Spinoza: Revelation and Prophets

Spinoza’s interpretation of the election of the Hebrews in the third chapter of the Theological Political Treatise enraged quite a few Jewish readers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The rise of nationalism, and the demand of loyalty to one’s own genos brought about a certain style of patriotic writing aimed at Spinoza’s “betrayal.” In a series of lectures on the eve of the Great War, Hermann Cohen portrayed Spinoza as a person of “demonic spirt” and as “the great enemy (...) who emerged from our midst.” In a stream of words more akin to shouting than to analytic discourse, Cohen protested against what he took to be the universal complacency regarding Spinoza’s treachery: “When Spinoza, with merciless severity, makes his own nation the object of contempt – at the time that Rembrandt lived on the same street and immortalized the ideal type of the Jew - no voice rises in protest against this humanly incomprehensible betrayal.” Cohen was right in identifying in Spinoza an absence of ethnic patriotism. I, for one, find this absence a virtue rather than a vice, and in this chapter I will argue, inter alia, that in rejecting ethnic normativity Spinoza was consistent with a dominant strand of rabbinic thought. What precisely was so offensive in Spinoza’s words in chapter three of the TTP? A common reading of this chapter suggests that Spinoza presents the election of the Hebrews as merely political and not spiritual in nature, thus downgrading the importance of the election. This reading is not absolutely groundless, but it is highly imprecise, for as we shall shortly see, for Spinoza, God’s (genuine) election of the Hebrews indicates the political weakness of their state, rather than its strength. Apart from pointing out this important corrective, I will also attempt in this essay to evaluate Spinoza’s critique of the election of the Hebrews, the result of which might lead us to some highly unexpected conclusions. In the first section of this chapter I present an outline of Spinoza’s interpretation of the connection between the Hebrews’ belief in being chosen, and the xenophobic nature of their ancient state. In the second section, I discuss Spinoza’s interpretation of the election of the Hebrews in chapter three of the TTP, and show that on Spinoza’s sardonic reading it was nothing but luck which allowed the Hebrew state to survive for a rather long time in spite of its poor political constitution. The third and final part provides a defense of Spinoza’s critique of the notion of chosenness. I will argue, first, that chosenness has never been granted the status of theological doctrine or principle of faith within rabbinic Judaism. I will then point out the significant religious problems with the notion of chosenness, suggesting however two exceptions in which belief in chosenness might still be defensible. I will conclude this section with a discussion of rabbinic views on the conversion of minors, arguing that according to the mainstream rabbinic view, being a Jew is a merit only on the condition that a person is pious, a view which is not far from Spinoza’s own claims in the third chapter of the TTP. (shrink)

In this contribution, I discuss some less well-known premodern and early modern antecedents of Spinoza’s concepts and claims in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. On the one hand, I will argue, Spinoza’s notion of prophecy owes more to Moses Maimonides than to any Christian author; and through Maimonides, Spinoza may be linked to the discussion of prophecy in _The Virtuous City_ by the tenth-century Islamic philosopher al-Farabî. Spinoza’s concern with prophecy as a popular formulation of the Divine Law may be fruitfully seen (...) in the light of these two authors. On the other hand, Spinoza’s notion of _pietas_ has arguably been shaped by a number of early modern authors from the Low Countries, including Thomas a Kempis and Erasmus: it does not consist in merely obeying the law, but also has a clear devotional and theist dimension of love for God and for one’s neighbors. As such, it may be associated with recent ideas on philosophy and spiritual exercises. These findings have a number of non-trivial implications for Spinoza’s place in the rise of modern, academic Western philosophy. I will discuss these implications in the context of Pierre Hadot’s influential views on philosophy as a way of life and Michel Foucault’s notion of spirituality. (shrink)

