To
automatically
subsume particular cases under general rules is to violate their singularity.
Hegels Philosophy of the Historical Religions
hegel's philosophy of judaism 141
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
hegel's philosophy of judaism 149
(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). everything, not only 'the real', the necessary or 'the possible', but also the impossible that transgresses the all too human, natural, the probable and actual. everything is possible for him who believes (mark 9; 23). for love realizes the impossible: forgiveness, love for god above all, and love for ones neighbour. Necessity's despair (this 'sickness unto death', as Kierkeg- aard names it) is to lack possibility. The 'abstract' law of love does not (in effect) destroy the law, but it perfects the law. Hegel's denunciation of the law-as-law, of the law of love, fails to appreciate this transcendent, typically Jewish import. His philosophical revocation of the law leads to the accommodation, the naturalization and neutralization of love. it leads to what is nothing more than a mere 'idea' of love; to the idea of love as recognition. Christian love however, is not simply continuous with nature and humanity. What presents itself as love, in form of human love, friend- ship and patriotism, is generally nothing more than a sublime form of egoism. seen closely, this love is merely self-love, erotic love or prefatory love, love for a preferred object (preferred only because it satisfies my needs), while the law-as-law reminds me that i must love my neighbour (every other without any restriction). love is a law and a duty. The com- mandment 'wrenches open' the lock of self-love. and only as law is love eternally secure and safe against the self-love, jealousy and hatred that reside within worldly love and recognition. 34
love is no friend of the community. love seeks congregation in the Kingdom of god (in heaven). even the church here on earth is not (not as a community) an appropriate object of love. The church is the mystical body of Christ, the 'community' of free and separate believers (who might not even know of the existence of their fellow travellers). Communal life is not so much the purpose of being, as it is merely an instrument for the single individual to inform his neighbour about god. The law of love sets each one apart with his conscience in relation to his personal god. The law itself sets him apart (coram Deo), to the 'detriment' of his involvement
34 "only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured against every change, eternally made free in blessed independence. " soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, H. Hong and e. Hong (eds. ), Princeton New york: Princeton uP 1995, p. 29. (sKs 9, 36) Cf. franz Rosenzweig, The star of Redemption, transl. W. W. Hallo, Notre dame london: university of Notre dame Press 1985, p. 214: "The love for god is to express itself in love for one's neighbor. it is for this reason that love of neighbor can and must be commanded. "
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in the merely general bonum commune. But this relation is not degrading, and it does not deny his freedom. on the contrary! only when one has become a Christian in becoming a person in a personal relationship to god, only thus, by way of 'the truth as an encounter' (cf. martin Buber), can one expect to be able to relate--in love--to one's neighbour. "eter- nity scatters the crowd by giving each an infinite weight, by making him heavy, as an individual. for what in eternity is the highest blessing, is also the deepest seriousness. What there, is the most blessed comfort, is also the most appalling responsibility. "35
only thus, alone before god, alone with his conscience, free and subject to no-one, is he a fully responsible servant to his neighbour. only thus can he be expected to be ready and 'open' to this absurd, teleological suspen- sion of the ethical (the immanent and 'relative') in which finally, Justice is to be found. Kierkegaard refers to the Jew, to abraham, the father of israel, as the father this faith. it is this faith in the divine command that makes us free and sovereign:
[The] self acquires a new quality or qualification in the fact that it is the self directly in the sight of god. This self is no longer the merely human self but is what i would call, hoping not to be misunderstood, the theological self, the self directly in the sight of god. and what an infinite reality this self acquires by being before god! a herdsman who (if this were possible) is a self only in the sight of cows is a very low self, and so also is a ruler who is a self in the sight of slaves--for in both cases the scale or measure is lacking. The child, who hitherto has had only the parents to measure himself by, becomes a self when he is a man by getting the state as a measure. 36
By getting this strange god and his divine command as a measure, an infi- nite accent falls upon the self. evans repeats after Kierkegaard: "a respect and reverence for transcendent divine commands in fact fosters a genuine autonomy; an individual who hears the call of god is an individual who may break with established social norms for the sake of the good. "37 god
35 soren Kierkegaard, Purity of heart is to will one thing, Radford: Wilder Publication 2008, p. 104.
