Abstract
The criticism of Christianity, based on the mythological interpretation of Scripture and the recovery by the subject of the alienated contents, took its inspiration from Schelling and Hegel, but, in the works of Strauss, Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, it took on more radical tones and lead to atheism. By denying the existence of a transcendental God in the name of man, these writers ended up by attacking Judaism even harder, since Judaism was held responsible for having introduced monotheism. The more attention turned from God to man, the more the religious point of view became insufficient also when considering Judaism. Judaism came to be judged on the basis of the need for civil and social emancipation. One significant example of this was the polemical work by Bruno Bauer, called The Jewish Question. Its harsh criticism of the parasitic nature and spiritual immobility of the Jews provoked the reaction of Marx. While Marx was prepared to accept certain criticisms about their fondness for money, he contested the charge of immobility: they were the most open expression of the modern world and were rooted in the very heart of the historical transformations. Although mainly concerned with anti-religious criticism, Feuerbach also found time for negative considerations about the Jews’ inherent character. At first, he supported the bizarre historical reconstructions ofDaumer and Ghillany, who gave a scientific semblance to a series of incredible falsehoods spawned by the vastly expanding anti-Jewish sentiment. Later on, Feuerbach disassociated himself from this movement and his comments took on a more positive tone. One example of the reaction against this wave of anti-Judaism was the position of Gotthold Salomon, who recalled the great humanism of Mendelssohn, seeing it as synonymous with the values of progressive liberalism. On the other hand, Moses Hess, with his past in the radicalism of left-wing Hegelianism, rejected such humanism and sought to return to his own Jewish roots as an indelible patrimony, linked to birth and the aspiration for a homeland. The theme of Judaism as “the last nationalist question” revealed an urgent modernity. This urgency had rending side-effects, as Zionism was to show. A new era was beginning and growing racism was paving the way for tragic consequences.
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References
On the common aspiration to change of Jews and radical intellectuals, see Hans Liebeschütz, German Radicalism and the Formation of Jewish Political Attitudes during the Earlier Part of the Nineteenth Century, in Studies in nineteenth-century jewish intellectual history, ed. Altmann, 142–67. This does not mean placing the Jews only on the side of the radicals and revolutionaries, a stereotype used against them by Nazi propaganda, in this regard see Gay, op. cit., 101, 107, 136–137, 161–162, 166.
Streitschriften zur Vertheidigung meiner Schrift über das Leben Jesu und zur Charakteristik der gegenwärtigen Theologie. Drittes Heft. Tübingen, 1837, 95, 126.
David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu. Tübingen, 1835–36, repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969, I, 28. On the progressive approach of classical mythology to the tales of Jewish literature in Michaelis and Herder, while still maintaining their differences, see Valerio Verra, Mito, rivelazione e filosofla in J.G. Herder e nel suo tempo. Milano: Marzorati, 1966, 34–40, 43–9.
Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, 29, 31.
Ibid., 28.
On the importance of Schelling and this work for the elaboration of the myth concept in Strauss, see Jean-Marie Paul, D.F. Strauß (1808–1874) et son époque. Paris: Société Les Belles Lettres, 1982, 90–5, 100–01, who also underlines the differences. Strauss had actually eliminated the mythical stories and emphasised the role of invention compared to the naivety of myth.
Schelling, Werke, I, Historisch-kritische Ausgabe (HKA), ed. H.-M. Baumgartner et al. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1976–, 198. For the importance that this concept of Mendelssohn’s had in Herder and Schelling, who revaluated the listening cultures with respect to the reading ones, see W.G. Jacobs, op. cit., 117–18, 194.
Werke, I, 219. See also p. 223 in which he refers again to the concept of teaching as a generating influence.
Ibid., 229.
Allgemeine Übersicht der neuesten philosophischen Literatur, 1797, Werke, III, HKA, 101.
Philosophisches Journal, 1798, Werke, III, 184. On the wide influence of Lessing’s vision, see W.G. Jacobs, op. cit., 54, 60–88, 146, 208, in particular on Schelling, ibid., 78–83, 177, 265.
