Indiana University Press

Indiana University Press
Sublimity and Ressentiment: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews

Author(s): Yirmiyahu Yovel
Source: Jewish Social Studies, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Spring - Summer, 1997), pp. 1-25
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4467502
Accessed: 16-10-2015 03:44 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4467502?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Jewish Social Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 131.94.16.10 on Fri, 16 Oct 2015 03:44:43 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Sublimity and
Ressentiment: Hegel,
Nietzsche, and the Jews
Yirmiyahu Yovel
he last two centuries have seen momentous developments in

Jewish history-from political emancipation to Nazi genocide,
from large-scale assimilation and secularization to the creation
of a Jewish State, and more-all linked to the tribulations of moder-
nity, especially in Europe. However,Jews were not only the targets and
victims of modern European upheavals; they also provided Europeans
with a mirror-a crooked, passion-laden mirror-in which to see their
own identity problems reflected. The "Jewishproblem" was basically
a European problem, that is, not only a problem for Europe but a
reflection of Europe's own problem with itself: of how Europeans, in
an age of rapid transformation, were understanding their own identity,
future, and meaning of life.
To what extent did European philosophers perform this self-under-
standing through the Jews? To answer part of this question, I have
taken a closer look at Hegel and Nietzsche, the two most important
and certainly most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century.
Both were Germans, one active in the early part and the other in the
second half of the century, the first a major philosopher of reason,
the second one of its most severe critics. How did each of them
interpret the Jews as philosopher, that is, in terms of his own concepts
and philosophical project?
Hegel's philosophical project was a vast and ambitious one. It
attempted to reach a philosophical understanding of the modern
world, its essence and genesis, and thereby shape modernity still
further, leading it to its climax. Hegel saw European culture as the
core of world history and as essentially a Christian culture, one that
the philosopher must translate and elevate into concepts; Judaism
? Yirmiyahu Yovel
was a necessary background for understanding the Christian revolu-
tion and era.
[2] According to the Hegelian dialectic, every cultural form makes some
true, genuine contribution to world history (and the world Spirit), after
Jewish which it is sublated (aufgehoben)and disappears from the historical
Social scene. Yet the Jews continued to survive long after their raison d'etre
Studies had disappeared-indeed, after they no longer had a genuine history
in Hegel's sense but merely existed as the dead corpse of their extin-
guished essence. With the French Revolution, the Jews were entering
the modern world and claiming their rights and place within it. Hegel,
despite his anti-Jewishbias, was perfectly disposed to grant these rights,
but he did not know what to do with the Jews in modernity asJews, nor
could he explain their survival in terms of his system.
Nietzsche too had an ambitious philosophical project, one that in
many ways opposed Hegel's. A radical cultural revolutionary,
Nietzsche's goal was not to bring the process of modernity to culmina-
tion but rather to subvert and reverse it-more precisely, to divert it
onto a totally different course. The process that had started with Soc-
rates, Moses, and Jesus, and that Hegel saw as creating truth, civiliza-
tion, spirit, and even God himself (the Absolute), was for Nietzsche a
story of decadence and degeneration. Nietzsche attributed this deca-
dence to two main sources: rationalistic metaphysics and Christianity.
The first stemmed from the Greeks, the second from the ancientJews.
He therefore needed an interpretation of Judaism (and also of Socra-
tism, as he did in TheBirthof Tragedy)in order to expose and upset the
decadent culture of the present.
Given these projects, Hegel had seen the merit of ancientJudaism
in its discovery-which led to Christianity-that God was spirit and
that spirit is higher than nature; whereas for Nietzsche this was the
great falsification that the ancient Jewish priests had brought about.
However, Nietzsche did not recognize a single, permanent Jewish
essence. He distinguished three different modes or phases inJudaism
and expressed admiration for two of them: for biblical Judaism, and
for the Jews of the later Diaspora (discussed below in this article). His
harsh critique treats exclusively the middle phase, the second-temple
"priestly"Judaism (as he called it), which had started the "slave revo-
lution" in morality-namely, Christianity. Nietzsche's true target was
Christianity;so much so that often he directly read the ideas and even
the phrases of the New Testament right into what he derogated under
the name ofJudaism.
Contrary to Hegel, who considered post-ChristianJewish life as a
dead repetition of meaningless existence, Nietzsche exaltedJewish life
in the Diaspora as a great human experience. Having rejected Jesus
and gone into exile, theJews had schooled themselves in suffering and
endurance; they had gained historical depth and existential power, [3]
which Nietzsche wanted to pour into his new Dionysian Europe as an
antidote to Christianity and its secularized forms, such as liberalism Yirmiyahu
Yovel
and egalitarianism. The Jews were thereby given a role in modernity
as Jews: they were to mix with the other Europeans, create new values
and standards in all fields, and provide the power and potential virtue Hegel,
Nietzsche,
required to re-vitalize the old continent that the Jews' forefathers had and the
helped corrupt. Jews
It has become a commonplace to say Nietzsche was "ambivalent"
about the Jews. Yet the word "ambivalent"is itself ambiguous and often
creates an impression of depth where there is only confusion. One
needs to analyze the precisestructureof that ambivalence and bring to
light its ingredients in their mutual relations. On the one hand
Nietzsche saw ancient Judaism as a major source of European deca-
dence, and on the other he assigned modernJews, whom he admired,
a leading role in creating the non-decadent, de-Christianized Europe
he wished for the future. As for modern antisemitism, Nietzsche repu-
diated it with the same passion he reserved for the proto-Christian
Jewish "priests"-and for similar reasons. These two human types,
apparently so opposed to each other-the antisemite and the Jewish
priest-are actually genealogical cousins: they share the same deep
psychological pattern of ressentiment that Nietzsche's philosophy diag-
nosed as the root of human meanness and degeneration.
Hegel too was ambiguous about Judaism, but in a different way. His
views shifted over time, sometimes reverting to older positions in a
new form, but never, not even in maturity, did he fully resolve the
problem. It is ironic that the notoriously unsystematic Nietzsche
reached a fairly unified and coherent position on the Jews, however
complex, whereas Hegel, the great systematizer, never fully stopped
wavering. As a result, when we see Hegel shifting his views or emphases
on the Jews, we have most probably moved in time; when Nietzsche
does the same, he is moving synchronically from one zone of the same
map to another-that is, he stresses a different ingredient of the same
complex position.
To what extent did the philosophers overcome the anti-Jewishfeel-
ings imbued by upbringing and milieu? Those feelings were of a
different kind in both cases. Nietzsche came to maturity in the second
half of the nineteenth century amidst a wave of nationalistic and racist
antisemitism raging in Germany that already possessed a distinct sec-
ular feature. For a short time, Nietzsche said, he too "had resided in
the zone of the disease" (meaning in particular his association with
Wagner), but later he performed a powerful overcoming of that "dis-
[4] ease" and became opposed to the antisemites with all the energy and
passion of his soul.
Jewish Hegel's case and times were different. Born and raised in the
Social eighteenth century, he was affected by anti-Jewishfeelings and stereo-
Studies types that mostly emanated from the older Christian tradition, primar-
ily in the Lutheran version. Hegel was only marginally exposed to the
new, secular anti-Jewishtrend that had arisen, paradoxically, with the
Enlightenment. That exposure took place in his youth, when Hegel
himself was imbued with Enlightenment ideas, including Kant's attack
on all historical religions,Judaism in particular. Kant, the philosopher
of pure reason and the epitome of the Enlightenment, denied that
Judaism was a religion at all, because-he claimed-it had no moral
content and message but was only an external political constitution.
The best prospect Kant could offer the Jews was that they nominally
convert to Christianity (which Kant did not favor either), so as to gain
social and political acceptance, but actually adhere to the universal
(Kantian) morality of reason. Kant dubbed this proposal "the Eutha-
nasia" of Judaism. In another text the old Kant called the Jews "a
nation of cheaters" and referred to them as "the Palestinians living
among us"; Kant used this appellation to suggest that the Jews were
foreigners who did not really belong to the land and exploited its
inhabitants.
Kant's Religion Withinthe Limits of ReasonAlonewas among the first
Kantian works that Hegel read, and it left a strong mark on his early
thinking. The young Hegel's written reflections on religion contain
some of his strongest anti-Jewishutterances, and his emancipation from
Kant was partly achieved through a re-thinking of the issue ofJudaism.
The Young Hegel
Karl Rosenkranz, Hegel's early biographer, said that Judaism was al-
ways a "darkriddle" for Hegel, one that both attracted and repulsed
him.' Hegel's earliest essays, written between ages 25 to 30 and never
published, are dominated by the question of ChristianityandJudaism.
In this period Hegel strongly believed that Judaism had contributed
nothing constructive to Christianity,only its defects. Jesus' revolution
borrowed nothing valuable from his Jewish background. In a typical
text, influenced by Kant's attack on Judaism as a religion of merely
"statutory"laws, the young Hegel said:
[The JewishSpirit at the time of Jesus] was overwhelmedby a burden
of statutorycommandswhich pedanticallyprescribeda rule for every
casual action of daily life and gave the whole people the look of a [5]
monasticorder.As a result of this system,the holiest of things, namely
the service of God and virtue, was ordered and compressed in dead Yirmiyahu
Yovel
formulas,and nothing save the pride in this slavishobedience to laws
not laid down by themselveswas left to the Jewishspirit,which already 0
was deeply mortifiedand embitteredby the subjectionof the state to a Hegel,
Nietzsche,
foreign power.2 and the
Jews
No wonder, Hegel went on, that "in this miserable situation there must
have been Jews of a better heart and head who could not renounce
or deny their feeling of selfhood, or stoop to become lifeless ma-
chines." These dissident Jews refused to have their life "spent in a
monkish preoccupation with petty, mechanical, spiritless and trivial
customs." They felt the need for "avirtue of a more independent type"
and a "freer activity than existence with no self-consciousness." From
these people Jesus arose, the revolutionary who-quite miraculously
(but isn't religion built on miracles?)-"was free of the contagious
sickness of his age and his people."3
These words convey a harsh judgment. The Jews have not pro-
duced a great new religious idea, not even in a false form. They are
presented from the outset in their negative aspect alone. The Jews
contributed nothing to Christianity's spiritual content, they are re-
sponsible only for its "positivity,"namely for the irrational and au-
thoritarian elements in it.
To put Hegel's harsh language in context, we must remember that
Jews in his time were usually described with almost automatic disdain,
not only by their foes but even by their most devoted friends, such as
Christian Wilhelm Dohm, Abbe Gregoire, and even Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing. The philo-Semites of the age, like later the Zionists, wanted
to "cure" the Jews by changing their degenerate conditions, but did
not deny they were degenerate.4
Against this background, Hegel's tone in "The Positivity of the
Christian Religion," though laden with Christian prejudice and supe-
riority, cannot count as particularly antisemitic. This verdict must
change with the next essay, "The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate,"
which was the most abusive text Hegel ever wrote against the Jews.
Whereas Hellenism is the Spirit of unity and harmony, Judaism is
severance, the fissure between man and everything else, including
himself.5 The immutable spirit ofJudaism is represented by the patri-
arch Abraham, a sworn wanderer who severs all his ties to life, to a
particular place, to family and love, in order to be absolutely free, and
thereby becomes alienated and dehumanized-"alien in the country,
[6] to the land and to other men."
For Abraham the world depended on a God which was absolutely
Jewish Other, alien. His battle against idolatry introduced an infinite chasm
Social between the creator and his creation. Since nothing in nature can
Studies participate in the divine essence, God's relation to the world is abso-
lute difference, not participation but dominion. Abraham cannot re-
late to nature directly, only through God's mediation. Thus God is the
lord and owner of the land, of the crops, of his people-the absolute
master who instills fear and trembling in his servants.6
Hegel then embarked on a particularly biased exegesis of the Old
Testament. Abraham insists on paying Efron for the cave of Makhpela
because, in Abraham's arrogance, he did not want to recognize Efron
as equal. Following the rape of Dinah, her two brothers inflict a
horrible revenge on the people of Nablus even though they had been
offered a generous compensation. Hegel concluded: when the Jews
have power, they become brutal. The most grotesque Hegelian exe-
gesis onJews referred toJoseph, the son ofJacob, who rose to power
in Egypt. Joseph, said Hegel, used the seven hunger years in Egypt
to impose the Pharaoh, his boss, as absolute lord and tyrant of the
land, just as the Jewish God was the absolute lord of his slave-people.
The young Hegel's anti-Jewish bias produced a laughable fantasy
here: the Israelites did not come to a political culture that had
preceded them by over a millennium, they imposed that culture on
the land of the Nile!
Later the situation was reversed and the Jews became Pharaoh's
slaves in addition to being God's slaves. Their spirit was passive and
resigned-a mental disease and corruption, said Hegel, that had
continued even when the Jews broke away from Pharaoh's rule.
Hegel refused to see the exodus as real liberation. The Jews contin-
ued to have a slavish spirit even as they were leaving Egypt, an act
for which they took no responsibility and which Moses had to impose
upon them.
Then came the ten plagues. Egypt was in agony for the Jews' sake,
but they themselves remained passive; everything happened to them
through another's action.
Amid general lamentationthey withdraw,driven forth by the hapless

