Between Philosophy and Religion: Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity: Vol. I: Hermeneutics and Ontology

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BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION: SPINOZA, THE BIBLE, AND MODERNITY

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BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION: SPINOZA, THE BIBLE, AND MODERNITY Volume I: Hermeneutics and Ontology

Brayton Polka

LEXINGTON B OOKS A division of ROWMAN & LIT TLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

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LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2007 by Lexington Books First paperback edition 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows: Polka, Brayton. Between philosophy and religion : Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity / Brayton Polka. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632–1677. 2. Religion—Philosophy. I. Title. B3999.R4P65 2006 199'.492—dc22 2006013872 ISBN: 978-0-7391-1601-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-7391-1602-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-0-7391-5232-4 (electronic) Printed in the United States of America

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

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Contents

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1 Introduction: The Challenge of Spinoza to Modernity 2 The Bible and Hermeneutics 3 The Ontological Argument and Modernity: The Relationship between Thought and Existence 4 Conclusion: Hermeneutics and Ontology

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Appendix 1: Critical Commentary on Works Relating to Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity

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Appendix 2: Strauss on the Bible, Philosophy, and Modernity

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Bibliography

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Index

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About the Author

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SPINOZA’S HERMENEUTICS AND ONTOLOGY is part of a twovolume study the general title of which is Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity. I intend by the overall heading Between Philosophy and Religion to signal the guiding spirit of my study. The companion book of my two-volume study is entitled Politics and Ethics. Each of the two volumes is an independent book and can be read separate from the other. Still, each volume is to be understood, within the limits of its own particular thematic, to engage Spinoza as a thinker who is at once biblical and modern. Indeed, the argument of both volumes is that, when we place Spinoza between philosophy and religion, when we come to understand what it means for this philosopher to make the God of the Bible the subject of knowledge that is at once sufficient and necessary for human beings, we shall be in a position to see the Bible and modernity, not as fundamentally opposed to but as profoundly related to each other. Just as Spinoza has been essentially misunderstood when what is modern (philosophical or secular) in his thought has been opposed to what is biblical (theological or religious) in his thought, so it is equally the case that modernity cannot be truly comprehended when it is opposed to the Bible (faith) and that the Bible cannot be truly comprehended when it is not grasped as fundamentally, as essentially, modern (rational and secular). As we understand Spinoza, so we understand both the Bible and modernity. As we understand both the Bible and modernity, so we understand Spinoza. Just as we cannot truly comprehend Spinoza without seeing him as at once biblical and modern, so he helps us realize that we cannot have a true understanding of either the Bible or modernity without grasping the fact that the Bible is no less modern than

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modernity is biblical. To place ourselves with Spinoza between philosophy and religion is to be in the position of overcoming the paralyzing dualisms between modernity and the Bible and so between reason and faith, between the secular and the religious, and, ultimately, between the human and the divine. It is also the case that, because the Bible is not to be understood as “ancient” (premodern), compared with what is modern, modern thought, when truly comprehended as biblical, will (have to) be sharply distinguished from “ancient” thought, the thought of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Spinoza is enormously fruitful in helping us see that the thought of the ancients—whether that of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics (including the protean amalgam of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism that we know as Neoplatonism), the skeptics, or the Epicureans—is neither philosophical nor theological. In other words, the concepts of both the human and the divine in ancient thought are totally other than those found in Spinoza and the thinkers who, together with him, constitute the canon of modernity (including Montaigne, Caravaggio, Shakespeare, Descartes, Vermeer, Kant, Beethoven, Dostoevsky, Corot, Nietzsche, Buber, Wallace Stevens, Shostakovich, and Chagall—to name but a few). The famous ban cutting Spinoza off from the Amsterdam Jewish community was issued in 1656, his having been born in 1632. While he always remained a Jew, Spinoza lived his adults years apart from organized Jewish life with his main intellectual followers and supporters being unorthodox Christians. In my two-volume study of Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity, I focus on the three major (mature) works of this Dutch thinker: Theologico-Political Treatise (which was published anonymously in Latin in 1670), Ethics, and (the uncompleted) Political Treatise (the second and third of which were published anonymously both in Latin and in Dutch translation in 1677, shortly after Spinoza’s death that same year). I do not consider here the earlier, immature works of Spinoza. Instead of treating the Theologico-Political Treatise, together with the Political Treatise, separate from the Ethics, that is, instead of treating his politics (together with his biblical hermeneutics) in one book and his ethics in another book, I divide my two-book study between hermeneutics and ontology, on the one hand, and politics and ethics, on the other. I make this unorthodox division for two principal reasons: 1. Whatever the apparent differences in style and mode of demonstration between the Theologico-Political Treatise and the Ethics, Spinoza’s two greatest works are not to be isolated from each other in the traditional manner of philosophers writing in English, who typically treat the Ethics without reference to the Theologico-Political Treatise. Nor is the Theologico-Political Treatise to be subordinated to the Ethics in the tradition of Leo Strauss’ approach to Spinoza, with the result that the Bible

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is put in opposition to, by making it ancillary to, philosophy, in flagrant disregard of Spinoza’s explicitly articulated aims in the TheologicoPolitical Treatise and in contradiction of the primacy of the God of the Bible in the Ethics. 2. Another way of putting this same point is to indicate the importance of considering the interrelation of hermeneutics and ontology in the thought of Spinoza. It is equally important not to isolate the politics of Spinoza from his ethics. Only then are we able to see that the freedom of the democratic civil state (together with what Spinoza calls the multitudo [the people] in the Political Treatise) both presupposes and is presupposed by the concept of freedom that he attributes to the eternity of the mind in part V of the Ethics. Just as Spinoza shows in the TheologicoPolitical Treatise that God is not found outside of (without) sovereign political authority (the authority of the political sovereign), so it is important to see that, for Spinoza, the eternity of the mind, understood as involving and expressing the intellectual love of God, does not constitute an ethical domain that is located outside of (without) the civil state. But this conclusion is hardly surprising, given the fact that, as I show, Spinoza makes the golden rule of loving your neighbor as yourself—which expresses what he calls the principles of charity and justice—the rational basis not only of biblical hermeneutics but also of both political life and ethical practice in the democratic civil state. In demonstrating that the theology of the Bible is fundamentally democratic and that its principles of charity and justice for all constitute true sovereign authority, which is at once ethical and political, both individual and communal, Spinoza shows us that we cannot conceive of modernity outside of (without) the Bible and that we cannot conceive of the Bible outside of (without) modernity. In order to show how profoundly interrelated hermeneutics and ontology are in the thought of Spinoza, here, in this present volume, I examine the major passages of chapters 1–15 (plus the Preface) of the Theologico-Political Treatise, together with parts I and II of the Ethics. (In my companion volume I show how intimately related Spinoza’s politics and ethics are by examining chapters 16–20 of the Theologico-Political Treatise; the incomplete Political Treatise; and parts III–V of the Ethics, together with the appendix of part I.) Spinoza develops his concept of biblical hermeneutics in the first fifteen chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise. In the first and second parts of the Ethics he propounds (what we, since Kant, know as) the ontological argument for the existence of God—that there is one thing that cannot be thought (by human beings) without necessarily existing, which is God. Consistent with the

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fact that the subject of part I of the Ethics is God and of part II is the human mind is Spinoza’s radical insight (as true to the ontological argument since its initial formulation by St. Anselm in the later eleventh century) that God does not and cannot exist outside of (without) human thought and that human beings do not and cannot think outside of (without) the existence of God. (These formulations are equally reversible, as I show.) Central to the concept of biblical hermeneutics that Spinoza develops in the Theologico-Political Treatise is the golden rule of doing unto the neighbor what you would have the neighbor do unto you (as his or her neighbor), or what he generalizes as the doctrines of charity and justice for all. Just as the Bible provides the standard of interpretation for its readers, so its readers provide the standard of interpretation for the Bible. The Bible must be read from itself alone by its readers from themselves alone. There is an absolute parity between the faith (revelation) of the Bible and the reason (revelation) of its readers. Just as the Bible demands that the reason of its readers be faithful to its demands, so the readers of the Bible demand that its faith be true to the rational demands of their minds. The reciprocal relationship of text and reader is precisely the relationship of self and other that is central to the ontological argument. God does not exist and cannot exist outside of (without) the reason (thought, mind, or idea) of human beings; and human beings do not think and cannot think (reason or be mindful) outside of (without) the existence of God. But it is hardly surprising that hermeneutics is ontological and that ontology is hermeneutical when we recall the formulation of the two great commandments on which, Jesus says, the law and the prophets rest: that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Such is the Miltonic “highth” of the “great argument” of this volume. I show how fruitful it is to read the hermeneutics of the Theologico-Political Treatise in light of the ontology of the Ethics (and vice versa). That hermeneutics (interpretation) is not found outside of (without) the ontological argument for the existence of God and that the ontological argument for the existence of God is not found outside of (without) the hermeneutical relationship of self and other, of reader and text, testifies to the fact that Spinoza can be understood as modern only insofar as he is biblical and as biblical only insofar as he is modern. But to read Spinoza as at once biblical and modern is but to acknowledge that the Bible is modern from the beginning and that modernity is biblical unto the end. While my study of the relationship between hermeneutics and ontology in Spinoza is complete in itself and my analysis of the relationship of chapters 1–15 of the Theologico-Political Treatise and of parts I and II of the Ethics constitutes a complete study, what they also demonstrate is that hermeneutics and ontology are founded on relationships that are at once po-

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litical and ethical. Consequently, they also point to the fact that politics and ethics are constituted by relationships that are no less hermeneutical than they are ontological. Such a conclusion, however, is not unexpected. In the final five chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza demonstrates that democracy is the sole civil state in which human beings exist as truly free and sovereign, for in that state alone do they live by the standards of charity and justice as known in and through the golden rule. He further demonstrates in the Political Treatise that the multitudo freely constitutes the sovereign political authority of the civil state, even when the state is monarchical or aristocratic in form. It is also in parts III–V of the Ethics (together with the appendix of part I) that Spinoza demonstrates that passive bondage to or ignorance of the affects yields to (as presupposing) active knowledge of the affects, which he calls the dictates of reason, whose base or standard is the good (the intellectual love of God) that is universally true and accessible to all—the golden rule of doing unto others what you would have others do unto you. Thus, in the companion volume of this study, on Spinoza’s politics and ethics, I show that hermeneutics and ontology point to, as they presuppose, politics and ethics, just as politics and ethics are founded on, as the true end of, hermeneutics and ontology. I want to add here that neither in this volume nor in my companion volume do I comment extensively or systematically on works either of scholarship or of philosophical analysis that contain points of view that differ significantly from my own. I felt that it would be more productive for readers if I gathered my comments on such scholarly and philosophical studies in two appendices. In appendix 1, I provide a critical commentary on studies relating to Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity. In appendix 2, I discuss the approach that Leo Strauss takes to the Bible, philosophy, and modernity. Both Appendices are found at the end of this volume. Finally, I want to acknowledge the pleasure, indeed, the privilege of having the opportunity of thanking friends, colleagues, and graduate students, who, by so kindly and generously giving of their time in reading and criticizing my work, help me learn to articulate its ideas more adequately. They belong to the larger community of readers, of students and thinkers, to whom the author owes everything. The failings of his study that remain are but his own poor things. Christopher Irwin offers a penetrating critique of my work that elucidates its conceptual framework. Lee Danes provides me with critical support that is unfailingly bracing. John Elias brings a comprehensive vision to his critique of my work that helps me see its details more clearly. Grant Havers is constantly bringing new books and articles to my attention. Mohamed Khimji is a formidable critic of my writing from whom there is always more to learn than I am able. Avron Kulak provides me with critical insight into my work

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that is invaluable. I thank them all. I also want to thank Mark Cauchi, Philip Goodchild, Terri Kulak, Nancy Levene, Shaul Magid, and Martin D. Yaffe for their kind assistance. I am grateful to the members of the symposium on Spinoza and Jewish Modernity, which was held at the University of Toronto on 14–15 September 2003, for the opportunity of benefiting from their criticisms of the paper that I gave on Spinoza’s concept of hermeneutics (a shortened version of section 4 of chapter 2). I am also pleased to thank David Goicoechea for organizing, at Brock University, on 21 November 2003, a symposium on “Love and Desire in Professor Brayton Polka’s book Depth Psychology, Interpretation, and the Bible: An Ontological Essay on Freud.” The symposium concluded with my delivery of a lecture entitled “The Love of Ontology: Reflections on Modernity and the Bible” and subsequent discussion. Finally, I am grateful to the Faculty of Arts of York University for providing me with a research grant that allowed Matthew Sang to serve as my graduate research assistant in the summer of 2004.

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1 Introduction: The Challenge of Spinoza to Modernity

Whatever one generation learns from another, no generation learns the essentially human from a previous one. In this respect, each generation begins primitively, has no task other than what each previous generation had, nor does it advance further, insofar as the previous generations did not betray the task and deceive themselves. . . . There perhaps are many in every generation who do not come to faith, but no one goes further. . . . But the person who has come to faith (whether he is extraordinarily gifted or plain and simple does not matter) does not come to a standstill in faith. Indeed, he would be indignant if anyone said this to him, just as the lover would resent it if someone said that he came to a standstill in love; for, he would answer, I am by no means standing still. I have my whole life in it. Yet he does not go further, does not go on to something else, for when he finds this, then he has another explanation. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling 1 [1843] (121–23) HE CHALLENGE THAT SPINOZA PRESENTS to his readers is the very modern one that Kierkegaard articulates so poignantly in Fear and Trembling. Can we moderns go further than faith, further than being a faithful human being, further than keeping faith with the essentially human? Can we go further than love, further than the golden rule of loving our neighbor, indeed, of loving our enemy as ourselves? They say, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling observes with polemical irony, that anyone, certainly a progressive Hegelian philosopher of the nineteenth century, can go further than Abraham. But what would it mean to go further than Abraham in his faith for his

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God and in his love for his son Isaac? Does Jesus (or Muhammad) go further than Abraham? Does Spinoza? Do we? The challenge that the major texts of Spinoza represent for modern readers is, in one sense, simply that of learning to become adequate readers of them, as is true of all great texts. Indeed, we must learn to apply to them the simple hermeneutical rule that Spinoza famously articulates in the Theologico-Political Treatise for the Bible: the texts of Spinoza are to be read from themselves alone. Or we can interpret them in light of the principle that is central to the Ethics: truth is its own standard. Or we can recall the pair of principles that Spinoza makes central to his third major work with which we shall be concerned in this study, the Political Treatise. On the one hand, Spinoza is insistent that no state can be based on the foundation of reason alone, for we must take fully into account the fact that human beings are ruled by their (non-rational) affects. On the other hand, Spinoza is no less insistent that no state can be said to serve the essential ends of humanity if it is not founded on reason. A more explicitly hermeneutical rendering of the relationship between affect and reason (between what is called in the Ethics a passive or an inadequate idea and an active or an adequate idea) is the paradox that Spinoza propounds in terms of the Bible. The Bible is replete with errors. Yet the fundamental teaching of the Bible—love of God and neighbor—not only is true but indeed could not have been (or be) falsified without the very attempt to falsify it being thereby exposed. If the attempt to falsify the principle of the golden rule were successful, we would not even know it. For we would then be back in what Spinoza calls the natural state (the state of nature), or in the garden of Eden before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in which, as Spinoza writes in the Political Treatise, all human beings are enemies, that is, subject to power that is not their own. What the natural state or garden signifies is that human beings are ignorant of the fact that they contradict both each other and themselves. In other words, they are ignorant of the very nature or law of contradiction itself. To become adequate readers of Spinoza’s texts, to read them from themselves alone, is to ask about their relationship to their past, above all, to their biblical past, and about our relationship to them in relation to their past. What is our past or history such that Spinoza may be said to be central to its constitution? The challenge that Spinoza poses to modernity is that, in reading his texts, we are confronted with how, indeed, we understand or conceptualize modernity. In arguing that we are to read the Bible from itself alone— that is, in light of its fundamental teaching of the politics and ethics of the love of God and neighbor—does Spinoza understand himself to go beyond Abraham, to go beyond faith and love? But how would that be possible if the very principle of interpretation that he applies to the Bible is the principle that, in

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his judgment, the Bible teaches from beginning to end and that could not be falsified without our knowing it? How, then, do we understand, conceptualize, or interpret Spinoza? What is his relationship to Abraham or, more generally, to the Bible and to the history constituted by the Bible in all of its manifold history that is Jewish, Christian, Muslim—both secular and modern? Spinoza argues, as we shall see, that his central purpose in the TheologicoPolitical Treatise is to separate philosophy from theology such that neither is the hand-maiden of the other—in sharp contrast to Thomas Aquinas who, typical of high medieval scholastics, held that philosophy was ancillary to (the ancilla or handmaiden of) theology. But does the separation of philosophy from theology mean for Spinoza that philosophy goes further than theology, reason further than faith, or the secular further than the religious? If Spinoza intended us to believe that he has gone further, if he intended us, his philosophical readers, to believe that we have gone further than Abraham, then he would simply have reversed, and so reinstated, the very hierarchical dualism of scholastic thinkers that he had intended his separation of philosophy from theology to overcome. We may recall that one of the most celebrated ideas of Spinoza—the very apex of the Ethics—is the intellectual love of God. Perhaps the most important claim that Spinoza makes in the three texts on which I shall concentrate here—his three mature texts, written in the 1660s and 1670s—is that knowledge of God is the only knowledge that is adequate to the human mind. Or to put this same claim differently: human beings possess adequate knowledge of God. In making knowledge—the intellectual love—of God the very basis of the ethical (and therefore also the political?) life of human beings, does Spinoza go beyond Abraham? Or would he agree with the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling that, while he does not go further than Abraham—for how can one go further than knowledge of God?— at least he is not to be accused of standing still? He does not go on to something else, “for when he finds this, then he has another explanation.” Spinoza does, indeed, have another explanation of his relationship to Abraham, to the Bible, to what we, his readers, may call the history of philosophy and its relationship to theology: the logos, the word, the logic of God. My study is, in a sense, an extended commentary on that explanation and on the many ways—profound, challenging, perplexing—in which Spinoza advances his explanation. Central to that explanation, to the separation of philosophy from theology, is God. Indeed, in holding that human beings have adequate knowledge of God, Spinoza makes individuals responsible for their ethical (and political) lives. There are no excuses. Ignorance, of God, is not an option for human beings. Readers familiar with Spinoza’s major works—and with the scholarship on the relationship of the Theologico-Political Treatise to the Ethics—are vividly aware of how controversial is Spinoza’s conception of the

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relationship between philosophy and theology, between ethics and politics, and so between the rare individual who possesses true (what Spinoza often calls speculative) knowledge of God and the multitudo, plebs, vulgus, or populus who do not possess true knowledge of God but yet have the capacity, as Spinoza, the first systematic theorist of democracy in history, argues in the last five chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise, to develop a democratic pactum or imperium. He repeats time and again that the biblical prophets did not possess true (philosophical or mathematical) knowledge of God and that the revelations of true moral doctrine that they received were accommodated to their imagination (as distinct from reason) and so to their (inadequate or false) opinions (and also to their historical character, temperament, time, place, occasion of prophesizing, etc.). But, as we shall see, the main burden of Spinoza’s concept of accommodation is that it allows him to account for error—both textual and doctrinal—and thus to distinguish superstition (as false) from religion (as true). It is typical of Spinoza, as we shall see over and over again, to develop his argument—“another explanation”—in terms of opposed concepts that do not directly overlap. The reader is constantly confronted with the either/or alternative of viewing Spinoza’s thought as either contradictory or dualistic (which it unreservedly is not) or dialectical (which it exquisitely is). In the case at hand, the opposed pairs of terms—superstition and religion, on the one hand; and religion and philosophy, on the other—are not homologous. Religion (the religion of Abraham and the biblical tradition of which he is the progenitor) is distinguished from both superstition and philosophy. But religion (or theology: these are identical terms in Spinoza) is not partly superstitious and partly philosophical. Religion—as love of God and neighbor—is true in the precise sense that superstition is not; and yet it is separate from—that is, it is not subordinate or ancillary to—philosophy. Superstition is ignorance of God. More precisely, for Spinoza, superstition is the confusion of the human with the divine, the reduction of God to human ignorance and the projection upon God of human ignorance, consistent with the biblical critique of idols. To claim that God is supernatural, that he operates outside of the laws of nature in ways that are unknown (mysterious) to us, is, for Spinoza, to base (our) faith and (our) religion on (our) ignorance, than which nothing, he holds, can be more unworthy of either God or human beings. What he demonstrates in his trenchant critique of miracles is that, to make use of the formulations of Hegel and of Alyosha and his elder Father Zosima in the Brothers Karamazov, miracles presuppose (exhibit) faith. Faith cannot be demonstrated by miracles. First there is God. Then, existence—life, spirit—is a miraculous creation. Spinoza does not contemptuously dismiss biblical miracles in the later, pseudo-Enlightenment tradition of reducing them to priestly conspiracy, etc. Indeed, with his concept of accommodation

