunity and disarray. Religion proper precedes philosophy, but eventu- ally (as history shows) it is not the way to reconciliation: "it is the fate [of Christian Religion] that church and state, piety and virtue, spiritual and worldly action can never dissolve into one. "18 The finite world remains to be merely finite (not infinite). The world remains to be merely a stage, a stairway to heaven and a passage to an eternity 'outside the world'.
The absolute idea is the unity of the concept of religion and reality, which is spirit. in this respect, the divine command is not 'true'. "Truth is beauty intellectually represented. "19 To act in love is one thing, but to be able to see it is another; every determinate 'object' here on earth is merely finite; confined to the restrictions and separation of reflective logic. But if this is so, how can one represent intellectually the living beauty and spirituality of love? indeed, we need to be able to objectify this love. How- ever, where is this unity to be found; where else than in the inner citadel of our subjective consciousness? What is the 'object' of love; where is this religious object that love as unity promises?
This is Hegel's research program from 1799 onwards; to rethink and conceptualize the inner truth of religion. The spiritual content of faith (the absolute) cannot be directly verified by the 'unspiritual', that is the sensible as such, (for instance) by miracles, sacraments and by Christ's empty grave, but only by the conformity of something 'positive' to what is ideal and rational. it is essential that the object would need to be in conformity to our own rational spirit. With this in mind Hegel more and more sacrifices Revelation and religion to reason and thought. Not the all-too-Jewish religion-proper but reason, some reasonable appropria- tion of religion, is thought be able to 'realize' the truth of Christianity; its spirit of life, the love and unity in which the unhappy consciousness of the abstract individual is 'consumed' by the intersubjectivity of the spiri- tual community. Reconciliation is to be found not in the individual heart (conscience), or within the confines of the church (or the cloister), but in
18 Hegel, ? spirit of Christianity? , p. 301/418. 19 idem, p. 196/288.
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objective spirit and reasonable freedom of ethical life (family; civil society and state) and its institutions.
Nevertheless, Hegel's decisive movement towards philosophy con- fronts him with the difficulty that the 'Jewish' spirit and fate of Christian- ity (the estrangement and the unhappy consciousness of religion) is also very much present within the confines of philosophy itself; especially in Kant, fichte and Jacobi. 20 according to the protestant tradition, 'the prin- ciple of the North', as Hegel calls it in Glauben und Wissen (1801), god and his divine wisdom cannot be known by man. Not only love is 'not true' in the sense that it cannot be known in an intellectual or theoretical sense. Knowledge of things as they are in themselves (das Ding an sich, the thing as god knows it) is not possible. Knowledge of god and of his divine knowledge is not possible. The reflexive subjectivity and the self- restriction of reason in Kant (and the others) are both fruits of the tree of Protestantism; both are counteracting the self-assured rationalism of scholasticism. in addition, this 'philosophical Protestantism' (die Reflex- ionsphilosophie der Subjektivita? t) makes a strong point of the division of faith and knowledge, of the finite and the infinite:
The great form of the world spirit, however, which has discovered itself in these philosophies, is the principle of the North and, from the religious point of view, of Protestantism, the subjectivity in which beauty and truth presents itself in feelings and dispositions, in love and understanding. Reli- gion builds its temples and altars in the heart of the individual, and sighs and prayers seek the god whose contemplation is forbidden because there is always the danger of the intellect, which would see the contemplated object as a thing, the forest as firewood. it is true that the inward must also become outward, the intention attain to reality in action, the immediate religious feeling express itself in outward movement, and the faith that flees
20 Cf. derrida, Glas, p. 34a, where he, in his accurate and patient reconstruction of Hegel's interpretation, refers to Kantianism as, 'structurally, a Judaism. ' The Christian god is a revealed god. god is god insofar as he knows himself. This knowledge is self-con- sciousness in man, man's knowledge of god, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in god. Kant fails to comprehend this: for him god is not an object of knowledge; he doesn't see the relation between god and man. derrida: "To claim to found Christianity on reason and nonetheless to make non-manifestation, the being-hidden of god, the principle of this religion is to understand nothing about revelation. Kant is Jewish: he believes in a jealous, envious god. " idem, p. 213a. of course, one cannot simply consent to Hegel's suggestion that Kant is a Jew (derrida himself would never consent to this). Kant's internalization (Verinnerlichung) of the law, his 'subjective legalism' is more in accordance with modern- ism (enlightenment philosophy and religious liberalism), and certainly not so with ortho- dox Judaism and its insistence on the externality and alterity of the other. Cf. leo strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz. Beitra? ge zum Versta? ndnis Maimunis und seiner Vorla? ufer, Berlin: schocken Verlag 1935, esp. pp. 9-29.
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the objectivity of knowledge take objective form in thoughts, concepts and words; but the objective is very carefully distinguished by the intellect from the subjective, and it is the element which has no value and is nothing, just as the struggle of subjective beauty must be precisely to take all due precau- tions against the necessity of the subjectives becoming objective. [. . . ] it is precisely as a result of its fleeing the finite and holding fast to subjectiv- ity that it finds the beautiful turned altogether into things, the forest into firewood, pictures into things that have eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear, while the ideals that cannot be taken in wholly intelligible real- ity like sticks and stones become fabrications of the imagination and every relation to them is seen as empty play, or as dependence on objects and as superstition. 21
To Hegel, the final consequence of the principle of the North is the com- plete desecration of the natural and social world. Kant's 'Protestantism', his religion within the bounds of reason, cultivates an empty, otherworldly, deontological ethos, to the detriment of the urge to the reformation of this world. faith is made so sublime (or 'Jewish', in Hegel's perspective) that it becomes ineffective and even destructive for our daily life. Both spheres, the finite as well as the infinite, have to be connected to each other, and where religion proper leaves off, philosophy should take on the respon- sibility to finish what it started. Philosophy should try to recognize 'the rose of reason within the cross of reality'. it should try to close the gap between human and divine knowledge by transcending, through reason, the limitations of abstract reflexive understanding.
This is why Hegel since his early (frankfurter) writings has been look- ing for a dialectical synthesis in which the estrangement of understand- ing, the negativity of logical opposition (including the negativity of the law), is both recognized and saved as a moment in the argumentation, as well as eliminated in the unity of absolute science. Not religion but phi- losophy leads the way to life and unity. only a philosophy of the unity of identity and difference is able to realize what love promises.
for ethics to be true, it is necessary that it is real. To be real (wirklich), it must have grown out of the development of an intelligible historical- dialectical process. Certainly, the resulting Sittlichkeit also implies strict political laws and duties that simply confront the citoyen of a state; laws that this subject simply needs obey. Nevertheless, these laws are at least manmade, in contradistinction to the Jewish laws. Certainly, one simply
21 g. W. f. Hegel, 'glauben und Wissen' in: Hauptwerke in sechs Ba? nden, Bd. 1, darm- stadt: WBg 1999, p. 316 (my translation).
140
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needs to obey them. However, from an alternative perspective the 'posi- tive' laws and duties of a citizen are in fact rights that embody the idea, or realization of his freedom. moreover, these laws and rights should and can be recognized as such. freedom exists by means of this conscious participation in the state.
according to Hegel, there is a possible conceptual system in which the divine content is expressed in terms of the logical oppositions of under- standing. This system is implied in the unity of identity and difference, in the logical 'negation of the negation' such as only reason (Vernunft) can recognize and affirm. it is neither the divine command nor the love as a mere feeling, but reason and philosophy that can lead the way to rec- onciliation. although through religion-proper human consciousness and absolute divinity remain juxtaposed, religion also remains to represent an important dialectical and pedagogical image (Vorstellung) of the reconcil- iatory truth as it is comprehended in philosophy. 22
5. law and love: The alternative, Jewish Perspective
We cannot refrain from commencing a more critical evaluation of what we learned here from Hegel's (mature and premature) dialectical inter- pretation of Judaism. from a moral standpoint, it would not be right to do so. and Hegel himself would agree that a faithful reconstruction as such is not enough; that it fails to do justice to his philosophy of religion and his understanding of (the place of ) Judaism within the context of the development of spirit.