Philosophische Briefe, 1795, Werke, IV, HKA, 77.
Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, 1797, Werke, V, HKA, 90.
F.W.J. Schelling, Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, ed. Walter E. Ehrhardt. Hamburg: Meiner, 1992, 397–98, 398, 518, see also 456–59.
Ibid., 9, 518, 521.
Ibid., 459.
Ibid., 517: “The Old Testament religion has its truth only in the future”.
Ibid., 517, 458, 518, 148, 146. W.G. Jacobs, op. cit., 177 sustains that Schelling tends to eliminate a “particular revelation of the Jews”.
On the connection in Schelling between myth and the philosophy of history, see W.G. Jacobs, op. cit., 194–210.
Das Leben Jesu, I, 38–9.
In order to demonstrate the presence of myth in the Jewish people, Strauss, like Herder before him, does not hesitate to cite Eisenmenger, although from a wide range of sources, see ibid., I, 303; II, 12, 33, 299, 320.
Ibid., I, 51, 62–66, 74.
Ibid., 73, 148.
Ibid., 101–02.
Ibid., 127.
Ibid., 174.
Ibid., 128, 203–07, 209, 215, 224.
Ibid., 224–35, 242–54.
Ibid., 243. On the predominance in Strauss of the motive of invention over that of naivety in myth, see Paul, op. cit., 100–04, 110.
Ibid., 496, 497, 504.
Ibid., II, 1–251.
Ibid., 13, 211–51, 175–76, 234–35.
Ibid., 173, 171, 648–63, 590.
Ibid., 472. On Strauss’ position with regard to St John’s Gospel, see Paul, op. cit., 173–81.
Paul, ibid., 97–100 emphasises that Strauss was dissatisfied with the role attributed to Judaism, not only by Schleiermacher, but also by Hegel. He charged the latter with scarce attention to historical detail, an insufficient philological precision and a strong harmonising tendency (ibid., 116–21, 210).
Das Leben Jesu, II, 733, 735.
On such dissolution, expressed in Hegelian terms that were very distant from the master, see Paul, op. cit., 206. For the debate on the more or less Hegelian conception of Strauss, ibid., 211–16.
Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, I. Leipzig: Wigand, 1841, repr. Hildesheim-NewYork: Olms, 1974, pp. VI, XV.
Ibid., 393, 408, 398–99, 416. For the persistence of the theological scheme letter and spirit in Bauer and even in Marx, see Librett, op. cit., 228–240. Die Religion des Alten Testaments in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung ihrer Prinzipien dargestellt. Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1838, I, p. XLVII.
Ibid., 121.
Ibid., pp. XXII–XXIII, XXXI–XLII, XLVIII–XLIX.
Ibid., pp.XLIX–L.
See, for example, pp. XXVI–XXVII, where Enlightenment and Hegel are credited with having revalued self-consciousness; see also pp. LXVI.
Ibid., 23, 66–7. Even the Flood, despite being rooted in ancient tradition, comes to represent the step towards order.
Ibid., 74.
Ibid., 84, 98, 163–74.
Lothar Koch sustains that the collaboration between Bauer and Marheineke was not easy, on account of their sharp differences of interpretation, Humanistischer Atheismus und gesellschaftliches Engagement. Bruno Bauers >kritische Kritik<. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971, 31.
Die Religion des Alten Testaments, I, 151, 154–56, 141, 115.
Ibid., 259, 350–54.
Ibid., 92, 98, 176–77, 200–05.
Ibid., II, 279–81, 344, 372.
Ibid., 448.
Ibid., 334, 284, 403–14, 439.
Ibid., I, pp. LXV–LXVI, LXVII–LXXV.
For the first criticism of Strauss, which was still under the influence of conservative opinions, see Koch, op. cit., 98. Bauer, however, was rapidly modifying his conceptual basis.
For the reconstruction of this rapid change, between October 1839 and January 1840, see Ernst Barnikol, Bruno Bauer. Studien und Materialien. Aus dem Nachlaß, ed. P. Reimer and H.M. Saß. Assen: van Gorcum, Prakke & Prakke, 1972, 30–41, 48.