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to the imagination of the authors and audiences of the biblical narratives, he views (defends) miracles as appropriate, in their time, for persuasively conveying the moral teaching of religion and piety: love of God and neighbor. Indeed, the real object of Spinoza’s devastating critique is not miracles (as a characteristic and fitting element of biblical story) but rather their philosophical and theological commentators who, in claiming that they are supernatural and so beyond human comprehension, reduce God to human ignorance (of nature) and then project this human ignorance (of nature) back onto God as a source of supernatural knowledge of which human beings are ignorant. For Spinoza, to explain the known by the unknown is to make God a refuge of (a rationalization of or an excuse for) human ignorance. The result of superstitious belief in miracles as supernatural, than which there is no greater error, is, then, atheism. It is only when we do not confuse God with human beings but truly “separate” human being from divine being that we can be true to each. If God is not supernatural and not beyond human knowledge—the refuge of human ignorance—is God natural? Running parallel to, yet again not strictly homologous with, Spinoza’s argument that God is at once (separately) theological and philosophical is another perplexing pair of terms: Deus sive natura—God or nature. Spinoza insists that the infinite power with which God exists, acts, and directs all things is identical with the infinite power of nature and thus with the natural causes (laws) of all things. For thinkers in Spinoza’s age the scandal was that God had thus been reduced to nature—whence the unhappy accusation of pantheistic (or atheistic) naturalism launched against Spinoza. The scandal in our age is that for thinkers Spinoza’s God has thus been reduced to nature—whence the unhappy accolade of scientific (and atheistic) naturalism bestowed upon Spinoza. Earlier readers of Spinoza were unhappily scandalized that God was no longer the first cause or end of nature in the tradition of Aristotelian scholasticism. Later readers of Spinoza were happy to find no scandal in the reduction of God to the objects of nature in the tradition of mathematico-empirical science. But Spinoza is absolutely clear that God is neither the final cause of nature nor a finite object of nature. God is absolutely infinite and, as I indicated earlier, knowable only in, through, and by the human mind. For Spinoza, we do not arrive at knowledge of God through nature when nature is conceived of in terms of either finite end or finite object. He allows no argument from posterior effect to prior cause, in either the (antiquated) teleological or the (modern) scientific sense. While Spinoza is equally fervent in rejecting Aristotelian final causes and in embracing the new science of nature associated with Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Boyle,2 and Huygens (Newton’s Principia mathematica was published in 1687, ten years after Spinoza’s death), there is for him no argument to but only from the necessary,

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eternal, absolutely infinite existence of God. Deus sive natura. God is (infinitely) natural. But nature is also (infinitely) divine. Has Spinoza naturalized God, or has he divinized nature? Has Spinoza, in his embrace of the infinite power of God as the power of nature, gone beyond Abraham? Or has he rather, in viewing the infinite power of nature as divine, at least not stood still and so entered the battle of existence on the side of Joshua, for whom, in the famous narrative (Jos. 10.12–14), the sun miraculously stood still for a sufficiently long time to enable him to leave the field of battle victorious? For Spinoza we begin, necessarily, with the existence of God, with the necessary existence of the infinite power of God or nature. But who are we, we human beings, who begin with the necessary existence of God, for whom God necessarily exists? Just as Spinoza identifies God with the infinite power of nature, so he tirelessly insists that human beings, like all things (or modes) of nature, are necessarily subject to natural causation. Human beings are not a thing apart but are, rather, a part of nature and subject to the infinite, eternal laws of nature. In harmony with the identification of God and nature—Deus sive natura—we could say, consistent with Spinoza’s thought: homo sive natura: human being or nature. But, as always, the incongruous sets of terms that Spinoza generates (and that we can generate in his name in our efforts to grasp and to articulate his—indeed, our own—thinking adequately or congruously) concentrate the mind (or allow the mind to dissipate and distract itself among contradictions). Just as the equation of “God or nature” does not involve or express a reduction of God to finite nature (or the reduction of finite nature to God), so does it follow that human being—human nature—is not (only) finite as the objects (modes) of nature are (only) finite? Who is the human being such that s/he would presume to know God, the prophets, together with the author of the story of Job, ask? In Jeremiah we read: “I know, O Lord, that the way of man3 is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps” (10.23). God challenges Job to tell him where he (Job) was when God created the world and who it was who determined its measurements.4 Yet, according to the author of the Garden of Eden story, after God cursed man and woman with conception, desire, labor, and death and then clothed them with the garments of skins that he had made for them himself, he declares: “‘Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’”—and he drove him forth from the garden “to till the ground from which he was taken” (Gen. 3.22–23). Consistent with the author of Genesis, what the prophet Hosea finds lacking among his idolatrous people is precisely knowledge of God.5 But on the day of restoration and renewed covenant, the Lord through the prophet promises the people: “And I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in jus-

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tice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord” (Hos. 2.19–20). What is knowledge of God if it is not the ethical responsibility—within the covenant—of knowing good and evil, of walking upright in the way of the Lord, as Hosea says in the final verse of his prophecy? I linger over these key passages of Joshua, Jeremiah, Job, Genesis, and Hosea because the Bible is central to this study of Spinoza and modernity and because Spinoza makes the Bible central to his thought, as we shall see in the next chapter. One of the critical aims of my study is to show that what Spinoza understands by knowledge of God is fundamentally consistent with the Bible. It is precisely this point that most commentators have failed to realize. Indeed, they are, for the most part, silent on the tradition of thought out of which Spinoza emerges, except to say, vaguely, that he is critical of conventional Judaism and Christianity, which they associate with supernaturalism, about which the above biblical passages, it is important to note, make no mention whatsoever. Or commentators make vague claims about the indebtedness of Spinoza to Greek (and Roman) philosophy, without textual proof or analytical demonstration, as they fail to grasp what he means by the separation of philosophy from theology. (There are indeed tensions, ambivalences, and paradoxes in Spinoza in this area, as in others, as I have already begun to indicate and that will be a critical focus of my study.) While I discuss the Garden of Eden story in detail, in light of Spinoza’s engagement with it in all three of his major works, only in volume II of this study, I shall briefly comment here on the most salient features of the passage cited above. The incongruity between the apparently harsh curse laid on Adam and Eve by God and his gracious clothing of them is heightened by the acknowledgment on the part of God that they have become like him in knowing good and evil. Then, lest Adam and Eve also eat of the tree of life and live forever, God expels them from the garden to inhabit the earth from which they (first!) came. But surely three elements of the curse—conception (sexual and spiritual), desire (sexual and spiritual), and labor (both child-birth and field work)—are central to human existence, to the good of created life (to the creation of life as good), even though (as) they involve pain and suffering (bodily and spiritual) or, we may say, fear and trembling.6 What, then, are we to say about death, to which Adam and Eve are also condemned? Having become like God in knowing good and evil, they are expelled from the garden lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever. What would it mean to live forever? God through the prophet Hosea promises to betroth his lover, his beloved Israel, forever. Indeed, the tree of life returns at the very end of Hosea’s prophecy. Through the prophet God asks Israel what the Lord has to do with idols and responds himself: “It is I who answer and look after you. I

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am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit” (Hos. 14.8).7 Early in the prophecy, when the prophet’s wife, like Israel, plays the harlot, God through Hosea says about her: “And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished upon her silver and gold which they used for Ba‘al” (Hos. 2.8). Here we learn that the fruits of the earth are not givens for us to reach out and to take and so to make our own and to turn into idols—of eternal life. The fruits of the earth—all of creation—are the gifts of God. The tree of life—the evergreen cypress—is God himself: “from me comes your fruit.” Such is also the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus prays: “Give us this day our daily bread—on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat. 6.10–11).8 Our daily bread is manna from heaven. It is becoming clear, I think, that the tree of life, in the Garden of Eden story, represents a false conception of eternal life, one based on the givens of nature, from which Adam and Eve are expelled into the creative life of the covenant, in which God is like the Cyprus tree, whose fruits are the gifts of life. Man and woman are created in the image, not of nature but of God. But is this to suggest, too, that God does not enjoy eternal life as represented by the idols of nature? The concept of temporality that is central to the biblical story of creation, sin (fall), and covenant (redemption or salvation) is one that cannot be understood on the basis of either a supernatural (finite) God or a natural (finite) humankind. God is not supernatural in the sense, as Spinoza argues, that he breaks (suspends, renders contradictory) the laws of nature. Human beings are not natural in the sense that they can literally reach out and pluck the fruit of eternity. Is death, then, a curse or a blessing? The Deuteronomist commands us (members of the covenant) to choose life, not death (Deut. 30.19–20). But in the choice of life—note, again, that life is not a given but a gift—what is the place of death? What is the relationship between death and creation, between death and salvation, between death and eternal life (what Matthew addresses in and through his extraordinary series of kingdom parables)? The concept of temporality central to the biblical understanding of eternal life is also that fundamental to the biblical concept of creation. What is the time of creation? When did (does? will?) creation take place? When God asks Job, in the passage referred to above, where he was when God created the world, Job is basically silent as God puts on a grandiose son et lumière show. Job is proper, patient, self-effacing, even abashed, yet ever attentive. He waits on God until his great display is over and then says simply that he knows that God can do all things and that no purpose of his can be thwarted. (This Job had never doubted. For it was only on the basis of his and also God’s commitment to existence that Job had questioned God, to the horror of his three friends, and also of Elihu, all of whom immediately associate suffering and loss—that is, doubt or fear and trembling—with lack of faith, when they are

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precisely the opposite.) Indeed, Job continues, he spoke things that he did not understand and that he did not know (which is precisely what Job had incessantly repeated in his dialogue with God as he sought his response). Previously, Job continues, he knew of God through what he had heard about him; “but now my eye sees thee,” and he repents his words in dust and ashes (Job 42.1–6). The story of Job then ends with God reproving Eliphaz, together with his other friends, for not having spoken truly of him as “my servant” Job had, restoring Job’s fortune twofold, and showering his faithful servant with divine gifts. After reporting that Job lived for another one hundred forty years, the story ends: “And Job died, an old man, and full of days” (Job 42.17). What does it mean that Job now sees God? Surely, the full meaning of creation, revelation, and salvation—of eternal life—is embodied in the temporality of this now. God is not (now) present to Job in one instant of time, as distinct from another. Rather, Job has learned (yet again) that his life is an eternal gift. His creation is now, as his betrothal to (his covenant with) God has been renewed forever. Yes, Job is repentant. His suffering has been terrible (and blameless), for such are the vicissitudes of existence of God’s faithful servant. Yes, Job dies. But he chose life—God chose him—eternally. Just as eternal life does not take place in some contradictory time after death (existence), so creation does not take place in some contradictory time prior to life (existence). Spinoza is harshly critical of the conceptions of creation that he finds in theologians and philosophers, as we shall see, precisely because they are not true to the Bible (although he does not exactly express himself in this way). They read the temporality of creation (and also of eternal life) in terms of first and final causes, thus subjecting both God and human beings to the idolatry of nature. One can well understand Spinoza’s severe criticism of Maimonides, which I shall be examining in the next chapter—and this critique directly engages creation!—when one takes note of the account of the Book of Job that Maimonides gives in The Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides views Job as representing Aristotelian philosophy, which is an inspired thought, given the enormous role that Aristotle played in thirteenth-century scholastic thought—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. But he also views Eplihaz, and not Job, as the true representative of the biblical, or divine, position, which shows us how difficult it is even for capacious thinkers to come to terms with the biblical concept of temporality as it involves both creation and eternal life. It is little wonder that Spinoza dedicated his life to the separation of philosophy from theology! How we understand—together with Adam and Eve, Job, the prophets, and Jesus (and also Paul, a favorite authority of Spinoza)—the biblical concept of temporality and how it involves creation, eternal life, and death, is closely related to how we understand, as I indicate in volume II of my study, the

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famously challenging conception of eternal life with which Spinoza concludes the Ethics. As a preview to engaging the issues involved in the biblical concept of temporality—the time of creation, eternal life, seeing God now, and death—it is worth drawing upon one of the paradoxes central to Fear and Trembling. Faith is said there to be the paradox that “the single individual”— the knight of faith: Abraham (Adam and Eve, Job, Hosea, Jesus)—is higher than the universal, when the universal is understood not as the covenant of single individuals or Kant’s kingdom of ends but as the commensurability of what is naturally sensate (the body) and what is naturally psychical (the soul)—as distinct from the spirit. “If this is not faith, then Abraham is lost, then faith has never existed in the world precisely because it has always existed” (55). I highlight Kierkegaard’s inimitable formulation of the paradox of biblical temporality. If faith has always existed—as universal, as naturally preceding the single individual whose spirit is the creative gift of God—then it has never existed. Then faith does not come into existence with the single individual. Then faith is not the task of every generation, the task of realizing, yet again, the essentially human. We can restate the Kierkegaardian paradox in yet more radical terms. If God has always existed—as universal, as supernatural—then God has never existed—as essentially, as substantially divine, what Spinoza calls the cause of itself (as had Descartes before him) in order to thwart the assimilation of divine substance to the teleology of Aristotelian first and final causes. Again, we ask: what is the temporality of the cause of itself? The use of opposed terms—cause of itself and cause through another; substance and mode; infinite and finite; God and human being—by Spinoza make it difficult for us to see, to begin with, that his conception of the cause of itself is true to the conception of temporality that we find in Job and Hosea. But we recall that Spinoza insists, always, that human beings possess adequate (if not complete) knowledge of God. Clearly, a finite thing of nature does not comprehend the infinite. The ascription on the part of Spinoza of freedom, eternity, infinity, and necessary existence to God (substance, the cause of itself) is, I shall show, congruent with the concept of biblical temporality that I have been sketching here and that I shall develop more fully in the chapters that follow. Consistent with—central to—Spinoza’s concept of God as not supernatural (yet not contradicting or being contradicted by nature) and of his concept of human being as not natural (yet not contradicting or being contradicted by nature) is his proof of the existence of God, which, from the time of Kant on, we know as the ontological argument. What is so extraordinary about the ontological argument is that, in claiming to prove the necessary existence of God—that God exists necessarily, that necessity exists in and through God— it yokes necessity to existence and existence to necessity. Neither necessity nor

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existence inheres, as such, in nature (in the cosmos). If necessity always existed as necessary, in the sense of the final cause of fatality (Aristotle’s unmoved mover), then it has never existed as necessary. If existence was always necessary, then it was never necessary. I painfully go through these preliminaries to grasping the full sense of the ontological argument, for what lies at its core— necessary existence—has been largely dismissed or ignored in modernity (since Kant), except by Kierkegaard and Hegel. But the ontological argument that Kant named in his demolition of it has nothing at all to do with the ontological argument as originally formulated by St. Anselm in the later eleventh century and then taken up again in the seventeenth century, first by Descartes and then by Spinoza, as the ontological basis for eliminating Aristotelian teleology from the new science of nature and further by Spinoza for articulating a conception of political and ethical (democratic) sovereignty. What Kant demonstrates with magisterial authority is that necessity and existence inhere, not in objects of nature but rather in rational subjects (in desire, will, human practice: the bringing into existence of the kingdom of ends). Thus, while Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason destroys the ontological argument, based on Aristotelian (Neoplatonic) teleology—our ignorance of the one beyond being, of what is in itself—in the Critique of Practical Reason he silently reinstates it as the ethics of existence. Kant knows that the other term for necessary existence—when understood as characterizing rational subjects (whether divine or human), not natural objects—is freedom. It has been little appreciated since Kant that the ontological argument is consistent with—it is the philosophical articulation of—the biblical concept of creation (and its attendant concept of temporality). It is for this reason, as I have already noted, that Spinoza is relentlessly critical of inadequate concepts of creation, concepts that make God (and human being) blindly, fatally, dependent on the things of nature. The ontological argument classically states that there is one thing that cannot be thought without necessarily existing—which is God. In chapter 3 I shall examine the logic and meaning of the ontological argument and its place in the history of biblical thought, and thus in modernity, in light of Spinoza’s presentation of it in part I of the Ethics. But, by way of introductory orientation to the significance of the ontological argument, I want to note here how extraordinary is its fundamental feature, the very feature that post-Kantian (modern) thinking continues to ignore even as it presupposes it. What the ontological argument demonstrates, fundamentally, is the necessary relationship between thought and existence. God (the object, or rather the subject, of thought) does not exist outside of its thought (or idea), outside of the mind (or the idea) of the thinker who has the thought that God is the one thing that cannot be thought without existing necessarily. It is equally the case that one

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cannot think without thinking something, necessarily. Thought, as Spinoza argues, as we shall see, is fundamentally active: we necessarily think (will, desire) something. Thought is always given in relation to the other—to content. It is no less the case, fundamentally, that existence is not given outside of thought (will, desire, what Spinoza calls conatus: effort, work, endeavor, power, activity: “striving”). Thus we see that neither thought nor existence is at base a category of nature (and yet, as Spinoza insistently repeats, they are not opposed to nature: they neither contradict nor are contradicted by nature). Existence is not found outside of consciousness: existence is, in principle, self-conscious. Thought is not found outside of existence: thought is not disembodied (or supernatural) but always, in principle, actively engaged in and with existence. It is little wonder, then, that Descartes—with his first principle of “I think, therefore I am”—is the progenitor of modern thought. But it is frequently ignored that the logic of this “therefore” is neither deductive nor inductive. Existence (I am) is not deduced from a prior principle of thought; nor is it inferred from the prior experience of thought. The logic of this ontology, as Descartes especially makes clear in his Replies to the Objections of the Meditations of First Philosophy that he published along with the Meditations, is ontological (dialectical): thought and existence are given together. That is, they are separate from each other in the precise sense that each is mutually dependent on the other: we do not start with (or from) one and arrive at the other. Either we start with both thought and existence, or we make no beginning at all (which is precisely, as we shall see, the position in the Greek world where thought, or consciousness, is fatally opposed to—it is the contradiction of—existence, or being, and vice versa). It is ignored even more frequently that, although Descartes begins with the cogito ergo sum as his first principle of philosophy, the burden of his demonstration is to show that there is no beginning outside of God, which is a precise summary of the ontological argument (that Descartes recoups in his unrelenting onslaught on the Aristotelian teleology that had rendered scholastic thinking in the tradition of Aquinas incapable of adequately accounting for either thought or existence, whether divine or human). In his Ethics Spinoza reverses the Cartesian trajectory by beginning with God and ending with the human individual conscius of self, God, and things. But what Spinoza actually shows us, as we shall see, is that, consistent with his great mentor Descartes, all beginnings are double, split, dialectical— involving, at once, both thought and existence, both self and other, and so equally God and human being. Given the reciprocal relationship of thought and existence that is central to the ontological argument, it follows that the richer or the poorer one’s thinking is the richer or the poorer the subject of one’s thought is. The re-

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verse position equally holds. The richer or the poorer the subject of one’s thought is the richer or the poorer one’s thought of the subject is. The content of one’s thought is necessarily one’s God, adequate or inadequate. It follows yet further that the ontological argument demonstrates the existence (and thought) of God no more (or other) than it demonstrates the thought (and existence) of the human being. God does not exist outside of the thought of the human subject, and the human subject does not think outside of the existence of God. Alternatively, God does not think (will, decree) outside of the existence of the human subject—the human subject is the focus of divine thought (revelation)—and the human subject does not exist outside of the thought (or what Spinoza calls the idea) of God. Because, as I argue, the ontological argument is at once biblical and modern, it raises in acute fashion the question whether modernity is (essentially) secular and whether the Bible is (essentially) religious. In different terms, since the thought and the existence of God, in the Bible, involve and express the thought and the existence of human beings—in their covenantal relationship with God—is it at all evident that modernity is any less religious than it is secular? Is the Bible any less secular (human) than it is religious (divine)? Is the ontological argument itself secular or religious? What we shall actually find, as we probe the thought of Spinoza, is that the ontological argument bears (supports, creates) our concepts of both faith and reason, of both theology and philosophy, precisely as, in separating them, it distinguishes between divine being and human being, between self and other, such that neither is ancillary to (or the contradiction of) the other. Abraham is called the father of faith, and Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy. But who is the father of whom? In Fear and Trembling we read that “the one who will work gives birth to his own father” (27). Does Abraham, in not standing still, get at least as far as Descartes? Does Descartes, in getting at least as far as Abraham, not stand still? In constituting the ontological argument of St. Anselm as the very structure of modern thought and existence, does Descartes not find “another explanation” for not standing still, yet in not going further than Abraham? While Spinoza cannot be said to go further than Descartes, we can also say that he does not stand still in getting at least so far. For he sees what Descartes does not yet see, which is that the ontological argument is ethical in its structure. There is one thing that cannot be loved without existing necessarily (freely), and that is the neighbor. Alternatively, there is one thing that cannot exist without being loved necessarily (freely), and that is the neighbor. Every human being is commanded, necessarily, to love God above all (natural) things and his neighbor as himself (and not as a natural object). It is fitting that Spinoza makes the ontological argument the very basis of the work that he entitles Ethics, which is incomparably the single, most comprehensive (and perhaps

