Hegel’s paired treatment of Jews and Muslims shaped later theory

Evidence

Hegel did have quite a bit to say about the Jews. And about the Muslims. Moreover, it should be clear that an understanding of “thoroughgoing passivity” and of absolute subjection gains much by being juxtaposed-as Hegel often does-with “the Jew, the Arab,” the Jews and the Muslims. It is in this context that Hegel deploys a vocabulary and a conceptual apparatus that, after Kant and Montesquieu, would continue to determine much of the history I am trying to trace here. Hegel himself situates Judaism and Islam within a theologico-political history of subjection, although he does so predominantly in terms of “antithesis” and “by contrast,” thus recalling, distinctively, Kant’s sublime: Judaism and Islam, religion and politics, hate and love, universality and particularity, spirituality and lack thereof, and absolute surrender. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 647

Categorization

• XREF: States the genealogical spine directly: Kant and Montesquieu seed a vocabulary Hegel deploys that then ‘continue[s] to determine’ the history Anidjar traces — the bridge other cluster books point back to.
• SEED: Moveable essay: ‘the Jew, the Arab’ as a paired figure of subjection from Kant through Hegel to contemporary Islamophobia discourse.