This work presents an alternative reading of the respective works of Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza. It argues that both thinkers are primarily concerned with the singular perfection of the complete human being rather than with attaining only rational knowledge. Complete perfection of a human being expresses the unique concord of concrete activities, such as ethics, politics, and psychology, with reason. The necessity of concrete historical activities in generating perfection entails that both thinkers are not primarily concerned with an “escape” (...) to a metaphysical realm of transcendent or universal truths via cognition. Instead, both are focused on developing and cultivating individuals’ concrete desires and activities to the potential benefit of all. This book argues that rather than solely focusing on individual enlightenment, both thinkers are primarily concerned with a political life and the improvement of fellow citizens’ capacities. A key theme throughout the text is that both Maimonides and Spinoza realize that an apolitical life undermines individual and social flourishing. (shrink)

Tracing key biblical topics recurrent in Grotian and Hobbesian discourses on the church-state relationship, The Sovereign and the Prophetsexamines Spinoza's Old Testament interpretation in the Theologico-political Treatiseand elucidates his effort to establish what Hobbes could not adequately offer to the Dutch: the liberty to philosophize. Fukuoka develops an original method for understanding seventeenth-century biblical arguments as a shared political paradigm. Her in-depth analysis reveals the discourses that converged on the question, 'Who stands immediately under God to mediate His will to (...) the people?' This subtly nuanced theme not only linked major theoreticians diachronically--from the Remonstrants such as Grotius to the anti-Hobbesian jurist Ulrik Huber (1636-1694)--but also synchronically built the axis of resonances and dissonances between Leviathanand the Theologico-political Treatise. (shrink)

Spinoza insists in the Theological Political Treatise that philosophy and theology are two separate kingdoms. I argue here that there is a basis in the psychology of the Ethics for one of the major components of the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Under the kingdom of theology, religion's principal function is to overcome the influence of harmful passion that prevents people from living life according to a fixed plan: people can live according to a fixed plan because they can obey. (...) Through a series of arguments I show that Spinoza takes obedience to arise through devotion; devotion to associate with ideas of miracles and imaginative monotheism; and these ideas to be imaginative ideas of singular objects. On the psychology of the Ethics, ideas of this sort, although highly irrational, nevertheless give minds a power to resist harmful passion similar to that of ideas of reason. Although problems remain for the interpretation of the doctrine of the two kingdoms, this argument shows that Spinoza's psychology gr.. (shrink)

Event synopsis: Professor Susan James inverses Leo Strauss’ reading of Spinoza. Whereas Strauss emphasized the hidden subtext of Spinoza’s arguments, James revives the explicit debates of his time within which Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise was situated. But this is not a simple historical reconstruction. James’ close reading of the Treatise offers a radically new perspective on Spinoza’s revolutionary book – a reading that presents startling new perspective on the political, metaphysical and theological implications of the book. Given the importance of Spinoza’s (...) political writings in contemporary radical democratic approaches to the state, James intervention has the potential to reshape the way we think of a Spinozan politics. (shrink)

Many pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim philosophers from Antiquity to the Enlightenment made no meaningful distinction between philosophy and religion. Instead they advocated a philosophical religion, arguing that God is Reason and that the historical forms of a religious tradition serve as philosophy's handmaid to promote the life of reason among non-philosophers. Carlos Fraenkel provides the first account of this concept and traces its history back to Plato. He shows how Jews and Christians appropriated it in Antiquity, follows it through (...) the Middle Ages in both Islamic and Jewish forms and argues that it underlies Spinoza's interpretation of Christianity. The main challenge to a philosophical religion comes from the modern view that all human beings are equally able to order their lives rationally and hence need no guidance from religion. Fraenkel's wide-ranging book will appeal to anyone interested in how philosophy has interacted with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious traditions. (shrink)