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also the most demanding and, at first reading, the most rebarbative) of any single work in the history of philosophy (or religion?). It is also fitting that in his first great work, the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza makes love of neighbor, the golden rule of loving your neighbor as yourself, the hermeneutical basis of the Bible. While he insists that the doctrine taught by the prophets (together with the apostles and Jesus) is moral, and not what he calls mathematical, from what Spinoza writes we can see clearly that the moral doctrine of Scripture is necessary, for at least two reasons. In the first place, Spinoza acknowledges that the moral truth of the Bible cannot be deduced by reason from prior universal principles. Revelation was (is) necessary; or, in other words, religion is separate from reason and not reducible to it. In the second place, it is inconceivable, Spinoza equally acknowledges and as I noted above, that the doctrine of charity could ever be falsified or lost in the sense of being reduced to error such that it would be indistinguishable from it. For in that case we would have no basis for even knowing that we were in error. Error (or sin) would then be reduced to ignorance, and we would be back in the Socratic world of the fatally blind, contradictory opposition between thought and existence, between self and other. The moral principle of charity cannot be doubted, or, in other words, it is precisely that which makes doubt possible (necessary). What Descartes had earlier demonstrated with incomparable insight9 is that doubt is possible only insofar as it necessarily rests on the selfconscious act of the existing subject who thoughtfully doubts. One doubts something; and, in so doubting, one substantiates the existence no less of the doubter than of that which the doubter doubts. Thought possesses existence; and existence is not found outside of (self-conscious) thought. Love of God and neighbor, as Spinoza explicates the hermeneutical standard of the Bible, is a necessary (absolute and universal) truth. The hermeneutical principle that caritas is its own standard, the standard both of what is true and what is not true in Scripture, is identical with the formulation of the ontological argument in the Ethics that truth is its own standard: the necessary truth that cannot be thought without existing (and that cannot exist without being thought). It is important to remember, always, that Spinoza does not call his concept of necessary existence the ontological argument (although Kant, in naming, as he demolishes, the ontological argument and so saving it as the necessary relationship of subjects, understood with utter lucidity that what was at stake in it was nothing less than the relationship between necessity and existence). Furthermore, Spinoza does not directly relate his hermeneutical standard of moral truth, as found in the Theologico-Political Treatise, to his (putative) mathematical demonstration of the existence of God in the Ethics. Indeed, as I indicated earlier, how he understands the relationship between the two works and thus between religion (as moral certitude) and ethics (as mathematical certitude),

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or between imagination and reason, has been one of the most misunderstood and thus one of the most controversial topics in Spinoza scholarship. But once it is truly comprehended that the ontological argument—linking (as it no less separates) necessity and existence—is at once biblical and modern, and so ethical, we shall be in a position to grasp the profound integrity of Spinoza’s thought. Spinoza typically ascribes necessity to what he calls mathematical (or geometrical) demonstration. But the paradox here is that the content of so-called mathematical demonstration is the necessary existence of God. Notwithstanding Spinoza’s perfervid (or perverse?), naturalistic rhetoric, God is no mathematical theorem but the true—the profoundly, the only satisfying—content of human thought and existence: that in which the human mind finds what Spinoza calls acquiescentia (which I translate as “active acceptance,” given that the term “acquiescence” in English tends to suggest merely passive acceptance). We shall see that for Spinoza the concept of necessity (together with the concepts of the eternal, the absolute, the universal, and the infinite) does not involve logical entailment, when logic is understood to be governed by the law of contradiction. It involves, rather, ontological entailment: that which cannot be thought (or doubted or desired . . .) without necessarily existing (and that which cannot exist without being necessarily thought).10 The paradox here is that charity, as found in biblical revelation, is no less necessary—in terms of the ethical imperative: love your neighbor as yourself—than the putatively mathematical demonstration of the existence of God. Indeed, the hermeneutical strategy that is required to make sense of the tensions, ambivalences, and (yes, at times) inadequacies of Spinoza’s thought is, as I have already indicated, to work through, with careful deliberation, the pairs of opposed terms—those, in fact, that are central to the ontological argument!—that typically characterize it and not to take at face value those formulations whose apparent contradictions can and are to be resolved in light of the truth of their deeper ontological content. But this is precisely the principle of hermeneutics that Spinoza articulates in the Theologico-Political Treatise and that he claims, as we shall see, is based on the method of interpreting nature from itself alone (by the necessary principles of rational demonstration). The hermeneutical circle is complete! We shall apply—we have no choice but to apply: it is an ethical, an ontological imperative—the necessary, universal method of interpretation that Spinoza formulates in the Theologico-Political Treatise to the Ethics (and to the Political Treatise). This method states, with beguiling simplicity, that the Bible is to be interpreted from itself alone. The Bible is to be separated from, so that it is not directly dependent on, the immediate interests (or idols) of the reader. But, since our acquiescence in the Bible involves and expresses active (and not

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merely passive) acceptance, we also have to use our judgment in determining what is necessarily true in the Bible: its moral doctrine. For if we accepted (or rejected) the word of the Bible merely passively, we would be subject to idolatry, than which there is no greater sin conceivable in the Bible. It thus turns out that the hermeneutics of interpreting the Bible from itself alone demands (creates) readers who are called to interpret the Bible from themselves alone. The Bible, together with the principle of hermeneutics that it creates in and for its readers, is itself grounded in the very doctrine that it reveals to its readers, the doctrine of charity. The Bible must love—show respect for—its readers as it also makes them subject, necessarily, to the standard of love that cannot be thought without existing and that cannot exist without being thought (willed). It follows, therefore, that readers, in judging the Bible, are no less subject to the judgment of the Bible. The story that the Bible tells is ultimately their (our) story. It tells the story of its readers—sinful, faithful, rational human beings—as they constitute the community for which and in which the Bible is (and continues to be) written. (We shall have occasion to ponder Spinoza’s remark that there would not appear to be any prophets living today.) The readers of the Bible, while they cannot in good faith aspire to go further than Abraham, that incomparable Cartesian, can, with the alternative interpretation of the ontological argument, reasonably get as far as Abraham without in the least standing still. We have seen that, because the ontological argument—the necessary relationship between thought and existence—is at once biblical and ethical, it separates God and human beings as it brings them into a covenantal relationship one with the other. But the fact that God does not exist outside of the thought of human beings (to think God is to exist humanly) and that human beings do not exist outside of the thought of God (to exist humanly is to think God) means that the ontological argument at once constitutes and is constituted by a beginning, an origin, a principle that is split, doubled, duplicated from the beginning. We do not begin with (the existence or the thought of) God and arrive at the (existence or thought of) human being. It is equally the case that we do not begin with (the existence or thought of) human being and arrive at (the existence or the thought of) God. We—who are we?—begin, from the beginning, doubly, with both human and divine being, with both self and other.11 Yet Spinoza begins part I of the Ethics, which is entitled, simply, “Concerning God,” with the definition of substance in the terms of the ontological argument. It is God, or substance as the cause of itself, alone that cannot be conceived without existing. It is to the existence of God alone that necessity is to be attributed. Right from the beginning of the Ethics, then, its readers are thrust into the position of Job. Where were (are) they when God created (creates) the thought and existence of human beings? Where were (are) they when

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God was (is) defined as necessary existence, when God became (assumes) the conception (definition) of existing necessarily? At the end of their harrowing engagement with the Ethics, do its readers finally attain the beatitudo, the blessing of Job? Do they recognize in the necessary existence of God his omnipotence (that he can do all things) and his omniscience (that no purpose of his can be thwarted)? Do they acknowledge things too wonderful for them to have understood and to have known, because what they heard was based on hearsay (philosophical and theological tradition), whereas now they can say: “my eyes see thee”? In despising, now, their words of frustration and anguish and in experiencing repentance (I assume here the electronic equivalent of dust and ashes!), are they rewarded, doubly, for having, from the beginning, spoken truly of God? Or do readers remain in the position of Eliphaz and his friends, including Eliju (not to mention Maimonides and other great scholastics of the High Middle Ages of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—those posterior to St. Anselm and prior to William of Ockham and Nicholas of Cusa) and never comprehend the fact that the necessary existence of God is the most glorious of human ideas, precisely because it is not and cannot be found apart from or outside of human thought and existence? Just as the ontological argument itself has become largely incomprehensible to moderns, so it has also not been generally understood that the very structure of the five parts of the Ethics embodies, as it explicates, the ontological argument as the necessary relationship between thought and existence, between self and other, between human being and divine being. Part I of the Ethics is, to begin with, extraordinarily incomprehensible, just as Job finds the silence of God incomprehensible, because, while we readers feel the action of (Spinoza’s conception of) God condemning us to the ash heap of innocent (blameless) helplessness, we do not understand where this definition—the proof—of God as necessarily existing comes from or how we are to comprehend (justify) it. But if, like Job, we do not give up on God, if we continue to demand a response from the text, we persevere in our reading. Part II of the Ethics introduces mind—the thought, conception, or idea of God (that we human beings possess); and slowly it begins to dawn on us that God does not exist outside of the human mind, outside of (without) our conception or idea of God. Then, as I show in volume II of this study, comes part III of the Ethics on the affects, which introduces us to the reality of human effort to comprehend God: conatus. But, again, it is all too easy to be seduced by Job’s friends in the guise of philosophical commentators. For how does the endeavor (conatus) on the part of each natural thing (mode) to persevere, as much as it finds within itself (I paraphrase proposition 6), embody (comprehend or justify) the ontological argument necessarily linking divine thought and existence? Yet, that is precisely the question that the friends of Job relentlessly put

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to him. Who is he to question God’s power and justice? Is not the fact that Job is suffering the total loss of temporal fortune—although not of his existence, or of his mind (which God does not include in the terms of his wager with Satan at the beginning of the story)—proof of the worthlessness of human effort? How, in other words, does the conatus of persevering in one’s actual essence (I now paraphrase proposition 7), as Job perseveres, demonstrate the necessary existence of God? Let it suffice to say at this point that the glory, the mystery, the miracle of the Ethics is that (how) human (self-) consciousness, as conatus, comes into existence as the adequate knowledge of God demonstrating the necessary relationship between thought and existence, at once divine and human. At the very end of the fifth and last part of the Ethics, entitled “Concerning the Power of Intellect or Concerning Human Freedom,” Spinoza presents his final, definitive pair of opposed terms—no longer between God and human beings but now between, rather, two human beings: ignarus (the fool of the Psalms who denies God in his heart, or the friends of Job whose superstitious, idolatrous belief in the supernatural prevents them from seeing that necessary existence defines human being no less than divine being) and sapiens (persevering Job). In contrast to the individual who, in his ignorance, finds the ontological argument of the Ethics to be incomprehensible, is the individual whose wisdom is constituted by knowledge of God as necessary existence. “Conscious of self, of God, and of things by a certain eternal necessity, he never ceases to be but always possesses true acquiescence of mind.” By the end of the Ethics the attributes that, at the beginning of the text, were central to God and to the ontological argument—necessity and eternity—are now comprehended as true no less of human beings who are conscious of themselves, God, and things: I think (God), therefore (necessarily and eternally) I am. Has not the reader of the Ethics been doubly rewarded for persevering in his hermeneutical existence until he finds himself acquiescing in its necessity? Spinoza’s challenge to modernity is radical, for it is as old and as new as Abraham. To take up that challenge, which is the undertaking of this study, is to locate ourselves as moderns in the history, in the story in and through which modernity comes into existence and to which Spinoza makes so significant a contribution. We read in Fear and Trembling that “everything depends on one’s position” (75). “Position” here has to do with the stages (or spheres) of existence, with one’s calling (by God), with what is identified in Kierkegaard’s text as the absolutely necessary position: the gift of life as the absolute relation (of human beings) to the absolute (God and neighbor). The position on which everything in life depends absolutely, necessarily, is not reducible to one’s (finite or given) role or status in life, relative to the role or status of others. Spinoza has not been thoroughly or essentially comprehended

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because he has not been positioned absolutely (adequately) in relation either to his past or to his future, which is no less our past (and future). For us moderns to become adequate readers of Spinoza we have to position ourselves such that, in reading Spinoza reading his past (history), we are also engaged in reading our own (past) history. Spinoza’s challenge to us moderns is to think through, once again, how the absolute relation to the absolute, the position that cannot be thought without existing necessarily, is at once our past and our future, both old and new. The simple (meaning: primitive, elemental) reason that Spinoza has not been adequately comprehended; that modernity has not been understood to presuppose the absolutely necessary position of our relationship to the Bible; and that the ontological argument has not been grasped as providing the structure of modern ethics (and politics) is that the success of (the) Enlightenment has obscured for us its familiar, theological roots. Rather, it has not been adequately understood that the essentially human, the position that Spinoza in the Ethics associates with homo liber (the free individual whose meditation is of life, not of death), presupposes the concept of necessary existence and thus the ontological argument proving the existence of God. It is interesting to note that so fierce and timely a critic of religion (Christianity) as Nietzsche acknowledges that that which is most familiar to us, that in which we are most deeply rooted, is that which presents us with the most acute problem of comprehending. Because we are so used to the familiar, because we are so at home or at one with it, it is precisely the canny, the heimlich, that “is most difficult to ‘know’—that is, to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as ‘outside us’” (Gay Science, #355). So Nietzsche himself makes the uncanny discovery that his challenge to modernity that God is dead, together with his own position of atheism, presupposes the concept of truth that is rooted in what he calls the ascetic critique of Christianity.12 To get to know ourselves, to recognize ourselves, we have to become other than ourselves. So once again we make the uncanny, the unheimlich, the alienating discovery that, in order to find ourselves, we have, first, necessarily, to lose ourselves—in the ontological argument; and thus we regain the position of Job as the perplexed, lost, alienated reader of the Ethics. The reason, then, that Spinoza, together with modernity, has not been adequately comprehended is that the relationships that are fundamental to the biblical tradition— human being and God, self and other, thought and existence, philosophy and theology, reason and faith, the secular and the religious—are constantly rendered contradictory when articulated in the oppositional terms of Greek metaphysics (many and one, appearance and reality, matter and form, body and soul, time and immortality). This explains why, as Kant observes, every age has to confront the same old—and new—dualisms of skepticism and dogmatism, of empiricism and rationalism. Few are the texts—of whatever medium: poetry,

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fiction, the fine arts, music, philosophy, religion . . . —that overcome by appropriating these oppositional dualisms and so bear witness to the miraculous transformation of contradiction into paradox. The challenge of Spinoza to us moderns is to see that the very constitution of modernity is founded on the ontological argument, whose fundamentally ethical structure comprehends the covenantal relations of human beings and God of which the Bible gives the classical articulation. If we fail to see that central to Spinoza’s modernity is the Bible and if we equally fail to see that central to the Bible is its modernity, then we shall be unable to grasp the necessity (the absolute truth) of relationship binding together the pairs of opposites that are utterly fundamental to Spinoza and to the whole of the biblical tradition down to the present: thought and existence, philosophy and theology, human being and God, time and eternity. The result, then, will be to lose both Spinoza’s and our own modernity. Spinoza’s challenge to us moderns is that, in order to read him comprehensively, we have to have a comprehensive reading of modernity and so of ourselves. But the reverse proposition is equally true. If we are to have an adequate reading of modernity, and so of ourselves, we must comprehend how and why Spinoza is so very central to that reading. If we read Spinoza comprehensively, we shall have a comprehensive reading of modernity, and so of ourselves. If we do not read him comprehensively—if we are not open to being read comprehensively by the three major texts of Spinoza that are central to this study—then we shall fail to comprehend both modernity and our position within it. In this study on hermeneutics and ontology, together with my companion study on politics and ethics, I undertake to show, in systematically working through the pairs of opposed terms that are central simultaneously to Spinoza, to the Bible, and to the ontological argument—human being (nature) and God, thought and existence, self and other, philosophy and theology—that (how) Spinoza’s thought comprehends biblical interpretation (hermeneutics), politics (homo liber: democracy), and ethics (love of neighbor) within a consistent, comprehensive framework of ontology whose principle and consummation are the intellectual love of God. I combine close textual analysis of individual passages—interpreting the text from itself alone—with an eye, always, to the doctrina, the teaching, of the text(s) as a whole. Spinoza appears to claim, as we shall see, that texts whose truth depends on reason and mathematical demonstration do not require interpretation, unlike the Bible, whose (metaphoric) language, in being accommodated to the imagination of both prophets and people, demands of its readers careful distinction between its literal meaning, its sensus, and its spirit (truth). But the delicious irony here is that the bristling armature of definitions, axioms, propositions, demonstrations and the like render the Ethics utterly opaque until we realize that, as I in-

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dicated above, the necessity of its demonstration is not mathematical but ontological, expressing the necessary (free) relation between thought and existence. Spinoza seems, at times, so perplexed by the infinite resources of biblical language, when combined with our extremely limited (historical) knowledge of it, that his theory of accommodation is easily (and often) misread as reducing language to the imagination of the prophets and people. Since, however, he profoundly understands that truth inheres not in language but in doctrina—in the necessary relationship of thought and existence: the golden rule of loving your neighbor as yourself—we cannot and must not read the Ethics as saying that truth is found outside of language, in the mind or heart, as if it were directly available to us. Indeed, it is precisely the complex interweaving of the propositions and their demonstrations—not to mention the interplay between them and the myriad of explanatory notes, introductory prefaces, and summary appendices with which Spinoza bucks up his “formal” demonstrations— that confronts us with the necessity of having to work through their pairs of opposed terms. For it is precisely the language of the Ethics, not its metaphors, in this case, but its pairs of opposed terms, as I keep noting, that demand that we position them within the ontological doctrine of which they are, when truly understood, so rich an exposition. Spinoza’s challenge to us moderns is to discover that it is solely on the basis of comprehending the relationship between hermeneutics—founded on the golden rule of interpreting the neighbor as we wish the neighbor to interpret us—and the ontological argument—demonstrating the necessary relationship between thought and existence—that we can appropriate, at once faithfully and rationally, the terms of the opposition between philosophy and theology, between human being and divine being, and not be reduced by their opposition to contradiction. Thus, in chapter 2, I shall discuss Spinoza’s conception of the Bible and the hermeneutics that it demands as found in chapters 1–15 of the Theologico-Political Treatise. In chapter 3, I shall show how parts I and II of the Ethics, on God and mind, articulate the two basic elements of the ontological argument, the existence of God and the thought of the human being. In chapter 4 I shall conclude this volume with reflections indicating that, in coming to see—with the eyes of blessed Job—the interrelationship between hermeneutics and the ontological argument, we can acquiesce in the thought of Spinoza with a satisfaction that is as rare as it is profound.

Notes 1. For information on works cited in this study, consult the bibliography. 2. Spinoza criticizes Boyle’s empiricism in letters 6 and 13.

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3. Consistent with the RSV translation, in this study I use “man” (“men”) in the ungendered sense of the Latin homo (homines), which Spinoza constantly uses, and not in the gendered sense of the Latin vir (and its cognates virtue, virility . . .). It would, in my judgment, be artificial to avoid the language of “man” in explicating the thought of Spinoza (i.e., when paying close attention to his language). 4. Job 38.4–5. 5. See Hos. 4.1, 6; 6.7. 6. I omit here that part of God’s curse on Eve that Adam her husband “shall rule over you” (Gen. 3.16). Even if this passage can be saved, I view it, in the spirit of Spinoza, as accommodation (on the part of both author and audience) to the sociological reality (hierarchical gender relations) of the age. 7. I have not attempted to preserve the prosody of the passages that I cite from Hosea. 8. I have transposed these two lines from Matthew. Also see Luke 11.3. 9. Already St. Augustine had clearly seen in the City of God that the fact that we are deceived (or that we are sinners) supports, not the academic skeptics (in the tradition of Plato) but the faithful. We who are deceived (in good faith) know that we are deceived. We are not deceived that we are deceived—about something (necessarily existing). (If we were deceived that we were deceived, then we would not even know that we were deceived; and we would be back in the world of Socratic ignorance.) Thus deception (like Cartesian doubt) presupposes, necessarily, the existence both of the one who is deceived and of that about which one is deceived. Anselm also had clearly seen, in the Proslogion, that, when the fool of the Psalms says in his heart that there is no God, the fool has to be understood as saying (as desiring to say, to communicate, to think, to enact) something. It might well be, we could add, that the fool’s God is foolish (i.e., impoverished or idolatrous in conception). But the fool cannot communicate his doubt (deception) about God to us or even to himself without presupposing (bringing into existence) the dialectic of self and other, of thought and existence, of human being and divine being. Spinoza’s polemic against doubt (that it presupposes the necessary relation between thought and existence) is consistent with Cartesian certitude, as we shall see. 10. Descartes makes clear both in the Replies to the Objections to the Meditations and in his brilliant (and neglected) Search for Truth that the “therefore” logic of the cogito and of its doubting (and thus of the ontological argument for the existence of God) is not based on the law of contradiction. See note 50 in chapter 2. 11. Otherwise, as I shall show in chapter 3, we would find ourselves back in the Greek world of Socrates in which no beginning can be made either in the world of appearances (which contradict and are contradicted by their natural end) or in the world of forms (which, as the end of nature, are identical with their natural end). 12. See On the Genealogy of Morals, III.27 (where Nietzsche cites the aphorism in the Gay Science in which he acknowledges his uncanny rootedness in the critique of Christianity). See Kulak’s study on the relationship between origin and critique in Nietzsche.