36 Kierkegaard, Sickness unto death, p. 79. (sKs 11, 193)
37 C. stephen evans, Kierkegaard's ethic of love. Divine commands & moral obligations, oxford: oxford uP 2006, p. 304. in line with Kierkegaard, recent literature focused on this more positive interpretation of the divine command: Robert adams, 'divine commands and the social nature of obligation' in m. Beaty, C. fisher en m. Nelson (eds. ) Christian Theism and moral philosophy, macon: mercer uP 1998); 'Religious ethics in a pluralistic society', in: g. outka en J. P. Reeder (eds. ) Prospect for a Common Morality, Princeton: Princeton uP 1993. Philip Quin, 'The divine command ethics in Kierkegaard's Works of love', in: J. Jordan en d. Howard-snyder (eds. ), Faith, Freedom and Rationality, lanham:
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is not a ruthless Tiran who eliminates freedom: "but a ruler who extends to his subjects the dignity of becoming what we might call his partners. "38 Without the royal law, 'the good law', this thorn in the flesh, individual freedom remains nothing but an empty concept, and giving love withers away in desiring Eros, in humanism, 'reconciliation' and in the economy of the self.
Conclusion
as we have seen, the dialectical configuration of Hegel's speculations pre- cludes him from interpreting Jewish faith and religion in its own right. one possible objection to this critical evaluation of Hegel's account of Judaism remains to be discussed. Various scholars are of the opinion that his evaluation changed during the years, and that he did not sustain his clearly anti-semitic ideas characteristic of the early work. in the Philoso- phy of Right (1821), in a famous footnote to ? 270, Hegel speaks out for Jewish emancipation. The exclusion, he says, of Jews from civic life was the 'highest folly', and the emancipatory measures of 1812 (the Jews were given citizenship rights) were in fact 'wise and honourable'. many com- mentators have argued that this clearly shows how Hegel's perspective on Judaism had changed during the years from a negative to a positive approach. His state, it is thought, is indeed a state of reconciliation, and it is genuinely pluralistic and inclusive, fully recognizing the humanity of the Jews. "Hegel's state, as an articulated unity and totality, would affirm and preserve difference in its difference. "39
However, his straightforward aversion to Judaism and his support of civil equality are not necessarily inconsistent with each other. other explanations are possible and plausible. Hegel's praise of the emancipa- tion edict was less purely principled than Williams implies, and it was not simply a generous, non-reciprocal gift (with nothing in return), as has been shown recently by (among others) yovel and markell. 40 it was an
Rowman and littlefield 1996); 'Kierkegaard's Christian ethics', in: a. Hannay and g. marino (eds. ), The Cambridge companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge: Cambridge uP 1998.
38 evans, Kierkegaard's ethic of love, p. 129.
39 Robert Williams, Hegel's Ethics of Recognition, Berkeley: uCP 1993, p. 333.
40 for a further account of the continuity between Hegel's early and mature positions,
see: yirmiyahu yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche and the Jews, university Park: Pennsyl- vania state uP 1998; yovel, 'Hegels Begriff der Religion und die Religion der erhabenheit', Theologie und Philosophie 51, no. 4 (1976): pp. 512-537; Patchen markell, Bound by Recogni- tion, Princeton: Princeton university Press 2003, pp. 123-151.
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active effort to reshape Jewish identity, by making it more useful to the state, and by making it more in conformity to german culture. By granting Jews citizenship rights, the Jewish identity ('this state within a state') was to be weakened and dissolved, because their assimilation was a condition to the realization of the harmony and unity of the state:
far from being a simple 'release' or 'freigabe' that affirms Jews as coequal others in their difference, Jewish emancipation (both in history and for Hegel) was part of the process of nation- and state building in Prussia and other german lands; and even when it liberated Jews from some restric- tions, it also subjected them to novel forms of subordination precisely in order to secure the sovereign self-image of germans--albeit indirectly, by facilitating identification with a supposedly sovereign state. 41
as we have seen, Hegel's harsh judgment on Jewish faith comes down to his rejection of one of its most prominent characteristics: the divine com- mand. Judaism is a religion based upon obedience to authority, rather than upon ethics. This (supposedly) slave-like submission is exempli- fied by abraham, but also by the story of Job, whose self-renunciation in dust and ashes reflects the typically Jewish acknowledgment of the absolute sovereignty of the 'hidden god'. This theological spirit accounts for the spirit of parochialism and separatism that Hegel (systematically) attributes to Judaism, and that he regarded as a potential threat to the holiness and sovereignty of the state. as we have seen, Hegel's analysis certainly underwent some transformation, yet the modifications should not be overestimated. "Hegel's view of the limitations of Jewish theology was not substantially altered, nor was his view of its ultimate anachro- nism and the necessity of its supersession. "42
But what is the purpose of this critique, this re-evaluation of the Jew- ish pathos? Why should this 'Jewish Wisdom', this 'abstract universality' (l2 27, 683/575), be of any concern, not just to the any 'shareholder in the system' (Kierkegaard), but also to the more scrupulous and honest Hegel scholar? We are no abraham, isaac or sarah. Why would Job's self- renunciation have anything to do with modern ethics? of course, most of us will never have quite the same mystical experience of gods presence in the way abraham experienced it. However, a special revelation like the one he had does not seem to be the only way to experience the divine
41 markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 127. Cf. e. Benbassa and J. C. attias, Le Juif et l'autre, Paris: editions du Relie? 2002, pp. 110-135.
