Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

218 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

out of its nature and sever all its inner connections [allen innern Zusammen-

hang abschneiden]. In this sense even the one most lacking in character can

be ascribed that as his character; but character as dispositional consistency

[Gesinnungstreue], as unity between appearance and essence [Schein und

Sein], this is something that very few indeed have achieved.^89

In Auerbach’s view, “nearly everything Heine has written emanates from his

Ich; everything clusters and pivots around this Ich; he can make no claim to

objective judgment.”^90 In both his poetry and his politics, Heine appears “now

in this, now in that guise with his Ich,” whereas true character comes from grasp-

ing the objective truth that subjectivity’s vicissitudes obscure, thereby achieving

unity between one’s inner and outer life.^91 Auerbach’s acknowledgement that

everything has a particular character and cannot step outside its nature echoes

Spinoza’s ontology. More important, Spinoza’s understanding of virtue in-

forms Auerbach’s ideal of character as unity between Schein and Sein. Spinoza

defines virtuous individuals as people who come to understand themselves

(or their bodies’ ideas) “under a species of eternity.” They thereby become

self-determined rather than determined from without. Through greater, more

powerful understanding, the virtuous overcome obscure imagination, illusion,

and their enslavement to passions (Schein). Guided by eternal reason, they

achieve unity between the self and the eternal world (God, or nature).^92 Spinoza

is the implicit standard against which Auerbach measures Heine’s immoder-

ate Ich.

However we assess Auerbach’s strategies for dealing with the minefield he faced

as a young, unknown Jewish writer, we can appreciate his quandary: How was

one to enter the scene as a Jewish writer, when any marker of Jewishness tended

to expose one to the protean charge of Jewish egoism? Auerbach’s ambivalent

engagement with Jewish biography reflects this predicament. His construction

of Spinoza’s life models a way to reconcile Jewish particularity with unassailable

universality. For Auerbach, Spinoza embodied everything Heine was not.

Auerbach’s Jewish Biographical Portraits

Just as the discourse of Jewish subjectivity was a crucial subtext of Auerbach’s

literary criticism of the 1830 s and 1840 s, it also inevitably complicated his forays

into Jewish biography as editor of the Gallerie der ausgezeichnetsten Israeliten

aller Jahrhunderte, ihre Portraits und Biographien [Gallery of the most out-

standing Israelites of all centuries, their portraits and biographies] and as author

of “Das Leben Spinoza’s” (The life of Spinoza). Auerbach is notably ambivalent