We must, i think, recognize that Hegel's account of the 'limitations' of Judaism reflects an anti-semitic sentiment long exhibited by european Christians. 23 according to Hegel, the jealous god of the Jews has no place in either absolute Religion or in absolute Knowledge. However, when we
22 Cf. what Hegel says at the end of his preface to the Philosophy of Right. The distinc- tive principle of Protestantism is the unwillingness to acknowledge anything which has not been justified by the subject itself. "What luther inaugurated as faith in feeling and in the testimony of the spirit is the same thing that the spirit, at a more mature stage of its development, endeavors to grasp in the concept so as to free itself in the present and thus to find itself therein. "
23 Cf. simon Critchley: "Hegel's attitude is perhaps philosophically anti-semitic, that is to say, the conceptual matrix of family, community, and property has no place for the Jew, if the latter is defined as the other to greco-Christian philosophical conceptuality. " Critchley, 'a commentary upon derrida's reading of Hegel in glas', Hegel after Derrida, ed. stuart Barnett, london/New york: Routledge 1998, p. 204.
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look at it closely, one cannot rule out the possibility that the problem here is not necessarily located in the 'object' of this sentiment (the god of the Jews, and Jewish faith), but in the narrow perspective of the subject thereof (Hegel himself). When one reads 'The spirit of Christianity', and the negative evaluation of the divine command in his mature Philosophy of Religion, it is hard to believe that Hegel did not see the irony and the paradox in his own representation of the incarnation. in addition, it is hard to understand how he could fail to notice the 'limitations' and pos- sible dangers associated with the internalization and annihilation of the law-as-law, as he would have it.
let me start off with a few critical questions and remarks on the con- cept of love that is of vital importance to Hegel's account of Christianity. according to Hegel, the Jew as a dutiful subject to the law does not, and cannot love. is not one of the dangers of love that one tends exclusively to reserve one's charity to those neighbours that fall within one's horizon, that is, with whom one can indeed easily, and emphatically, identify one- self? should we not at least try to extend our love to those who cannot simply be recognized as 'other selves', to those who cannot be seen to belong to our unity of life, and to those who are to remain (in this respect) somewhat strange and even 'opposed' to us? in respect to the dangers of any possible trade-off (a 'bad' incarnation), Jewish ethics and the impor- tance of the law for the Jewish faith deserve the benefit of the doubt. let me put it straightforward. least of all they cannot be ruled out as hateful and unloving for trying to cultivate a radical hospitality within the soul, a 'desert like emptiness' that is, for something and someone wholly strange and unexpected; something or someone that cannot possibly be reduced to and reconciled with the 'economy of the same'.
from a Jewish perspective the tables are turned. Hegel's obsession with the unity of life and with the reconciliation of the law with nature can be said to rest on an erotic form of love. a love that desires and 'takes' more than it is prepared to give. The immanent-transcendence of his 'spirit of Christianity' is an expression of a political kind of self-love, through which eternity proper and real love are being corrupted and betrayed. Reflexivity and recognition (Anerkennung) both lead to the destruction of this radical love; a love that intends (by means of our duty) to break with the usual 'economical' reciprocity (do ut des) through which the more i give, the more i have. love is not an economical investment. love as it is, or better still, love as it should be, needs to break with the idea of a bonum com- mune that gathers together me and the other in the 'concrete-universality' (konkrete Algemeinheit) of a 'genuine society' (Gemeinschaft). The move-
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ment of speculative dialectics always results in a reappropriation of what has been sacrificed. Judaism seems to deconstruct this economy. To be able to love is to be able to transcend oneself, without restraint. To learn to love is to become 'a stranger to oneself', without (unconsciously and economically) trying to return from this exitus. 'you shall love the alien as yourself. ' (lev. 19; 33) To love an alien is to be an alien; and it takes an alien to be an alien. To love is to die to oneself and to the world without trying to (economically) 'survive' this gift of death and this sacrifice of the self. This loving exitus is not unlike the exodus that Hegel detested so intensely: the exodus of abraham from Chaldea, the land of his ancestors. god commanded him to this 'brutal act of disseverance' that snapped the bonds of his communal life and his (erotic) love for his kinsfolk.
The first act which made abraham the progenitor of a nation is a dis- severance which snaps the bonds of communal life and love. The entirety of the relationships in which he had hitherto lived with men and nature, these beautiful relationships of his youth (Joshua 24:2), he spurned. 24
it is the 'sedentary' spirit of Hegel's (idea of) Christianity that takes offence to the figure of the wandering Jew and his strange law. Wander- ing is the Jewish fate and the punishment of any spirituality that is not firmly rooted in the substantiality of ethical life.
However, according to an alternative Jewish reading, the awe-inspiring law initiates a sublime trans- gression and hospitality. The law cultivates an awareness of singularity, instead of being merely an expression of indifference towards the other, and a restriction or 'limitation' to the sublimity of love. 25 on the other hand, seen from a Jewish perspective, love in the Hegelian-Christian sense runs the risk of being a 'fulfoulment' rather than a fulfilment (pleroma) of the law. in this perspective, 'Hegel' stands for a pollution of love that lim- its the intrinsically transgressive effect of law itself. 26 The other, towards whom justice is to be shown, is an absolute other (the wholly other repre- sents eternity). as such, the other is never 'present' and cannot (as such)
24 Hegel, ? spirit of Christianity? , p. 185/277.
25 Cf. Timo slootweg, 'das go? ttliche gebot und der geist der liebe. eine kritische auseinandersetzung mit Hegels fru? hen theologischen Voraussetzungen', in: a. arndt, P. Cruysberghs, a. Przylebski (eds. ) Hegel-Jahrbuch 2010--Geist? , Berlin: akademie-Verlag 2010, pp. 72-78.
26 Kant, 'the Jew from Ko? nigsberg', is also very much conscious of this transcendent dimension of the law. laws cannot be automatically applied. Their application necessi- tates an Urteilskraft (a force of judgment) that is not reducible to rules, because (in that case) these rules, in their turn, would have to be interpreted, ad infinitum. see immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B171f. for this Kantian line of thought, see also J. derrida, Force de loi. Le <<fondement mystique de l'autorite? >>, Paris: galile? e 1994.
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be enclosed within the loving embrace of any form of Gemeinschaft. Rec- ognition and harmonization threaten the (originally) 'open' and hospita- ble existence of mankind, in juxtaposition (that is) to laws and duties that seem to interminably 'postpone' and defer the longed for reconciliation of the self in relation to the other and in relation to the unity of life. seen from this alternative perspective, the spirit of the Jewish-Christian tradi- tion is a messianic spirit. its spirit is to aspire interminably to a righteous- ness that is always 'to come', and that cannot possibly become apparent and present. it is an unlimited waiting for justice without any forgone expectation or 'horizon'; it is an absolute hospitality that keeps watch over its own quasi-transcendental universality. 27
What augustine tells us about time, may apply to love as well. as long as we do not ask ourselves what they are, everyone seems to know what they are. from the moment on that we dare to question them, we seem to lose our innocence, and time and love reveal their unfathomable char- acter. in this precarious situation in which the success of our task is at the very least not solely within our own rational power and seems to depend on some kind of grace, a philosopher, in his attempts to write about love, might be best off doing his work both actually 'out of love' as well as 'in the name of love'. To Hegel, religious violence 'for the love of god', and this also applies to the violence of the crusades, is an impor- tant sign that the (meaning of the) incarnation of god in mankind has not yet fully penetrated the heart of human dignity. Religious indifference and violence reflect estrangement. They are the morbid reflection of a deficient or 'abstract' mode of religious consciousness, of a consciousness that projects its longing for a long lost universality, for the unity of life itself, unto a transcendent, divine 'entity', that presents itself merely in a sensuous and 'unspiritual' form (holy sepulchre). Religious violence is in flagrant opposition to Christ's spiritual example of compassion and char- ity through which mankind works itself towards universal recognition and community.