42 idem, p. 140.
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command and to appreciate its meaning. sometimes it is a text from the Bible that suddenly speaks to us. suddenly this text appears to be urgently relevant for the special circumstances in which we stand and feel obliged to act. in openness to the situation at hand, and in relation to the eternal perspective, we suddenly seem to 'see' what it is that we have to do; as if god himself whispered it to us by means of a divine command.
The relevancy of the divine commandment can also be seen in rela- tion to the epiphany of god in the command that is represented by the face of the other. This ethical dimension has been thematized in the philosophy of emmanuel levinas. one encounters the other face-to- face, that is, in the encounter with the face of the other: the widow, the orphan or the stranger (cf. lev. 18; 19, Jes. 2; 17, Jer. 7; 6, deutr. 27; 19). "it is always starting from the face, from the responsibility for the other, that justice appears. "43 Prior to the ontology of the subject, and prior to any conceptual and totalitarian onto-theology of god, the ethical relation, the primary experience of the encounter with the face installs in us an infinite responsibility. Jacques derrida, who was very much influenced by levinas, elaborated on him at this point. 'every other is wholly other':
if god is completely other, the figure or name of the wholly other, then every other (one) is every (bit) other. Tout autre est tout autre. This formula disturbs Kierkegaard's discourse on one level while at the same time rein- forcing its most extreme ramifications. it implies that god, as the wholly other, is to be found everywhere there is something of the wholly other. and since each of us, everyone else, each other is infinitely other in its abso- lute singularity, inaccessible, solitary, transcendent, non-manifest, originally non-present to my ego [.
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). everything, not only 'the real', the necessary or 'the possible', but also the impossible that transgresses the all too human, natural, the probable and actual. everything is possible for him who believes (mark 9; 23). for love realizes the impossible: forgiveness, love for god above all, and love for ones neighbour. Necessity's despair (this 'sickness unto death', as Kierkeg- aard names it) is to lack possibility. The 'abstract' law of love does not (in effect) destroy the law, but it perfects the law. Hegel's denunciation of the law-as-law, of the law of love, fails to appreciate this transcendent, typically Jewish import. His philosophical revocation of the law leads to the accommodation, the naturalization and neutralization of love. it leads to what is nothing more than a mere 'idea' of love; to the idea of love as recognition. Christian love however, is not simply continuous with nature and humanity. What presents itself as love, in form of human love, friend- ship and patriotism, is generally nothing more than a sublime form of egoism. seen closely, this love is merely self-love, erotic love or prefatory love, love for a preferred object (preferred only because it satisfies my needs), while the law-as-law reminds me that i must love my neighbour (every other without any restriction). love is a law and a duty. The com- mandment 'wrenches open' the lock of self-love. and only as law is love eternally secure and safe against the self-love, jealousy and hatred that reside within worldly love and recognition. 34
love is no friend of the community. love seeks congregation in the Kingdom of god (in heaven). even the church here on earth is not (not as a community) an appropriate object of love. The church is the mystical body of Christ, the 'community' of free and separate believers (who might not even know of the existence of their fellow travellers). Communal life is not so much the purpose of being, as it is merely an instrument for the single individual to inform his neighbour about god. The law of love sets each one apart with his conscience in relation to his personal god. The law itself sets him apart (coram Deo), to the 'detriment' of his involvement
34 "only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured against every change, eternally made free in blessed independence. " soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, H. Hong and e. Hong (eds. ), Princeton New york: Princeton uP 1995, p. 29. (sKs 9, 36) Cf. franz Rosenzweig, The star of Redemption, transl. W. W. Hallo, Notre dame london: university of Notre dame Press 1985, p. 214: "The love for god is to express itself in love for one's neighbor. it is for this reason that love of neighbor can and must be commanded. "