Egyptians,but they themselveshave only the malice the cowardfeels
when his enemy is brought low by someone else's act; . . . they go
unscathed, yet their spirit must exult in all the wailing that was so
profitableto them. The Jews vanquish,but they have not battled. The
Egyptiansare conquered,but not by their enemies;they are conquered
(like men murderedin their sleep, or poisoned) by an invisibleattack, [7]
and the Israeliteslook like the notorious robbersduring the plague at
Marseilles.7 Yirmiyahu
Yovel
Who are the robbers of Marseilles?A study of Hegel's life byJ. D'Hondt 0
allows us to answer that question.8 It turns out that the young Hegel Hegel,
Nietzsche,
had read a book by one Jacques d'Entrechaux about a plague in and the
southern France in 1720. The source of the plague was discovered on Jews
an island where contaminated goods from the Levant had been stored;
thieves from the region had started looting these goods, thus spreading
the plague to other places as well as to their own families and villages.
Hegel saw an analogy between those thieves and theJews leaving Egypt:
both had profited because of other people's agony and gained advan-
tage from an act they had not produced; freedom had fallen to the
Jews from heaven, like the loot to the thieves; both acted meanly and
as cowards.
This was not all. Just as the thieves contaminated their families and
neighbors, so the Jews, Hegel insinuated, were also the bearers of a
disease. That disease, he hinted, was "the slavish spirit that was re-
tained within freedom and corrupted it," a spirit of passivitythat later
had entered the Jewish messianic hope.
There are several other illustrations of the young Hegel's emotional
bias. He was unmoved even by the Jews' suffering, which rather caused
him aversion. In one particularly wild moment he wrote:
The tragedyof the Jewishpeople is not a Greektragedy,it is incapable