However, as we have seen, Hegel's idealism, and his analysis of Judaism is not completely free of religious violence itself. moreover, this violence is not just 'incidental' (which is the usual benevolent approach to his anti-semitism). for it is in itself a consequence of the Hegelian dialectic that logically necessitates the sublime fulfilment of a merely 'schlechte
27 for this alternative, messianic spirit, see for instance J. derrida, in: Spectres de Marx, Paris: E? ditions galilee? 1993; Specters of Marx, New york: Routledge 1994.
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unendlichkeit' (a 'finite infinity'). for Hegel, transcendence is immanent in the ideality of the 'konkrete-algemeinheit' (the 'concrete universality'), that is: in the objective spirit and in absolute science. But whoever looks for 'das Jenseitige' ('the Beyond') on this side of life, runs the risk of ren- dering eternal value to some kind of presence that belongs to the sphere of the temporary; to what is only an imperfect historical representation of the eternal. in addition, this idolatry would not only degrade the holi- ness of god--and god is love, but with that, the holiness of the human soul and its conscience (as an image of god) would become damaged and violated as well.
That this is precisely what happens in Hegelian dialectics becomes clear as soon as we see that what really binds the soul to eternity (love, hope and faith; conscience) is in fact sacrificed to the illusory certainty of the Hegelian Geist. as long as its god is distant and strange, and much of the effect of this strange god is carried over from Judaism to Christian- ity, the soul remains in a state of unhappy consciousness. But ultimately the divine and absolute subject, its knowledge of good and evil, and last but not least, its 'work' will take its due and proper place in the centre of the universe. Hegel's philosophical god comes to prevail over the god of abraham, isaac and Jacob. in the end, faith has done its job as a mere 'conception' (Vorstellung) of the immanent-transcendence that Hegel develops and explains in purely reasonable terms. Religion is 'true' only, up to a certain point. and after being philosophically understood (after going through Hegel's reasonable interpretation), faith and religion can be left behind. although they remain usefull in order to fulfil some instru- mental, political and pedagogical purposes in the service of the ethical disposition (Gesinnung) of the state and its people (the remaining pur- pose of religion-proper is to develop the individuals participation in com- munal life and state; to stimulate its 'Bildung zum Allgemeinen'). 28
28 love comes from a good conscience (cf. Timothy 1; 5). To Hegel however, a 'proper' religious conscience is still merely 'subjective', and as such a moral form of evil. instead, 'true conscience' is contained in the 'horizontal', ethical disposition (Gesinnung): "True conscience is the disposition to will what is good in and for itself; it therefore has fixed principles, and these have for it the character of determinacy and duties which are objec- tive for themselves. in contrast to its content--i. e. truth--conscience is merely the formal aspect of the activity of the will, and this will, has no distinctive content of its own. But the objective system of these principles and duties and the union of subjective knowledge with this system are present only when the point of view of ethics has been reached. Here, within the formal point of view of morality, conscience lacks this objective content, and it is thus for itself the infinite formal certainty of itself, which for this reason is at the same
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Religion integrates the state at the deepest level. That is why the state ought to require all its citizens to belong to a religious community. How- ever, in the Philosophy of Right Hegel clearly states that, although the content of religion relates to the absolute, it differs from it in form. The form of religion--religious feeling--destroys everything that is objective. Through religion the objective spirit, the determinate laws and institu- tions of the state that embody our freedom, are all dissolved into the muddle of subjectivity and undifferentiated inwardness:
Those who seek the lord, and assure themselves, in their uneducated opin- ion, that they possess everything immediately instead of undertaking the work of raising their subjectivity to cognition of the truth and knowledge of objective right and duty, can produce nothing but folly, outrage, and the destruction of all ethical relations. 29
Here we may already see foreshadowed what is happening nowadays under the influence of the enlightenment: religion and religious con- science are being expelled as the fanatical, the irrational and unreason- able. after having done its necessary work, religion is exorcised from the sanctity of democracy, to the private sphere. and politics, once divorced from religion in this all too subjective sense tends to fossilize to 'closure'; to immanent transcendence, self-righteousness and indifference.
seen from a Jewish perspective, and Christianity might be more con- tinuous with Judaism than Hegel is prepared to acknowledge, it is not safe to identify the divinity with any living present, or to positively affirm the 'fullness of time' in any 'here and now'. it is dangerous to define with divine authority the incarnation of the infinite in the finite, to define as a holy instance of eternity something or someone determinate (a name, for- mulation, habit, practice, or nation). for once we have god on our side, it becomes dangerously costly (potentially lethal even) not to belong to the chosen and blessed (one's fellow citizens), to belong to those who cannot or will not affirm the revealed truth of the parousia; the 'rest', the unfaith- ful, the inessential, the eternally displaced that cannot--in principle--be accommodated by any system.
Hegel's opposition of law and gospel, of letter and spirit is a pseudo Christian attempt to deface Judaism. and it does not do a great service
time the certainty of this subject. " g. W. f. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. a. W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge uP 1991, ? 137, p. 164.
29 idem, ? 270R, pp. 292-294. see also Hegel's Enzyklopa? die der Philosophischen Wissen- schaften, Berlin: 1830, ? 552 where he makes the same point.
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to Christianity in interpreting the religion of love as a negation of Jewish faith; in not being able to reconcile Christianity with Judaism and in prov- ing itself to be so disdainful to the Jews and of Jewish religion. We have seen ample proof of his harsh judgments on the 'limitations' of Jewish faith. Hegel's denunciation of the Jew, this pseudo Christian onto theology is quite sincere. in a sense it is as hypocritical as some of the Pharisees with whom Jesus had to deal. These scribes were certainly Jews, but we may not take them pars pro toto. according to martin Buber (for instance), it is the god-idea of Prophets that represents the Jewish spirit at its best, namely: "a transcendent unity . . . the world-creating, world-ruling, world- loving god. " although, as history continues "the idea becomes diluted, fades, until the living god is transmuted into lifeless a schema character- istic of the later priestly rule and of the beginnings of rabbinism",30 Jewish spirituality has always centred on the personal encounter (Begegnung) with the human, in whom we encounter god. for Buber, the law is merely is a derivative of this Jewish religiosity, and it is only through man that revelation becomes legislation. in this sense also, Jesus himself was very much a Jew. as a Jew he thought and spoke in Jewish language, and what is more, he spoke Hebrew even after he had sat himself at the right hand of his father. (acts 26; 14) What Jesus and John the Baptist proclaimed was nothing else than the renewal of this original Jewish religiosity. 31 and indeed, recent scholarship on the subject confirmed these (Buber's) insights; it has made clear that Jesus merely preached a relatively radical Judaism that drew upon the most original of Judaic resources. 32
This of course, is meant not to deny completely the importance of the divine command for Jewish faith. What is to be said (from a Jewish perspective) in response to Hegel's critique hat it is 'not true'? Justice is receptive to the exceptional singular that is not simply an individual 'case' of a universal principle that can 'automatically' be applied. in one sense certainly, the law is blind to the singular. and as such, the law, the universal and ethical (Sittlichkeit), are the temptation (Anfechtung) that one ought to resist. moreover, the general (das Allgemeine) must be
30 martin Buber, On Judaism, Nahum glatzer (ed. ), New york: schocken Books 1995, pp. 42-43.