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was published anonymously in 1670 and immediately provoked huge debate. Its main goal was to claim that the freedom of philosophizing can be allowed in a free republic and that it cannot be abolished without also destroying the peace and piety of that republic. Spinoza criticizes the traditional claims of revelation and offers a social contract theory in which he praises democracy as the most natural form of government. This Critical Guide presents essays by well-known scholars in (...) the field and covers a broad range of topics, including the political theory and the metaphysics of the work, religious toleration, the reception of the text by other early modern philosophers and the relation of the text to Jewish thought. It offers valuable perspectives on this important and influential work. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw out a tension between miracles, prophecy, and Spinoza’s assertions about Moses in the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP). The three seem to constitute an inconsistent triad. Spinoza’s account of miracles requires a naturalistic interpretation of all events. This categorical claim must therefore apply to prophecy; specifically, Moses’ hearing God’s voice in a manner which does not seem to invoke the imagination or natural phenomena. Thus, Spinoza seemingly cannot maintain both Moses’ exalted status and his account of miracles. (...) I consider some possible solutions, but find that they are either untrue to Spinoza’s position, or would undercut his categorical argument against miracles. I therefore conclude that Spinoza leaves an unresolved tension in the TTP. (shrink)

Examining the philosophical, theological, and political teachings of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, this book proposes that Benedict Spinoza fashions a ...

Yitzhak Y. Melamed - Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 333-334 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Yitzhak Y. Melamed University of Chicago Graeme Hunter. Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought. Aldershot, UK–Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. vii + 196. Cloth, $89.95. If this book's announced and modest aim—"to present the Christian dimension of Spinoza's thought positively and directly" —were all the author meant to achieve, (...) he was clearly successful. Any reader of the Theological Political Treatise cannot fail to see that Spinoza engaged seriously with Christianity, its sacred texts, and its internal divisions and disputes. Throughout his mature life, Spinoza lived among the Collegiants, the radical Dutch reformers, and it is clear that his dialogue with this circle played a significant role in shaping his writing on religion, Judaism, and.. (shrink)

Spinoza resolves the tension between reason and revelation by granting reason complete authority and autonomy in all philosophical and natural matters, and by denying revelation any claims to knowledge. Despite this dramatic partisanship, he attempts to make this solution attractive to believers by creating a hermeneutic that allows a limited claim to knowledge for revelation. This article attempts to explain how he arrived at this strategy and why he believed it would succeed.

Context -- A Jew in Amsterdam -- Conflicts and communities -- Christian philosophy? -- A Bible gallery -- Religion and politics in the TTP -- Miracles, meaning, and moderation -- Christian pluralism -- Ethics reconsidered -- Providence, obedience, and love -- Spinoza and Christianity.

In Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus two phenomena, which are of crucial importance for revealed religion, namely prophetic revelation and miracle, are investigated in two different ways. The first phenomenon, prophetic revelation, is primarily considered as a theological issue and is mainly discussed on the basis of biblical research. The second phenomenon, miracle, is primarily considered as a philosophical issue and is mainly discussed on the basis of rational principles. The question is raised why Spinoza is using two different methods to discuss (...) these two issues. Some have argued that Spinoza is using these two different methods on account of strategic reasons. Nevertheless, such a strategic explanation is not entirely satisfactory in so far as it ignores more substantial reasons, which are related to the content of the issues mentioned. In search of these substantial reasons it is necessary to investigate Spinoza’s discussion of the phenomena of prophetic revelation and miracle in more detail. This investigation leads to the conclusion that Spinoza exerts himself more to give causal explanations of miracles than of prophetic revelations, although both phenomena are considered by him as purely natural. However, in the last analysis both extraordinary phenomena are considered as inexplicable natural events, which in this respect are not different from all ordinary natural events. In this way we discover at the border of Spinoza’s rigorous rationalism a new enchantment of the world. (shrink)

