Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Introduction { 13

unequivocal Jewish heroes but that (and, to some extent, that therefore) reveal

a rich texture of German-Jewish self-reinvention at thresholds of philosophical

and political modernity.

In The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image, Daniel

Schwartz studies the evolution of the Jewish image of Spinoza from despised

excommunicate to intellectual hero, a role in which he continues to be cast in

contemporary Spinoza scholarship. Willi Goetschel’s Spinoza’s Modernity:

Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine is incisive and suggestive, yet the sort of un-

abashedly celebratory embrace of Spinoza it exemplifies is apt to miss, for ex-

ample, how Auerbach drew on Spinoza for cultural and political ends that were

squarely opposed to those of his nemesis, Heine. Whereas Goetschel reads

Heine as deploying Spinoza to subvert a grand narrative of German intellec-

tual history, and Hegel’s place or self-placement in this narrative in particular,

Auerbach’s intensive engagement with Spinoza was not only compatible with,

but in many ways prepared the way for, the esthetics and political vision of the

Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (Black Forest Village Stories), the phenomenal

success of which bestowed on Auerbach the cultural identity of a German Volk-

schriftsteller. Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789 – 1848 does not op-

pose or seek to supplant or coyly subvert the paradigm of subversion, which has

been the most fecund development in German-Jewish studies in recent decades.

It does, however, aspire to augment it and to provoke reflection both on the dan-

gers of projection inherent in it and on the sort of cultural dynamics to which it

may be ill equipped to do full justice.