31 Buber, On Judaism, pp. 79-94.
32 see for instance: g. Vermes, Jesus the Jew. A Historian's Reading of the Gospels Phila- delphia: fortress Press 1973; e. P. sanders, Jesus and Judaism, Philadelphia: fortress Press 1985, and of the same author, The Historical Figure of Jesus, New york: Penguin Press 1993, and marinus de Jonge, Christology in Context. The earliest Christian response to Jesus, West- minster: John Knox Press 1987.
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deconstructed in the name of justice. The temptation is the duty, the law and the ethical itself. They keep him from doing god's will.
Nevertheless, the resistance to the law (its deconstruction) is not some- thing that necessarily comes from without (ex nihilo) as something (love) that is wholly other than the law. and the resistance need not be under- stood in the sense of the Hegelian 'negation of a negation'. from a certain Jewish perspective, the law actually deconstructs itself. it itself initiates its transgression or 'suspension'. Because of its mystical foundations, the law is indeterminate and open towards any future applications. The gospel actually confirms this when it refers to the law as the shadow of a justice to come: "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. for this reason it can never, by the same sac- rifices be repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. " (Hebr. 10; 1). To automatically subsume particular cases under general rules is to violate their singularity. it is to violate 'life', as Hegel would call it. However, it is just because of their indeterminateness, that we need to reinterpret legal categories to conform to the case. Just as we have to reinterpret the case to conform to legal categories. in either case however, we need to refer to the law. Because without any law the decision threatens to become unrestrained power and violence.
6. Tables Turned: Kierkegaard's alternative Christian Reading
The deadening force of spiritless legalism and slavish servility threatens every faith. it is not the exclusive 'privilege' of Jewish faith (or any other). in Paul, it is by means of a law that these inauthentic restrictions and determinations are abolished and negated. "everything is permissible for me" (1 Cor. 6; 12). Certainly a Christian is a servant to his neighbour, but without sacrificing his freedom, without which their can be no love. This also means that a Christian is in principle not bound by the opinions, the traditions and values of others (the objective spirit). "for why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience? " (1 Cor. 10; 29)
Those who will not live by the law shall die by the law. When Paul-- 'Paul the Jew'--says that one must live, not after the letter but after the spirit of the law, and that the righteous shall live through faith (that this is actual freedom and sovereignty) this is essentially an elaboration of a sentence in Habakuk 2; 4. in galatians, he tells us that this is something 'we' Jews already know. in Habakuk it is still without the help of Jesus (the mediator) that one is supposed to live by the law through faith alone
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(because we are all sinners and remain to be dependent on the mercy of god). The fulfilling of the law through faith is already an important theme in the Torah although at other places it merely stresses the command- ments. Within letters of Paul there is, to be sure, also much 'commanding Torah'. in addition, according to Paul it is in fact a law (the law of Christ) that delivers us from the law: "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. " (gal. 6; 2) it is the 'good law', the 'law of love' that promises to fulfil the law (the entire law). The commandment of love liberates us from working under the curse of the law (works without faith) and commands us to open up to the love of god that mercifully does its work through us, his servants and instruments.
i will linger just a little longer on the relationship of law and love because Hegel's philosophy of Judaism very much concentrates on this subject; and there is--to my opinion--an important lesson to be learned here. in Kierkegaard's lutheran reading of Christianity, we find fur- ther reason to question the strong and hateful opposition to the divine command:
on the whole, it is unbelievable what confusion has entered the sphere of religion since the time when 'thou shalt' was abolished as the sole regulative aspect of man's relationship to god. This 'thou shalt' must be present in any determination of the religious. 33
although law and love are not the same and cannot be reconciled in an easy way, there is at least one important similarity in that love itself is the most important divine command; it is itself a kind of law. it is the law of the gospel; it is a law as law; an 'abstract law' as Hegel would have it:
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the sadducees, they gath- ered together. and one of them, a lawyer [it. T. s. ] asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? " and he said to him, "you shall love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first command- ment. and a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. on these two commandments depend all the law and the Prophets. " (matt. 22; 34-40)
The law as law initiates the teleological suspension of the ethical. it is in fact a law that repeats the old law in leviticus: "love your neighbour as
33 soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto death. A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, H. Hong / e. Hong (eds. ), New Jersey: Princeton university Press 1980, p. 115. (sKs 11, 226)
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yourself. i am the lord. " (lev. 19; 18) in 'Kierkegaard' it is stressed that only love as law is the excess, the transcendence through which justice takes place. god is love. With god everything is possible (matt. 19; 26).
god is 'in' the world, but this identity does not take shape in a 'cheaply obtained' sensible form. Nature is in fact divested of divinity. (l2 27, 676/567) "god's appearance is at once grasped as sublimity that is supe- rior to appearance in [ordinary] reality. " (l2 27, 677/569) With regard to the greek god, human beings relate to the divine by relating themselves to nature. This identity of the ideal and the real leads to a blunting of differences. To Hegel the invaluable contribution of the Jewish Religion is that it 'liberated' god out of nature and beauty in this all too simplistic form. His determinations are merely independent natural objects. "Nature is submissive and manifests only god, but in such a way that god subsists at the same time outside this manifestation. " (l 1827, 366) god's purpose is to become known by consciousness. and the more determinate pur- pose is that the world should 'subjectively' manifest the divine by ethically proclaiming the glory of god, and by actively testifying to the holiness of god. (l2 27, 679/571) This legality or right is what is divine; it is something worldly within finite consciousness; that is, at the same time, decreed by god.
according to Hegel, god's purpose in creation, his wisdom, is in this stage still only abstract. The Jewish wisdom is merely abstract universality.
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The wisdom and self-determining of god does not yet include god's development. This development in the idea of god is first found in the religion where the nature of god is open and manifest. The defect of this idea at the present stage is that god is indeed the one, but yet is within himself only in the determinacy of this unity; he is not what is eternally self-developing within itself. This is still not a developed determination; to this extent, what we call wisdom is an abstraction, it is abstract universal- ity. (l2 27, 683/575)
The divine purpose of creation is that it conforms to divine law, both moral commandments and ceremonial laws. That is the service of the lord:
Because the purpose is still in fact abstract, the consequence is that the commandments, both those in force as properly religious and those of the cultus, appear only as something given by god, as something prescribed and immutable, something eternally and firmly posited. The purpose is still abstract; and when we speak of 'abstraction' in the purpose, we are referring to something immediate in its determinate being or existence--something subsisting in just this one way, something immutable. (l2 27, 686/578)
a human being is supposed to obey and do right, although in itself (in a more developed understanding) cultus involves the requirement that religious activities, like the carrying out of the divine law, be understood, and that their wisdom be known. "[Cultus] demands the insight that these activities are rational, that they have a connection with the particular- ity of human life and sensibilities (indeed, with its legitimate particular- ity). " (l2 27, 686/578) However, in the Jewish religion this wisdom has not been developed and recognized. in comparison to the god of the Con- summate Religion the god of the Jews is still insufficiently developed and 'revealed' within creation (god is still too sublime). The laws are simply to be obeyed and forever immutable: "the divine commandment is only an abstract precept of wisdom; in this mode it is not understood, it is done as something external. Because god is absolute power, the activities are intrinsically indeterminate, and for that reason they are external, being determined quite arbitrarily. " (l2 27, 687/578)
To Hegel the message of love seems to contain the solution to the abstract externality (the sublimity) of the Jewish ethos, the negation of which is (supposedly) implied in the spirit of Christianity and in the phi- losophy of history. as we have seen in the early Writings, love aims at an absolute reconciliation of opposites: individuality and universality; duty and inclination; god and man; subject and object. god has become man in His son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy spirit, we, as a people, can
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participate in His divine nature, which is love. The 'method of love' is already dialectical, although still in a non-logical sense, in the form of feeling. and although love as a feeling deploys unification, it does so in a merely restricted sense. and Christian love itself (love in a primitive, non- rational interpretation) has its share in developing new forms of separa- tion and demarcation.