of provokingpity and fear, because these attach only to the fate of a
beautiful creaturewho had committed an inevitableflaw;whereasthe
[Jewishtragedy]can only provokerevulsion(Absheu).The fate of the
Jewishpeople is that of Macbethwho went out of the limits of nature,
combined with alien creatures,and in their servicedestroyedand mur-
dered everythingthat is sacred in human nature, and finallywas aban-
doned by his Gods . . . and necessarily crashed.9
This is not the only case in literature where an author speaks of disgust
and provokes it himself.
However, at another moment Hegel went to the other extreme,
flying into admiration of the Jews' resistance to Rome during the
great revolt-when, he said, they overcame their passivity and took
to arms. Hegel thus moved back and forth, in a pendulum-like
motion; yet his attitude in youth was most of the time very negative,
attributing toJudaism the slavery, fear, and alienation that rationalist
[8] critics of religion since Epicurus-and especially during the Enlight-
enment-attributed to the religious phenomenon in general.
Jewish
Social Transition to the Mature Hegel
Studies
In 1806, at age 36, Hegel published his masterpiece ThePhenomenology
of Spirit,the first major work of his mature period. Hegel was now a
historical and dialectical thinker for whom every cultural form has
made some distinct contribution to the history of spirit, albeit in a
partial and one-sided way. Accordingly, Phenomenologydiscusses a
whole procession of cultural shapes-Hellenism and paganism, sto-
icism and skepticism, the Reformation, the ancien regime and the
French Revolution, etc.-but, strangely enough,Judaism is hardly ever
mentioned. 0 On this subject, which had been so prominent in his early
essays, Hegel now seemed to pass into complete silence. How can this
be explained?
At first glance it seems that Hegel maintained his old view that
Judaism has contributed nothing valuable to the world spirit. But a
deeper examination reveals that the contrary is true. Under the sur-
face, Hegel was already reversing his early view but was still emotion-
ally incapable of saying so overtly-and the conflict paralyzed his pen.
Moreover, it can be shown that in the final part of Phenomenology,
Judaism does play a hidden role. Without mentioning its name, Juda-
ism functions there as the "unhappy consciousness" of antiquity, the
spiritual longing for God that allowed Christ to be born. Hegel in that
chapter draws a strange literary metaphor of the nativity,in which the
mother-Spirit-is lying in labor and great pain, pushing hard, while
all of Spirit's existing forms surround her in tense expectation until
the newborn emerges. Judaism, according to this metaphor, is the
spirit's painful labor and pushing: it is the "birth-pangsof Christianity."
So Judaism, after all, does contribute to the world spirit-even at
its most critical moment. Hegel's silence turns out to be a talking
silence: it tells more than it conceals.
This bizarre situation ends with the next relevant text-the Lectures
on the Philosophyof History." Hegel here speaks his mind clearly and
decisively. The old reproving tone gives way to a balanced apprecia-
tion of Judaism, perhaps the most objective in the Hegelian corpus.
And although Hegel is still critical of Judaism, there is no malice
anymore in his tone, no negative passion. Hegel now shows feeling
and empathy toward aspects of Jewish life and suffering that had
repelled him in the past.
In a passage that, in retrospect, illuminates the obscure text of [9]
PhenomenologyI have just discussed, Hegel says that the "world-
historical importance and weight of the Jews" lies in their unhappy Yirmiyahu
Yovel
consciousness-the painful yearning for a transcendent God in front
of whom the individual feels insignificant. This insatiable thirst for 0
God is expressed "most purely and beautifully" in David's Psalms and Hegel,
Nietzsche,
the Prophets. The Jews long for God as a spiritual entity, a person, and the
and no longer as a natural substance. Moreover, when God is grasped Jews
as spirit, nature loses the self-sufficiency it had in paganism and is
reduced to something created. Nature becomes subservient, reified,
de-sacralized-whereas God, its creator, is elevated to the status of the
Sublime.12
This violent break from nature, which Nietzsche would later de-
nounce as a source of Western corruption, Hegel extolled as a great
leap forward, the birthplace of self-conscious spirituality.
However, the flaws ofJudaism are still numerous. The individual is
not really free, but bound by the family and the community. Moreover,
in front of the Divine One uniting the Jews, the individual vanishes.
This is expressed in the "rigid cult" to which the Jews are bound, and
which makes the law of Moses look as if it had been given them as
punishment. Another serious incongruity is between the essential uni-
versality of the Spirit and its appearance in Judaism as limited and
particular-because of the idea of the Jews' election.
The tone of empathy recurs in Hegel's Lectureson Aesthetics.13 There
Hegel viewsJudaism through its religious poetry and notjust through
its "legalism."He thereby recognizes depth in Judaism, a rich inner
world to which he had been blind in his youth. The Jewish poets had
thrust God outside of nature as an infinite transcendent Overlord.
Thereby pantheism was replaced by sublimity. God as infinitely remote
from the world became sublime, while nature became God's mere
"creation," a contingent being lacking justification of its own. Man
became insignificant, and Nature's whole glory, its plenitude and
immense diversity are mere instruments of God's glory. "In this way"
Hegel says, "the [Jewish] Psalms provide classic examples of true
sublimity, valid for all times" (384).
But here we must ask: How sublime is sublimity? Is the fact of
expressing sublimity an advantage for a religion? The answer is given
in Hegel's Lectureson the Philosophyof Religion,which is the most im-
portant source for his mature view of Judaism.
The Mature Hegel: The Religion of Sublimity
[10] Hegel's Lectureson thePhilosophyof Religiondesignates Judaism as the

