Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Patriotic Pantheism { 23 9

of anonymously contributing to a cultural edifice (and the superfluous if not del-

eterious nature of “egoistic” personal recognition) also comments— silently—

on the absence of any explicit mention of Spinoza in “Liebe Menschen.” Au-

erbach might indeed be able to use Spinoza most effectively to aid the liberal

German cause by studiously avoiding any explicit reference to the philosopher.

Rudolph, the patriotic self-identified pantheist, silently draws on Spinoza to

theorize the relationship of part to whole in what he views as Germany’s higher

freedom and genuine harmony. The Spinozan underpinnings of Rudolph’s

conception of German provincial and national life gain in importance when we

consider the crucial role that an idealized (nationalized) provincialism plays in

Auerbach’s Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten. In conversation with Karl, Elisa-

betha, and their mother, Rudolph declares: “It is delightful... that the Ger-

man nation is beginning to cast off its provincial spirit, its Cantönligeist, as the

Swiss call it.... North and South, East and West, all of us are one, all must

recognize the affairs of a particular province or state as that of the fatherland in

its totality [des Gesammtsvaterlandes] .”^165 As this conversation about German

pluralism unfolds, Rudolph advances a critique of toleration, which he views as

dependent on feeling (Gemüth, Gefühl) and therefore unstable and susceptible

to being rescinded with the next change in Gemüthstimmung. What provides a

solid foundation for a viable and harmonious German pluralism is, once again,

a version of Spinoza’s concept of intellectual love (“the knowledge that becomes

love”):

The mere peaceable sentiment [Stimmung], human tolerance [humane

Nachsicht], lags far behind the insight and the knowledge that becomes love;

in the former one allows differences to obtain because one recognizes some-

thing of universal relevance therein, but one still regards the particular as er-

roneous or deficient. In the latter one learns to recognize and love the entire

particularity with all its peculiarities as valid and necessary.... In the percep-

tion and thorough knowledge of particularities lies harmony; the essence of

harmony is not that everything has one tone [daß Alles Einen Klang habe],

but that everything has consonance [daß Alles Einklang habe], that the tones

persevere in their difference, yet that they cultivate their particular nature

unto purity. In this purity they then join, by the power of their innermost

nature, the total chorus [ Gesammtklange]; free and independent, they none-

theless merge into the whole. In my view that is the higher German freedom

and genuine harmony.^166

To highlight the Spinozan nature of Auerbach’s vision of the German Vaterland

and its pluralistic Volk, we need only recall Auerbach’s definition in his Spinoza