Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) - Hegel's Theory of the State and Its Jewish Critique
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Franz Rosenzweig occupies a special position in the German reception of Hegel. He was at once one of the best experts on Hegel’s political philosophy and its most radical critic from a Jewish-religious perspective.
“Hegel and the State” (1920) - The Academic Monograph
Rosenzweig’s dissertation Hegel und der Staat (1912, published 1920) is still considered one of the most thorough investigations of the origins of Hegel’s political philosophy.[1] In two volumes, Rosenzweig reconstructs the development of Hegel’s thought about the state, from the early Frankfurt fragments to the Philosophy of Right of 1821.
The method was historical-genetic: Rosenzweig showed how Hegel’s concept of the state developed step by step - from youthful enthusiasm for the Greek polis, through the confrontation with the French Revolution, to the theory of the modern constitutional state. This genetic perspective was innovative at the time; it showed that Hegel’s political philosophy was no rigid system but a response to historical experiences.
The central thesis: Hegel’s philosophy of the state is not an apotheosis of the Prussian state, but a theory of the modern constitutional state as such. The “ethical state” is not just any factual state, but only the one that realizes the freedom of its citizens in rational institutions. This reading was directed against the nationalist interpretation of Hegel then widespread.
The impact was considerable. Hegel und der Staat became a standard work and shaped academic discussion for decades. Rosenzweig showed that serious interpretation of Hegel requires philological precision - textual knowledge, source analysis, historical contextualization.
“The Star of Redemption” (1921) - The Jewish Counter-Movement
A few months after publishing his Hegel monograph, Rosenzweig published a work that fundamentally contradicted Hegel: The Star of Redemption (1921).[2] The contrast could not be greater: there the academic reconstruction, here the religious counter-position.
The basic critique: Hegel’s system is “totality” - the claim to grasp everything in being conceptually, to dialectically sublate all distinctions, to integrate all history into a single process. Rosenzweig calls this “philosophy of the All” (“Allphilosophie”) and sees in it a denial of what cannot be systematized: the uniqueness of God, the unavailability of revelation, the singularity of the mortal individual.
The three basic elements - God, world, human being - cannot be dialectically dissolved into one another for Rosenzweig. They remain distinct, but enter into relation through creation (God-world), revelation (God-human), and redemption (human-world). These relations are events, not logical necessities. They happen or they do not happen - the system cannot guarantee them.
The existential dimension: Rosenzweig wrote The Star as a soldier in the First World War, partly on military postcards. The experience of mortal danger shaped his critique of Hegel’s system: the individual, mortal human being cannot be sublated into the universality of Spirit. Death is not “abstract negation” that is dialectically overcome - it is the boundary at which all systematics fails.
The Jewish perspective: Rosenzweig argues from the position of Judaism, which he understands as an “eternal people” - a people that falls out of history because it is with God, not with the World Spirit. This position is not anti-Hegelian in the sense of mere negation; it opens up an alternative form of thought that Rosenzweig calls “new thinking.”
The Systematic Significance
Rosenzweig shows the limits of systematic thinking from a perspective that is neither irrational nor anti-modern. He accepts the scholarly interpretation of Hegel - his own early work proves this - but he disputes that the system has the last word.
The question of totality becomes central: can there be a system that truly encompasses everything? Or are there dimensions of existence - death, revelation, love - that elude systematic integration? Rosenzweig answers with the latter.
This critique was later taken up and developed further by Emmanuel Levinas (Volume II, Ch. 10). The question of the “Other,” which does not fit into totality, became a leitmotif of 20th-century Jewish philosophy.
The tragedy: Rosenzweig died in 1929 of ALS; he did not live to see the National Socialist catastrophe. His work was banned by the Nazis, his legacy scattered. Its rediscovery began only in the 1960s.
Franz Rosenzweig: Hegel und der Staat, Munich/Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1920 (reprint Aalen: Scientia, 1962). The dissertation was accepted in Freiburg in 1912; the examiners were Heinrich Rickert and Friedrich Meinecke. ↩︎
Franz Rosenzweig: Der Stern der Erlösung, Frankfurt/M.: Kauffmann, 1921. New edition Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1988. As an introduction, see: Stéphane Mosès: System und Offenbarung. Die Philosophie Franz Rosenzweigs, Munich: Fink, 1985. ↩︎