"religion of Sublimity."4 But soon it becomes clear that sublimity is
Jewish far from being sublime. It is, rather, the state of alienation in which
Social man is severed from God by an infinite abyss with nothing to bridge
Studies it but fear and servitude.
Judaism here is the first sublation (Aufhebung)of natural religion.
We already know what that means: the absolute is seen as subject,
spirit, and no longer as a natural substance. Thereby the seeds of
freedom and meaningful purpose make their first appearance in reli-
gion. As long as the absolute is pictured as substance, humans cannot
re-discover their own selves, interests, and spirit in the supreme prin-
ciple of reality. A philosophy of substance, therefore, does not allow
the individual to be truly free.
Substance is a false totality, because it submerges the individual
instead of rebuilding him. By contrast, Hegel's system was based on
construing the absolute as subject too, and not only as substance: this,
he says in a famous aphorism, is the most important turn in philoso-
phy.15Since ancientJudaism effected a similar turn-and since religion,
according to Hegel, has the same content as philosophy, presented in
images-it follows that the mature Hegel draws an implicit parallel
between Judaism's historical role and the most important turn in his
own philosophy. We have gone a long way indeed since the youthful
essays.'
However, the image of Judaism that evolves here is very negative.
By conceiving God as spirit, the Jews have made alienation possible,
because only now can we expect to see ourselves reflected in God-yet
Judaism frustrates this expectation. The Jews have introduced a revo-
lutionary principle-spirit, freedom, purpose-but falsified it from
the very start. There was no process of degeneration involved, as when
an idea is first announced and then distorted; rather, the new idea had
been introduced from the outset as its own falsification.
We might see this briefly from several viewpoints.
God's spirituality is not mediated inJudaism by the human spirit;
hence the external gap separating the two. The Jew conceives God as
an infinite power residing at an infinite distance from man and the
universe: this was the first meaning of sublimity. No reconciliation
between the finite and the infinite is possible. In experiencing God as
sublime, I stand before Him in fear and trembling, servility and self-
effacement. God's infinite power transcends my limited grasp and is
therefore terrifying, overwhelming, and inscrutably remote.
A different aspect of this alienation concerns religious law. Because
God is now spirit, humans for the first time are able to see their goals
and concerns reflected in God's aims; but actually, God's sublimity [11]
makes this impossible. God's aims must look completely incompre-
hensible to the Jews, and His commands become alien, arbitrary,and Yirmiyahu
Yovel
irrational: Hegel reverts here to the picture of Jewish "legalism" he
0
had denounced in his youth.
Thus again, Judaism creates a master-slave relation between man Hegel,
Nietzsche,
and God. This relation had been impossible before Judaism, when and the
God was not a subject, because a master-slave relation requires two Jews
subjects, or consciousness: it exists only where there is a possibility of
freedom too. Herein lies the dialectic of theJewish God. He emerges
as a principle of liberation that immediately becomes an oppressor.
God is actually man's essence, yet in Judaism man cannot re-discover
himself in God and becomes subjugated to his own essence.
Slavery is compounded by fear. The Jews stand before their God
both in metaphysical trembling and in terrestrial fear. "The overall
command inJudaism," Hegel wrote in his lecture-notes, "isfear before
the absolute master."17
Even in maturity, therefore, Hegel continued to find inJudaism the
same basic faults he had found in his Enlightenment youth. It looks
as if Hegel clustered into Judaism all the basic ills and defects that
rationalist critics have imputed to the religious phenomenon in gen-
eral: fear, alienation, domination, irrationality,heteronomy, and so on.
Judaism was singled out as the self-alienated religion par excellence.
Also, Hegel continued to deny thatJudaism had any viable history left.
As he said in Phenomenology, after the Jews rejected Jesus their history
was aborted, and henceforth they lie reprobate before the gates of
salvation.
Modem Judaism
What does this picture signify for modern Judaism? In brief: eman-
cipation for the individual Jew, and no future for the nation. It is
noteworthy that Hegel did not allow his Christological negation of
Judaism to become a political negation. On the contrary, he sup-
ported Jewish emancipation both in his theoretical work and in prac-
tice. Hegel encouraged the Jews' social integration, their admission
to the student Burschenshaftenand to academic posts,18 and he wrote
in The Philosophyof Right that Jews must be given civil rights and
accepted socially. If antisemitism is to be judged by policies rather
than by sentiments, then the mature Hegel was certainly not anti-
semitic but a liberal of the classic kind. His justification of the Jews'
[12] emancipation actually reverts to the Enlightenment: the Jews are
human beings and, as such, deserve civil rights by which to gain true
Jewish personality. It is interesting that both Hegel's philosophical attack
Social and his political defense of the Jews revert in great measure to his
Studies Enlightenment positions.
Yet Hegel had no course to offer theJews asJews. On the one hand
he could not subscribe to Kant's assimilatory prospect, because he did
not believe the Jews could easily relinquish their steadfast attach-
ment-which Hegel thought irrational-to their separate identity. On
the other hand, although he was the philosopher of historical diversity
and an early pluralist, Hegel did not see any living ingredient that the
Jews could contribute to a pluralistic modern world, because they had
become "reprobate"-their essence extinct and their history aborted.
Nor would Hegel have subscribed to the attempt of Moses Hess, a
Hegelian disciple and the first modern Zionist, to make the Jews
return to history as a nation, because on Hegel's reading, theJews had
no history left. Post-ChristianJudaism was stuck in front of the gates
of salvation with nowhere to go and nothing to return to.
Hegel's Christocentric and Absolute Vantage Point
Any debate with the mature Hegel must start from the assumption
that he had a right to criticize Judaism-and maintain Christianity's
superiority to it-without being, on that count alone, denounced as
an antisemite. Toleration is compatible with competition about values,
identity, and opinions.
Yet Christianity (and, following it, Hegel) was not satisfied with
saying it is superior to Judaism; it saw itself as draining Judaism of
meaning and spiritual assets and leaving it an empty shell-and this,
indeed only this, is an act of spiritual violation. Christianity gave itself
the title of "true Israel" and thereby took away not only the Jews'
election (a doubtful concept anyway) but their history as well. Hegel
repeated this move in a secular, dialectical fashion. Judaism becomes
in Hegel a sublated "moment" sunk into the reality of Christian Eu-
rope, while the continued existence and self-perception of the Jews
who survived Jesus by many centuries became spiritually empty and
historically obsolete. In this respect Hegel's dialectic does to Judaism
what the church has done to the synagogue, the ecclesia to the syn-
agoga. Herein, strongly put, lies the Christocentric significance of
Hegel's critique of Judaism.
Another aspect of Hegel's Christocentrism is his notion that human [13]
history on our planet is the locus in which the Absolute, God himself,
is being actualized. This view secularizes a version of the idea of the Yirmiyahu
Yovel
Incarnation, which is thus built right into the heart of the Hegelian
system. Hegel's metaphysics thus accepts the central thesis dividing
Hegel,
ChristianityfromJudaism into its very foundations. Moreover, Lutheran Nietzsche,
Christianityis the top religious stage in Hegel's ladder, from which the and the
philosophical standpoint of "absolute knowledge" finally emerges. Jews
Hegel's Christocentric standpoint is thus at work in the beginning
and the end of his philosophy. Given such a self-sustaining teleological
circle, Judaism could not occupy any other place than that which
Hegel's dialectic assigned it. There is something pathetic, therefore
(because doomed to failure), in the attempt of Hegelian-leaningJews
to "correct" their master's doctrine by placing Judaism higher than
Christianityin Hegelian terms.'9Emil Fackenheim calls Hegel's view of
Judaism "a flaw in the Hegelian meditation";20yet this is no accidental
flaw that can be amended locally by eclectic corrections. The flaws of
Hegelianism call, I think, for a bolder and more comprehensive move:
renouncing the claim of absolute knowledge in one critical stroke. This
will open up a treasure of fertile, often profound Hegelian ideas and
thought patterns by which one can philosophize in a dialectical and
history-conscious manner, free of many illusions of contemporary an-
alytic philosophy (the illusion, for example, of a timeless, univocal truth
ruled by some formal canon) and free also of Hegel's illusion of a
religious Absolute wearing a conceptual apparel (which Nietzsche
rightly saw as the "shadow"of the dead God). Only when this radical
move is taken can Hegel's Christocentric position also be overcome.
Nietzsche and the People of Israel
For Hegel, theJews were interesting and enigmatic but did not matter
that much personally. Not so for Nietzsche, for whom the Jewish
question was more central than meets the eye, and his personal
attitude to it was passionate. With Nietzsche we also move into a
historical period marked by the upheavals of German unification and
the fierce antisemitism that accompanied it.
Nietzsche, however,was a sworn enemy of both antisemitism and the
German Reich, no less than the ancient Jewish priest. In the present
summary I cannot do full justice to this fascinating topic, but I will try
to delineate the main contours of Nietzsche's complex position.
[14] A few methodological comments: first, I am dealing with Nietzsche
as philosopher, that is, with his own thought and philosophical proj-
Jewish ect-not with its popular uses and abuses or with what is vaguely called
Social "Nietzscheanism," despite the value they have for the historian or
Studies sociologist. Second, I examine his views of the Jews in relation to his
genuine philosophy, not as casual reflections that any intellectual,
artist, or scientist may have about the Jews. Third, I try to listen to
Nietzsche's words in their rhetorical and even musical context, and to
some extent I have taken his own psychological career into account-
both his struggle with close antisemitic intimates and his last twilight
letters before he went mad, which carry a special hermeneutic value.
Fourth, and above all, I am not satisfied with repeating the common-
place that Nietzsche's relation to the Jews was "ambivalent"but try to
clearly explicate the structure and ingredients of that ambivalence.
The latter goal led me to distinguish between Nietzsche's attitude
toward antisemitism and toward Judaism. Within Judaism I had
further to distinguish between three periods or modalities: biblical
Judaism; Second-temple "priestly"Judaism; and Diaspora and con-
temporary Jews.21
Judaism and Antisemitism
When Nietzsche attacked the antisemites or defended the Jews, he