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2 The Bible and Hermeneutics Theologico-Political Treatise, Chapters 1–15

In their interpretation of scriptural texts which literally contradict our rational concept of God’s nature and will, biblical theologians have long made it their rule that what is expressed in human terms (anthropopathos) must be interpreted in a sense worthy of God (theoprepos). By this they quite clearly confess that in matters of religion reason is the highest interpreter of the scriptures. . . . Whereas dogma requires historical scholarship, reason alone is sufficient for religious faith. . . . The philosophy faculty does theologians no harm if it uses their statutes to corroborate its own teachings by showing that they are consistent with these statutes; one would rather expect the theology faculty to feel honored by this. But if the two faculties still find themselves in thoroughgoing conflict about interpreting the Bible, I can suggest only this compromise: If biblical theologians will stop using reason for their purposes, philosophical theologians will stop using the Bible to confirm their propositions. But I seriously doubt that biblical theologians would agree to this settlement. . . . Only a moral interpretation, moreover, is really an authentic one—that is, one given by the God within us; for since we cannot understand anyone unless he speaks to us through our own understanding and reason, it is only by concepts of our reason, insofar as they are pure moral concepts and hence infallible, that we can recognize the divinity of a teaching promulgated to us. Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, first part: “The Conflict of the Philosophy Faculty with the Theology Faculty” [1798] (266–72)1

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Introduction: Theologico-Political Treatise, Chapters 1–15 of Spinoza that are the focus of my two-volume study—the Theologico-Political Treatise—takes us into the very depths of his thinking. He views his stated goal of separating philosophy from theology as involving two momentous, theoretical tasks that turn out to be profoundly interwoven with each other: the systematic elaboration of theories of biblical interpretation and of democracy. Spinoza holds that it is only on the basis of a rigorous distinction between religion (theology, prophecy, revelation, faith: Spinoza uses these terms broadly interchangeably) and superstition (idolatry) that we can have a true foundation for freedom of thought and speech and that the only basis for freedom of thought and speech is the political constitution whose imperium (sovereignty: rule, law) is democratic. Not only is it impossible, and thus unrealistic, dangerous, and ultimately contradictory, Spinoza observes, for rulers to forbid citizens to think what they desire and to say what they think. But the freedom of desire, thinking, and speech is also central to the very constitution of what he more generally calls the ratio vivendi: the rationale (purpose or nature) of human life— the reason for which we human beings live. To separate philosophy from theology is to show that religion is opposed to superstition and that, while superstition is inimical to freedom of desire, thought, and speech, religion, precisely because it enjoys an imperium (sovereignty) that is not subordinate (or ancillary) to that of philosophy, is not simply compatible with but is essentially supportive of philosophical freedom. Or we can say that it is only insofar as both religion and philosophy enjoy independently—separately—the common freedom of desire, thought, and speech that each is free to think what it desires and to say what it thinks. Would this common independence of both religion and philosophy suggest, then, that philosophy depends on religion, not in the sense that it is subordinate to religion but in the sense that, unless it promotes freedom of religion, religion will not be in a position to support the freedom of philosophizing? But the relationship among philosophy, religion, and politics becomes even more extraordinary when we find Spinoza demonstrating that there is no religion outside of the civil state, the status civilis. More specifically, he argues that religion is not found in the natural state, the status naturalis (the state of nature) and that, therefore, it has no authority (truth) outside of sovereign, political authority. But what, then, about philosophy? Is it no less subject to political imperium than is religion? Or is philosophy to be found in the status naturalis? But how would that be possible, since Spinoza views the status naturalis as the “state” in which human beings are ruled not by reason but by affects? Would this mean, then, that the sovereign God, love and knowl-

T

HE FIRST OF THE THREE MAJOR WORKS

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edge of whom constitute the highest—the unique—good of human beings, is himself subject to political sovereignty? But how could God, as that in whose infinite existence and power all things have their being, be subject to the political determination of sovereign human beings? Or do we begin to suspect that the separation of philosophy from theology, such that neither is ancillary to the other, rests on the separation of God from human beings, such that their relationship is not (finitely) hierarchical but (infinitely) reciprocal? Is the God of the biblical covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, also the God of the philosophers? Is what Spinoza shows us in the Theologico-Political Treatise that, while the God of the philosophers does not go further than the God of Abraham, he does not stand still in getting at least so far? For what less (more) can the sovereign God of the philosophers demand than a democratic imperium in which sovereign human beings are free to think what they desire and to say what they think? Spinoza does not appear—at least in the eyes of his standard commentators—to advocate (directly) or even to realize (indirectly) the implications of his separation of philosophy from theology that I have begun to draw out. But, as we shall see, it is precisely the dramatic tension among the pairs of opposed terms that are central to the presentation of his thinking—philosophy and theology, theology and superstition, natural state and civil state, God and human being, theology and the political constitution—that makes his thinking stimulating, challenging, provocative, and truly modern as the disciple not only of Descartes but also of Abraham. Ultimately, readers are confronted with deciding whether the incongruity among these pairs of opposed terms reflects fundamental contradiction on Spinoza’s part or deep insight that can properly be called paradoxical (or dialectical). Those who opt for contradiction are faced with choosing between two opposed, interpretive strategies. Spinoza—whose greatness as a thinker is not in itself questioned (or challenged)—is viewed either as contradictory in spite of himself or as contradictory in spite of others. The first strategy, following which Spinoza is contradictory in spite of himself, would mean that at the most fundamental level Spinoza does not know what he is thinking (writing) about. This is always possible but hardly a fruitful approach; and, if true, Spinoza could not be considered a great philosopher.2 I think Spinoza would view this interpretive approach, as commonly found among analytic philosophers, to be one that grounds knowledge in ignorance (praise in desperation). The second strategy, following which Spinoza reduces others to contradiction, would mean that at the most fundamental level Spinoza does not want others to know what he is thinking (writing) about. This interpretive approach, adopted by Leo Strauss and those who follow him, has also not proved to be fruitful, for it reduces Spinoza to the contradictory position of Maimonides, one that Spinoza utterly rejects, as we shall see.

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It will not have escaped experienced readers of Spinoza that these two interpretive strategies, in which Spinoza contradicts himself, either overtly (but unconsciously) or covertly (but consciously), reflect positions that Spinoza himself formulates as skepticism (the reduction of the self to contradiction that follows the abandonment of reason) and dogmatism (the reduction of the other to contradiction that follows the abandonment of the text). In the first case, commentators, in denying that the philosophy of Spinoza is compatible with God and the Bible, view his philosophy as exoterically (i.e., implicitly) self-contradictory. In the second case, commentators, in denying that Spinoza intends his philosophy to be compatible with God and the Bible, view his philosophy as esoterically (i.e., explicitly) self-contradictory. In the first case, readers regret that Spinoza fails (in spite of contradicting himself) to go further than Abraham. In the second case, readers applaud Spinoza for succeeding (in spite of reducing them to contradiction) in going further than Abraham. In both cases readers view the relationship between philosophy and theology as contradictory and oppositional, in complete disregard for the fact that Spinoza’s purpose in separating philosophy from theology is to show that each is sovereign. The alternative to viewing the incongruity among the pairs of opposed terms that Spinoza makes central to the Theologico-Political Treatise as contradictory is to view them as reciprocal and so paradoxical (and dialectical) in their relationship. This is the interpretive strategy that I adopt throughout this study. It allows Spinoza to be true to himself. It allows us readers to be true to Spinoza. It allows Spinoza to be true to his readers. Another way of putting the fruitfulness of this interpretive approach is that it allows us to account for the tensions, ambivalences, and, also, at times, inadequacies (blind spots) in his thinking by comprehending them within its overall consistency. It is not by chance that readers, in interpreting the Theologico-Political Treatise from itself alone—from themselves alone—apply the very principle of hermeneutics to that work that Spinoza formulates in it and applies to the Bible. It is also no coincidence that the principle of hermeneutics that readers apply to Spinoza and that Spinoza applies to the Bible is that which the Bible applies to all its readers—both Spinoza and his readers: love of God and neighbor. The hermeneutical imperative fundamentally at play here is: interpret the other as yourself; interpret the other as you desire the other to interpret you. Every text (that is a text), every person (who is a person) possesses his own principle of interpretation. I discuss in volume II of my study Spinoza’s presentation, in chapters 16–20 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, of the democratic imperium as the status civilis whose freedom of desire, thought, and speech reveals the efficacy of separating philosophy from theology. Still, in working out in chapters

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1–15 his conception of the Bible and the hermeneutics that it demands (presupposes), Spinoza makes distinctions between divine and human, natural and civil, and philosophical and political—not to mention between universal and historical, internal (intrinsic) and external (extrinsic), individual and social, truth and language, reason and imagination, axioms and experience, natural light and revelation, philosopher (the few) and prophet (the people), moral and mathematical—the incongruity of which ultimately demands democracy as its own standard to resolve into fruitful relationships. Otherwise, the result is contradiction, to which either Spinoza or his readers or rather both are reduced. Spinoza frequently compares a truly (adequate) philosophical position with a falsely (inadequate) political position. Yet his ultimate purpose is to show, not that politics is inadequate compared to philosophy but that, just as philosophy can be adequate or inadequate, so also can politics. Thus, Spinoza’s goal is not to subordinate the political to the philosophical—the multitudo (whose principle of love of neighbor is not based on true knowledge of God) to the ethical (the intellectual love of God)—but to argue that democracy is the res publica or imperium that alone is congruent with the truth of philosophy (knowledge of God). We shall now proceed to see whether, as I intimated above, the God of the philosophers, whose sovereignty (authority), according to Spinoza, is infinite and absolute is no less democratic than the God revealed to the people by the prophets and whose mouthpiece is Christ. I shall discuss the eleven key chapters of the fifteen chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise that involve the Bible and hermeneutics in the following order: chapters 4 and 5 (on the divine law and its relationship to histories and ceremonies such as they are found in Scripture); chapters 1–3 and 6 (on prophecy and miracles); chapters 7 and 15 (on hermeneutics); and chapters 12–14 (on the essential teaching of Scripture). I shall not discuss chapters 8–10 (on the books of the Hebrew canon) and 11 (on the Apostolic Letters of the New Testament), since their detailed exegesis is less important for our purposes.

On Divine Law and Its Relationship to the Histories and Ceremonies of Hebrew Scripture: Chapters 4–5 How Spinoza determines (arrives at) his concept of divine law in chapter 4 of the Theologico-Political Treatise and then uses it as the means of answering four questions relating to Scripture that he raises in chapters 4 and 5 takes us into the very center of his complex argumentation whereby the difference between theology and superstition is completely different from the difference

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separating philosophy from theology. What is striking here is that Spinoza begins his discussion of divine law with a generic notion of law as “that according to which each individual thing, either in whole or in part, acts in one and the same, certain, and determinate way”—either from the necessity of nature (i.e., it follows from the nature or definition of the thing) or from the decision of men (ab hominum placito).3 Law that follows from the decision of human beings is what is called right (ius), that is, what human beings prescribe to themselves or to others for the purpose of living more securely or commodiously or for other reasons. “But that men give up or are driven to give up their right, which they have from nature, and to bind themselves to a certain reason of living (ratio vivendi) depends on human decision” (49). Spinoza explains further that, although all things are determined to exist and to operate from universal laws in a certain and determined fashion, human beings are a part of the power of nature, with the result that “those things that follow from the necessity of human nature, that is, from nature itself insofar as we conceive it to be determined through human nature, nevertheless follow, even if necessarily, from human power.”4 It thus follows, Spinoza indicates, that law may be defined as “the ratio vivendi that man will prescribe to himself or to others on account of some end.” But this leads Spinoza to yet another distinction, between the true end of law, which is known only to a few, and another end, “which is far different from that which necessarily follows from the nature of laws” and to which legislators wisely bind most men who, because they do not live according to reason, do not perceive the true end of law. The ratio vivendi is thus held to be the law that is prescribed to men from the imperium (sovereign authority) of others; “and, consequently, those who obey the laws are said to live under law and appear to be in bondage.” When individuals render to each his own on the basis of what the vulgus loves and fears, they cannot be called just. “But he who renders to each his own, because he knows the true reason of laws and their necessity, and who acts with constant mind and from his own decree and not truly from the decree of another, is, therefore, meritoriously called a just man.” In support of his concept of the just man Spinoza invokes the authority of both Paul and Solomon and then concludes: “Since, therefore, law is nothing other than the ratio vivendi, which men prescribe on account of some end either to themselves or to others, thus law appears to be distinguished as human and divine.” While the human ratio vivendi is concerned only with securing life in the state, the divine ratio vivendi “looks only to the supreme good, that is, to the true knowledge and love of God” (50). The extraordinary way in which Spinoza thus arrives at his concept of divine law involves three successive pairs of opposing terms that are not fully congruent with each other. First, he distinguishes human law from the neces-

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sity of nature. Second, he views human law as the ratio vivendi that human beings prescribe on account of some end either to themselves or to others. This distinction involves the difference between the few who, following reason and knowing the true end of law (which follows necessarily from the laws of nature), prescribe the law to themselves and live justly, and the many who, in not following reason and in not knowing the true end of law, have the law prescribed to them (by others) and live in bondage. Third, because law is the ratio vivendi that human beings prescribe either to themselves or to others on account of some end, Spinoza distinguishes between human law (secure life in the state) and divine law (the supreme good of truly knowing and loving God). What is extraordinary, then, is that Spinoza arrives at his concept of divine law by making a distinction from within human law. Equally extraordinary is the fact that, in distinguishing between the many or the political (whose end is a secure life) and the few or the ethical (whose end is true knowledge and love of God as the supreme good), Spinoza appears to eliminate his earlier distinction between two notions of the political: prescribing law to oneself and having it prescribed to one (by another). He appears, in other words, to reduce the political to the bondage of living by law prescribed by others and to elevate the supreme good or end (of ethics or philosophy)— true knowledge and love of God—above the political. All this we find in a “theologico-political” treatise! What we shall discover, however, is that the three successive pairs of terms that Spinoza invokes in order to arrive at his concept of divine law as distinguished from human law will ultimately allow him to bring together the human and the divine, the political and the ethical, within a congruent whole. What finally will count is the concept of prescribing laws to oneself (both individually and collectively) and of not living by the law prescribed by another (whether divine or human!). The concept of prescribing law to oneself is not divine as opposed to human, individual as opposed to social, or ethical as opposed to political. Not only does the concept of prescribing law to oneself constitute the very definition of the democratic imperium (one does not give up one’s natural right but makes it one’s own, both individually and collectively) as distinct from unjust (or unfree) regimes, where law is imposed by the imperium of another. But also the concept of prescribing law to himself—one is not “caused” by another—reflects, as we shall see, two key concepts in Spinoza: 1. human beings are not (only) subject to the common order of nature (where every cause is the effect of yet another cause outside of it); and 2. God is the cause of himself.

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There are, then, two connections which, while Spinoza does not make them explicit, form the very center of his thought, just as divine law turns out to be another name for human law when understood as self-imposed: 1. between the concepts of prescribing law to oneself as individual or ethical (divine) and as collective or political (human); and 2. between the concept of prescribing law to oneself (as at once ethical and democratic) and the concept of God as the cause of himself. (I discuss in volume II of my study what it means to know and to love God as the supremely human good when God is understood as the cause of himself. Again, Spinoza never directly comments on how it is possible to know and to love what is the cause of itself, that is, what is its own cause.) While we have had to take time to reflect on the implicit connections that underlie the concept of divine law that Spinoza develops, he simply proceeds to explain that why he calls this law divine is on account of the nature of the supreme good, which he now outlines. (Once again, we see that he binds closely together the human and the divine, as he presupposes the ontological argument as I outlined it in chapter 1 and will be explicating it in chapter 3.) The better part of us, he says, is our intellect, which, in order to seek our utile (that which is to our own advantage), we should endeavor (conatus) to perfect to the best of our ability. Because all knowledge (together with the removal of all doubt) depends on knowledge of God, our supreme good and perfection depend on knowledge of God alone. Further, since all things involve and express the concept of God by reason of their essence and perfection, the greater and the more perfect our knowledge of God is the more natural things we are able to know. In other words, “the more natural things we know the more perfectly we know the essence of God (which is the cause of all things).”5 This means that our knowledge, that is, our supreme good, not only depends on but also consists altogether in the knowledge of God and that, therefore, “that man is the more perfect on the basis of the nature and perfection of the thing that he loves above the rest” (while the contrary is equally true). “Therefore, he is necessarily most perfect and most of all participates in supreme beatitude who loves, above all others, the intellectual knowledge of God, the absolutely most perfect being, and most delights in it. Thus our supreme good and beatitude are found in the knowledge and love of God.” Having thus indicated that knowledge of things blesses and perfects human beings only insofar as they view them within their supreme cause and end, who is God—for God and human beings, together with their knowledge of things, are reciprocal concepts, we see—Spinoza proceeds to identify means (human) and end (divine) in radical fashion. The means (media) that God, as the end of all

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human actions, “insofar as his idea is in us,” demands can be called his commands (jussa) “because they are prescribed to us as if from God himself, insofar as he exists in our mind; and therefore the ratio vivendi, which looks to this end, is best of all called the divine law.” The divine end, existing (as the idea of God) in our mind, prescribes our human means, the ratio vivendi of human beings, as the divine law. What is human—the ratio vivendi—is divine because it is prescribed to us by God insofar as his idea exists in us. What is end and what is means, what is divine and what is human—or what separates end from means or divine from human—Spinoza renders yet more problematic when he observes that what the means or ratio vivendi is that the divine end demands “and how the best republics and the ratio vivendi among men follow the foundations pertain to universal ethics” (51). Although Spinoza observes that here he will be concerned only with a general concept of divine law—which, in making the love and knowledge of God the supreme good of human beings, is their ratio vivendi—he has, nevertheless, identified the ratio vivendi of human beings not only with the divine law but also with (the best) politics and (universal) ethics. Having only just begun our analysis of the Theologico-Political Treatise, we have yet to discover that Spinoza will indicate that the best republic is democratic and that universal ethics, as taught by the prophets, involves and expresses love of neighbor. Before drawing out from his concept of divine law as the ratio vivendi of human beings four principles, which he will then apply to Scripture, Spinoza makes two additional distinctions regarding the divine law that further complicate his presentation of it. First, he notes that, because love of God is man’s supreme happiness and beatitude, “he only follows the divine law who cares to love God, not from fear of punishment or through the love of another thing . . . but from this alone—that he knows God or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God are the supreme good.” It is carnal man, he observes, who is motivated by fear of punishment and penalty or by love of other things, those that he can touch or eat, and not by “what consists in speculation alone and in pure mind” (52). Second, Spinoza observes that he has now explained what divine law is in contrast with all those human laws that have another aim, except for the laws of Moses. For the laws of Moses, as sanctioned by revelation, are also referred to God, although, because they are accommodated to the spirit and preservation of one particular people, they are not universal. There are three incongruous elements in these two additional distinctions that need to be noted: 1. The distinction between love of God as the supreme good and love based on fear (of punishment) or on lesser (material) goods not only distinguishes philosophy (“what consists in speculation alone and in pure

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mind”) from “carnal man” but also, as we shall see, religion from superstition. This is not a true (or adequate) distinction between divine and human. Rather, it is a distinction between what is adequately divine (and human) and what is inadequately human (and divine). We have already seen Spinoza indicate that knowledge and love of God as the supreme good of human beings are their ratio vivendi. But this ratio vivendi, as the divine law, comprehends both politics and ethics. The ultimate distinction here is not that between speculation (mind) and carnal man (politics). 2. When Spinoza indicates that human laws are those that have another (i.e., not a truly divine) and so a “carnal” aim, we must remember that he has already drawn out (derived) the divine from the human and identified divine law as the ratio vivendi of human beings. 3. Finally, the laws of Moses do not allow Spinoza to maintain a pristine (false) distinction between divine (as speculative) and human (as carnal). For, as we shall see, the laws of Moses (prophecy, revelation, faith, religion) are, in Spinoza’s view, divine, but not speculative, and human (because founded on charity), but not carnal. Spinoza’s greatness as a thinker is due precisely to the fact that he keeps all of these distinctions in play and, with regard to the Bible, constantly allows it to upset (he sees it problematize) his pairs of opposed terms. Spinoza will ultimately acknowledge that he cannot “explain” the Bible and its divine revelation on the basis of reason. The paradox, as I shall continue to remark, is that Spinoza recognizes that the content of biblical revelation (knowledge and love of God, love of neighbor) is identical with the content of philosophical “speculation” and that, additionally, readers of Scripture must use their reason in order to make adequate judgments about the content of Scripture. What Spinoza does not yet acknowledge (directly), however, is that the speculative reason of the philosopher does not go further than the ratio vivendi or faith of Abraham and the prophets. Spinoza is now ready to draw out four conclusions from what he calls (for the first time) the “divine natural law,” which, as we have seen, is the ratio vivendi of human beings: 1. The divine natural law is universal and common to all human beings, “for we deduced it from universal human nature.” 2. It does not require or rest on what Spinoza calls “the faith of histories” (or, in particular, on biblical narratives). Because the divine natural law is based on human nature alone, we can conceive of it, Spinoza writes, equally in Adam or in any other human being and equally in the individual who lives in society and in the individual who lives a solitary life.