in contradistinction to love, reflection seems to lead only to logical oppositions. That is why the early Hegel thinks it is only in spiritual terms that the divine can be spoken of. But he already recognizes the possible dangers of the merely spiritual form of religion. love and enthusiasm can also become an impediment to unification as they are confronted with the 'cold' and 'hard' world of (for instance) private property and prop- erty rights of unloving and selfish individuals. one cannot possibly deny these aspects of reality, and if unification is to be realized in the world, it has to be a unity that encompasses this impersonal sphere of negativity. Because it cannot accommodate this world (because it cannot account for this 'negative' dimension of life), spiritual love (love in unreflected, irra- tional form) eventually degenerates to the otherworldly 'positive religion' of a privileged sect that accordingly brings unity only to a certain extent, and beyond this to a new disunity and discord. This also is part of the fate of Christianity, that precisely in trying to present a direct alternative to it, unknowingly and involuntary shares in the fate of Judaism. it is only by passing through a logical and reasonable mediation of opposites, and not through bypassing these oppositions in sense of this immediate and unreflective love, that unity and freedom can be realized (which still is what the spirit of Christianity promises to do). Reconciliation is the truth of religion, but it only attains this truth in philosophy.
There is no truth in abstract law. laws are merely strange, transcendent, untimely and unchangeable. in his early work Hegel aims at saving the truth of the law by eliminating it; by means of a 'pantheism of love' that fulfils the law through a religious, non-logical synthesis of duty and incli- nation. in these early texts reflection necessarily means 'estrangement'. Nevertheless, love as a mere feeling is also restricted in its potential of bringing unity and life. Christian religion develops the message of Christ into an exclusive and even sectarian belief. in the hands of the apostles, the spirit of Christianity becomes a 'positive religion', an otherworldly enthusiasm that does not fit in with reality, and--in particular--comes into conflict with the order and the laws of the state. mere Christianity remains too 'subjective'. and it belongs to the fate of Christianity that it breathes new life into the spirit of Judaism, an enemy that supposedly
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was already defeated. left to itself, the spirit of Christianity deteriorates into a dogma and a codified belief that divides the world instead of unit- ing it. The purpose of Jesus' moral teaching (absolute reconciliation) can- not possibly be realized within the immediate boundaries of Christian religion. a purely feeling or 'aesthetic' religion of love eventually leads to disunity and disarray. Religion proper precedes philosophy, but eventu- ally (as history shows) it is not the way to reconciliation: "it is the fate [of Christian Religion] that church and state, piety and virtue, spiritual and worldly action can never dissolve into one. "18 The finite world remains to be merely finite (not infinite). The world remains to be merely a stage, a stairway to heaven and a passage to an eternity 'outside the world'.
The absolute idea is the unity of the concept of religion and reality, which is spirit. in this respect, the divine command is not 'true'. "Truth is beauty intellectually represented. "19 To act in love is one thing, but to be able to see it is another; every determinate 'object' here on earth is merely finite; confined to the restrictions and separation of reflective logic. But if this is so, how can one represent intellectually the living beauty and spirituality of love? indeed, we need to be able to objectify this love. How- ever, where is this unity to be found; where else than in the inner citadel of our subjective consciousness? What is the 'object' of love; where is this religious object that love as unity promises?
This is Hegel's research program from 1799 onwards; to rethink and conceptualize the inner truth of religion. The spiritual content of faith (the absolute) cannot be directly verified by the 'unspiritual', that is the sensible as such, (for instance) by miracles, sacraments and by Christ's empty grave, but only by the conformity of something 'positive' to what is ideal and rational. it is essential that the object would need to be in conformity to our own rational spirit. With this in mind Hegel more and more sacrifices Revelation and religion to reason and thought. Not the all-too-Jewish religion-proper but reason, some reasonable appropria- tion of religion, is thought be able to 'realize' the truth of Christianity; its spirit of life, the love and unity in which the unhappy consciousness of the abstract individual is 'consumed' by the intersubjectivity of the spiri- tual community. Reconciliation is to be found not in the individual heart (conscience), or within the confines of the church (or the cloister), but in
18 Hegel, ? spirit of Christianity? , p. 301/418. 19 idem, p. 196/288.
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objective spirit and reasonable freedom of ethical life (family; civil society and state) and its institutions.
Nevertheless, Hegel's decisive movement towards philosophy con- fronts him with the difficulty that the 'Jewish' spirit and fate of Christian- ity (the estrangement and the unhappy consciousness of religion) is also very much present within the confines of philosophy itself; especially in Kant, fichte and Jacobi. 20 according to the protestant tradition, 'the prin- ciple of the North', as Hegel calls it in Glauben und Wissen (1801), god and his divine wisdom cannot be known by man. Not only love is 'not true' in the sense that it cannot be known in an intellectual or theoretical sense. Knowledge of things as they are in themselves (das Ding an sich, the thing as god knows it) is not possible. Knowledge of god and of his divine knowledge is not possible. The reflexive subjectivity and the self- restriction of reason in Kant (and the others) are both fruits of the tree of Protestantism; both are counteracting the self-assured rationalism of scholasticism. in addition, this 'philosophical Protestantism' (die Reflex- ionsphilosophie der Subjektivita? t) makes a strong point of the division of faith and knowledge, of the finite and the infinite:
The great form of the world spirit, however, which has discovered itself in these philosophies, is the principle of the North and, from the religious point of view, of Protestantism, the subjectivity in which beauty and truth presents itself in feelings and dispositions, in love and understanding. Reli- gion builds its temples and altars in the heart of the individual, and sighs and prayers seek the god whose contemplation is forbidden because there is always the danger of the intellect, which would see the contemplated object as a thing, the forest as firewood. it is true that the inward must also become outward, the intention attain to reality in action, the immediate religious feeling express itself in outward movement, and the faith that flees
20 Cf. derrida, Glas, p. 34a, where he, in his accurate and patient reconstruction of Hegel's interpretation, refers to Kantianism as, 'structurally, a Judaism. ' The Christian god is a revealed god. god is god insofar as he knows himself. This knowledge is self-con- sciousness in man, man's knowledge of god, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in god. Kant fails to comprehend this: for him god is not an object of knowledge; he doesn't see the relation between god and man. derrida: "To claim to found Christianity on reason and nonetheless to make non-manifestation, the being-hidden of god, the principle of this religion is to understand nothing about revelation. Kant is Jewish: he believes in a jealous, envious god. " idem, p. 213a. of course, one cannot simply consent to Hegel's suggestion that Kant is a Jew (derrida himself would never consent to this). Kant's internalization (Verinnerlichung) of the law, his 'subjective legalism' is more in accordance with modern- ism (enlightenment philosophy and religious liberalism), and certainly not so with ortho- dox Judaism and its insistence on the externality and alterity of the other. Cf. leo strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz. Beitra? ge zum Versta? ndnis Maimunis und seiner Vorla? ufer, Berlin: schocken Verlag 1935, esp. pp. 9-29.