aimed at real people: the actual community of theJews, and antisemi-
tism as a contemporary movement. By contrast, when dealing with
ancient priestly Judaism, Nietzsche treated it as a psycho-cultural
category latent in the current, Christian culture that he, as the "ge-
nealogist" of that culture, must expose. Contrary to many antisem-
ites-and also to manyJewish apologetics-Nietzsche did not project
his critique of ancient Judaism into a political attitude against the
Jews of today. This break allowed him to be at the same time-and
with the same intense passion-both an anti-antisemite and a critic
of ancient priestly Judaism, the fountain of Christianity.
THE ANTI-ANTISEMITE
Nietzsche's fierce and univocal opposition to contemporary anti-

semitism is illustrated in various types of text, including his published
writings, his intimate letters (to his sister, his mother, his close friends),
his "twilight letters" written on the verge of madness, and his corre-
spondence with the antisemitic agitator Fritsch who tried to recruit
Nietzsche-and "Zarathustra" too, as Nietzsche said with disgust-into [15]
his camp.22
I shall quote a few brief examples of the first three categories. In Yirmiyahu
Yovel
The Genealogyof Morals,Nietzsche wrote:
0
They [the antisemites] are all men of ressentiment, physiologically un- Hegel,
Nietzsche,
fortunate and worm-eaten, a whole tremulous realm of subterranean and the
revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts against the fortunate Jews
and happy.23
In his intimate letters he wrote:
[To Overbeck:] This accursed anti-Semitism . . . is the reason for the

great rift between myself and my sister.24
[To his mother:] Because of people of these species [antisemites], I

couldn't go to Paraguay [where a group led by Nietzsche's fiercely anti-
semitic brother-in-lawhad set up an experimental colony]. I am so happy
that they voluntary exile themselves from Europe. For even if I shall be a
bad German-I am in any event a very good European.25
[Again to his sister, several years later:] Your association with an anti-
Semitic leader expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which
fills me ever again and again with ire or melancholy.... It is a matter
of honor to me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to
anti-Semitism, namely opposed, as I am in my writings.... My disgust
with this party (which would like all too well the advantage of my
name!) is as outspoken as possible . . . and that I am unable to do
anything against it, that in every Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheet
the name of Zarathustra is used, has already made me almost sick
several times.26
In his last, twilight letters written in frenzy before he dimmed out

completely, Nietzsche included several attacks on the antisemites. To
his friend Franz Overbeck and his wife he wrote:
Although so far you have demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I

yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts-for
example, to you. I am just having all anti-Semites shot.
Dionysus27
And to his revered Basel mentor Jakob Burkhardt, whom Nietzsche
(like many others) considered an antisemite, he addressed a mad but
[16] telling letter in which he portrayed himself as an inverted son of God,
and also as Dionysus functioning as the Antichrist, ending with this
Jewish postscript: "I had Caiaphas put in chains .. ., Wilhelm Bismarck and
Social all anti-Semites deposed."28
Studies The intimate texts and, especially, the twilight letters carry special
hermeneutical weight, because they prove that Nietzsche's opposition
to antisemitism was not merely external and "political" (or "politically
correct"), as with many liberals, but penetrated into the deep recesses
of his being. That result might have been reinforced by Nietzsche's
intense relations with antisemites: his sister, Wagner, Cosima, and
perhaps also Jakob Burkhardt. These relations could have served to
provide the heightened energy for overcoming his early antisemitism
in the intense way he did, that is, not as liberal rationalist but with all
the passion of his being-the "Nietzschean" way.
PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS FOR NIETZSCHE'S ANTI-ANTISEMITISM
Even without considering psychology,we can find sufficient philosoph-

ical grounds for Nietzsche's active anti-antisemitism. The antisemitic
movement contains and heightens most of the decadent elements in
modern culture that Nietzsche's philosophy set out to combat:
1. Antisemitism is a mass movement, vulgar, ideological, a new form
of "slave morality" and of the man of the Herd.
2. As such, antisemitism is a popular neurosis, affecting weak peo-
ple who-contrary to Nietzsche's "Dionysian"character-lack existen-
tial power and self confidence.
3. Antisemitism, especially in Germany, serves to re-reinforce the
German Reich and the cult of politics and the state, which Nietzsche,
as "the last un-political German'" denounces as "the New Idol."29
4. Antisemitism, in Germany, was also the lubricant of German
nationalism, which Nietzsche opposed most insistently (though he did
so "from the right").
5. Antisemitism also depends on racism, yet Nietzsche's philosophy
rejected racism as a value distinction between groups (though he did
admit of race as a descriptive category). Nietzsche demanded the
mixing of races within the new Europe he envisaged.
6. At the ground of all the preceding points lies a common genea-
logical structure-fear, insecurity, existential weakness, and above all
ressentiment-the malignant rancor against the mentally powerful
and self-affirming, and hatred toward the other as a precondition for
self-esteem. The ardor of the antisemite conceals deep insecurity: he
does not start with the celebrating affirmation of his own being but
with the negation of the other's, by which alone the antisemite reaf- [17]
firms his own self-and he does so in an overblown, empty, and
arrogant manner. Yirmiyahu
Yovel
Nietzsche's four negations-of nationalism, of racism, of antisemi-
0
tism, and of the cult of the state-also explain why Nietzsche's philos-
Hegel,
ophy was inherently opposed to fascism and Nazism, although these Nietzsche,
ideologies have abused Nietzsche for their purposes. and the
Jews
The Jews Who Begot Jesus
Nietzsche's attack on ancient "priestly"Judaism was as fierce and

uncompromising as his assault on antisemitism. The Jewish priests
excelled in ressentiment and falsified all natural values. They spread
the spurious ideas of a "moral world-order": sin, guilt, punishment,
repentance, pity, and love of one's neighbor. The meek and the weak
are the good who deserve salvation; all men are equal in their duties
toward a transcendent God and the values of love and mercy He
demands. Thereby Nietzsche attributed to the Jewish priests a direct
Christian content, and he often described them as Christian from the
start. Yet beneath his doctrine of mercy, the priest's soul was full of
malice and ressentiment, the rancor of the mentally weak whose will-
to-power turns into hostility and revenge against the other, which is
his only way to affirm himself. Thereby the Jewish priests-pictured
as early Christians-created the "slave morality" that official Christi-
anity then propagated throughout the world. Whereas the antisemite
accuses the Jews of having killed Jesus, Nietzsche accuses them of
having begotten Jesus.
The slave revolt in moralitybegins when ressentiment itself becomes