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Furthermore, “the faith of histories” cannot give us knowledge of God (or love of God, which arises from his knowledge). For knowledge of God “ought to be drawn from common notions that are certain and known through themselves. Wherefore, it is far from the case that the faith of histories has the requisite necessity whereby we can arrive at our supreme good” (52). 3. The divine natural law does not demand ceremonies as actions that are indifferent in themselves, that represent some good necessary for salvation (i.e., that surpass human understanding), and that, therefore, cannot perfect our intellect. “For the natural light demands nothing that the light itself does not attain but [only] that which can indicate to us most clearly that it is good or a means to our beatitude.” 4. “Its reward is the law itself, namely, to know God and to love him from true freedom and from whole and constant mind” (53). Its penalty is simply the privation of these things, that is, enslavement to the flesh or to an inconstant mind. Having outlined the basic content of the “divine natural law”—it is universal; it does not rest on history; it does not involve ceremonies; its reward is the law itself: to love and to know God freely and wholly—Spinoza now poses four questions about Scripture in light of his concept of the divine natural law. He devotes the rest of chapter 4 to answering the first two questions and all of chapter 5 to answering the third and fourth questions. I shall dispose of his responses to questions 1 and 2 briefly while spending more time on his responses to questions 3 and 4 (on ceremonies and history). Regarding the first question, Spinoza denies that God can be truly conceived by the natural light in the human terms of a legislator (law-bringer). Because, he observes, divine intellect and divine will are one and the same, God’s decrees are eternal, necessary truths. His general point is that Adam, Moses, the prophets, and the Israelite people, unlike Christ, did not adequately perceive the laws of God as eternal (universal and necessary) truths, for their laws involved solely their political (historical and corporeal) wellbeing. “Since God revealed himself immediately to Christ or to his mind, and not, as to the prophets, through words and images, we can understand nothing other than that Christ truly perceived or understood revealed things. For a thing is understood when it is perceived by the pure mind itself outside of words and images. Therefore, Christ perceived revealed things truly and adequately” (55). I shall return later to the pairs of opposed terms that are central here: prophets and Christ (and also Paul); political (historical) and eternal (necessary and universal); words/images and mind. But it is important to note that Christ’s position is anomalous. Christ is said by Spinoza to be superior to

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the prophets, although he will hold that they teach the same moral doctrine. Is Christ then equal to the philosophers? In his second question Spinoza asks what Scripture teaches about the natural light and the divine law. He cites several passages from Proverbs to show that Solomon possessed the philosopher’s understanding that our intellect and knowledge depend on, arise from, and are perfected by the idea (knowledge) of God alone and that “this knowledge contains true ethics and politics, which are deduced from it” (58). He also cites Romans 1.20,6 where Paul writes in refutation of the wicked who suppress the truth: “Ever since the creation of the world his [God’s] invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse . . . ”7 Spinoza comments that “with these words Paul indicates that everyone clearly understands the virtue [power] of God and eternal divinity by the natural light, from which men are able to know and to deduce what is to be sought and what is to be avoided.” It thus follows that men cannot be excused by ignorance, “which they obviously could be if he were speaking about a supernatural light or about the passion and the resurrection of a carnal Christ, etc.” When Paul goes on to show in the rest of Romans 1 that the vices of ignorance are the punishment of ignorance, that we reap what we sow, he agrees, Spinoza observes, with what Solomon states in Proverbs 16.22 (which Spinoza had cited earlier): “the punishment of fools is folly.” Spinoza concludes chapter 4 with the observation that “Scripture therefore absolutely commends the divine natural light and law” (59). In citing this extraordinary passage of Paul, which had been commonly invoked from St. Anselm to Descartes in support of the claim that human beings had rational (extra-biblical?) knowledge of God,8 Spinoza touches here on issues that he addresses elsewhere in the Theologico-Political Treatise, as we shall see. If the Bible possesses and commends knowledge of God that is universal in human nature, what is—for its readers, including Paul—the purpose of its historical revelations involving, for example, the passion and incarnation of Christ? Does interpretation of Scripture presuppose or require supernatural revelation? What, indeed, is revelation or prophecy? How do revelation and prophecy relate to reason or philosophy and also to history? Spinoza deals with these questions in chapter 5 insofar as they allow him to discuss the relationship between both ceremonies and history, the topics, respectively, of the third and fourth questions that he now poses, and divine law. He initiates chapter 5 with a summary of chapter 4: “we showed that divine law, which renders men truly blessed and teaches true life, is universal in all men. Rather, we thus deduced it from human nature as itself innate and as if inscribed in the human mind” (60). It thus follows, Spinoza holds, in taking up question 3, that the ceremonies of the ancient Israelites do not pertain to di-

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vine law (beatitude and virtue), for they were instituted only by and for them to serve the temporal happiness of the body and the tranquility of the imperium. (I shall later examine Spinoza’s claim in chapter 3 of the TheologicoPolitical Treatise that God did not favor the Hebrews above other peoples with special divine election and also his claim, here repeated, that, unlike Moses, who offered a corporeal reward to his people, Christ’s teaching was universal and spiritual and did not involve a particular imperium.) But the opposition between the particularity of politics and law, on the one hand, and the universality of the true life of virtue, on the other, is undercut when Spinoza proceeds to discuss how it was that the ancient ceremonies, which were central to the life of the ancient Israelites, served to preserve their imperium and to render it stable. Explicitly arguing on the basis of what he calls universal foundations, Spinoza summarizes what he views as the two aims of society: 1. security from external enemies and 2. internal arrangements that are essential to all human life, that is, mutual support and aid (i.e., the division of labor) in both daily activities and “the arts and sciences, which are also supremely necessary for the perfection of human nature and its blessing. For we see that those who live barbare without politics (politia) lead a miserable and almost brutal life” (64). Spinoza observes further that, if human beings were so constituted by nature that they desired nothing but what true reason dictated, society would not need laws but only true moral doctrines so that “men would spontaneously do what was truly useful with whole and liberal mind” (64). But human nature is constituted far differently. While all individuals seek their own utile, they seek it on the basis, not of reason but of (passive) affects, with the result that society cannot subsist without imperium, force, and laws that moderate and restrain the unbridled lusts of men. Still, Spinoza changes direction once again when he observes that human nature does not tolerate being absolutely controlled; that violent (i.e., tyrannical) imperia have a short life; that human beings who act from fear, that is, who do what they most of all do not want to do, are extremely dangerous to rulers; that individuals suffer nothing less than serving and being ruled by their equals; and that, finally, once freedom is granted to a people, nothing is more difficult than to take it away from them. From this complex of principle and observation based on (incongruous) pairs of opposed terms—brute life and the blessings of political life, affects and reason, (coercive) laws and society (morality), fear (oppression) and freedom— Spinoza proceeds to draw three conclusions. First, “either all society, if it can be

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done, ought to hold the imperium collegially so that all men are bound to serve themselves and no one [is bound to serve] his equal; or, if few or one man alone holds the imperium, he ought to have something above common human nature or at least to strive with all his powers to persuade the people (vulgo) of that.” Does Spinoza, in the spirit of Machiavelli, truly advocate the second alternative (although these are the terms in which he will proceed to describe Moses)? Or is it rather his purpose to expose Machiavellianism as explicitly self-contradictory (it can be advocated only insofar as it is not advocated)? Further, how can what is universal (innate) in human nature be superior to what is “common human nature”? Second, “laws ought thus to be instituted in whatever imperium so that men are led (retineantur) not so much by fear as by the hope of some good that they most of all desire (cupiunt); for in this manner each individual will do his duty eagerly (cupide).” As we have already seen, the distinction between fear, on the one hand, and blessedness as the identity of desire and the good, on the other hand, is critical to Spinoza. Third, “since obedience consists in the fact that someone follows commands from the authority alone of the one holding sovereignty (imperantis), hence it follows that this obedience has no place in a society whose imperium belongs to all (penes omnes) and [whose] laws are given sanction from common consent. And in such a society, whether the laws are increased or diminished, the people (populus) remains equally free because it acts not from the authority of another but from its own proper consent” (65). (Spinoza also indicates that the opposite occurs when one individual alone holds the imperium absolutely.) Three comments are in order regarding Spinoza’s third and last point. In the first place, it is precisely popular consent (sovereignty) that will allow Spinoza to resolve the tension among the opposed pairs of terms that he introduces and thus to identify (in principle) the blessings of political life, reason, society (morality), and freedom with laws that rest not on the coercive authority of another but on the free authority of a people itself. In the second place, we shall see that Spinoza will introduce a concept of (democratic) obedience to God that is identical with love and charity and so properly compatible with popular sovereignty. In the third place, as I indicated above, Spinoza has now undercut the sharp opposition between the particularity of law (politics) and the universality of virtue (ethics)—between Moses (corporeal reward) and Christ (spiritual truth)—that he had appeared to introduce. (In volume II of my study, I discuss the application of these general principles of politics to the imperium of the ancient Israelites and their ruler Moses in the context of analyzing chapters 16–20 of the Theologico-Political Treatise.) When Spinoza proceeds to discuss the fourth and last question concerning the status of historical narrative—“the faith of histories”—he observes, first, that argumentation can take place on the basis either of experience or of intellectual axioms that are known through themselves from reason. While

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holding that reasoning from axioms (definitions) is superior to reasoning from experience, he states that most people, because they cannot follow the long concatenations involved in reasoning from axioms, prefer to be taught by experience. “Whence it follows that, if someone wants to teach doctrine to a whole nation [in the Hebrew Bible], not to mention to universal humankind [in the New Testament], in order to be understood by all men in all things, he is required to confirm his matter by experience alone and to accommodate his reasons and the definitions of the things to be taught to the understanding of the people (ad captum plebis), who compose the greatest part of humankind. . . . Otherwise, he would write only for the learned, that is, he could be understood only by the fewest men compared with the rest” (67–68). This, for Spinoza, is precisely the case with Scripture, which teaches basic truths about God—that he exists, that he directs and sustains all things with supreme wisdom, and that he rewards the pious and punishes the wicked—through its narratives. “And although experience is not able to give or to teach any clear knowledge of these things . . . , nevertheless, it can teach and illuminate men insofar as it suffices to impress obedience and devotion on their minds. Thus, I think it is sufficiently clear from what I have written for whom and for what reason faith in the histories that are contained in the Sacred Scriptures is necessary” (68). Having distinguished between two kinds of demonstrations—deduction from axioms and teaching through historical narrative (experience)—and so between philosophers and the people, Spinoza then outlines a typology of four kinds of human beings based on their different relationships to history and truth: 1. pious people who are taught the truth by the sacred histories; 2. the impious individual who denies the histories because he does not believe that God exists and looks after things and human beings; 3. the individual who, although ignorant of the sacred histories, knows by the natural light that God exists and directs all things, has a true ratio vivendi, and is altogether blessed, indeed rather more blessed than the people (vulgo) because, beyond true opinions, he possesses a clear and distinct concept of God; and 4. the individual who, ignorant of the sacred histories and also not knowing anything by the natural light, is, if not impious or obstinate, nevertheless inhuman, almost a brute, and without any gift of God. Spinoza will consistently hold to the distinction between types 1 and 3— between pious people who depend on learning about God through historical narratives (experience) and the wise (philosophers) who know God through

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first principles and do not rely on history (or experience), between the many (politics) and the few (ethics), between what is particular historically and what is universal in human nature, between revelation (religion) and philosophy. He will even claim, as here, that those who have true (philosophic) knowledge of God are more blessed than those who, depending on biblical narratives, do not. Still, in undertaking to separate philosophy from theology (biblical narrative), the fundamental point that Spinoza makes is not that philosophy is superior to theology but simply that neither is ancillary to the other. Indeed, he will ultimately claim in the Theologico-Political Treatise, as we shall see, that the doctrinal (moral) truth of Scripture—love of God and neighbor—is identical with philosophical truth. We have also seen him indicate that society (social relations) is fundamental to human well-being, indeed, to human blessedness, involving what he calls a true ratio vivendi (which, we may recall, is the very basis of divine law). We saw Spinoza claim that love of God depends on knowledge of God. Should it turn out, however, that what Spinoza means by knowledge of God (in philosophy) is identical with love of God (in prophecy), then we may discover that his refusal to dismiss the Bible, together with his recognition that revelation cannot be demonstrated by reason, will lead us to reconsider any literal (or simple) opposition on his part between politics (the people) and ethics (the philosopher), between history and universal human nature. Indeed, while Spinoza consistently argues that human beings need laws, since they are not guided solely by reason, still, the formation of a democratic imperium, whereby the people, by popular consent, obey themselves, not another, presupposes the transition from the natural state (of the affects) to the civil state of the true ratio vivendi (based on reason). Spinoza’s conclusion about “the faith of histories” is that it does not pertain to the divine law, does not through itself render human beings blessed, and does not possess any utility—except with regard to the doctrine (teaching) it contains, by whose standard some histories can be seen to be more excellent than others. Just as the people (the faithful) do not need to know all the sacred histories but only those which—possessing true doctrine—move them to obedience (love of God and neighbor) and devotion, so various biblical narratives, by reason of their salutary beliefs, can be judged superior to profane narratives and even to each other. Spinoza notes further that, if individuals have faith in all of the scriptural narratives and yet do not attend to their moral teaching or amend their life, this is no different from reading poetic tales or chronicles. On the other hand, if individuals are ignorant of scriptural narratives and nevertheless possess salutary opinions and a true way of living, they will be absolutely blessed and will possess the true spirit of Christ. But this is not the view of Maimonides and the Jews, Spinoza observes. They hold

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that true opinions and a true way of life contribute nothing to blessedness insofar as they are embraced from the natural light alone and not from the prophetically revealed teachings of Moses.9 This is also the position, Spinoza continues, of Rabbi Joseph10 regarding Aristotle. While Rabbi Joseph believes that Aristotle wrote the supreme work on ethics, omitted nothing concerning true ethics, and lived by these ethical principles in his own life, he holds, nevertheless, that, because Aristotle embraced these true ethical doctrines on the basis, not of prophetic revelation but of reason alone, they did not contribute to his salvation. Spinoza calls the claims of Maimonides and Rabbi Joseph mere fictions that lack support in either reason or Scripture. To refute them, he remarks, it is sufficient simply to report them. Indeed, he does not even have to refute those who claim that the natural light cannot teach anything true about salvation. “For those who grant themselves no sane reason also can prove this with no reason” (70). Equally, to claim to possess a super-rational faculty is no less contradictory. We see in Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides and Rabbi Joseph the extraordinary power of the logic that operates in his separation of philosophy from theology. If one claims that revelation is superior to reason,11 the result is contradiction. For, in arguing for the superiority of revelation to reason, one either uses reason or one does not. In both cases, the result is contradictory (irrational). But then it would follow that the logic that is central to the separation of philosophy from theology is true no more of philosophy (reason) than of theology (faith, revelation, prophecy, religion). In other words, Spinoza, in showing the view of Maimonides and Rabbi Joseph to be contradictory, does not himself hold that reason is superior to faith (revelation). Thus, we have to continue to probe the logic that underlies Spinoza’s pairs of opposed terms—such as between history and axioms, politics and ethics, and the people and the philosopher. Indeed, it is important to see that, in showing that any hierarchical opposition between revelation and reason is contradictory (and irrational), Spinoza does not indicate agreement (with Rabbi Joseph) that Aristotle taught ethical (rational) truth. How would such a view, in fact, be possible, given that, for Spinoza, as we shall see, the sum of biblical teaching is love of God and neighbor, which, in presupposing the equality of all human beings, is a doctrine utterly foreign to Aristotle? Spinoza concludes chapter 5 (and thus his discussion of divine law) with a claim whose logic is central to his refutation of Maimonides and Rabbi Joseph: “we can know no one except from works.” Would this claim not mean that, if (philosophical) knowledge and love of God did not embody the ethics and politics of charity, they would be false? Indeed, Spinoza goes on to remark that he who abounds in the fruits of charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and continence, “whether taught from reason alone or from Scripture

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alone, is truly taught by God and is altogether blessed” (71).12 But thus we begin to see that the phrases “from reason alone” and “from Scripture alone” cannot be held in (hierarchical) opposition to each other. It is also clear, here, that the principle of “works” (of the spirit) allows no fundamental (hierarchical) distinction between reason and Scripture, between the philosopher and the people. Indeed, Spinoza has now silently abandoned his earlier statement that true knowledge of God renders the philosopher more blessed than the people, whose faithful opinions do not give them true (philosophic) knowledge of God. In basing his critique of Maimonides and Rabbi Joseph on the logic separating philosophy from theology, Spinoza highlights the fundamental difference between his conception of the relationship between reason and revelation and that of his medieval predecessors. While both Spinoza and his scholastic predecessors distinguish between reason and revelation (faith), his predecessors, in ascribing to Aristotle (and to Greek philosophers, generally) a true concept of reason, are then forced into the contradictory position of a double truth or of a hierarchy of truth (reason is true, but revelation is the criterion of rational truth). As Spinoza indicates with nearly contemptuous terseness, to argue that reason is inferior to revelation is either to use reason or not to use reason. To use reason in making it inferior to revelation is contradictory (irrational), while not to use reason in making it inferior to revelation is irrational (contradictory). It follows, therefore, that the logic underlying the separation of philosophy from theology cannot be based on the hierarchical opposition between reason and revelation. In other words, the logic in terms of which philosophy is separated from theology must be equally shared by both reason and revelation if it is not to collapse into the contradictory irrationalism of hierarchical opposition. The further implication of the separation of philosophy from theology is that, because this logic is shared equally by reason and revelation, they must both share a common history. In other words, the concept of reason that is implicit in the logic separating philosophy from theology is not found in Aristotle (or in Greek philosophy, generally). It must be compatible with—that is, it must share the same values as— the (democratic) ethics (and politics) of the love of God and neighbor. Spinoza is not yet able to connect directly his concept of transitio—from the natural to the civil state, from affects to reason—with history, with how history embodies universal human nature and universal human nature embodies history. Still, what the logic separating philosophy from theology shows us is that, if we are not to fall into the irrational contradiction of Maimonides (and of his fellow scholastic thinkers of the High Middle Ages like Aquinas), reason cannot be said not to go as far as the faithful practice of Abraham (while it also cannot be said to go further than the father of faith). Spinoza concludes his dis-

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cussion of divine law in chapters 4 and 5 of the Theologico-Political Treatise with the opposed terms of history and human nature, faith (revelation) and truth, particularity and universality. But his sharp critique of Maimonides reminds us that he has also noted that histories (narratives) have nothing essential to do with knowledge of God or human blessedness—except insofar as they contain true moral teaching (love of God and neighbor). But thus we see that the real distinction that Spinoza is implicitly making here is not between history (as particular) and reason (as universal) but between two different types of histories: those that teach true (universal) morality (the logic of which they share with reason) and those that do not (but would reflect a hierarchical concept of reason as found in Aristotle and other Greek philosophers). Spinoza has now shown us that, if we are to have a true concept of divine law, we have to account for its relationship to the ratio vivendi and the histories of human beings while not falling into the contradictory irrationalism of a hierarchical opposition between reason and revelation (faith). I shall now continue to think through the logic separating philosophy from theology by examining the concepts of prophecy and of miracles that Spinoza develops, respectively, in chapters 1–3 and 6 of the Theologico-Political Treatise.

