Despotism and fanaticism only later coagulated onto Islam and Jews in Hegel

Evidence

From Kant’s use of the term, it is clear that “despotism” has yet to coagulate into a stable political category. As a figure of domination, Beherrschung, it is joined in an exclusive pair by the republic (although Kant will write of Cromwell’s “despotic republic”). At times an adjective, at times the name of a regime, at times a mode of government (democratic or not), despotism is being invented (see Kant: Political Writings and Lyotard, L’enthousiasme). It is also the case that fanaticism (which “must always be distinguished from enthusiasm,” Kant had written in the Observations), although associated with religion, was not yet so heavily linked with Islam (Kant, Observations on the Feeling, 108 n). In the Critique of judgment itself, Kant speaks of “freeing the will from the despotism of desire” (section 83). As I will try to show below, it would take the combination of Kant and Montesquieu in Hegel for the absolute subjection that despotism entails to be articulated under the figure of the Muslims. And the Jews. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1162

Categorization

• XREF: Genealogical claim central to reader’s purpose: traces how Europe’s political vocabulary (‘despotism,’ ‘fanaticism’) was only belatedly attached to Islam and Jews — corroborates the antisemitism-Islamophobia bridge in other batch books.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: when exactly does ‘despotism’ harden as the stable antonym of republic, and who fixes its Oriental reference point before Hegel?