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the objectivity of knowledge take objective form in thoughts, concepts and words; but the objective is very carefully distinguished by the intellect from the subjective, and it is the element which has no value and is nothing, just as the struggle of subjective beauty must be precisely to take all due precau- tions against the necessity of the subjectives becoming objective. [. . . ] it is precisely as a result of its fleeing the finite and holding fast to subjectiv- ity that it finds the beautiful turned altogether into things, the forest into firewood, pictures into things that have eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear, while the ideals that cannot be taken in wholly intelligible real- ity like sticks and stones become fabrications of the imagination and every relation to them is seen as empty play, or as dependence on objects and as superstition. 21
To Hegel, the final consequence of the principle of the North is the com- plete desecration of the natural and social world. Kant's 'Protestantism', his religion within the bounds of reason, cultivates an empty, otherworldly, deontological ethos, to the detriment of the urge to the reformation of this world. faith is made so sublime (or 'Jewish', in Hegel's perspective) that it becomes ineffective and even destructive for our daily life. Both spheres, the finite as well as the infinite, have to be connected to each other, and where religion proper leaves off, philosophy should take on the respon- sibility to finish what it started. Philosophy should try to recognize 'the rose of reason within the cross of reality'. it should try to close the gap between human and divine knowledge by transcending, through reason, the limitations of abstract reflexive understanding.
This is why Hegel since his early (frankfurter) writings has been look- ing for a dialectical synthesis in which the estrangement of understand- ing, the negativity of logical opposition (including the negativity of the law), is both recognized and saved as a moment in the argumentation, as well as eliminated in the unity of absolute science. Not religion but phi- losophy leads the way to life and unity. only a philosophy of the unity of identity and difference is able to realize what love promises.
for ethics to be true, it is necessary that it is real. To be real (wirklich), it must have grown out of the development of an intelligible historical- dialectical process. Certainly, the resulting Sittlichkeit also implies strict political laws and duties that simply confront the citoyen of a state; laws that this subject simply needs obey. Nevertheless, these laws are at least manmade, in contradistinction to the Jewish laws. Certainly, one simply
21 g. W. f. Hegel, 'glauben und Wissen' in: Hauptwerke in sechs Ba? nden, Bd. 1, darm- stadt: WBg 1999, p. 316 (my translation).
140
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needs to obey them. However, from an alternative perspective the 'posi- tive' laws and duties of a citizen are in fact rights that embody the idea, or realization of his freedom. moreover, these laws and rights should and can be recognized as such. freedom exists by means of this conscious participation in the state.
according to Hegel, there is a possible conceptual system in which the divine content is expressed in terms of the logical oppositions of under- standing. This system is implied in the unity of identity and difference, in the logical 'negation of the negation' such as only reason (Vernunft) can recognize and affirm. it is neither the divine command nor the love as a mere feeling, but reason and philosophy that can lead the way to rec- onciliation. although through religion-proper human consciousness and absolute divinity remain juxtaposed, religion also remains to represent an important dialectical and pedagogical image (Vorstellung) of the reconcil- iatory truth as it is comprehended in philosophy. 22
5. law and love: The alternative, Jewish Perspective
We cannot refrain from commencing a more critical evaluation of what we learned here from Hegel's (mature and premature) dialectical inter- pretation of Judaism. from a moral standpoint, it would not be right to do so. and Hegel himself would agree that a faithful reconstruction as such is not enough; that it fails to do justice to his philosophy of religion and his understanding of (the place of ) Judaism within the context of the development of spirit.
We must, i think, recognize that Hegel's account of the 'limitations' of Judaism reflects an anti-semitic sentiment long exhibited by european Christians. 23 according to Hegel, the jealous god of the Jews has no place in either absolute Religion or in absolute Knowledge. However, when we
22 Cf. what Hegel says at the end of his preface to the Philosophy of Right. The distinc- tive principle of Protestantism is the unwillingness to acknowledge anything which has not been justified by the subject itself. "What luther inaugurated as faith in feeling and in the testimony of the spirit is the same thing that the spirit, at a more mature stage of its development, endeavors to grasp in the concept so as to free itself in the present and thus to find itself therein. "
23 Cf. simon Critchley: "Hegel's attitude is perhaps philosophically anti-semitic, that is to say, the conceptual matrix of family, community, and property has no place for the Jew, if the latter is defined as the other to greco-Christian philosophical conceptuality. " Critchley, 'a commentary upon derrida's reading of Hegel in glas', Hegel after Derrida, ed. stuart Barnett, london/New york: Routledge 1998, p. 204.
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look at it closely, one cannot rule out the possibility that the problem here is not necessarily located in the 'object' of this sentiment (the god of the Jews, and Jewish faith), but in the narrow perspective of the subject thereof (Hegel himself). When one reads 'The spirit of Christianity', and the negative evaluation of the divine command in his mature Philosophy of Religion, it is hard to believe that Hegel did not see the irony and the paradox in his own representation of the incarnation. in addition, it is hard to understand how he could fail to notice the 'limitations' and pos- sible dangers associated with the internalization and annihilation of the law-as-law, as he would have it.
let me start off with a few critical questions and remarks on the con- cept of love that is of vital importance to Hegel's account of Christianity. according to Hegel, the Jew as a dutiful subject to the law does not, and cannot love. is not one of the dangers of love that one tends exclusively to reserve one's charity to those neighbours that fall within one's horizon, that is, with whom one can indeed easily, and emphatically, identify one- self? should we not at least try to extend our love to those who cannot simply be recognized as 'other selves', to those who cannot be seen to belong to our unity of life, and to those who are to remain (in this respect) somewhat strange and even 'opposed' to us? in respect to the dangers of any possible trade-off (a 'bad' incarnation), Jewish ethics and the impor- tance of the law for the Jewish faith deserve the benefit of the doubt. let me put it straightforward. least of all they cannot be ruled out as hateful and unloving for trying to cultivate a radical hospitality within the soul, a 'desert like emptiness' that is, for something and someone wholly strange and unexpected; something or someone that cannot possibly be reduced to and reconciled with the 'economy of the same'.
from a Jewish perspective the tables are turned. Hegel's obsession with the unity of life and with the reconciliation of the law with nature can be said to rest on an erotic form of love. a love that desires and 'takes' more than it is prepared to give. The immanent-transcendence of his 'spirit of Christianity' is an expression of a political kind of self-love, through which eternity proper and real love are being corrupted and betrayed. Reflexivity and recognition (Anerkennung) both lead to the destruction of this radical love; a love that intends (by means of our duty) to break with the usual 'economical' reciprocity (do ut des) through which the more i give, the more i have. love is not an economical investment. love as it is, or better still, love as it should be, needs to break with the idea of a bonum com- mune that gathers together me and the other in the 'concrete-universality' (konkrete Algemeinheit) of a 'genuine society' (Gemeinschaft). The move-
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ment of speculative dialectics always results in a reappropriation of what has been sacrificed. Judaism seems to deconstruct this economy. To be able to love is to be able to transcend oneself, without restraint. To learn to love is to become 'a stranger to oneself', without (unconsciously and economically) trying to return from this exitus. 'you shall love the alien as yourself. ' (lev. 19; 33) To love an alien is to be an alien; and it takes an alien to be an alien. To love is to die to oneself and to the world without trying to (economically) 'survive' this gift of death and this sacrifice of the self. This loving exitus is not unlike the exodus that Hegel detested so intensely: the exodus of abraham from Chaldea, the land of his ancestors. god commanded him to this 'brutal act of disseverance' that snapped the bonds of his communal life and his (erotic) love for his kinsfolk.
