Nahman Krochmal (1785-1840), the originator of the idea of the "mission of the Jewish people", was born at Brody. His chief work, published posthumously through the efforts of Zunz, the Moreh Nebuke ha- Zeman ("The Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times"), is the most original piece of philosophic writing in modern Hebrew. Krochmal led the sad life of the Polish-Jewish scholar—void of pleasures and filled to overflowing with privation and suffering. His whole time was consecrated to Jewish science. He led a retired life, and while he lived nothing of his was published. On account of the precarious state of his health, he never left the small town in which he was born. However, his house became the foregathering place of the votaries of Jewish science. Especially young men eager to learn came from everywhere to sit at the feet of the master. The influence which he thus exerted during his life was reinforced and perpetuated after his death by the publication of the "Guide of the Perplexed of Modern Times", in 1851, at Lemberg.
The studies contained in this work, for the most part unfinished sketches, form a curious collection. Limitations of space forbid more than a summary of its contents, and an analysis of its chief principles.
The need of finding a philosophic explanation of Divine existence forced Hegel to formulate the axiom, that reason alone constitutes the reality of things, and absolute truth is to be found in the union of the subjective and the objective—the subjective corresponding to the concrete state of every being, that is, matter, which forms his actual reason, and the objective corresponding to his abstract state, that is, the idea, which forms his absolute reason.
On this Hegelian axiom of actual reason and absolute reason, Krochmal builds up his ingenious system of the philosophy of Jewish history. He is the first Jewish scholar who views Judaism, not as a distinct and independent entity, but as a part of the whole of civilization. At the same time, while it is attached to the civilized world, it is distinguished by qualities peculiar to itself. It leads the independent existence of a national organism similar to all others, but it also aspires to an absolute, spiritual expression, consequently to universalism. The result of this double aspect is that while Jewish nationality forms the element peculiar to the Jewish people, its civilization, its intellect are universal, and detach themselves from its peculiar national life. Hence it comes that Jewish culture is essentially spiritual, ideal, and tends to promote the perfection of the human kind. Krochmal in this way arrives at the following three conclusions:
1. The Jewish nation is like the phoenix, constantly arising to new life from its ashes. It comprises within itself the three elements of Hegel's triad: the idea, the object, and the intelligence. The successive resurrections of the Jewish people follow an ascendant progression, which tends toward the spiritually absolute. Starting as a political organism, it soon developed into a dogmatically religious sect, only to be transformed into a spiritual entity. Krochmal—though he does not say it explicitly—sees in religion only a passing phenomenon in the history of the Jewish people, exactly as its political existence was but a temporary phase.
2. The Jewish people presents a double aspect to the observer. It is national in its particularism, or its concrete aspect, and universal in its spiritualism. The national genius of all other peoples of antiquity was narrowly particularistic. That is why they were submerged. Only the Jewish prophets conceived of the absolutely and universally spiritual and of moral truth, and therein lies the secret of the continued existence of the Jewish people.
3. With Hegel Krochmal admits that the resultants from the historical development of a people form the quintessence of its existence. [Footnote: See chapters IX, XVI, and others; also M. Bernfeld, Da'at Elohim ("The Knowledge of God"); and M. Landau, Die Bibel und der Hegelianismus (Dissertation).] But what he does not believe is that the essential element in the existence of a people is the resultant. The process of historical evolution is in itself an adequate reason for its existence. More rational than Hegel himself, Krochmal thus avoids the contradiction which follows from the mystical definition of existence in the Hegelian system.
For the German metaphysician, existence is the interval between not being and being, that is, the period of becoming. Krochmal simply eliminates this more or less materialistic notion of the interval. He substitutes the moral effects produced incidentally to the course of historic action, for the idea of effects posterior to the same action, the effects called the resultants. The more or less materialistic manner in which historic action develops replaces with him the idea of the transition period, the period of becoming, as a mysterious intermediary between actual reason and absolute reason.
Proceeding from these axioms, Krochmal, at a time in which Völkerpsychologie and sociology were embryonic sciences, explains the phenomena of Jewish history as well as the phenomena of the religious and spiritual evolution of mankind, and does it with remarkable originality and profundity.
Krochmal's ideas produced an effect not to be exaggerated upon the intelligent among the Polish Jews, who had thrown off the trammels of dogmatism and mystic hope, but were in a hesitating state of mind, casting about for the reason of their very existence as Jews. His book offered them an explanation, based on modern science and yet in accord with their Jewish essence as revealed by history and therefore satisfying to their national pride.