This paper discusses Spinoza's critique of religion as a visible moment of a radically occluded materialist Judeo-Arabic Aristotelian philosophical tradition. While the prevailing (Christo-Platonic) tradition begins with the familiar gesture to metaphysics as first philosophy, Spinoza's thought (and thus, this Other Tradition) takes politics as its point of departure with its concrete emphasis on a critique of dogma. This paper will show-by way of differing readings of Spinoza-how this materialist tradition becomes occluded by the prevailing tradition, even in the work (...) of such careful materialist Spinoza commentators as Etienne Balibar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 417-418 [Access article in PDF] Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, editors. Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 290. Cloth, $78.50. Paper, $26.95.The current anthology presents an important contribution to the study of Spinoza's relation to Jewish philosophy as well as to contemporary scholarship of Spinoza's metaphysics and political (...) theory.In the opening essay, Lenn Goodman takes upon himself the ambitious task of evaluating Spinoza's positions as to several central disputes throughout the history of philosophy. In this rich and extensive essay Goodman argues that Spinoza's radical rationalism makes him pursue syntheses between traditionally opposed poles. Lee Rice's article, "Love of God in Spinoza," carefully analyzes Spinoza's concept of love and suggests the existence of three kinds of love parallel to the three kinds of knowledge. Warren Montag addresses the unresolved issue of Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah. Montag sides with Deleuze against the association of Spinozism with the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation, arguing that unlike the Neo-Platonists and Kabbalists, Spinoza's view of God rules out any hierarchy, and does not assume a descent from primal simplicity into complexity. Edwin Curley contributes a beautiful reading of the story of Job and of Maimonides' interpretation of the story. Curley follows Maimonides' discussion of the various positions regarding the question of divine providence and his attempt to identify the speeches of the characters of the book of Job with each of these positions. Following a sensitive consideration of various attempts to [End Page 417] recover Maimonides' own rather concealed view about providence, Curley concludes that "[W]hatever you think Maimonides' final word on Job is, our examination of him certainly supports [Spinoza's] claim that [Maimonides] reads Scripture in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian speculations" (170).Warren Zev Harvey's essay addresses Spinoza's most neglected work, the Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language. Apart from providing an outline of Spinoza's work as a Hebrew grammarian ("a noun-intoxicated grammarian") and pointing out some of Spinoza's more eccentric views about the nature of the Hebrew language, Harvey makes a compelling case for the importance of the book for the study of Spinoza's metaphysics. He points out a fascinating analogy which Spinoza draws between the parts of speech: (proper) noun, adjectives, and participles, and Spinoza's key metaphysical terms: substance, attributes, and modes. (Think about the weighty implications of this analogy for Curley's interpretation of the substance-mode relation.) According to Harvey, Spinoza's claim that all Hebrew words are derived from nouns is a linguistic parallel to Spinoza's pivotal metaphysical doctrine which makes all things be in the substance (or God). Kenneth Seeskin's article discusses the views of Maimonides and Spinoza on the question of creation and God's relation to the world. Seeskin reconstructs an interesting critical dialogue between these two philosophers. According to Seeskin, both philosophers held that an effect must be similar to its cause. Maimonides' commitment to Negative Theology and to the denial of any common measure between God and finite things forced him to deny causal or explanatory relation between God and the world. What Maimonides can suggest instead is rather to prove that the emergence of the world ex nihilo and according to the divine will, is possible, and even likely given certain astronomical facts of medieval science. Thus, Maimonides would hold that "although we have grounds for believing that creation occurred, we will never be in a position to say how" (120). For Spinoza, such a view constitutes nothing but a "sanctuary of ignorance." Thus, according to Seeskin, Spinoza affirms a clear causal relation between God and the world of finite things insofar as God is said to explain the world. While I tend to agree with most aspects of this analysis, it is important to note that Spinoza also claims that "between the finite and infinite there is no relation" (Letter 54). This... (shrink)