Hegel’s Lehre von der Religion und Kunst von dem Standpuncte des Glaubens aus beurtheilt. Leipzig: Wigand, 1842, 5–32.
Ibid., 61.
Ibid., 70, 73, 81, see also 121.
Ibid., 94, 95–6, 101–111, 120.
Ibid., 119–20.
Ibid., 123, 120, 126, 138–157, 205.
Ibid., 121–22.
Thus, their individualistic vision of providence is defined as Kleinkrämerei des Geistes (158), according to the disparaging expression which alluded to their commerce in “bric-à-brac”.
B. Bauer, Die Judenfrage, first in Deutsche Jahrbücher (17 November 1842), then expanded into a book (Braunschweig: F. Otto, 1843), from which we quote, pp. 70–4.
Ibid., 14, 25, 29, 44, 109–110.
Ibid., 45, 102–05, 93, see also 48.
Ibid., 61.
Ibid., 4–6, 5, 11, 34, 33.
Ibid., 16, 9, see also 81–83, where, alongside the criticism of Mendelssohn, he emphasised the mere sophistry of Maimonides, which contrasted with the Christian scholastics who, on the contrary, belonged to universal history. For the revival of the argument of Jewish sterility by Richard Wagner, see Lerousseau, op. cit., 192–195.
Die Judenfrage, 41.
Ibid., 104–06. Note the difference in treatment between the Jew and the Christian: “The Jew, like the Christian, to the extent that he is Christian, are incapable of a theoretical interest and a scientific relationship” (ibid. 86).
Ibid., 91.
Ibid., 86.
The work, Das Entdeckte Christentum. Eine Erinnerung an das achzehnte Jahrhundert und ein Beitrag zur Krisis des neunzehnten. Zürich and Winterthur: Verlag des literarischen Comptoirs, 1843, was confiscated, but it was known, for example, to Marx, Engels and Stirner; on this matter and for the text, see Ernst Barnikol, Das entdeckte Christentum im Vormärz. Bruno Bauers Kampf gegen Religion und Christentum und Erstausgabe seiner Kampfschrift, ed. Ralf Ott. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 19892, spec. 23–61, 86–93.
Die Judenfrage, 86. Bauer realises that slightly provocative hypothesis which, as we have seen, had been advanced by Michaelis (Mendelssohn, JubA XXII, 97).
Ibid., 114. For the important role played by Bauer in the passage from anti-Judaism to anti-Semitism, see Lerousseau, op. cit., 23, 68–71, 183, 203–207, 231–233, 257–259, 262–269, 289–292.
For the importance of this observation, refer to Levine, op. cit., 81.
Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, cit., 171.
Katz, ibid., sustains: “the family adopted an ostrich policy shutting their eyes to the fact of their Jewish origin, never mentioning it, and overreacting whenever reminded of the unpleasant fact”.
In this sense the continuity with Bauer which is stressed by Misrahi under the label of anti-Semitism (op. cit. 34–36, 39, 43–44, 47) turns out to be interrupted.
Zur Judenfrage, Marx-Engels Werke (MEW), I. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972, 372, see also 376.
Die Judenfrage, 6–8.
On this culpable silence, see Misrahi, op. cit., 27–30, 35, 93, 100.
Zur Judenfrage, 372. According to Misrahi, op. cit., 48–49, 51–52, 56, 63–65, 89–90, 92 Marx is even more dogmatic and theological than Bauer since he does not take into consideration the oppression endured by the Jews throughout the history and actually fosters a magical interpretation, open to any counterfeiting; see also Lerousseau, op. cit., 16, 227–228.
Zur Judenfrage, 370, 374, 377, 376.
In Marx’ conception this meant a kind of appreciation.