The first act which made abraham the progenitor of a nation is a dis- severance which snaps the bonds of communal life and love. The entirety of the relationships in which he had hitherto lived with men and nature, these beautiful relationships of his youth (Joshua 24:2), he spurned. 24
it is the 'sedentary' spirit of Hegel's (idea of) Christianity that takes offence to the figure of the wandering Jew and his strange law. Wander- ing is the Jewish fate and the punishment of any spirituality that is not firmly rooted in the substantiality of ethical life.
However, according to an alternative Jewish reading, the awe-inspiring law initiates a sublime trans- gression and hospitality. The law cultivates an awareness of singularity, instead of being merely an expression of indifference towards the other, and a restriction or 'limitation' to the sublimity of love. 25 on the other hand, seen from a Jewish perspective, love in the Hegelian-Christian sense runs the risk of being a 'fulfoulment' rather than a fulfilment (pleroma) of the law. in this perspective, 'Hegel' stands for a pollution of love that lim- its the intrinsically transgressive effect of law itself. 26 The other, towards whom justice is to be shown, is an absolute other (the wholly other repre- sents eternity). as such, the other is never 'present' and cannot (as such)
24 Hegel, ? spirit of Christianity? , p. 185/277.
25 Cf. Timo slootweg, 'das go? ttliche gebot und der geist der liebe. eine kritische auseinandersetzung mit Hegels fru? hen theologischen Voraussetzungen', in: a. arndt, P. Cruysberghs, a. Przylebski (eds. ) Hegel-Jahrbuch 2010--Geist? , Berlin: akademie-Verlag 2010, pp. 72-78.
26 Kant, 'the Jew from Ko? nigsberg', is also very much conscious of this transcendent dimension of the law. laws cannot be automatically applied. Their application necessi- tates an Urteilskraft (a force of judgment) that is not reducible to rules, because (in that case) these rules, in their turn, would have to be interpreted, ad infinitum. see immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B171f. for this Kantian line of thought, see also J. derrida, Force de loi. Le <<fondement mystique de l'autorite? >>, Paris: galile? e 1994.
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be enclosed within the loving embrace of any form of Gemeinschaft. Rec- ognition and harmonization threaten the (originally) 'open' and hospita- ble existence of mankind, in juxtaposition (that is) to laws and duties that seem to interminably 'postpone' and defer the longed for reconciliation of the self in relation to the other and in relation to the unity of life. seen from this alternative perspective, the spirit of the Jewish-Christian tradi- tion is a messianic spirit. its spirit is to aspire interminably to a righteous- ness that is always 'to come', and that cannot possibly become apparent and present. it is an unlimited waiting for justice without any forgone expectation or 'horizon'; it is an absolute hospitality that keeps watch over its own quasi-transcendental universality. 27
What augustine tells us about time, may apply to love as well. as long as we do not ask ourselves what they are, everyone seems to know what they are. from the moment on that we dare to question them, we seem to lose our innocence, and time and love reveal their unfathomable char- acter. in this precarious situation in which the success of our task is at the very least not solely within our own rational power and seems to depend on some kind of grace, a philosopher, in his attempts to write about love, might be best off doing his work both actually 'out of love' as well as 'in the name of love'. To Hegel, religious violence 'for the love of god', and this also applies to the violence of the crusades, is an impor- tant sign that the (meaning of the) incarnation of god in mankind has not yet fully penetrated the heart of human dignity. Religious indifference and violence reflect estrangement. They are the morbid reflection of a deficient or 'abstract' mode of religious consciousness, of a consciousness that projects its longing for a long lost universality, for the unity of life itself, unto a transcendent, divine 'entity', that presents itself merely in a sensuous and 'unspiritual' form (holy sepulchre). Religious violence is in flagrant opposition to Christ's spiritual example of compassion and char- ity through which mankind works itself towards universal recognition and community.
However, as we have seen, Hegel's idealism, and his analysis of Judaism is not completely free of religious violence itself. moreover, this violence is not just 'incidental' (which is the usual benevolent approach to his anti-semitism). for it is in itself a consequence of the Hegelian dialectic that logically necessitates the sublime fulfilment of a merely 'schlechte
27 for this alternative, messianic spirit, see for instance J. derrida, in: Spectres de Marx, Paris: E? ditions galilee? 1993; Specters of Marx, New york: Routledge 1994.
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unendlichkeit' (a 'finite infinity'). for Hegel, transcendence is immanent in the ideality of the 'konkrete-algemeinheit' (the 'concrete universality'), that is: in the objective spirit and in absolute science. But whoever looks for 'das Jenseitige' ('the Beyond') on this side of life, runs the risk of ren- dering eternal value to some kind of presence that belongs to the sphere of the temporary; to what is only an imperfect historical representation of the eternal. in addition, this idolatry would not only degrade the holi- ness of god--and god is love, but with that, the holiness of the human soul and its conscience (as an image of god) would become damaged and violated as well.
That this is precisely what happens in Hegelian dialectics becomes clear as soon as we see that what really binds the soul to eternity (love, hope and faith; conscience) is in fact sacrificed to the illusory certainty of the Hegelian Geist. as long as its god is distant and strange, and much of the effect of this strange god is carried over from Judaism to Christian- ity, the soul remains in a state of unhappy consciousness. But ultimately the divine and absolute subject, its knowledge of good and evil, and last but not least, its 'work' will take its due and proper place in the centre of the universe. Hegel's philosophical god comes to prevail over the god of abraham, isaac and Jacob. in the end, faith has done its job as a mere 'conception' (Vorstellung) of the immanent-transcendence that Hegel develops and explains in purely reasonable terms. Religion is 'true' only, up to a certain point. and after being philosophically understood (after going through Hegel's reasonable interpretation), faith and religion can be left behind. although they remain usefull in order to fulfil some instru- mental, political and pedagogical purposes in the service of the ethical disposition (Gesinnung) of the state and its people (the remaining pur- pose of religion-proper is to develop the individuals participation in com- munal life and state; to stimulate its 'Bildung zum Allgemeinen'). 28
28 love comes from a good conscience (cf. Timothy 1; 5). To Hegel however, a 'proper' religious conscience is still merely 'subjective', and as such a moral form of evil. instead, 'true conscience' is contained in the 'horizontal', ethical disposition (Gesinnung): "True conscience is the disposition to will what is good in and for itself; it therefore has fixed principles, and these have for it the character of determinacy and duties which are objec- tive for themselves. in contrast to its content--i. e. truth--conscience is merely the formal aspect of the activity of the will, and this will, has no distinctive content of its own. But the objective system of these principles and duties and the union of subjective knowledge with this system are present only when the point of view of ethics has been reached. Here, within the formal point of view of morality, conscience lacks this objective content, and it is thus for itself the infinite formal certainty of itself, which for this reason is at the same
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Religion integrates the state at the deepest level. That is why the state ought to require all its citizens to belong to a religious community. How- ever, in the Philosophy of Right Hegel clearly states that, although the content of religion relates to the absolute, it differs from it in form. The form of religion--religious feeling--destroys everything that is objective. Through religion the objective spirit, the determinate laws and institu- tions of the state that embody our freedom, are all dissolved into the muddle of subjectivity and undifferentiated inwardness:
Those who seek the lord, and assure themselves, in their uneducated opin- ion, that they possess everything immediately instead of undertaking the work of raising their subjectivity to cognition of the truth and knowledge of objective right and duty, can produce nothing but folly, outrage, and the destruction of all ethical relations. 29
Here we may already see foreshadowed what is happening nowadays under the influence of the enlightenment: religion and religious con- science are being expelled as the fanatical, the irrational and unreason- able. after having done its necessary work, religion is exorcised from the sanctity of democracy, to the private sphere. and politics, once divorced from religion in this all too subjective sense tends to fossilize to 'closure'; to immanent transcendence, self-righteousness and indifference.
seen from a Jewish perspective, and Christianity might be more con- tinuous with Judaism than Hegel is prepared to acknowledge, it is not safe to identify the divinity with any living present, or to positively affirm the 'fullness of time' in any 'here and now'. it is dangerous to define with divine authority the incarnation of the infinite in the finite, to define as a holy instance of eternity something or someone determinate (a name, for- mulation, habit, practice, or nation). for once we have god on our side, it becomes dangerously costly (potentially lethal even) not to belong to the chosen and blessed (one's fellow citizens), to belong to those who cannot or will not affirm the revealed truth of the parousia; the 'rest', the unfaith- ful, the inessential, the eternally displaced that cannot--in principle--be accommodated by any system.