My essay explores the connections between Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation and his conception of prophecy, linking the two through what he calls “moral certainty.” The question of what prophecy conveys is connected to the question of how to read Scripture because readers are in a similar position to both the prophets, who attain sure knowledge of some matter revealed by God, and the audience of prophecy, who have access to this knowledge only through faith. Like prophets, readers are interpreters (...) of something that can not be known by way of reason alone; hence the effort to secure certainty involves factors other than purely rational ones (the history of the text, for readers; a vivid imagination, signs, and virtue for the prophet). But like the prophet’s audience, the knowledge of texts that we can attain is not always “sure,” since texts “transcend” us in a certain sense. That is, they introduce novelties---laws, customs, histories---that we wouldn’t know without reading them, and we therefore have to take their authors, prophets in this case, at their word-as it were, on faith. While most of the focus on Spinoza’s concept of biblical interpretation has centered on his maxim that “the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the method of interpreting Nature,” I hold that it is just as crucial to investigate his claims concerning the nature of prophecy, and in particular to allow prophetic knowledge to shed light on Spinoza’s concepts of words, history, and the corruption and incorruptibility of texts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 385-406 [Access article in PDF] Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides on the Prophetic Imagination Part Two:Spinoza's Maimonideanism Heidi M. Ravven 1. Spinoza's Maimonideanism Now it is precisely with the belief that the prophets were philosophers and the Bible offers veiled insights into the central doctrines of philosophy, so powerfully argued and deeply held by Maimonides that he included (...) it as one of his Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith the acceptance of which is a necessary condition of a share in the World to Come, 1 that Spinoza took strong issue. 2 At the same time, however, Spinoza agreed with Maimonides' doctrine [End Page 385] of the a. imaginative (literary) character 3 and b. the political function 4 of the Bible and of its authors and of the major prophetic figures. The quite obvious influence of Maimonides' account of prophecy upon Spinoza's account in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) has been widely recognized and commented upon. That is to say (although no commentator up till now, as far as I know, has made this point explicit), Spinoza adopted Maimonides' conception of prophecy as mimetic or productive and not only—or chiefly—as receptive. 5 The Maimonidean account of the (prophetic) imagination clarifies why the atomic fact model of the receptive function of the imagination is inapplicable to the TTP. The imaginative character of prophecy is not about picking up information (in a dream or otherwise) delivered from God; rather, it concerns how one understands (and presents) certain truths (in the case of Spinoza's notion of prophecy, namely, those of ethics and in Maimonides' those of science as well as of ethics) imaginatively rather than rationally, i.e., within a web of (narrative and symbolic) associations instead of within the deductive order of rational causal explanation. "Now we see," Spinoza, in the first chapter [End Page 386] of the Tractatus, 6 writes, echoing Maimonides (esp. Guide II, 47), "why the teachings of the prophets were nearly all in the form of parables and allegories, and why all spiritual matters were expressed in corporeal form, for this is more appropriate to the imaginative faculty." Prophecy does not consist in the simple reception of pieces of information transmitted directly from God. This is not what it is for Maimonides nor for Spinoza.Thus we find that Spinoza formally defines the prophet in the beginning of TTP, chapter i, as "one who interprets (interpretatur) God's revelations to those who cannot attain to certain knowledge of the matters revealed... For the Hebrew word for prophet is nabi, that is, speaker and interpreter (orator et interpres)." 7 The prophet is interpreter in imaginative terms, whether he reformulates belief imaginatively or instead merely understands it in that way himself to begin with. Prophecy is an imaginative (narrative, symbolic) rather than a philosophical (logical and demonstrable) type of understanding and presentation. If one looks at Spinoza's account of prophecy in TTP i, one finds that immediately after Spinoza defines prophecy, he then goes on to tell us what revelation is scientifically: "the nature of [the human] mind... is the primary cause of divine revelation." That is to say, the mind itself, whether rationally in intellectual thought or in its imaginative capacity and in both cases as itself a product of divine (i.e., natural) causes, supplies the content of revelation. 8 Spinoza then goes on to say that now that we have understood the true explanation of prophecy, we must return from this scientific understanding to the biblical account of prophecy. At that point he tells us that "the Jews never make mention of intermediate or particular causes nor pay any heed to them, but to serve religion and piety... they refer everything to God." Now this is a crucial passage and must be used as an interpretive principle for all that follows. (Spinoza illustrates the point in some detail at the end of the chapter where he lists the various... (shrink)

This book investigates various aspects of the controversial relations between Spinoza's philosophy and his Jewish background. It examines some important trends of medieval Jewish philosophy on the shaping of Spinoza's thought - particularly the impact of Maimonides. The book elucidates the differences between Spinoza and his predecessors in regard to Bible criticism, and dwells extensively on the concepts of Substance and Pantheism. It also discusses Spinoza's views of Judaism and the Jewish people, the relationship between state and religion, and some (...) problems of his -Hebrew Grammar-.". (shrink)