creativeand gives birth to values:the ressentimentof naturesthat are
denied the true reaction,thatof deeds, and compensatethemselveswith
an imaginaryrevenge.While every noble moralitydevelopsfrom a tri-
umphantaffirmationof itself, slavemoralityfrom the outset saysNo to
what is "outside"what is "different,"what is "notitself'; and this No is
its creativedeed.30
Priestly morality is the morality of the existentially impotent, in

whom ressentiment against the powerful and the self-assured has be-
come a value-creating force. The existential "slaves"take vengeance
on their "masters"on an ideal plane, in that they succeed in imposing
their own values on the masters and even cause them to interiorize
[18] those new values, and thereby subjugate them. Henceforth the pow-
erful person sees him/herself as sinner not only in the other's eyes
Jewish but in his/her self-perception as well, which is the ultimate form of
Social subordination (and also of mental corruption).
Studies Nietzsche thereby placed the critique of ancientJudaism at a crucial
junction of his philosophy. It was grounded in ressentiment, a key
Nietzschean category, and was responsible for the corruption of Eu-
rope through Christianity.However, his critique enabled Nietzsche to
fight not against contemporaryJews but against contemporary Christi-
anity and the "modern Ideas" he saw as its secular offshoots (such as
liberalism, nationalism, socialism). Moreover, in Nietzsche's analysis
the modern antisemite is the genealogical cousin of the ancientJewish
priest, whose properties the antisemite inherited on a lower level-be-
cause he lacks the value-creating power of the Jewish priests and be-
cause he needs the modern mass-culture and the fake security offered
by the "togetherness" of a political movement in order to feel that
he/she is somebody-a need that heightens his existential impotence.
Nietzsche's analysis, like Socrates' dialectic, ended in an ironic
reversal. While the antisemite is the ancientJewish priest's relative, the
modern Jew is his complete opposite (or "antipode"). As such, mod-
ern Jews, after they leave the ghetto and become secularized, are
candidates for helping create a new Dionysian culture, thus redeeming
Europe from the decadence instilled by their forefathers.3' Rhetori-
cally, too, the antisemite learns that, at bottom, he has the same
psychology that his worst enemies, theJews, used to have in their worst
period. This unsettling revelation is supposed to shock the antisemite
into disgust-perhaps with himself and eventually with antisemitism.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche had little hope of changing the antisemites,
so his more practical recommendation was to contain or ignore them
(in Nietzsche's vivid rhetoric: "to expel the yelling anti-Semites from
the country").32
Ambivalence and Tension Without Contradiction
It follows that Nietzsche held two rather clear positions-against mod-

ern antisemitism and against ancient priestlyJudaism-that are linked
by the same genealogical root, ressentiment. Nietzsche's ambivalence
derived mainly from combining these two positions, which look con-
tradictory but are not so in effect. From a logical or systematic point
of view, there is not a contradiction between rejecting antisemites and
rejecting the message of ancientJudaism, yet this combination creates
an immense psychological tension that ordinary people will find hard [19]
to sustain. Hence the need to transcend ordinary psychology and to
cultivate an uncommon, noble character capable of holding onto both Yirmiyahu
Yovel
positions despite the tension they create.
This is nothing new. Almost every important matter in Nietzsche 0
calls for an uncommon psychology; for example: exercising amorfati, Hegel,

Nietzsche,
drawing creative power from hard truths, and affirming life despite the and the
demise of all "metaphysicalconsolations." In all these cases one needs Jews
to go beyond the limits of ordinary human psychology, toward a goal
that Nietzsche's rhetoric dramatized under the name Ubermensch.
Nietzsche's position on Judaism and antisemitism is no exception.
This analysis will also explain (in part) why Nietzsche's position has
so widely been abused: the mental revolution he was seeking did not
actually take place, although his ideas were generalized, vulgarized,
and delivered to a public in which the old psychology still prevailed.
At the same time, on various occasions Nietzsche himself exploited
antisemitic images and feelings existing in other people (or whose
traces persisted in his own mind) and manipulated them in a dialec-
tical technique, as a rhetorical device to insult the antisemites or to
hurt Christianity.However, Nietzsche in such cases was clearly playing
with fire.
No Essentialism: The Three Jewish Periods
The birth of Christianity through priestly Judaism complemented

Nietzsche's analysis of the death of tragedy through Greek rationalism.
These two main sources of European decadence were each launched
by a singular person whom Nietzsche both repudiated and admired:
the Greek Socrates and the Jew Jesus. Each cultural form called for
its proper genealogy. This is why the analysis ofJudaism was as essential
to Nietzsche as that of Hellenism. Yet Nietzsche explicitly avoided an
essentialist approach: neither Hellenism nor Judaism has a constant,
immutable essence. Instead, Nietzsche recognized in each of them a
series of radically different sub-periods. Greek culture was divided into
Olympian, tragic, Socratic, and Alexandrine (Oriental Hellenistic).
The Olympian culture was aware of the frightening nature of existence
yet held this awareness at bay through the powerful stories of the Gods,
their beauty and heroism; this was an admirable culture despite its
shortcomings. The tragic culture was the climax of Greek history,
setting the true balance between the Dionysian and Apollonian forces
of life and, without shedding it, transforming the Greek existential
[20] anxiety into an aesthetic experience, thus making it bearable through
art. Socrates and Euripides poison the tragic culture by the power of
Jewish rational self-consciousness, paving the way to Greek rationalism, its
Social weakness and illusions. And finally, the Alexandrine culture was the
Studies most decadent of all Greek forms, since the Dionysian power almost
disappeared from it and the Apollonian degenerated into lifeless
formalism.
Similarly, in the Jewish experience Nietzsche distinguished three
radically different periods:
1. In biblical times (the Old Testament), Nietzsche perceived
Dionysian greatness and natural sublimity that aroused his reverence.
He did not accept the content of the biblical figures' religious belief
but admired their attitude toward life and religion because it was
vital, natural, this-worldly, and built on self-affirmation rather than
self-recrimination.
2. The second temple and its priests were the object of Nietzsche's
harsh and merciless attack. Here the "slave morality" revolution was
performed, the major denaturation and reversal of values that led to
Christianity,as analyzed before.
3. Diaspora Jews again aroused Nietzsche's admiration, because
they demonstrated the power of affirming life in face of suffering and
drawing force from it. Moreover, Diaspora Jews had the merit of
having rejected Christ and served as a constant critic and counter-bal-
ance to Christianity.
ContemporaryJews and the Closing of the Circle
As a result of their hard schooling and invigorating experience, says

