Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 461 Edwin Curley's "Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece: Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics" takes as its starting point Savan's claim that Spinoza is the "founder of scientific hermeneutics." Rejccting the most extreme interpretation of this claim -- i.e., that Spinoza created scientific hermeneutics ex nihilo -- Curlcy carefully compares Spi- noza's contributions to Biblical criticism with those of Hobbes and Isaac La Peyr~re, and concludes that Spinoza's work possesses, in addition to a generally higher level of hermeneutical rigor, something quite specific that they do not -- namely, "a well worked-out theory of what is required for the interpretation of a text." This theory demands that we begin by applying to textual interpretation the Cartesian strategy of "removing all prejudices" and preconceptions; doing so allows us to interpret a text such as the Bible in the light of a "natural history," drawn from the resources of the text itself. Curley's essay is essential reading for anyone interested in hermencutics, Biblical criticism, Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, or Spinoza's general philoso- phy of science. Manfred Walthcr's related essay focuses more narrowly on a case in which the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus appears to violate its own requirement that scripture be interpreted through scripture itself. That case is the treatment of miracles, the Biblical reports of which Spinoza seems to discount on external and..