Hegel's opposition of law and gospel, of letter and spirit is a pseudo Christian attempt to deface Judaism. and it does not do a great service
time the certainty of this subject. " g. W. f. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. a. W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge uP 1991, ? 137, p. 164.
29 idem, ? 270R, pp. 292-294. see also Hegel's Enzyklopa? die der Philosophischen Wissen- schaften, Berlin: 1830, ? 552 where he makes the same point.
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to Christianity in interpreting the religion of love as a negation of Jewish faith; in not being able to reconcile Christianity with Judaism and in prov- ing itself to be so disdainful to the Jews and of Jewish religion. We have seen ample proof of his harsh judgments on the 'limitations' of Jewish faith. Hegel's denunciation of the Jew, this pseudo Christian onto theology is quite sincere. in a sense it is as hypocritical as some of the Pharisees with whom Jesus had to deal. These scribes were certainly Jews, but we may not take them pars pro toto. according to martin Buber (for instance), it is the god-idea of Prophets that represents the Jewish spirit at its best, namely: "a transcendent unity . . . the world-creating, world-ruling, world- loving god. " although, as history continues "the idea becomes diluted, fades, until the living god is transmuted into lifeless a schema character- istic of the later priestly rule and of the beginnings of rabbinism",30 Jewish spirituality has always centred on the personal encounter (Begegnung) with the human, in whom we encounter god. for Buber, the law is merely is a derivative of this Jewish religiosity, and it is only through man that revelation becomes legislation. in this sense also, Jesus himself was very much a Jew. as a Jew he thought and spoke in Jewish language, and what is more, he spoke Hebrew even after he had sat himself at the right hand of his father. (acts 26; 14) What Jesus and John the Baptist proclaimed was nothing else than the renewal of this original Jewish religiosity. 31 and indeed, recent scholarship on the subject confirmed these (Buber's) insights; it has made clear that Jesus merely preached a relatively radical Judaism that drew upon the most original of Judaic resources. 32
This of course, is meant not to deny completely the importance of the divine command for Jewish faith. What is to be said (from a Jewish perspective) in response to Hegel's critique hat it is 'not true'? Justice is receptive to the exceptional singular that is not simply an individual 'case' of a universal principle that can 'automatically' be applied. in one sense certainly, the law is blind to the singular. and as such, the law, the universal and ethical (Sittlichkeit), are the temptation (Anfechtung) that one ought to resist. moreover, the general (das Allgemeine) must be
30 martin Buber, On Judaism, Nahum glatzer (ed. ), New york: schocken Books 1995, pp. 42-43.
31 Buber, On Judaism, pp. 79-94.
32 see for instance: g. Vermes, Jesus the Jew. A Historian's Reading of the Gospels Phila- delphia: fortress Press 1973; e. P. sanders, Jesus and Judaism, Philadelphia: fortress Press 1985, and of the same author, The Historical Figure of Jesus, New york: Penguin Press 1993, and marinus de Jonge, Christology in Context. The earliest Christian response to Jesus, West- minster: John Knox Press 1987.
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deconstructed in the name of justice. The temptation is the duty, the law and the ethical itself. They keep him from doing god's will.
Nevertheless, the resistance to the law (its deconstruction) is not some- thing that necessarily comes from without (ex nihilo) as something (love) that is wholly other than the law. and the resistance need not be under- stood in the sense of the Hegelian 'negation of a negation'. from a certain Jewish perspective, the law actually deconstructs itself. it itself initiates its transgression or 'suspension'. Because of its mystical foundations, the law is indeterminate and open towards any future applications. The gospel actually confirms this when it refers to the law as the shadow of a justice to come: "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. for this reason it can never, by the same sac- rifices be repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. " (Hebr. 10; 1). To automatically subsume particular cases under general rules is to violate their singularity. it is to violate 'life', as Hegel would call it. However, it is just because of their indeterminateness, that we need to reinterpret legal categories to conform to the case. Just as we have to reinterpret the case to conform to legal categories. in either case however, we need to refer to the law. Because without any law the decision threatens to become unrestrained power and violence.
6. Tables Turned: Kierkegaard's alternative Christian Reading
The deadening force of spiritless legalism and slavish servility threatens every faith. it is not the exclusive 'privilege' of Jewish faith (or any other). in Paul, it is by means of a law that these inauthentic restrictions and determinations are abolished and negated. "everything is permissible for me" (1 Cor. 6; 12). Certainly a Christian is a servant to his neighbour, but without sacrificing his freedom, without which their can be no love. This also means that a Christian is in principle not bound by the opinions, the traditions and values of others (the objective spirit). "for why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience? " (1 Cor. 10; 29)
Those who will not live by the law shall die by the law. When Paul-- 'Paul the Jew'--says that one must live, not after the letter but after the spirit of the law, and that the righteous shall live through faith (that this is actual freedom and sovereignty) this is essentially an elaboration of a sentence in Habakuk 2; 4. in galatians, he tells us that this is something 'we' Jews already know. in Habakuk it is still without the help of Jesus (the mediator) that one is supposed to live by the law through faith alone
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(because we are all sinners and remain to be dependent on the mercy of god). The fulfilling of the law through faith is already an important theme in the Torah although at other places it merely stresses the command- ments. Within letters of Paul there is, to be sure, also much 'commanding Torah'. in addition, according to Paul it is in fact a law (the law of Christ) that delivers us from the law: "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. " (gal. 6; 2) it is the 'good law', the 'law of love' that promises to fulfil the law (the entire law). The commandment of love liberates us from working under the curse of the law (works without faith) and commands us to open up to the love of god that mercifully does its work through us, his servants and instruments.
i will linger just a little longer on the relationship of law and love because Hegel's philosophy of Judaism very much concentrates on this subject; and there is--to my opinion--an important lesson to be learned here. in Kierkegaard's lutheran reading of Christianity, we find fur- ther reason to question the strong and hateful opposition to the divine command:
on the whole, it is unbelievable what confusion has entered the sphere of religion since the time when 'thou shalt' was abolished as the sole regulative aspect of man's relationship to god. This 'thou shalt' must be present in any determination of the religious. 33
although law and love are not the same and cannot be reconciled in an easy way, there is at least one important similarity in that love itself is the most important divine command; it is itself a kind of law. it is the law of the gospel; it is a law as law; an 'abstract law' as Hegel would have it:
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the sadducees, they gath- ered together. and one of them, a lawyer [it. T. s. ] asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? " and he said to him, "you shall love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first command- ment. and a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. on these two commandments depend all the law and the Prophets. " (matt. 22; 34-40)
The law as law initiates the teleological suspension of the ethical. it is in fact a law that repeats the old law in leviticus: "love your neighbour as
33 soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto death. A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, H. Hong / e. Hong (eds. ), New Jersey: Princeton university Press 1980, p. 115. (sKs 11, 226)
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yourself. i am the lord. " (lev. 19; 18) in 'Kierkegaard' it is stressed that only love as law is the excess, the transcendence through which justice takes place. god is love. With god everything is possible (matt. 19; 26).