Nietzsche, the Jews reached the modern era as the strongest and most
stable race in Europe, and could have dominated it, though they did
not wish to do so. However, if the Jews decided to end their voluntary
seclusion, mix with the other European nations, and involve themselves
with all European affairs as their own, then because of their greater
existential power the Jews would naturally,without intending so, reach
a dominant position in determining the norms and values in Europe.
If, however, the Jews continued their seclusion, Nietzsche grimly pre-
dicted they would "lose Europe" (that is, emigrate or be driven out of
it), just as their ancestors had left or been driven from Egypt. Nietzsche
advocated the first alternative. TheJews must pour their gifts and power
into a new Europe that will be freed of the Christian heritage; the
forebears of Christ must work today in the service of the modern
anti-Christ (i.e., Nietzsche-Dionysus) and thereby pay their debt to Eu- [21]
rope for what their priestly ancestors had done to it.
Nietzsche thus assigned a major role to the Jews as Jews within his Yirmiyahu
Yovel
new Europe. If the Nazis considered the Jews as untermenschen,to
Nietzsche they were a possible catalyst of the Ubermensch. Of course,
for this to happen, European society must open up to the Jews and Hegel,
Nietzsche,
welcome them, as Nietzsche forcefully demanded. He opposed a nation- and the
alist (or Zionist) solution, because he wanted the Jews to mingle with Jews
the other European peoples. At the same time he opposed the usual,
passive, and imitativeJewish assimilation. His solution was creative as-
similation, in which the Jews would be secularized, excel in all European
matters, and serve as catalystsin a new revolution of values-this time
a curative, Dionysian revolution that would overcome the Christian
culture and the "modern ideas" born of it. TheJews' role would thereby
be a transitory one, for it would abolish itself when successful.
Three further remarks are necessary before I conclude. First,
Nietzsche's admiration was not aimed at the Jews as bearers of a
religious culture but as a human group displaying the existential
element he thought necessary for his cultural revolution. Nietzsche
was, of course, as opposed to the Jewish religious message as he was
to any other transcendent religion.
Second, Nietzsche's pro-Jewish attitude did not derive from liber-
alism. Just as his attack on nationalism and racism came "from the
right" so too his defense of the Jews derived, for good or bad, from
Nietzsche's own Dionysian and anti-liberal sources.
Third, in order to get out of the ghetto (as Nietzsche wanted them
to do), the Jews had to rely on political enlightenment and the ideal
of equality-that is, on the same principles that Nietzsche sought to
overcome with the Jews' help. Here was a paradox Nietzsche was unable
to untangle: in order for theJews to pour their power into a "Dionysian"
Europe that would overcome the culture of the Enlightenment, they
had to rely on that culture itself. However, most of the Jews who wished
to integrate in European society refused to relinquish the principles
that made their progress possible. Even the revolutionary among them
wanted to enhance and radicalize freedom and equality, or to apply
them more authentically to the social reality. In consequence, most of
the Jews who, as Nietzsche desired, involved themselves in European
affairs "astheir own" were potential opponents of Nietzsche's particular
message, at least in what concerns the "modern ideas" to which Jews,
rather naturally,were powerfully attracted.
This problem does not, however, change my main conclusion-
namely, that for Nietzsche as philosopher, in terms of some of his key
[22] concepts (ressentiment, revolution in values, self-overcoming, existen-
tial power, a new human character, and a new Europe) and, especially,
Jewish in terms of Nietzsche's philosophical project and historico-genealogi-
Social cal narrative, the Jewish issue was far more central than is usually
Studies recognized. The former corrupters of European culture and its des-
ignated redeemers, the Jews are placed by Nietzsche at two of the
critical historical junctures in his philosophy and, ironically, continue
to play the negative and positive role of a world-historical people,
perhaps even a "chosen" people in a new, heretical Nietzschean sense.
Concluding Remarks
In both Hegel and Nietzsche we observed several dualities concerning