Misrahi, op. cit., 54, 58, 99 accuses Marx of having overturned the reality in-as-much as the Jews from being oppressed had become the oppressors. In this sense he had a decisive part in the shaping of the anti-Semitic left (pp. 17–24). Behind Marx’ generic and serious admissions, however, his perception of the Jews contemporary embourgeoisement (see Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 107–123) could be supposed.
Zur Judenfrage, 375, 377.
That Marx’s anti-Semitism goes beyond Bauer’s position in its conclusions and in its world-wide effects is asserted by Misrahi, op. cit., 33, 54 (“conclusion génocide”), 63–64, 65 (“antisémite et délirant”) and Lerousseau, op. cit., 204–206, 227, 259–261, 292–293.
In this sense Misrahi and Lerousseau’s assertions had to be adjusted as far as Marx’s evaluations of Jewish realism and historicity had in his opinion a positive meaning and, what is more, in contrast with Bauer’s insistence on Jewish immobility. Misrahi, op. cit., acknowledges however in Marx a double image of the Jew, as oppressor and as emancipator (pp. 78–81) and sees his work on the Jewish question as a “catharsis” (pp. 77, 88), a liberation from an obscure sense of guilt (pp. 226–229, 231, 234–235, 238–239), from a kind of self-hatred (pp. 88–90), from the negative image. Consequently Marx’s anti-Semitism was short lived. Against this interpretation which assumes that Marx had an immediate change straight after (pp. 77), Lerousseau, op. cit., 224–227, 293–294, 341 argues that Marx adopted a permanently negative attitude.
A scarce consideration for Mendelssohn has been observed on the part of Marx, just as he has been seen to distance himself from the historical-social problems of the Jewish community, see Prawer, op. cit., 425–27.
It seems significant to me that, faced with the growing Nazi anti-Semitism, Levine, op. cit., in highlighting the contribution of Jewish thinkers and scientists to the evolution of mankind, numbered Marx among the “rebel believers”, who, despite attacking the religious doctrine, had kept something of his Jewish origins in that impetus of the rebellion (spec. pp. 97–8, 142–43).
Das Wesen des Christentums, Gesammelte Werke (GW), ed. Werner Schuffenhauer. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1967–, V, 212. Schopenhauer, too, was articulating his criticism of Judaism and the story of Genesis, in the name of nature and animal rights, see Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, SW, IV, 238–40; Parerga und Paralipomena, SW, VI, 399–400.
See on the same theme my, Heidentum und Judentum: vom schärfsten Gegensatz zur Annäherung. Eine Entwicklungslinie vom “Wesen des Christentums” bis zur “Theogonie”, in Ludwig Feuerbach und die Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. Walter Jaeschke and Francesco Tomasoni. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998, 148–66.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 410, 412.
Ibid., 98, see also 250.
Ibid., 250, 355, 96.
Ibid., 250–54.
Ibid., 436–38, 438.
Ibid., 439–40, 440.
Ibid., 441.
Ibid., 218, 440–41, 302n.
Ibid., 216, 319, 332.
Ibid 208 see with 331.
For its greater clarity, see also ibid., 452n.
Ibid., 209.
See Jesi, op. cit., 81–4.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 210.
Ibid., 209–10.
Letter to his father of 22 March 1825, GW, XVII, 71.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 453–54.
See in particular Die Naturwissenschaft und die Revolution, GW, X, 367–68 and Das Geheimnis des Opfers oder der Mensch ist, was er ißt, GW, XI, 38, 43, where he revalues eating and drinking also for the Jewish religion, which is brought closer to other religions.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 596–97.
Ibid., 597.
Anselm Feuerbach, Kaspar Hauser. Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Seelenleben des Menschen, 1832, it. tr. R. Sarchielli and R. Carpinella Guarneri. Milano: Adelphi, 1996.
Daumer, Mittheilungen über Kaspar Hauser. Nürnberg, 1832.
Karlhans Kluncker, Georg Friedrich Daumer. Leben und Werk 1800–1875. Bonn, 1984, 72–80.
Sabbath, Moloch und Tabu, 1, 5, 7, 10.
Ibid., 11–12, 16, 17.
Ibid., 15, 25.
Ibid., 3, 24.