On Prophecy and Miracles: Chapters 1–3, 6 Because the issues that Spinoza views as central to his discussion of prophecy and prophets in chapters 1 and 2 of the Theologico-Political Treatise—focusing, above all, on the distinction between reason and imagination and between mathematical certainty and moral certainty—he takes up again in chapters 7 and 12–15, it will suffice here to summarize the main points that he makes in presenting them. But it will be important to analyze in more detail Spinoza’s claims in chapter 3 that God calls no people above any other and that all nations had prophets. In denying that the ancient Hebrews enjoyed any special divine election or received any special prophetic revelation, Spinoza argues that their vocation solely involved the temporality and corporeality of their imperium, not what is eternal and universal in human nature. In chapter 6 he argues that, insofar as we conceive of miracles as supernatural, that is, as above (superior to) the natural light (of reason)—since God is then held to violate (contradict) the very order of nature that he established—we base miracles not on our knowledge but on our ignorance of God. Spinoza’s basic point here is that, if miracles are understood as supernatural, as reflecting human ignorance (impotence), they will lead directly to atheism. The common thread in the critique of prophecy and of miracles that Spinoza advances in these four chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise is that, if we fail to distinguish systematically

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between (divine) knowledge or truth and (human) error—as found in both Scripture and ourselves—we shall end up reducing Scripture, together with our understanding of it, to contradiction or, in other words, to superstition. If, in following in the tradition of Maimonides, we make the prophets superhuman (supernatural), then we shall reduce the moral certitude of their revelation to their ignorance of philosophical truth. If we view miracles as supernatural or above the natural light (of reason), we shall have no basis for trusting (believing) in either the natural light or God. Indeed, we shall not even possess a trustworthy criterion of miracles, for all of life will have been rendered arbitrary, irrational, faithless, and contradictory, that is, miraculous (and so indistinguishable from the life portrayed in the fabled metamorphoses of the ancients where, lacking meaningful story, any natural being—human, animal, plant—can turn into any other natural being). It has often not been understood by commentators on Spinoza that, in providing a rigorous critique of prophecy and miracles, his aim is not to eliminate them—in the tradition of the later, pseudo-Enlightenment reductionism of knowledge of God to human ignorance—but to preserve (defend) them. The only way in which prophecy and miracles can be viewed as meaningful (and not contradictory) is to recognize that they are based, not on supernatural ignorance (superstition) but on knowledge that is no less human than divine. The point that is always fundamental to the logic of Spinoza is that, if human beings do not have adequate knowledge of God, they will not have adequate knowledge of themselves. Only then, he holds, can human beings account for their error (sin). Is it surprising that this is precisely the position of both prophets and apostles, not to mention Jesus? Spinoza demonstrates with subtle rigor that human beings do not and cannot possess adequate knowledge of (or reliable faith in) the supernatural when understood as that which is superior to the natural light, whether prophetic or miraculous. If God is supernatural, then all human knowledge is reduced to ignorance. We shall see, consequently, that, consistent with his goal of separating philosophy from theology or revelation, Spinoza undertakes to show that prophecy and miracles are not and cannot be supernatural in origin. Neither human beings nor God is supernatural. Because prophecy and miracles are truly divine (but not supernatural), they are also properly human (but not therefore to be identified with what Spinoza calls in the Ethics the common order of empirical nature). To reduce human knowledge to supernatural ignorance of God is to make the Bible and religion, generally, indistinguishable from superstitious contradiction and so from atheism. Spinoza initiates chapter 1 of the Theologico-Political Treatise with three definitions—of prophecy, of the prophet, and of those who receive prophecy.13 Prophecy (or revelation) is certain knowledge of some thing re-

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vealed to men by God. The prophet is he who interprets the revelations of God for those who are not able to have certain knowledge of them and who can, therefore, embrace them only with “mere faith.” What Spinoza intends by his seemingly sharp distinction between “certain knowledge” (on the part of the prophet) and “mere faith” (on the part of the people) he does not here indicate. For it is another relationship, that between prophecy and natural knowledge, which presently interests him and whose introduction at this point renders the opening of chapter 1 at once surprising and dramatic. Spinoza immediately declares that, given his definition of prophecy, “natural knowledge can [also] be called prophecy. For the things that we know by the natural light depend on the knowledge alone of God and on his eternal decrees” (9). Given that the aim of Spinoza in the Theologico-Political Treatise is to separate philosophy from theology (prophecy, revelation, faith), how are we to understand his claim that natural knowledge (the natural light of reason) is prophecy precisely because it (too) depends on the knowledge of God? Right from the surprising beginning of his work Spinoza dramatically challenges the reader to ponder the relationship between prophecy (revelation) and reason. We shall find that his purpose is not to reduce prophecy to (natural, i.e., divine) reason, while he vigorously combats the reduction of either faith or reason to supernatural ignorance. Do we not suspect that Spinoza equates prophecy and reason because he sees, fundamentally, that they share the same logic? Is it not likely that he intend his readers to see, from the very beginning of his first major work, that, while he makes no claim to go beyond Abraham, at least he will not be found standing still as he shows that all human knowledge bears the logic of prophecy? Still, the point that Spinoza wants to emphasize here is that, because natural knowledge is common to all human beings, given that it rests on foundations common to all human beings, it is disparaged by those who aspire to what is unusual and spurn their natural gifts. Moreover, those who speak of prophetic knowledge want to exclude natural knowledge from it. But he repeats that natural knowledge can with equal right be called divine. Indeed, he points out that natural knowledge does not differ from that which all call divine “since the nature of God, insofar as we participate in it, and the decrees of God, as it were, dictate it to us.” However, Spinoza then proceeds to introduce two distinctions between natural knowledge and prophetic knowledge. First, prophetic knowledge extends beyond the limits of natural knowledge; and, second, the laws of human nature, considered in themselves, cannot be given by prophetic knowledge. “But in respect of certitude, which natural knowledge involves, and of the source, from which it is derived (namely, God),” Spinoza observes, “it yields in no fashion to prophetic knowledge” (9). He notes yet further that we are not to think that prophets had only human

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bodies but did not have human minds like the rest of us. Still, although natural knowledge is divine (and can be called prophecy), its propagators cannot be called prophets. “For what they teach the rest of men are able to perceive and to embrace with as equal certitude and dignity as they themselves, and that not from faith alone.” Spinoza explains in a note that prophets, as interpreters of divine revelation, interpret revelation to those who do not receive it themselves and who thus have to trust in the authority of the prophets. However, if those who listened to the prophets were to become prophets themselves, as those who listen to philosophers become philosophers, prophets would not be interpreters of divine decrees. For then the people would rely, not on the testimony and the authority of the prophet but rather, like the prophet himself, on divine revelation itself and internal testimony. Spinoza goes on to observe that, since our mind has the power of forming certain notions that both explain the nature of things and teach us how to live (vitae usum), given that “the mind contains the nature of God objectively in itself and participates in it,” we can then truly state that the nature of the mind “is the first cause of divine revelation.” For the idea and the nature of God dictate everything that we understand clearly and distinctly, “not indeed in words but in a manner far more excellent and that best agrees with the nature of the mind, as everyone, who tastes the certitude of intellect, has without doubt experienced within himself ” (10). It will become evident as we proceed, I think, that the suite of extraordinary ideas that Spinoza introduces at the beginning of chapter 1 of the TheologicoPolitical Treatise reflects his struggle both to limit prophetic knowledge to the Bible and to advance an expansive concept of natural knowledge that encompasses the mind of all human beings while holding that both depend on God in precisely the same way. It is not at all evident, however, that the faith of the people in what the prophets reveal to them can be different in principle from the faith of the prophets in what God reveals to them, given that, as Spinoza will point out later, both have to contend with false prophets. What is it that makes prophecy true? Also, since, as Spinoza observes, those who listen to philosophers have to be philosophical in order to understand them—given that the mind contains God in itself and participates in him—how could this not equally have been true of the ancient Israelites in listening to their prophets? (As indicated earlier, I analyze Spinoza’s detailed discussion of the ancient Israelites in volume II of my study.) On the other hand, while people who hear the prophecies are not prophets, Spinoza equally contends that philosophers, whose natural knowledge is prophecy and who contain God in their mind and participate in him, are not prophets. Yet Spinoza has not hesitated to articulate our (his own!) experience of God in the mystical terms of

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interior delectation. Finally, the two most dramatic claims that Spinoza makes, although they appear disparate, are, surely, closely related: 1. the mind is the first cause of divine revelation; and 2. the mind receives its dictations from God not in words but in a manner far more excellent. The first claim is universal and would as such have to include the mind of both prophets and people. The second claim, while also universal, would as such have to exclude the mind of both prophets and people (who depend on words). Still, as I indicated before, while Spinoza typically presents issues in terms of pairs of opposed terms, we can anticipate that he will continue to work his way through what he understands by prophecy, mind, and words until a coherent perspective on them emerges. Spinoza makes it clear, however, that he will confine his discussion of prophecy to what he can draw from Scripture. For, in depending on words and images (or visions), prophecy surpasses the bounds of natural intellect and cannot be explained on the basis of first principles. Additionally, he declares, he is not aware that we have any prophets (living) today. He observes further, however, that, although “we clearly understand that God can communicate himself immediately to men—for, without using any corporeal means, he communicates his essence to our mind—nevertheless, in order for some man to perceive by mind alone some things that are not contained in the first foundations of our knowledge and cannot be deduced from them, his mind must necessarily be more outstanding and far more excellent than the human mind.” The man to whom God revealed himself without words or visions but immediately was Christ. “. . . Therefore, God manifested himself through the mind of Christ to the Apostles as once he did to Moses by means of a voice mediated by air.” It follows then, Spinoza adds, that the voice of Christ, like that heard by Moses, can be called the voice of God and that the supra-human wisdom of God “assumed human nature in Christ and that Christ was the way of salvation.” Still, Spinoza is quick to add that he neither affirms nor denies Christian teaching about Christ, for he does not understand it. “What I have just affirmed, I gather from Scripture itself. For nowhere have I read that God appeared or spoke to Christ but [only] that God was revealed through Christ to the Apostles, that he was the way of salvation, and finally that the old law was transmitted through an angel but not in truth immediately by God, etc.” Spinoza concludes by noting that, if Moses spoke with God face to face (as two human beings speak by means of two bodies), then “Christ indeed communicated with God mind to mind” (14).

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As I noted above, Spinoza’s conception of Christ is anomalous. Christ is superior to the prophets; yet, because he communicates with God by pure mind and not by words or images, he would appear to be indistinguishable from everyman or at least from every philosopher. However, Spinoza never claims that the divine sapientia or adequate knowledge of God that everyone (and not just the philosopher) possesses is supra humana. Furthermore, the fact that Christ perceived things that are not contained in the primary foundations of human knowledge and cannot be deduced from them aligns him with the prophets and not with everyman (as philosopher). Indeed, just as Spinoza undertakes to separate philosophy from prophecy, while indicating that both depend on knowledge of God, so he also wants to make Christ superior to both prophets and everyman. But the mark of his superiority to the prophets—that he communicates with God mind to mind—unites him with everyman. The mark of his superiority to everyman—that he perceived things not contained in the human mind—unites him with the prophets. It is also important to note that, while Spinoza views the wisdom of Christ as supra-human, he is agnostic about any claims that Christians make about the supernatural (miraculous) status of Jesus.14 Once again, we come face to face with the Spinoza’s conception of the knotty relation of revelation (truth), mind, and words. I should also add that it is not evident that (or how) Jesus (as the Christ) would go further than Abraham (as the father of faith). Spinoza concludes his discussion of prophecy in chapter 1 by formulating yet again three key premises that allow him to pose the critical issue that he will address in chapter 2: the basis of prophetic certitude. First, he recalls that “the mind of God and his eternal thoughts are also inscribed in our mind and consequently [that] we also perceive the mind of God (so that I may speak with Scripture)” (20). While Spinoza then repeats his claim that the natural knowledge common to all men was disparaged by Jews, who boasted that they were superior to others, what is arresting here is that, once again, Spinoza uses the prophetic model to describe natural knowledge. Second, Spinoza observes yet again that he does not know by what laws of nature the prophets received revelations, in words and images, by means of their imagination. His purpose, he reiterates, is to investigate the scriptural documenta (teachings), not to determine their causes. Still, as I indicated before, it remains to be seen how prophetic revelation can be outside of (above) reason yet not supernatural while also serving at the same time as the model of natural knowledge. Third, Spinoza remarks that, because the prophets received the revelations of God on the basis of their imagination, they were able to perceive many things beyond the limits of intellect. “For from words and images many more ideas can be composed than from the principles alone and notions with which all our natural knowledge is constructed” (21). According to Spinoza, the prophets per-

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ceived nearly all things parabolically or enigmatically (symbolically) and taught and expressed all spiritual things corporeally. Although he also notes that, because the imagination is wandering and inconstant, prophecy was rare and did not remain long even with the prophets, what are we to make of his remark that the words and images constituting prophecy (revelation) contain a richness of ideas that is not to be found in the first principles of reason? Is there here some indirect recognition on Spinoza’s part that, while the principles of reason do not rest directly on words and images, they presuppose them?15 While the above limitations of prophecy explain, according to Spinoza, that the prophets did not possess a true (philosophic) concept of God, they do not explain the certitude that was able to arise in the prophets “who perceived [things] only through imagination and not from certain principles of mind.” Spinoza reiterates his position that “whatever truly can be said about this matter must be sought from Scripture [alone], since we do not have true science of this matter . . . , or we are not able to explain it through its first causes” (21). Spinoza opens chapter 2 with his often-repeated claim that Scripture abundantly shows us that the prophets were not endowed with a more perfect mind but rather with a more powerful and vivid imagination. He asserts that the stronger the imagination human beings have the less they are able to understand things and that the more human beings cultivate their intellect the more they are able to keep the brakes on their imagination and not to confuse it with their intellect. “Therefore, those who are eager to investigate the wisdom and knowledge of natural and spiritual things from the books of the prophets totally err.” Because superstition arises from the confusion between imagination and intellect (prophecy and philosophy), “the time, philosophy, and finally the matter itself ” demand that he take up this issue, notwithstanding the ranting of superstition “which hates none more than those who cultivate true science and true life. And, alas! Things now arrive at such a pass that those who openly confess that they do not themselves possess the idea of God and do not know God except through created things (of the causes of which they are ignorant) do not redden to accuse philosophers of atheism” (22).16 While Spinoza does not explicate here the opposition between what is in fact knowledge of God and ignorance of God, we shall see that this opposition does not describe the difference between philosophy and prophecy. Indeed, it is his purpose to argue that, when prophets are viewed as philosophers, both philosophy and prophecy become indistinguishable from superstition. Spinoza states that he will show at length that, because prophecy varies according to the imagination, temperament, and opinions of individual prophets, it never rendered the prophets more learned. But, first, he says, he will take up the question of what constitutes the certitude of prophecy.

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Spinoza observes that, unlike clear and distinct ideas, imagination cannot by its own nature be the basis of certitude, for reasoning must be added to imagination for us to be certain about the things that we imagine. “And, therefore, the prophets were not certain about the revelation of God through revelation itself but through some sign.” Because prophecy needs a sign, unlike natural knowledge that involves certainty from its own nature, prophetic certitude is not mathematical but moral. Still, although prophecy and revelation are plainly doubtful, they do contain certitude. “For God never deceives the pious and the elect,” Spinoza declares (23). But he reiterates his claim that the certitude of prophecy is only moral “because no one can justify himself before God or boast that he is an instrument of God’s piety, as Scripture itself teaches and indicates by the thing itself ” (23–24). Spinoza then remarks that prophetic certitude involves three characteristics: 1. things revealed to the prophets are vividly imagined (as human beings are affected by objects); 2. prophecies are accompanied by a sign; and 3. finally and chiefly, the prophets have their mind (animum) solely turned to the just and the good. It is striking that Spinoza, having distinguished the moral certitude of prophecy from the mathematical certitude of philosophy on the basis of the fact that prophecy, unlike natural knowledge, requires the addition of a sign, now indicates here, without preparation and without further elaboration, that the chief foundation of prophetic (moral) certitude is not imagination (vision accompanied by a sign) but the content of morality. But what, then, is the difference between the prophet, who has his mind turned to the just and the good, and the philosopher, who possesses in his mind the clear and distinct ideas of the just and the good? In other words, what is the difference between the moral (but not mathematical) certitude of the prophet (in the Bible) and the mathematical (but also moral) certitude of the philosopher (in the Ethics)? Not only does Spinoza not undertake here to resolve the tension between the pair of opposed terms—moral (but not mathematical) and mathematical (and ethical). But he then goes on to indicate, giving many examples, that signs (and revelations, too), because they were given to the prophets in terms of their varied (and even contrary) dispositions, opinions, and capacities, differed widely both among prophets and even within a single prophet. More broadly, he points out that the style of prophecy also varied according to the manner of speaking of each prophet. In other words, God has no particular style of discourse but speaks according to the erudition and capacity of each prophet. Another way of putting the same thing is that prophetic representa-

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tions and what Spinoza calls hieroglyphs (symbols), although they signify the same thing, nevertheless vary. In indicating that he will now go on to show yet more extensively that prophecies varied according to the different and indeed contrary opinions and prejudices of the prophets, he adds parenthetically, still without further comment: “I am speaking about merely speculative things, for concerning those things that look to probity and good customs, it is far otherwise to be thought.” He repeats that prophecy never rendered prophets more learned. Indeed, because it left them in their preconceived opinions, we are not bound to believe them concerning merely speculative matters. Spinoza then notes that commentators, with surprising haste, “have persuaded themselves that all the prophets knew what human intellect can attain” (27). Although there are passages of Scripture that indicate with absolute clarity that there were things of which the prophets were ignorant, the commentators try to explain such passages away on the basis of two (opposed) strategies. Either they say that we do not understand such passages (rather than concede that the prophets were ignorant of some matter); or they twist the words of Scripture so that it says what it plainly did not intend. “If either of these strategies is permitted,” Spinoza declares, “the whole of Scripture is done away with; for in vain shall we strive to show something from Scripture if it is permitted to put those passages that are maximally clear among those that are obscure and impenetrable or to interpret them ad libitum” (27–28). Spinoza illustrates his claim of how philosophy perverts Scripture with the famous example of Joshua (10.12–13). Nothing is clearer, he declares, than what Joshua (and perhaps also the author) thought: the sun goes around the earth; the earth remains stationary; and the sun remained stationary for some time. But commentators have adopted two different approaches in their attempt to turn Joshua into a philosopher. On the one hand, many of them (i.e., Aristotelians), in refusing to admit mutability in the heavens, make the passage say something different. On the other hand, there are those commentators (of today) who—in recognizing, more philosophically, that the sun stands still and that the earth moves around it—try to extract the same position from the passage in Joshua, although it openly protests. Spinoza expresses his surprise that such commentators can think that the soldier Joshua was a skilled astronomer and that either a miracle could not be revealed to him or that the light could not remain longer than normal without Joshua’s understanding the cause. “Either approach seems to me completely ridiculous,” Spinoza remarks. “I prefer to say openly that Joshua was ignorant of the true cause of the extended light [Spinoza suggests a possible physical reason for it]; that he and all of the army with him believed that the sun revolved around the earth with a diurnal motion; and that on that day it stood still for some time and was the cause of the extended light” (28). After giving additional examples of where commentators