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in the merely general bonum commune. But this relation is not degrading, and it does not deny his freedom. on the contrary! only when one has become a Christian in becoming a person in a personal relationship to god, only thus, by way of 'the truth as an encounter' (cf. martin Buber), can one expect to be able to relate--in love--to one's neighbour. "eter- nity scatters the crowd by giving each an infinite weight, by making him heavy, as an individual. for what in eternity is the highest blessing, is also the deepest seriousness. What there, is the most blessed comfort, is also the most appalling responsibility. "35
only thus, alone before god, alone with his conscience, free and subject to no-one, is he a fully responsible servant to his neighbour. only thus can he be expected to be ready and 'open' to this absurd, teleological suspen- sion of the ethical (the immanent and 'relative') in which finally, Justice is to be found. Kierkegaard refers to the Jew, to abraham, the father of israel, as the father this faith. it is this faith in the divine command that makes us free and sovereign:
[The] self acquires a new quality or qualification in the fact that it is the self directly in the sight of god. This self is no longer the merely human self but is what i would call, hoping not to be misunderstood, the theological self, the self directly in the sight of god. and what an infinite reality this self acquires by being before god! a herdsman who (if this were possible) is a self only in the sight of cows is a very low self, and so also is a ruler who is a self in the sight of slaves--for in both cases the scale or measure is lacking. The child, who hitherto has had only the parents to measure himself by, becomes a self when he is a man by getting the state as a measure. 36
By getting this strange god and his divine command as a measure, an infi- nite accent falls upon the self. evans repeats after Kierkegaard: "a respect and reverence for transcendent divine commands in fact fosters a genuine autonomy; an individual who hears the call of god is an individual who may break with established social norms for the sake of the good. "37 god
35 soren Kierkegaard, Purity of heart is to will one thing, Radford: Wilder Publication 2008, p. 104.
36 Kierkegaard, Sickness unto death, p. 79. (sKs 11, 193)
37 C. stephen evans, Kierkegaard's ethic of love. Divine commands & moral obligations, oxford: oxford uP 2006, p. 304. in line with Kierkegaard, recent literature focused on this more positive interpretation of the divine command: Robert adams, 'divine commands and the social nature of obligation' in m. Beaty, C. fisher en m. Nelson (eds. ) Christian Theism and moral philosophy, macon: mercer uP 1998); 'Religious ethics in a pluralistic society', in: g. outka en J. P. Reeder (eds. ) Prospect for a Common Morality, Princeton: Princeton uP 1993. Philip Quin, 'The divine command ethics in Kierkegaard's Works of love', in: J. Jordan en d. Howard-snyder (eds. ), Faith, Freedom and Rationality, lanham:
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is not a ruthless Tiran who eliminates freedom: "but a ruler who extends to his subjects the dignity of becoming what we might call his partners. "38 Without the royal law, 'the good law', this thorn in the flesh, individual freedom remains nothing but an empty concept, and giving love withers away in desiring Eros, in humanism, 'reconciliation' and in the economy of the self.
Conclusion
as we have seen, the dialectical configuration of Hegel's speculations pre- cludes him from interpreting Jewish faith and religion in its own right. one possible objection to this critical evaluation of Hegel's account of Judaism remains to be discussed. Various scholars are of the opinion that his evaluation changed during the years, and that he did not sustain his clearly anti-semitic ideas characteristic of the early work. in the Philoso- phy of Right (1821), in a famous footnote to ? 270, Hegel speaks out for Jewish emancipation. The exclusion, he says, of Jews from civic life was the 'highest folly', and the emancipatory measures of 1812 (the Jews were given citizenship rights) were in fact 'wise and honourable'. many com- mentators have argued that this clearly shows how Hegel's perspective on Judaism had changed during the years from a negative to a positive approach. His state, it is thought, is indeed a state of reconciliation, and it is genuinely pluralistic and inclusive, fully recognizing the humanity of the Jews. "Hegel's state, as an articulated unity and totality, would affirm and preserve difference in its difference. "39
However, his straightforward aversion to Judaism and his support of civil equality are not necessarily inconsistent with each other. other explanations are possible and plausible. Hegel's praise of the emancipa- tion edict was less purely principled than Williams implies, and it was not simply a generous, non-reciprocal gift (with nothing in return), as has been shown recently by (among others) yovel and markell. 40 it was an
Rowman and littlefield 1996); 'Kierkegaard's Christian ethics', in: a. Hannay and g. marino (eds. ), The Cambridge companion to Kierkegaard, Cambridge: Cambridge uP 1998.