For the mystical influences in Feuerbach, please refer to my Materialismus und Mystizismus. Feuerbachs Studium der Kabbala, in Sinnlichkeit und Rationalität. Der Umbruch in der Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Walter Jaeschke. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992, 57–67.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 446.
Sabbath, Moloch und Tabu, 25.
On this question, Kluncker, op. cit., 80, cites Daumer’s, Über die Entwendung ägyptischen Eigenthums beim Auszug der Israeliten aus Ägypten del 1833.
Ibid., 14–65.
Ibid., 226–320.
Ibid., 233–34.
Letter to Joseph Schibich of 21 October 1851, in GW, XIX, 324–25.
Letter of 18 January 1842, GW, XVIII, 152.
See ibid. and Kluncker, op. cit., 93–4.
Der Feuer- und Molochdienst der alten Hebräer, 70, 72.
For the reconstruction of the trial, see Jesi, L’accusa del sangue, 12–61.
Der Feuer- und Molochdienst der alten Hebräer, 70–1, 74, 75–6.
Ibid., 74, 77, 76.
Ibid., 78, 82, 87–92. The Brothers Grimm are cited several times (pp. 87, 91, 93).
Kluncker, op.cit., 84–5.
In truth, he became Catholic and, despite continuing with mystical and theosophical fantasies, he tried to put at the disposal of the Papacy that polemical vein which had previously been used against religion, see ibid., 158–74.
This is underlined by Kluncker, op. cit, 83–7, 90–91.
Ibid., 80.
Letter of 1842, SW, XVIII, 151.
Die Judenfrage. Eine Beigabe zu Bruno Bauer’s Abhandlung über diesen Gegenstand. Nürnberg, 1843.
Ibid., 43–5, 4n., 44, 3, 11, 12, 13.
Ibid., 21–8.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 22. In the letter of 28 June 1844, though, he expressed his perplexities to his brother over the theories of Daumer and Ghillany, GW, XVIII, 361. Manfred Vogel sustains that the sacrifice had little to do by then with Jewish worship and, therefore, there was a clear misunderstanding on Feuerbach’s part here, Feuerbachs Religionskritik: die Frage des Judentums, in Ludwig Feuerbach und die Philosophie der Zukunft, ed. Hans-Jürg Braun et al. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1990, 218–19n.
In the third edition, he omitted reference to the less well-known and weaker Ghillany, Das Wesen des Christentums, 22.
Eisenmenger, op. cit., I, 589, 605–14, 619.
Ibid., 568, 569–73, 573–78.
Das Wesen des Christentums, 514.
On this evolution, please refer to my, Ethnologische Vorurteile und Ansätze zu einer Überwindung derselben im Fall der Hebräer, in Solidarität oder Egoismus. Studien zu einer Ethik bei und nach Ludwig Feuerbach, ed. H.-J. Braun. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994, 254–63 and Heidentum und Judentum, 159–66.
Hamburg: Perthes-Besser & Mauke, 1843.
To the review, which we considered earlier and which was published as a separate booklet, Salomon had responded with the book Der Charakter des Judenthums, Leipzig, 1817 (see Bruno Bauer, 54).
He published sermons and explanations of the feast days, as Festtage für alle Feyertage des Herrn, Hamburg, 1829.
In Bruno Bauer, 75 proudly declared that he had been teaching in them for years. Moreover, he had published many aids and didactic books, such as Hebräisches Elementarbuch zum bessern und stufengemäßen Erlernen des Hebräischen und Rabbinischen, Dessau 1919; Deutsche Volks- und Schulbibel für Israeliten, Altona 1837. For the passage from the maskilim to the pedagogues and preachers and for the link between spiritual edification and German Bildung with the assumption of bourgeois values, Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 83–84, 89–90, 95–96, 120, 124–125, 132–139, 160.
Bruno Bauer, 1, 44, 124.
Ibid., 21, 127–28.
Ibid., 29.
Ibid., 18, 86.