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twist the plain sense of prophetic passages to make them fit philosophical prejudices, Spinoza points out that, if we claim not to understand such passages, then he does not know what we shall ever be able to understand from Scripture. “Rather, if it is permitted to feign (fingere) that Scripture thought otherwise—but on account of some reason unknown to us—than it thus wished to write, then this would be nothing other than the overturn in every manner of the whole of Scripture. For everyone with equal right would be able to say the same thing about all the passages of Scripture; and, therefore, whatever absurd and evil thing human malice can excogitate to save the authority of Scripture it will be permitted to defend and to support” (29).17 In other words, any claim, however contrary to the sense of Scripture, could be made consistent with scriptural authority. It is striking that Spinoza, in defending this passage from Joshua against both old (Aristotelian) and new (modern) philosophers, does not reject the “miracle” that the sun stood still long enough for Joshua to gain victory in battle. What Scripture plainly says (and intends) is to be respected. If, however, we accommodate the (literal) sense of Scripture, not to the opinions (prejudices, ignorance) of the prophets, but to ourselves, then we shall lose the authority of both Scripture and interpretation. To put this point in another way, Spinoza dismisses, not miracles but miraculous (philosophical) interpretations that falsify Scripture. Paradoxically, it is only if we acknowledge that the prophets were ignorant, that they were not superhuman astronomers and philosophers, that we can avoid reducing their true authority—that they agree on what is right and good—to philosophical speculations (whether true or false, according to our own standards). It is Spinoza’s profound insight that it is only in accounting for error (speculative and also textual, as we shall see) that we can demonstrate (save, liberate) the true authority of Scripture. The separation of truth from error—in upholding the principle that truth is its own standard—is, as we shall continue to underscore, the foundation at once of Spinoza’s exegetical practice and of his hermeneutical theory. Still, consistent with his presentation in these early chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza simply invokes without further elaboration the moral authority of the prophets: their prophecies are authoritative insofar as their revealed content contains the just and the good. After showing with the help of many additional passages of Scripture (including reference to the Apostles) how important it is to accommodate the opinions of the prophets to their ignorance of speculative truth, and not to our ignorance of what constitutes prophecy,18 Spinoza summarizes his findings: 1. God accommodated his revelations to the understanding and opinions of the prophets;

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2. we can ignore the prophecies and things that look to speculation alone and not to charity and the use of life (usum vitae); and 3. the prophets have contrary (opposed and contradictory) opinions (regarding, it is understood here, speculative, not moral, matters). Spinoza repeats yet again that “it is far from the case that knowledge of natural or spiritual [i.e., speculative] things is to be sought from the prophets. Thus, we conclude that we are bound to believe in the prophets nothing other than what is the end and substance of revelation. For the rest, each individual is free to believe as he wills” (34). We are to believe the reason of the revelation but not its philosophical details, about which each individual may believe as more consents to his own reason. Spinoza then concludes chapter 2 with the observation that, while he has discussed these matters in regard only to prophets and prophecy, they chiefly pertain to his overall goal of separating philosophy from theology. It is beginning to become clear, I think, that, in undertaking to separate philosophy from theology, Spinoza is ultimately critical not of the prophets, who are human (like us), not even of their reliance on imagination (with its inherent limitations, he contends), but of the philosophers (and theologians) who endow prophets with superhuman powers of speculation. If we do not separate the true from the false in prophecy, if we do not distinguish between what is truly authoritative in the prophets and what has no bearing on their authority, then we shall end up reducing truth to error, knowledge to ignorance, or, in other words, God to human being (spirit to letter). But thus it is also beginning to emerge that the separation of philosophy from theology involves our being able to see what is true in both philosophy and theology, although Spinoza will never deviate from using the opposed terms of mathematical and moral certitude to characterize their common truth. It is richly ironic that it is only insofar as the prophets are human that they have true knowledge of God, knowledge of the divine revelations of the true and the good, which is only once in this chapter identified as charity but which will become for Spinoza, as we shall later see, the fundamental standard of biblical truth. In these early chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza is fundamentally critical, not of the prophets but of the biblical commentators whose exegetical practice and hermeneutical theory utterly falsify Scripture. Spinoza claims to distinguish prophecy from philosophy on the basis of the fact that the prophets are dependent on signs (unlike philosophers, who are in possession of true and distinct ideas). But then, in going on to indicate that the signs accompanying prophetic visions vary enormously and indeed are often contrary to each other, what he actually shows us is that signs can be understood consistently only as accommodations to the opinions (prejudice or ignorance) of

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the prophets. Consequently, we begin to realize that to distinguish between signs (imagination) and clear and distinct ideas (reason) is to see that prophecy and philosophy share (contain) the same moral content. God, Spinoza says, does not deceive the pious (not to mention the philosophical, as we shall discover, too); for knowledge of God, on the part of prophets (and of philosophers), constitutes the true content of human life. We also now see that Spinoza’s concept of accommodation allows him to preserve the truth of prophecy by distinguishing it from the opinions of prophets that reflect their individual personalities and the times in which they lived. The ultimate paradox—and will Spinoza ever acknowledge this?—is that only insofar as we properly account for the differences between prophecy and philosophy can we truly detect their common foundation in the knowledge of God. Having thus presented with, we might say, studied ambiguity the paradox that the revelations of the prophets are true insofar as we readers properly accommodate them to—that is, distinguish them from—their false opinions, which are based on imagination, Spinoza takes up in chapter 3 of the Theologico-Political Treatise two closely related issues: whether the ancient Hebrews were uniquely favored by God with election and whether the prophetic gift was unique to them. In denying the special status of the Hebrews in either case, Spinoza argues on the basis of the same pair of opposing terms—between the universality of human nature and the uniqueness of historical character—that he invokes in chapter 5. There we saw him argue that the historical narratives of the Bible are a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition of the knowledge of God, while indicating, at the same time, that narratives are to be judged superior or inferior to each other on the basis of their (moral) content. But surely there is a connection between the superior, that is, the true and so universal content of biblical histories—knowledge of God—and the universality of human nature. How did the universality of truth enter the world if not historically? If it did not enter the world historically but is found innate in human nature, how, then, do scriptural narratives contain universal, moral truth? Spinoza, we recall, insists that there is no universal (rational) but only a historical (revealed, faithful) answer to this question. Only Scripture can explain Scripture. Yet he will also insist, as we shall see, that we (have to) use reason in judging Scripture. But if philosophy is to be separated from theology such that neither is ancillary to the other, then surely reason, in judging Scripture, is not superior to prophecy, revelation, history, faith, or religion. Will it also then prove to be the case that prophecy or religion is the judge (that is, that it provides the standard) of reason? In indicating that charity and reason are homologous, it does not seem likely that reason for Spinoza will bear any relation to the hierarchical concept of reason as found in Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. Indeed, this will be

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the very basis of his dismissal of Maimonides as a trustworthy guide to Scripture, as we shall also see. I mean to suggest by the questions posed above that the logic by which Spinoza separates philosophy from theology is no less the logic by which he separates universality (of human nature) from history (of individual character). But it has always proved extremely difficult for philosophers to comprehend that (how) the universal is historical and the historical universal or that (how) the universal and the historical are each eternal and temporal. Still, Scripture, both Hebrew and Christian, has no difficulty in embodying the relationship between universality and history, between eternity and temporality, in the story of the relationship between God and his people. God is at once universal (eternal) and historical (temporal). The people are historical (temporal). How can the people not also be universal (eternal)? Still, Spinoza argues in chapter 3, as we shall now see, that the universal God did not favor the ancient Israelites with a special grace that he did not equally bestow on all other peoples and that God’s prophets were equally found in all the nations, not just among the Hebrew people. The unique vocation—calling—of the ancient Hebrews is to be understood solely in terms of the political security and corporeal well-being of their temporal (historical) imperium, as distinct from what is universal and eternal in human nature and so true of all peoples, to whom God is equally gracious. A careful reading of chapter 3 of the Theologico-Political Treatise indicates that Spinoza has deep insight into both the universality of human good and the historical particularity of the ancient Hebrew peoples (as portrayed in Scripture). The good true for all human beings is absolute (infinite), not (finitely) comparative. It is such that it can (must) be (equally) shared by all individuals and that it can never be of advantage to individuals to (claim to) have more of it than others. My enjoyment of the good can (must) in no sense whatsoever diminish (or eliminate) your enjoyment of the good. My enjoyment of the good is not enhanced by your lack of it. Rather, my enjoyment of the good is enlarged by your (equal) enjoyment of it. Spinoza thus insists that the ancient Hebrews, in enjoying the human good that is God, had no right to claim that they were superior to other human beings or that they enjoyed the universal human good that was not equally accessible to other peoples. Regarding the historical particularity of the ancient Hebrews, Spinoza acknowledges that the five books of Moses, the historical books, the prophets, the Psalms, and the wisdom literature (from Job to Proverbs) richly express, in distinctive ways, what is universally (and not comparatively) good and right as true knowledge of God. But then Spinoza faces the dilemma of how to relate the universal and the historical. Since the Hebrews were historically particular, yet possessed the universally good in divine revelation, it must follow

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that the universal good was found in all peoples or, in other words, is universally present in human nature. The universal God would never favor one historical (particular) people by revealing to them what he did not reveal to all peoples. While never denying that the Hebrews, as a historically particular people, enjoyed the universal good, Spinoza employs two arguments in order to show that the universal good that they possessed was not historical or particular to them. First, he sharply distinguishes between knowledge of things (through their first causes) and virtue (morality) as universal (natural), on the one hand, and laws and society, as historically specific to a particular people, on the other. Still, the opposition between the individual (as natural) and the social-political (as historical), the first universal and the second individual, is hardly congruent; and it is not consistent, as I indicated earlier, with the claim that Spinoza advances in the last five chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise that democracy is the most “natural” political regime. Second, Spinoza claims that all the gentile peoples, not just the ancient Hebrews, had prophets (the chief standard of whose certitude is, we remember, that they had their minds turned to what is just and good). But what is peculiar here is that Spinoza cites no extra-biblical texts in support of this claim. Does the fact that Spinoza provides no evidence, from extra-biblical texts, for his claim that all gentile peoples had prophets reflect a belief on his part that this claim was so obvious that it would be accepted without demur? This hardly seems credible for a number of reasons. First, Spinoza never cites pagan philosophers in support of his arguments. Second, he is highly critical of commentators like Maimonides (as we have seen and as will become pellucid when he formulates his concept of hermeneutics in direct refutation of Maimonides) for reducing the Bible to human ignorance. Third, it hardly seems plausible that Spinoza would have omitted citing an extra-biblical text if he actually believed that it would support his claim about the universality of prophets among all peoples. What is credible, however, is that, while Spinoza argues that all peoples had prophets on the basis of his commitment to a concept of good that is universal and accessible to all, his intellectual probity prohibits him from citing extra-biblical texts in support of that claim, since he knew of none. Does the incongruity between the claim of universality on the part of Spinoza and his refusal to document that claim historically indicate that he recognizes or that he does not recognize that the separation of the universal from the historical involves and expresses the same logic as that found in the separation of philosophy from theology? The definition of the universal good that Spinoza gives in the opening sentence of chapter 3 provides the framework for his subsequent discussion of the election and of the prophetic gift of the Hebrews. “The true happiness and

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blessedness of each individual consist in the fruition of the good, not truly in that glory, namely, that he alone, and others excluded, enjoys (fruatur) the good.” He goes on to say that individuals who judge themselves more blessed because the good belongs to them and not to others are ignorant of true happiness, blessedness, and delight. The true happiness and blessedness of human beings consist in wisdom and true knowledge, not in the fact that they are wiser than others. “Who, therefore, has joy on account of this takes joy in the evil of another and, therefore, is envious and evil and does not know true wisdom or the tranquility of the true life” (36). In indicating that the universal good is true for all individuals, Spinoza shows us that it is not comparative (finite) but absolute (infinite). I am not blessed because the good I possess you do not possess or because I possess more of the good than you do. I am blessed solely insofar as the absolute good that I possess you also (have the right to) possess absolutely. While embracing a concept of the good that is not comparative (relative) but universal (relational), Spinoza gives no indication here that, because its content is charity or love of neighbor, as expressed in and through the biblical covenant, it is at once individual and social. He appears to intend his definition of the good to provide him with the ground for demonstrating that the Hebrew election or vocation was historical and not universal and that, because prophetic revelation bore the universal good, prophets were not unique to the ancient Hebrews. But is it possible, instead, that the definition of the good with which Spinoza provides the reader at the beginning of chapter 3 will become the framework for descrying the incongruity between his concepts of universal and historical? Spinoza indicates that the various passages from Deuteronomy that he cites showing that God elected the Hebrew people before the other nations, that God was close to them and not to others, that he prescribed laws only to them, and that he was known to them prior to the other nations merely signify that Moses used such claims to exhort the Hebrews, who did not know true blessedness, to obedience of the law: For obviously [Spinoza continues] they themselves would not have been less blessed if God had called all peoples equally to salvation. Nor would God have been less gracious to them if he had been equally close to others; nor would their laws have been less just, nor they themselves less wise if they had been prescribed to all, nor would the miracles have shown less power on the part of God if they had also been made on account of other nations. Nor, finally, would the Hebrews have been bound to worship God less if God had bestowed all these gifts equally upon all peoples. (36)

Yet Spinoza acknowledges that God prescribed the laws of the Pentateuch solely to the Hebrews and spoke to them alone and that the Hebrews saw a

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great number of miracles that never happened to any other nation. Indeed, Moses accommodated these claims to the understanding of the Hebrews in order to bind them more closely to the worship of God such that they surpassed the rest of the nations neither in science (sublime speculations) nor in the true life (piety) but plainly in another matter, which, Spinoza indicates, he will shortly identify. But, first, Spinoza provides definitions of four key concepts that he will use in arguing that the Hebrews surpassed other nations neither in knowledge nor in piety but “in another matter”: the direction of God, the external and the internal help of God, the election of God, and fortune. These four concepts can be condensed to the difference between two positions: 1. The eternal decrees of God involving eternal truth and necessity; or the laws of nature (the fixed and immutable order of nature); or the internal help of God; or the power of all natural things (which is “nothing other than the power itself of God”); or the power of human beings (who are part of nature) in preserving their own being; or the election of God (“no one chooses for himself any ratio vivendi or effects anything except from the singular vocation of God who elects him to this work or to this ratio vivendi before others”) (37). 2. The external help of God; or the power of external causes; or fortune. Next, Spinoza divides “all things that we honestly desire” into three categories: 1. Understanding things through their first causes (natural knowledge). 2. Subjugating the passions or acquiring the habit of virtue (ethics). 3. Living securely and in a healthy body (politics). Because, Spinoza declares, the first two categories depend solely on our power alone, that is, on the laws alone of human nature, “these gifts are not peculiar to any nation but are always common to all humankind, unless we wish to dream that nature once procreated diverse kinds (genera) of men” (38). In contrast, because living securely and preserving the body (category 3) chiefly involve external things and depend on external causes of which we are ignorant, they are called gifts of fortune. Although Spinoza remarks that here foolish and prudent individuals are almost equally happy and unhappy, he acknowledges, nevertheless, that, just as intelligence and vigilance are required for constituting and preserving society, human society will be more secure and stable and less exposed to fortune insofar as it is founded and directed by prudent and vigilant men.

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With his key definitions and categories of “honest desire” in place, Spinoza is now ready to formulate the conclusion towards which he has been driving: Through this only, therefore, are nations to be distinguished from each other, namely, by reason of the society and the laws under which they live and are directed; and, therefore, the Hebrew nation was elected before the rest not because of intellect or tranquility of mind [categories 1 and 2] but because of their society and the fortune by which it acquired imperium and kept it for so many years [category 3].

Since the Hebrews had “absolutely common notions” about God and nature, they were not elected by God before other nations because of their intellect. Nor were they elected because of virtue and the true life; for here, too, they were equal to the Gentiles, “and there were no elected [among them] except the fewest. Therefore, their election and vocation consisted in the temporal happiness alone of their imperium and in advantages [commodis]” (39). Spinoza then states that, according to the law (of Moses), the reward for obedience was simply the continual happiness of the imperium and the rest of the “commodities” of temporal life, while the punishment for breaking the covenant was the destruction of the imperium and maximum incommodities. Since the imperium cannot subsist without the laws by which each individual is bound, disobedience on the part of its members would lead to its dissolution. “Therefore, nothing other was able to be promised to the society of the Hebrews than security of life19 and its advantages; and, on the other hand, no more certain punishment for obstinacy was predicted than destruction of the imperium and the evils that then commonly follow, and chiefly those that peculiarly arose for them from the destruction of their particular imperium” (39–40). Spinoza is then careful to add that the laws of Hebrew Scripture were revealed and prescribed only to the Jews. “For, since God only elected them to constitute a particular society and imperium, they necessarily also had to have particular laws. Whether truly God also prescribed laws peculiar to other nations and revealed himself prophetically to their legislators, namely, under the attributes with which they were accustomed to imagine God, is not sufficiently clear to me” (40).20 Spinoza’s point here is evident. The ancient Hebrews, like all peoples, were specially elected by God—that is, thanks to divine external help, external causes, or fortune—solely in terms of the temporal (historical) vicissitudes of their political regime and its laws and corporeal advantages. God did not favor the Hebrews above other nations in terms of either their intellect or their piety. Not only would it be absurd, Spinoza contends, to think that nature (expressing the power of God) could “procreate” different genera of human beings; but also the Hebrews, with their “vulgar” understanding of God, were not superior

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to the Gentiles in intellect and were simply equal to them in piety and virtue (true life). By brilliantly applying to the ancient Hebrews the premises that he had set out, Spinoza achieves two purposes simultaneously. First, the ancient Hebrews were not superior by reason of divine election (or by what is eternal, that is, internal to human nature) to other nations in either intellect or virtue (ethics). Second, they enjoyed God’s special vocation or election solely in the temporal (historical) sphere of their imperium (covenant) and its laws, which provided them with the corporeal or external commodities of security and well-being. The result of Spinoza’s argumentation, then, is that the Hebrews are like all other peoples in two opposed senses. In the “honest desires” of intellect and virtue (ethics), all individuals, by universal human nature, are the same. In society, they are also the same, since all particular, political regimes, together with their laws and commodities, universally reflect, not eternal human nature, but external causes and fortune. In other words, all individuals are universally (internally, eternally, and naturally) the same insofar as they are not individually the same socially and politically, while all social and political regimes are universally the same (externally, temporally but also naturally) insofar as they are not individually the same. Whereas the first two categories of “honest desires” are individual and ethical—at once internal, eternal, universal, and natural—the third category is social and political—at once external, temporal, particular, but also natural. The Hebrews can claim superiority neither in what is eternal and so universal (internal) to all individuals—intellect and virtue— nor in what is temporal and so individual (external) to all peoples—the sociopolitical. Where Spinoza is most knotty in his argumentation, as here, it is important to take careful account of its opposing terms so that we do not fail to understand it either by simply accepting or by simply rejecting its terms as oppositional. My intent has been to provide an accurate representation of the terms central to his argument, while suggesting, at the same time, their inherent ambiguity or instability. Spinoza does not directly indicate here that the pairs of opposed terms that he uses to describe the “honest desires” of intellect-virtue and political-bodily well-being—internal and external, eternal and temporal, individual and social, universal (necessary or free) and particular (necessary or enslaved)—fail to do justice, unless carefully comprehended, to what he understands by either politics or ethics and their relationship in his three great works that are under investigation in the two volumes of my study. It is, however, inherently unlikely that what is individual (naturally) and what is socialpolitical (externally) can be so divided.21 Either Spinoza commits an elemental error in opposing individual (as universal but not historical) and social (as individual and historical). Or there is more at stake here in his oppositional terms than meets the eye. Most fundamental is his complex use of the term

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(human) nature, as we have seen earlier and shall continue to observe. For in both ethics and politics reason will emerge as what is truly natural (divine) because expressive of the human (divine or natural) power of human beings, at once individual and social, to overcome enslavement to the affects (natural passions), that is, to integrate the affects (human powers) ethically and politically into human life. It is surely scandalous that Spinoza, who is so critical of the conventional concept of creation, which reflects ignorance (not knowledge) of God, indulges in the use of the term “procreation” to state that nature could not procreate different genera of human beings. For he thus confuses (pro)creation—of human beings as distinct from nature (that is, as made in the image of God)—with generation, with the genera of nature. Insofar as human beings were simply one genus among other natural genera, without their own (universal and individual) ingenium, Spinoza would never be able to argue for the difference between freedom and slavery or between active (adequate) and passive (inadequate) ideas. Not only does the logic involving pairs of opposed terms indicate without fail that there is more at stake in the argumentation that Spinoza develops than is, at first, evident, but there are also other clues in the passage that I am presently discussing that, in pointing to its inherent instability, are important to note. Although Spinoza claims that political regimes are the result of external causes or fortune and not of (internal) human intellect and virtue, he observes, nonetheless, as we saw, that regimes can be secure and supportive of human well-being and least subject to fortune only when they are run by prudent and vigilant men. (This is actually a version of his standard paradox. If human beings lived purely according to the honest desires of intellect and virtue, they would have no need of laws; but, since human beings live, not by the guidance of reason but by the domination of affects, they need regimes of laws. Nevertheless, the distinction between free [democratic or truly human] regimes and oppressive [inhuman] regimes embodies the very distinction between reason and affects.) Further, when Spinoza locates what he calls “the power of human beings (who are part of nature) in preserving their own being” within the eternal decrees of God (as the power of nature) or the internal help of God, he expresses a version of his idea of conatus, which, in the Ethics, becomes the very basis of freedom (and of the intellectual love of God). Perhaps the most important clue warning his readers to proceed with caution in assessing the pairs of opposed terms that Spinoza employs in his argumentation is the one that he himself introduces in the final sentence of the passage that we are presently considering. There he states, as we saw, that it is not sufficiently clear to him whether “God also prescribed laws peculiar to other nations and revealed himself prophetically to their legislators” (40). As one who often cites ancient historians—Josephus, Curtius, Tacitus—and is