38 evans, Kierkegaard's ethic of love, p. 129.
39 Robert Williams, Hegel's Ethics of Recognition, Berkeley: uCP 1993, p. 333.
40 for a further account of the continuity between Hegel's early and mature positions,
see: yirmiyahu yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche and the Jews, university Park: Pennsyl- vania state uP 1998; yovel, 'Hegels Begriff der Religion und die Religion der erhabenheit', Theologie und Philosophie 51, no. 4 (1976): pp. 512-537; Patchen markell, Bound by Recogni- tion, Princeton: Princeton university Press 2003, pp. 123-151.
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active effort to reshape Jewish identity, by making it more useful to the state, and by making it more in conformity to german culture. By granting Jews citizenship rights, the Jewish identity ('this state within a state') was to be weakened and dissolved, because their assimilation was a condition to the realization of the harmony and unity of the state:
far from being a simple 'release' or 'freigabe' that affirms Jews as coequal others in their difference, Jewish emancipation (both in history and for Hegel) was part of the process of nation- and state building in Prussia and other german lands; and even when it liberated Jews from some restric- tions, it also subjected them to novel forms of subordination precisely in order to secure the sovereign self-image of germans--albeit indirectly, by facilitating identification with a supposedly sovereign state. 41
as we have seen, Hegel's harsh judgment on Jewish faith comes down to his rejection of one of its most prominent characteristics: the divine com- mand. Judaism is a religion based upon obedience to authority, rather than upon ethics. This (supposedly) slave-like submission is exempli- fied by abraham, but also by the story of Job, whose self-renunciation in dust and ashes reflects the typically Jewish acknowledgment of the absolute sovereignty of the 'hidden god'. This theological spirit accounts for the spirit of parochialism and separatism that Hegel (systematically) attributes to Judaism, and that he regarded as a potential threat to the holiness and sovereignty of the state. as we have seen, Hegel's analysis certainly underwent some transformation, yet the modifications should not be overestimated. "Hegel's view of the limitations of Jewish theology was not substantially altered, nor was his view of its ultimate anachro- nism and the necessity of its supersession. "42
But what is the purpose of this critique, this re-evaluation of the Jew- ish pathos? Why should this 'Jewish Wisdom', this 'abstract universality' (l2 27, 683/575), be of any concern, not just to the any 'shareholder in the system' (Kierkegaard), but also to the more scrupulous and honest Hegel scholar? We are no abraham, isaac or sarah. Why would Job's self- renunciation have anything to do with modern ethics? of course, most of us will never have quite the same mystical experience of gods presence in the way abraham experienced it. However, a special revelation like the one he had does not seem to be the only way to experience the divine
41 markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 127. Cf. e. Benbassa and J. C. attias, Le Juif et l'autre, Paris: editions du Relie? 2002, pp. 110-135.
42 idem, p. 140.
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command and to appreciate its meaning. sometimes it is a text from the Bible that suddenly speaks to us. suddenly this text appears to be urgently relevant for the special circumstances in which we stand and feel obliged to act. in openness to the situation at hand, and in relation to the eternal perspective, we suddenly seem to 'see' what it is that we have to do; as if god himself whispered it to us by means of a divine command.
The relevancy of the divine commandment can also be seen in rela- tion to the epiphany of god in the command that is represented by the face of the other. This ethical dimension has been thematized in the philosophy of emmanuel levinas. one encounters the other face-to- face, that is, in the encounter with the face of the other: the widow, the orphan or the stranger (cf. lev. 18; 19, Jes. 2; 17, Jer. 7; 6, deutr. 27; 19). "it is always starting from the face, from the responsibility for the other, that justice appears. "43 Prior to the ontology of the subject, and prior to any conceptual and totalitarian onto-theology of god, the ethical relation, the primary experience of the encounter with the face installs in us an infinite responsibility. Jacques derrida, who was very much influenced by levinas, elaborated on him at this point. 'every other is wholly other':
if god is completely other, the figure or name of the wholly other, then every other (one) is every (bit) other. Tout autre est tout autre. This formula disturbs Kierkegaard's discourse on one level while at the same time rein- forcing its most extreme ramifications. it implies that god, as the wholly other, is to be found everywhere there is something of the wholly other. and since each of us, everyone else, each other is infinitely other in its abso- lute singularity, inaccessible, solitary, transcendent, non-manifest, originally non-present to my ego [.