Ibid., 62 (where, though, he quotes Die Religion der Zukunft. Zürich-Winterthur, 1843, written by Friedrich Feuerbach, influenced by the ideas of his brother Ludwig, who was much better known and more important), 94, 120.
Ibid., 50, 61, 81, 130–33.
Ibid., 124.
Ibid., 36, 68, 70.
Ibid., 85.
Ibid., 126.
Ibid., 8–44.
Ibid., 38, for the importance of Spinoza, see also 26, 29, 39–40.
Ibid., 30 where, referring to the passage from Latin to German in philosophical language, he even said: “Mendelssohn has taught the Germans to love their language and to write with it!”, 31, 70–1. Salomon, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, had published: Denkmal der Erinnerung an Moses Mendelssohn zu dessen Säkulärfeier im September 1829. Hamburg, 1829.
Bruno Bauer, 48, 90–3, 112, 121, 130.
Ibid., 121–22, see also 19, where there recurs the expression already used by Mendelssohn “healthy human intellect” (gesunder Menschenverstand), and 111, where he hopes for the union between science and enlightened (erleuchtete) and authentic (ächte) theology.
Ibid., 68, 73–6, 97–8.
Ibid., 50, 51, 56–1, 60–2.
Ibid., 58–68, 88, where he exalts the ideal of “mankind without boundaries”. In this sense, Bauer maligned both religions (p. 60).
Ibid., 63.
The objective of the Israelites’ religion was defined as follows: to form (bilden) and educate the man within the Jew (65).
Ibid., 106, see also 104.
Ibid., 105.
It is curious that Salomon uses the expression “all-grinding” here (p. 1) for Bauer’s criticism, which Mendelssohn had coined for Kantian criticism, recalling it, too, in its original reference (p. 31).
Ibid., 45.
Ibid., 47–8, 78–9, 85–6.
Ibid., 32, 47, 82–3, 96, 84, 130.
Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism, 7–8 recalls that “Rabbi Gotthold Salomon praised King David as a man of Bildung”. See also Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 91–93, 131, 144.
G. Battista Vaccaro, Socialismo e umanesimo nel pensiero di Moses Hess (1837–1847). Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1981, 25–27, where he observes, among other things, that “up to a certain age, Hess’ knowledge of German was fairly uncertain” (pp.25–6). For his father’s mistrust, see the letter to M. Levy, April 1831, in which he reveals his passion for the theatre, but confides that he can attend it only rarely on account of his father’s opposition and concludes: “it is one’s duty to respect even the prejudices of one’s parents, whenever they are not in contradiction with superior duties”,
see in M. Hess, Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Horst Lademacher. Köln: Melzer, 1962, 378–79.
Letter already quoted in M. Hess, op. cit., 377–78.
Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit. Von einem Jünger Spinoza’s. Stuttgart: Hallbergersche Verlagshandlung, 1837, 80, 180, 184, 21.
He had only an indirect knowledge of him, see Vaccaro, op. cit., 38 and n.; Shlomo Na’aman, Emanzipation und Messianismus. Leben und Werke des Moses Hess. Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 1982, 62–3.
Die heilige Geschichte, 71, 88–89.
Vaccaro, op. cit., 41, 52.
Die heilige Geschichte, 80.
See Horst Lademacher, Apostel und Philosoph, in Hess, Ausgewählte Schriften, 10.
Die heilige Geschichte, 19, see also 80 where he defines mankind as “eine natürliche Erscheinung”.
Ibid., 20.
Na’aman, op. cit., 68.
See ibid., 58–9.
The same author, moreover, acknowledged that it was only an attempt to put chaos in order, see Die heilige Geschichte, 210.
Ibid., 80, 68.
See Na’aman, op. cit., 64–5, where it is pointed out how, for example, the parallelism he traced between the Davidian conquest of Zion with the consequent construction of the Temple and the Crusades must have been irritating for a Jew, especially of the Rhineland community, like Hess, (see Die heilige Geschichte, 120).
Die heilige Geschichte, 202.
Ibid., 338–41.
