Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Patriotic Pantheism { 225

This view holds that, since God is everywhere and everything, whatever one

desires must, by definition, issue from God and be good. Auerbach castigates

this position vehemently as destroying “the world’s entire moral foundation”:

“Pantheism was forced... to endure that the most wanton subjective tendencies

took refuge at its altar and now even wished to be pronounced holy; the mon-

strosity of a concept of a free divine subjectivity pompously entered with all its

unbridled pretensions.”^115 Auerbach objects to the interpretation of Spinoza’s

pantheism as incompatible with individual freedom because he follows Spinoza

in believing that individuals realize freedom not in their idiosyncrasies but in

their movement from idiosyncrasy to universality, a trajectory that Spinoza’s life

had paradigmatically traced. Auerbach leans on Spinoza’s famous refutation of

the divine origin of miracles in the Theological-Political Treatise to argue that

pantheism shows that our highest, most holy, and freest nature lies not in our

uniquely distinguishing subjective qualities but in the universal qualities com-

mon to all: “To consider what is distinguishing and peculiar in subjective na-

ture as higher is the same error as if one were, in objective nature, to consider a

miracle a higher revelation than the constant, universal, law-governed course of

things. And herein—that what is universal and common to all is what is higher—

lies the holy calling of pantheism’s moral and its freedom-giving power.”^116

Auerbach’s interpretation of Spinozan pantheism as the ultimate guarantor

of community provided the ethical standard by which Auerbach critiqued the

dangers of excessive subjectivity. The community that Auerbach drew on Spi-

noza to envision became increasingly patriotic and culminated in the work that

made Auerbach famous as a German Volksschriftsteller, the Black Forest Village

Stories. The final sentence of Auerbach’s Spinoza biography sums up the es-

sence of Spinoza’s philosophy in terms that equally characterize the ethos and

esthetic of the village tales, to which Auerbach turned shortly after publishing

his Spinoza edition: “to subordinate the particular to the general, yet still to

portray the former in the latter... this is the essence of active [tätigen] panthe-

ism.”^117 Auerbach’s attempts to use Spinoza to imagine an inclusive German

Volk took several forms, however, beginning with his first novel.

Auerbach’s Jewish Novels

In addition to the biographical entries in the Gallerie, Auerbach published a

sketch of Kuh in 1836 , which—as noted above—he later expanded into his sec-

ond novel, Dichter und Kaufmann ( 1840 ).^118 Between the sketch and comple-

tion of his novel about Kuh, Auerbach made his novelistic debut with Spinoza.

Spinoza and Kuh are opposites, the successful and unsuccessful Jewish nego-