the Jews. We have taken a glimpse of Hegel's "shiftsof the pendulum"
and analyzed the precise nature of Nietzsche's "ambivalence."To me
it was particularly revealing-and a bit startling-to see how, from the
depths of Nietzsche's Dionysian humanism (which rejected liberal
humanism and the Enlightenment), a much more emphatic, clear,
almost noble acceptance of theJews emerged than anything that came
from the great rationalists and lovers of universal reason, Hegel and
Kant, who allowed their doctrines to systematize their personal anti-
Jewish prejudice in varying forms and degrees. At the same time, they
condemned antisemitic practices in a cool, gentlemanly way charac-
teristic of many liberals-a way that Nietzsche called "merely political"
(today one would call it "politically correct")-whereas Nietzsche op-
posed antisemitism with all the passion of his being and saw the liberal
way as superficial and too weak to withstand its enemies.
Hegel's, and even more so Kant's, cases are illuminating when
compared to Nietzsche's, and they also illustrate the complexity of our
subject. A priori-or rather, superficially-one would expect the phi-
losophers of universal reason to be more forthcoming toward theJews
than a so-called "irrational" philosopher of power. That this is not
quite the case-as my forthcoming book demonstrates-will aggravate
present-day liberals and followers of the Enlightenment; yet their
surprise is naive, since the Enlightenment is known to have contained
a distinct antisemitic tenet, especially among the opponents of histor-
ical religion. Even a more sober and "dialectical" rationalist like
Hegel, who reinstated religion as a medium of truth, was far more
ambiguous and unresolved about theJews than the mature Nietzsche.
So rationalism, whether "pure" or "dialectical," provides no im-
munization against antisemitism, just as Nietzscheanism does not nec-
essarily lead to it. [23]
Perhaps we should conclude that great philosophers are complex
individuals who resemble themselves rather than others and should Yirmiyahu
Yovel
be recognized for what they are rather than classified into other
0
people's categories and debates. A related conclusion-quite obvious,
yet sometimes hard to accept-is that the proper way to evaluate a Hegel,
Nietzsche,
philosophical doctrine is not primarily through its attitude toward the and the
"JewishQuestion" (or toward other minorities for that matter). Many Jews
people-Jews and liberal Gentiles-tend to see theJewish question as
a key issue by which to test the merit, and even the inner meaning, of
philosophical and political ideas, but this may be an unreliable key
that leaves more doors closed than it opens.
About a decade after Nietzsche's mental extinction, the Dreyfus
affair in France was a prelude to a chain of events in Europe which
demonstrated that neither Hegel's solution nor that of Nietzsche
was adequate for the Jews. Meanwhile, the Jews had lost Europe, as
Nietzsche had feared, and under the most horrendous circum-
stances. But they also found something else: a land, a renewed
history, and difficult new dilemmas that cannot be resolved by rea-
son alone.
Notes
This article is based on my forthcoming book: Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the
Jews (Cambridge,Eng.). A Hebrew version was published in Tel Avivin 1996 and
contains the full source material and references underlying the present article.
What I offer here is a study in philosophy, not in the history of political ideology.
I confined myselfto treatingHegel and Nietzsche as philosophers,hoping, thereby,
to shed more light on their general thinking as well. This required, first, that I
discuss their own ideas and philosophical terms, rather than those of various
ideological followers, disciples, users, and abusers. Second, I try to understand
each philosopher'sview of theJews in light of his overallphilosophical project and
in its relation to his other ideas. In each case I ask two distinct questions:What is
the role the philosopher attributes to ancient or historicalJudaism?And, what is
the place he assigns to Jews in the modern world?
Quoted by Otto P6ggeler, one of the most extensive studies
"Hegel'sInterpretationofJuda- on Hegel and Judaism. Other
ism," The Human Context6, no. 3 studies include Nathan
(1974): 523-60. P6ggeler'sessayis Rotenstreich, "Hegel's Image of
Judaism," JewishSocial Studies 15, other stating thatJewish history
no. 1 (1953): 33-52 (reprintedin had been aborted when the Jews
[24]
his The RecurringPattern [London, rejected Christ:henceforth the
1963]); Emil Fackenheim,"Hegel Jews are lying outside the gates
andJudaism,A Flawin the Hegel- of salvation (i.e., they have no
Jewish ian Meditation"in TheLegacyof meaningful history anymore).
Social
HegelJ. J. O'Malley,K.W. Al- 11 Vorlesungeniber die Philosophieder
Studies
gozin, H. P. Kainz,and L. C. Rice, Geschichte,in Werkeim Zwanzig
eds. (The Hague, 1973), 161-85; Bdnden,vol. 12 (Frankfurt,1970);
YirmiahuYovel,"HegelsBegriff English translationinJ. Sibree,
der Religion und die Religion der The Philosophyof History (London,
Erhabenheit," Theologieund 1857 [reprintNewYork, 1956]),
51, no. 4 (1976): 512-
Philosophie 195-96. There are severaledi-
37;Jacques Rivelaygue,Leconsde tions of these lectures,which
metaphysiqueallemande,vol. 1 Hegel delivered in 1821, 1824,
(Paris,1990), 270ff;and StevenB. 1827, and incompletelyagain in
Smith, "Hegeland theJewish 1831.Although no edition is (or
Question:In BetweenTradition can be) satisfactory,I use the
and Modernity," History of Political 1821-24 lectures as the richest
Thought12, no. 1 (1991):88-105. and most representativeseries.
2 Hegel, "The Positivityof the 12 Ibid., 321, 197.
ChristianReligion,"in EarlyTheo- 13 Vorlisungen iiber die Asthetik,in
logical Writings,ed. H. Nohl, Werkein Zwanzig Bdnden, vol. 13;
trans. T. M. Knox (Chicago, English translationin T. M.
1948), 68-69. Knox, Aesthetics:Lectureson Fine
3 Ibid. Arts (Oxford, 1975), 1: 363.
4 Similarly,the Templar knight in 14 Vorldsungeniiber die Philosophieder
Nathan the Wise expresses admi- Religion,W.Jaeschke, ed. (Ham-
ration to Nathan as a person with- burg, 1983); English translation
out for a moment retractingthe in P. C. Hodgson, ed., Lectureson
disgust he had expressed toward the Philosophyof Religion 3 vols.
Nathan's nation. (Berkeley,Calif., 1984).
5 Hegel at this point is not yet the 15 Preface to The Phenomenologyof
historicalphilosopher he would Spirit.
later become, since he speaks of 16 The same is reiterated in other
an "eternal"or immutable spirit crucial turning-pointsof his sys-
or national essence. tem. For example, in TheScience
6 Hegel, "The Spirit of Christianity of Logicthe turning point from
and Its Fate," in Early Theological "ObjectiveLogic" (world-reason
Writings,182-86. as object) to "SubjectiveLogic"
7 Early Theological Writings, 190. (world-reasonas subject, and
8 Jacques D'Hondt, HegelSecret eventuallyspirit) is the most im-
(Paris, 1986), 184-200. portant passage, leading from
9 Early Theological Writings,204-5. dogmatic metaphysicsto Hegel's
10 Except for two passing remarks, objective idealism and his cate-
one of no importance and the gory of Begriff(concept). In the
history philosophy, this is the spectivesnouvelles sur Nietzsche
most important modern pas- et lejudaisme" (Revue des Etudes
sage-from Spinoza to Kant Juives138, nos. 3-4 [1979]: 483- [25]
(and Hegel). 85), in which this divisionis made.
17 We are back at the idea of self- 22 This indicates, by the way,that
Yirmiyahu
alienation that will later be Nietzsche was aware of being Yovel
adopted by Feuerbach and abused alreadyin his lifetime. 0
Marx. Its origin, in my opinion 23 Nietzsche, The Genealogyof Mor-
Hegel,
(which I expound in the larger als, Book 3, para. 14. Nietzsche,
study), lies in Kant'sidea of the 24 III/1, 503.
Nietzsche, Briefwechsel, and the
sublime. 25 Ibid., III/3, 736. Jews
18 See Shlomo Avineri,"ANote on 26 Ibid., III/5, 968.
Hegel's View of Jewish Emancipa- 27 Ibid., III/5, 1249.
tion', Jewish Social Studies 25, no. 28 Ibid., III/5, 1256.
2 (1968): 145-51. 29 Nietzsche, "WhyI am So Wise,"
19 For example, Nachman Kroch- in EcceHomo,para. 3, and "On
mal (Ranak), a religiousJewish the New Idol,"in ThusSpoke
thinker influenced by Hegel who Zarathustra,Book 1.
identifiedJudaism rather than 30 Nietzsche, Genealogyof Morals,
Christianityas "absolutereligion." Book 1, para. 10.
20 Emil Fackenheim, "Hegel and Ju- 31 This is asserted in particularin
daism:A Flawin the Hegelian Dawn 205, the text Nietzsche con-
Meditation," in History and Sys- sidered his most distinctivecom-
tem:Hegel's Philosophy of History, ment on the Jews. A highly
R. L. Perkins,ed. (New York, dramaticand rhetorical text, it
1984), 47-64. states in prophetic tones the di-
21 In "Nietzsche'sAttitudesToward lemma that modern Jews will be
the Jews" (Journal of the History of facing in the twentieth century:
Ideas49, no. 2 [1988]: 301-17), either lose Europe (emigrate or
MichaelDuffy and WillardMittel- be expelled from it) or integrate
man attributeto Nietzsche a in Europe and dominate its val-
threefold divisionvery much like ues. The antisemite would natu-
mine, which they say they could rallyexpect Nietzsche to prefer
not find in any former publica- the first option-yet he prefers
tion. Had they looked in the the second!
French literature,they would 32 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil,
have found my short paper "Per- para. 251.

Indiana University Press

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Indiana University Press

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Indiana University Press

Sublimity and Ressentiment: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews

You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

he last two centuries have seen momentous developments in

The Young Hegel

Amid general lamentationthey withdraw,driven forth by the hapless

The tragedyof the Jewishpeople is not a Greektragedy,it is incapable

[10] Hegel's Lectureson thePhilosophyof Religiondesignates Judaism as the

Hegel's Christocentric and Absolute Vantage Point

Nietzsche and the People of Israel

Judaism and Antisemitism

When Nietzsche attacked the antisemites or defended the Jews, he

Nietzsche's fierce and univocal opposition to contemporary anti-

In his intimate letters he wrote:

[To Overbeck:] This accursed anti-Semitism . . . is the reason for the

[To his mother:] Because of people of these species [antisemites], I

In his last, twilight letters written in frenzy before he dimmed out

Although so far you have demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I

PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS FOR NIETZSCHE'S ANTI-ANTISEMITISM

Even without considering psychology,we can find sufficient philosoph-

The Jews Who Begot Jesus

Nietzsche's attack on ancient "priestly"Judaism was as fierce and

The slave revolt in moralitybegins when ressentiment itself becomes

Priestly morality is the morality of the existentially impotent, in

Ambivalence and Tension Without Contradiction

It follows that Nietzsche held two rather clear positions-against mod-

calls for an uncommon psychology; for example: exercising amorfati, Hegel,

No Essentialism: The Three Jewish Periods

The birth of Christianity through priestly Judaism complemented

ContemporaryJews and the Closing of the Circle

As a result of their hard schooling and invigorating experience, says

In both Hegel and Nietzsche we observed several dualities concerning

You might also like