Na’aman, op. cit., 80–4. It is noteworthy that the synthesis of French and German culture already figured as a goal in Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin’s salons, see Hertz, op. cit., 131–132.
Die heilige Geschichte, 248–49.
Ibid., 252–53.
Ibid., 259, 261, 265.
Ibid., 296–97, 306.
Ibid., 274.
Ibid., 273, 276.
Ibid., 335, 280, 342–43, 308.
Ibid., 77–9.
Na’aman, op. cit., 89–91. For the burning disappointment that followed this enthusiasm, see what Hess wrote in Rom und Jerusalem, in Ausgewählte Schriften, 241–42, tr. Meyer Waxman, The Revival of Israel. Rome and Jerusalem, the Last Nationalist Question, 1918, repr. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, 71–73.
On the negative aspect of this shift, see Na’aman, op. cit., 91, 98–99, 102–03.
The author declared that it had a strict continuity, see Ausgewählte Schriften, 381. Die europäische Triarchie, in M. Hess, Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften, ed. August Cornu and Wolfgang Mönke. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1961, 90–1, 101, 109, 122, 124, see Na’aman, op. cit., 85–8; Vaccaro, op. cit., 80–3.
Die europäische Triarchie, 129.
Ibid., 130. Furthermore, he emphasised that Idealism had fulfilled its mission (p. 115).
Ibid., 130, 131, 133, 134.
Ibid., 135–36. Na’aman is particularly critical of this way, op. cit., 100, 102–3.
Die europäische Triarchie, 143.
Ibid., 158, 138, 160.
Über Staat und Religion, “Rheinische Zeitung”, 196, of 15 July 1842 in Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften, 188.
Na’aman, op. cit., 117–118. On the difficult and belated emancipation, even though, around 1840 most of the German middle class was favourable, see Nipperdey, op. cit., 250–53. On the effects of this delay upon the formation of a peculiar “subculture” and an invisible community, see Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 6–7, 103, 139, 173–177.
Die europäische Triarchie, 105.
Philosophie der That, in Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften, 215, 216.b
Die eine und ganze Freiheit (1843), in Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften, 229, 227–28.
Vaccaro, op. cit., 62–4, 221–22; Zwi Rosen, Moses Hess’ Einfluß auf die Entfremdungstheorie von Karl Marx, in Juden im Vormärz und in der Revolution von 1848, ed. W. Grab and J. H. Schoeps. Stuttgart-Bonn: Burg Verlag, 1983, 177–80.
Über das Geldwesen, in Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften, 346–47, 345.
In a passage where, for example, he compared the rapacity of men to that of hyenas, he spoke of their “common natural right, of their “common quality, just like predatory animals, bloodsuckers, Jews, mercenary wolves”, ibid., 346.
Ibid., 345, Na’aman, op. cit., 91–2 accuses Hess of having done very little at a moment when the Jews were once again under accusation from the public opinion over the Damascus case. In Rom und Jerusalem, 241, tr. 70–71 he described how he felt pain at that moment and that he had left a reflection in his “old manuscripts” on that “barrier” still existing, even in “enlightened Germany”, between the Jews and the “surrounding nations”. He added that the pain which, at that time, was “transient” later became “a dominating trait of my character and a lasting mood of my soul”.
Über das Geldwesen, 334.
Ibid., 334–44.
As we have seen, Schacher and Krämerei were disparaging expressions used for the economic activity of the Jews, see also Rosen, op. cit., 185–86.
Rosen has sustained that it was Hess who influenced Marx and not only in his interpretation of Judaism, but also in the application of alienation to the economic sphere, op. cit., 176–90.
In the letter of 2 September 1841 to Berthold Auerbach, he called him “my God”, he who “unites in one person Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel”, see Briefwechsel, ed. Edmund Silberner and Werner Blumenberg. s’-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1959, 80.
See Na’aman on this question, op. cit., 300–04, 326–28, 331, where he claims that the book anticipated the motives of Zionism, but had no direct influence on the formation of this movement, which discovered him later.
The pages dedicated to memories of his grandfather are particularly significant, Rom und Jerusalem, in Ausgewählte Schriften, 237, 259, tr. 64, 109.
Ibid., 253, see also 243, 265, tr. 96, also 76, 122.
Ibid., 232, 248, 259 tr. 52–53, 85–86, 113.
Ibid., 230–31, 238, tr. 51–52, 66.
Ibid., 262, see also 254, tr. 113, also 98.
Ibid., 265–66, tr. 123.
Ibid., 247, 253, tr. 84, 95–96.
Ibid., 223, tr. 43–44.
Ibid., 258, tr. 105.
Ibid., 227, 230, tr. 46–47, 50.
Ibid., 255, tr. 102.
Ibid., 242, tr. 74.
On the meaning of this reaction and its links with Zionism, see Na’aman, op. cit., 300–01.
Rom und Jerusalem, in Ausgewählte Schriften, 234–35, 240–43, tr. 56–57, 71–75.
Ibid., 241, see also 224, tr. 71, also 37.
Ibid., 237, 252, 260, tr. 64, 94, 111.
Ibid., 253, 255–56, 264, tr. 97, 101, 120.
Ibid., 230, 250, 268–70, 270–72, 253, 266, 265, tr. 49, 92, 127–131, 132–134, 96, 123–124, 122–123. Shlomo Avineri, Marxism and Nationalism, in The Impact of Western Nationalisms, by Jehuda Reinharz and George L. Mosse. London etc.: Sage Publications, 1992, 296–97 sees in Hess’ nationalism, a complement to the “reductionism” of Marx. For Hess, who was “close to Mazzini’s thinking”, the nation educated the individual to overcome his private interests. For this reason, the revolution that abolished classes would have eliminated conflict between nations, but not the nations themselves. Naturally, he was also aware of the rise of nationalism, and he applied it to the Jewish aspirations.
Rom und Jerusalem, 253, tr. 97–98.
Ibid., 225–26, 235, tr. 59.
Ibid., 247, tr. 84. On the subsequent insinuation of racism into Jewish assertions which, drawing on Gobineau, exalted the force of their own race, which had kept itself integral for thousands of years, see Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, 123–125.
Rom und Jerusalem, 262, see also 267, tr. 112–113, also 124.
Ibid., 252, 259, 262, tr. 96, 107, 112–113. For the “formative role” played by the criticism of the assimilation in the “genesis of subsequent ideologies, for example, Zionism”, see Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1.
Rom und Jerusalem, 266, 265, tr. 122, 121.
Ibid., 256, tr. 105.
Ibid., 268, 277, see also 233–34, tr. 251–260, also 54–55. Na’aman, op. cit., 304–05, 307, 317, 332 explains how this sympathy for France had contributed to determining the work’s alternating fortunes.
Rom und Jerusalem, 275, 276, tr. 149, 150.
Moreover, in his letter to Hess of 26 August 1862, Hajim Lorje expressed his agreement on behalf of the Generaldirektorium of the Kolonisationsvereins, see M. Hess, Briefwechsel, 404–06.
The fact that Hess and others saw links between Socialist ideals and Jewish tradition cannot be assumed as the basis of facile generalisations about the political opinions of the Jews, along the lines of the stereotype already mentioned and criticised by Gay, op. cit., 101, 107, 136–137, 161–162, 166.
On Auerbach’s loyalty to the ideal of the Bildung, championed by Mendelssohn and by which he sought to involve the people, see Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism, 4–6, 10, 23–24, 26, 29, 46. On his criticism of contemporary Judaism for having reduced Enlightenment to science and on his effort to recover Mendelssohn’s spirit of reform under the banner of “acculturation without assimilation”, see Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 141, 146–147, 150, 154.
Letter to the editorial office of the newspaper “Ben Chananja” del 22/8–5/9 in M. Hess, Briefwechsel, 403; see for all of this, Na’aman, op. cit., 310–14, 317, 319–22, 332.
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Tomasoni, F. (2003). Atheism, Progress and Revolution. In: Modernity and the Final Aim of History. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 187. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0113-6_4
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