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evidently familiar with Machiavelli’s Discourses (on the Roman republic), surely, if Spinoza did not find in these authors any evidence of divine revelation among the gentiles, he should have said, rather: it is sufficiently clear from my reading in and about the ancients that God did not prescribe laws peculiar to them by revealing himself to them through individual prophets. This stunning lack of clarity (this clearly stunning lack of evidence) on the part of Spinoza sets the stage for his comprehensive conclusion, which contains its own surprises. Since God is equally gracious to all peoples and elected the Hebrews solely by reason of their society and imperium, it follows, he declares, that the individual Jew, considered alone outside of [his] society and imperium,22 possesses no gift of God above others and that there is no difference between him and a Gentile. Since, therefore, it is true that God is equally kind, merciful, etc., to all men and that the office of prophet was not so much to teach laws peculiar to a patria as true virtue and to warn men about it, there is no doubt that all nations had prophets and that the prophetic gift was not peculiar to the Jews. To this profane as well as sacred histories also truly testify; and, although it is not clear from the sacred histories of the Old Testament that other nations had as many prophets as the Hebrews, rather, that no gentile prophet was expressly sent by God to the nations, that means nothing, for the Hebrews were concerned to write only about their own affairs and not, however, about those of other peoples. (42)

Now, while Spinoza does not here qualify his claim that all the nations had prophets or that the prophetic gift was not peculiar to the Jews, he now formulates it in significantly different terms. Since God is equally gracious to all nations and since prophecy primarily involves the teaching of true (universal) virtue and not the teaching of laws peculiar to an individual patria, it follows that prophecy was not unique to the Jews but was found among all peoples. The logic that Spinoza employs here he intends to allow him to distinguish between what is universal among all peoples and what is peculiar (individual) to the Jews—when combined with his claim that both profane and sacred histories testify to this fact. But when, once again, he provides no evidence from profane (or gentile) histories for his claim, we can see that he cannot argue that, because (all) the nations possessed prophets, with their message of virtue, it then follows that the Hebrews, in possessing prophets, who taught them virtue, were not unique. Rather, his logic goes in the opposite direction. Because the Hebrews had prophets, who taught universally true virtue, and because God is equally gracious to all peoples, it follows, then—even when there is no evidence that Spinoza can honestly provide—that all nations possessed universally true virtue taught to them by their prophets. Thus, the very

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lack of evidence for gentile virtue or prophecy suggests that what Spinoza actually demonstrates is the opposite of what he intends to demonstrate: namely, that prophets, with their message of virtue—which already earlier we saw him call charity (love of neighbor)—were unique to the Hebrews while being absent from all other nations. It is also striking that, while Spinoza argued earlier, as we saw, for a sharp distinction between virtue, as innate or universal in human nature, and the political regime, as peculiar to the Hebrews as to all peoples, now he says that the prophets chiefly teach what is true and eternal, not what is merely external and temporal. Surely, we conclude, then, that the opposition between (ethical) virtue and (political) laws that Spinoza claims to establish is not coherent, when taken literally. Indeed, in having, in addition to his universal definitions, solely the Bible to support his claims that gentile peoples also had prophets who taught them universal virtue, we begin to suspect that what the Bible actually reveals to us is not only that the ancient Hebrew prophets, with their message of universal virtue, were unique to the Jews and were not found among other ancient peoples, but also, perhaps even more dramatically, that Scripture is the source of the concepts of true virtue and the true life that Spinoza (rightly) holds to be universal. Still, Spinoza claims to advance yet further biblical evidence as proof that the gentile nations also had prophets.23 He notes that there are figures in Hebrew Scripture who, while gentile and uncircumcised, prophesied to the Jews, for example, Noah, Enoch, Abimelech, and Balaam. Furthermore, God sent Hebrew prophets not only to their own people but also to many other nations, for example, Ezekiel, Obadiah, Jonah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. As for Balaam, not only did he have his mind turned solely to the just and the good, as a true prophet, but also he was approvingly called by Joshua (13.22) a diviner or augur. The fact that the prophet Balaam was identified with pagan seers leads Spinoza to declare that those whom the gentiles called augurs or divines were true prophets, while those whom Scripture often condemns were pseudodivines who deceived the gentiles, just as pseudo-prophets also deceived the Jews. Spinoza then concludes chapter 3 with the statement that, if there are those who want to claim that the Jews were eternally elected by God, he will not oppose them “so long as it is clear that this election, whether temporal or eternal, insofar as it is peculiar only to the Jews, is in respect solely of the imperium and the commodities of the body (since this alone can distinguish one nation from another). But by reason of intellect and true virtue no nation can be distinguished from another, and, therefore, in these things one nation is not elected by God before another” (48). We shall be able to attain an overall perspective on Spinoza’s argumentation in the early chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise solely in light of his

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hermeneutical theory in chapters 7 and 15 and of his idea of charity (love of neighbor) in chapters 12–14 (together with his concept of democracy in chapters 16–20, including a detailed discussion of the ancient Hebrew imperium). Still, it is already becoming evident, I think, that Spinoza, while arguing that where the ancient Hebrews were universal, in having prophets who taught true virtue, they were universally like all the other (individual) nations and that where they were individual, in having a unique political regimen, they were also universally like all the other (individual) nations, demonstrates in fact quite the opposite. Furthermore, although he claims that not only the ancient Israelites but also all the Gentile nations had prophets through whom God revealed to them divine knowledge and virtue (the true way of life), he provides no evidence whatsoever for this claim from Gentile sources. We can properly hold Spinoza in high esteem for his deep commitment to a concept of universal good that is accessible to and to be shared by all human beings. He remains true to Scripture by upholding prophetic teaching as universal and not reducing it, in the tradition of medieval scholasticism, to what he calls Aristotelian (pagan) trifles (nugae). He claims that the Gentiles had prophets through whom God revealed to them the just and the good. Yet he scrupulously refrains from twisting prophetic revelation to accommodate it to pagan ideas, thus embodying in his own exegetical practice his critique of commentators like Maimonides. As I have already indicated, Spinoza uses the concept of accommodation to separate truth (both conceptual and textual) from error. Here, in chapter 3, while appearing to be extremely critical of the ancient Hebrews and to hold the Gentile peoples in high favor, Spinoza actually uses the concept of accommodation to protect Scripture from contamination by (or reduction to) pagan ideas. In other words, just as Spinoza argues that God accommodates his revelations to the common (non-speculative) understanding of both prophets and people in order to keep its truth from being reduced (accommodated) to error, it is no less the same commitment to truth on his part that keeps him from accommodating (reducing) prophetic revelation of the truth to pagan ignorance of the truth. It is thus important to see that, although Spinoza insists upon the fact that all ancient peoples, not just the Jews, had prophets, what is really at stake here is the content of biblical prophecy. Not only does Spinoza give no evidence that the Gentile peoples had prophets, but, more significantly, he does not claim (or attempt to argue) that they possessed either natural (divine) knowledge or true (eternal) virtue. But what Spinoza does not appear to show evidence of understanding, as I indicated before, is that the separation of the universal from what is particular, individual, social, political, and historical bears the same logic as the separation of philosophy from theology. In order for one side not to be ancillary to the other side, both must be equally and indepen-

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dently true. Still, in claiming that the political regimen is temporal (historical) and not eternal, external and not internal, legal and not ethical, the opposition between individual (social-political) and universal (individual) would become contradictory if taken literally, as I have already noted. Moreover, if these pairs of opposed terms were contradictory, Spinoza would then be unable to develop a concept of politics as democratic that is consistent with (the universally ethical principle of) love of neighbor, which is the standard of prophetic or biblical truth. But that is specifically the concept that he does develop, as I show in volume II of this study. Let it suffice, then, for the moment to say that, precisely because (or insofar as) Spinoza adheres to prophetic revelation as true, he will ultimately conceive of the (contradictory) opposition between universal (natural) and individual (historical) in the (paradoxical) terms of the separation of philosophy from theology. To take the Bible seriously, on its own terms, to make the Bible the standard both of its truth and of its falsehood, is to find, always, that at the same time it provides the standard for distinguishing between truth and falsehood in one’s own philosophy. The biblical Hamlet24 reminds Horatio, who, at the end of Shakespeare’s play, wants to die like an antique Roman, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his pagan philosophy. When Spinoza takes up discussion of miracles in chapter 6 of the TheologicoPolitical Treatise, the fundamental point that he is concerned to make is that miracles must be based on knowledge, not on ignorance.25 Otherwise, he argues, we shall have no way of distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, truth from error. If we call knowledge that surpasses human understanding divine or miraculous or if we call works whose cause is unknown to us a miracle of God, then not only do we reduce God to human ignorance but we also lose all reliable knowledge of nature. In other words, if we claim that God performs supernatural miracles that surpass or suspend the laws of nature, then we invoke two contradictory powers, God and nature, whose relationship we shall never be able to determine. Spinoza holds that the essence, existence, and providence of God are known not from miracles but from the fixed and immutable order of nature. It is not miracles that prove the existence of God. Indeed, “the existence of God is not known through itself but through notions whose truth is firm and unshakeable” (75).26 But Spinoza indicates that people think that the power and providence of God are most clearly evident when they see something unexpected in nature, especially if it contributes to their own profit or advantage, and that the existence of God is most clearly proved when nature does not preserve its order. “And therefore they think that all those [philosophers] who explain things and miracles through natural causes or are eager to understand them remove God or at least the providence of God. For they of

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course think that God does nothing insofar as he acts from the accustomed order of nature and, on the other hand, that the power of nature and natural causes are otiose insofar as God acts” (72). Spinoza then proceeds to explain in more detail that people thus call the unaccustomed works of nature miracles or the works of God, in part from devotion and in part from the desire of opposing those who cultivate the natural sciences. People do not wish to know the natural causes of things and want to hear only about the things of which they are most of all ignorant and which, moreover, cause the greatest wonder. Of course, because for no other reason, except through removing natural causes and imagining things outside of the order of nature, can people adore God and refer all things to his imperium and will. Nor does their wonder for the power of God increase except in imagining that the power of nature is as if subjected by God. Indeed, the origin [of this idea] seems to have been introduced by the first Jews who saw the gentiles of their time worship visible things as gods, namely, the sun, moon, earth, water, air, etc. And in order to convince and to show them that these gods were weak, inconstant, or changeable and were under the imperium of the invisible God, they narrated their miracles in which they undertook, above all, to show that all of nature was directed from the imperium of God, whom they worshiped, only for their own advantage. This idea so possessed men that to this day they have not ceased to feign miracles, so that they would be believed to be more loved by God than other people and [to be] the final cause on account of which God created27 and continuously directs all things. What folly do people not arrogate to themselves! They have no sane concept either of God or of nature. They confuse the decisions (placita) of God with the decisions of men. Finally, they feign nature as limited in order to believe that man himself is its chief part. (72–73)

In countering the traditional (popular, but also scholarly) conception of miracles as reflecting human ignorance of both God and nature, Spinoza’s critique of miracles abounds in paradoxes. If miracles reflect ignorance of God on the part of human beings, whether within or without the Bible, then human beings have no way in which to distinguish ignorance from knowledge, error from truth, or superstition from religion. When human beings, in ascribing to God miracles that surpass human understanding, claim to be ignorant of divine power, what they in fact do is reduce the infinite power of God to human (finite) ignorance. When human beings subordinate, or make ancillary, the limited power of nature (as known to themselves) to the infinite power of God (as unknown to themselves), they lose both God and nature (and themselves). What is paradoxical here is that it is only on the basis of the separation of human being from God and of God from nature that all three— God, nature, and human being—can be liberated from ignorance (or super-

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stition). The paradox is that it is only on the basis of their knowledge, not of their ignorance, of God that human beings can properly separate both human being and nature from God. Another way of formulating this paradox is that it is only insofar as human beings know God that they can account for human ignorance, error, superstition, and doubt, which otherwise, Spinoza argues, simply turn into atheism. It is no less paradoxical that Spinoza does not simply dismiss or reject miracles but rather defends them as truly biblical. He undertakes to account for them in such a way that we do not end up reducing the Bible itself to ignorance of God. “For thus it is also clear from Scripture itself that miracles do not give knowledge of God or clearly teach the providence of God” (78–79). Because the eternal, fixed, and immutable order of nature is but the infinite power of God, miracles reflect not nature (or God) but human opinion, that is, something that human beings do not understand. Miracles are thus works of nature that surpass or are believed to surpass human understanding. Spinoza repeats the claim that he makes central to his discussion of prophecy in holding that Scripture is not concerned with speculative matters, while it understands “the decrees, orders, and providence of God to be nothing truly outside of the order of nature. That is, when Scripture says that this or that was done by God or by the will of God, it in truth understands nothing other than it was done according to the laws and order of nature, not, however, as people believe, that nature so long ceased acting or that its order was interrupted for a time” (79). The things narrated in Scripture happen naturally but are referred to God “because, as we have already shown, it is not the purpose of Scripture to teach things through natural causes but only to narrate those things that broadly occupy the imagination” (80). Scriptural narration uses a method and a style whose purpose is to educe wonder from and to impress devotion on the minds of the people. “Therefore, if there are things found in the Sacred Letters for which we do not know how to give natural causes and that seem to happen beyond or even against the order of nature, they should not give us pause. But altogether it is to be believed that what truly happened happened naturally” (80). In addition, Spinoza notes, miracles are always placed in contexts involving natural circumstances and causes. For example, locusts invaded the land of the Egyptians from the natural mandate of God, namely, from an east wind that blew fully day and night; and they left the land by means of the strongest west wind.28 It is also the case that, since false prophets were equally adept in producing miracles, as Scripture makes clear, miracles cannot themselves be the standard of nature (or faith). For we must first be able to distinguish between true and false miracles; and that distinction itself presupposes knowledge of God (faith), not ignorance of God (superstition). Spinoza concludes absolutely, therefore,

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that all things that are truly narrated in Scripture happened according to the laws of nature, as all things necessarily happen, and that, if something is found that can be apodictice demonstrated to oppose the laws of nature or cannot follow from them, it is plainly to be believed that it was added to the Sacred Letters by sacrilegious men. For whatever is against nature is against reason and what is against reason is absurd and thereby also refuted. (82)

Spinoza additionally points out that, when human beings narrate events, they typically shape their narration according to their own preconceived opinions, “especially if the thing done surpasses the understanding of the one narrating or of the one listening and most of all if it is relevant to him that it happens in a certain way” (82). He notes further that different individuals with diverse opinions frequently narrate the same events very differently. Once again he refers to the story of Joshua. Since the ancient Hebrews believed that the sun moved and the earth was at rest, they did not simply narrate that the day of the battle in question was longer than usual but that the sun and the moon stood still. This could have helped them refute the gentiles, who worshipped the sun, by showing them that “the sun was under the control of another deity from whose bidding it was bound to change its natural order. Thus, due partly to religion and partly to preconceived opinions, they conceived of and related the matter far differently from how it truly could have happened” (83). Spinoza further notes that, in order to understand the narration of miracles, we must grasp the phrases and tropos that are unique to the ancient Hebrew language. “For he who does not attend sufficiently to these will ascribe many miracles to Scripture that its writers never intended to narrate and will be plainly ignorant not only of things and miracles as they truly happened but also of the mind of the authors of the sacred codices” (84). Spinoza cites examples from Zechariah 14.7 and Isaiah 13 to indicate that the prophets used “miraculous” events such as the darkening of the stars, moon, and sun simply to give emphasis to their narratives. The Hebrews authors used this style of speech, he says, both to adorn their language (consuevisse ornate) and especially to express devotion (devote loqui). He thus concludes with the observation that, keeping in mind that many things in Scripture are narrated with extreme brevity, without any circumstances, and in utterly mutilated fashion, whoever reads with probity “will find nothing at all in Scripture that can be demonstrated to oppose the light of nature. On the contrary, he will be able to interpret easily and to understand with regular thought (mediocri meditatione) many things that are viewed as very obscure” (85). Spinoza also points out that we need always to distinguish between the senses, that is, what authors actually perceived, and their representations of

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what they perceived. “For, otherwise, we confuse their opinions and judgments with the miracle itself as it in truth happened. It is important to know their opinions not only for this but also so that we do not confuse things, which truly happened, with imaginary things that were nothing but prophetic representations. For there are many things in Scripture that are narrated as real and also that are believed to be real, which, nevertheless, were nothing but representations and imaginary things” (83). He gives as examples of unreal representation the various statements that Mt. Sinai smoked because God in fire descended upon it (Ex. 19.18) and that Elijah ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire (II Kings 2.11). Spinoza concludes his discussion of miracles with the observation that nowhere does Scripture teach that God fails to preserve a fixed and immutable order in nature or that something happens in nature that opposes its laws or that is not able to follow from them. “Nevertheless, although I say that Scripture teaches these things, I do not understand them as if doctrines (documenta) taught by it as necessary for salvation but only that the prophets embraced the same teachings (documenta) as we do. Therefore, about these matters everyone is free to judge simply as he thinks to be better for bringing him to the worship and religion of God with whole mind” (86). In his characteristically blunt yet subtle critique of miracles, Spinoza shows that it is only when, in defending miracles as biblical, we do not reduce the Bible to them or make our understanding of the Bible depend upon them, that we shall not end up reducing God and thus also the Bible to human error, ignorance, and superstition. When we acknowledge that the miracle narratives, in embodying Hebrew usage, serve the purpose of instilling piety, we can recognize at the same time that our faith in them is not undermined by the fact that they reflect the (false) opinions and beliefs of their ancient authors and audiences. Miracles do not contain and are not narrated with the purpose of demonstrating the speculative (philosophical) truth of modern science. The paradox here is to understand how miracles, while containing opinions about God and nature that are not philosophically true, can in fact be true and not false and thus be distinguished from the miracles of false prophets. What Spinoza shows us is that biblical miracles are true (that is, they are lively, engaging, meaningful, and purposeful) narratives insofar as we do not confuse their content and their purpose—to instill piety—with truth as known by the natural light of reason. Miracles do not demonstrate faith (or what the prophets call knowledge of God). Rather, they serve faith insofar as they are upbuilding, to adopt a Kierkegaardian idiom, in presupposing that which they upbuild: faith in the other, in their audience or reader.29 Miracles do not (initially) bring us to faith. Rather, they (consequently) bring us further in(to) faith. Miracles do not initially demonstrate faith. Rather, they are the consequent narrations of

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faith. Miracles do not demonstrate faith to the uninitiated. Rather, they narrate the consequences of faith to the initiated. A further paradox here is the fact that Spinoza indicates that the method he follows in discussing miracles relies on the natural light of reason and not on the scriptural foundation of revelation that he presupposes in his discussion of prophecy.30 Still, in directly showing that Scripture is consonant with the natural light in never teaching that a supernatural God suspends, opposes, or violates his own creation—the infinite, fixed, eternal order of nature—Spinoza also indicates, if only indirectly, that prophetic piety and the natural light of reason bear the same relationship as theology and philosophy. When miracles are not confused with speculative truth and when, as faithful narratives, they are understood to upbuild faith, it then turns out that miracles are consonant with the natural light of reason. Thus, it is only when miracles are separated from the natural light that they can be understood to teach knowledge of God as the ethics of walking truly in the way of the Lord. If, on the other hand, miracles are held to go beyond human knowledge and to be based on human ignorance of God, then, instead of supporting piety and knowledge of God, they become the very source of the confusion, superstition, and doubt that ultimately lead to atheism. It is only when both prophetic faith and the natural light are understood to provide the true standard of miracles that we can distinguish not only between true and false miracles in Scripture but also between true and false accounts of miracles among believers and unbelievers, whether learned or popular, today.

On the Interpretation and Authority of Scripture: Chapters 7 and 15 Having demonstrated in his critique of miracles that readers of Scripture can truly separate prophetic faith from the natural light of reason solely on the basis of their knowledge, not of their ignorance, of God, Spinoza is now in a position to expound his magisterial concept of biblical interpretation in chapter 7 of the Theologico-Political Treatise. Additionally, just as he shows in the previous chapter that miracles have true authority for the faithful only insofar as they are not conflated with (or reduced to) the false opinions of their authors and audiences, so the concept of biblical hermeneutics that Spinoza elaborates in chapter 7 further serves him in formulating his concept of the true authority of Scripture in chapter 15. This latter chapter is closely tied to chapter 7 because in it Spinoza explicates his understanding of the separation of faith from reason (that is, of their relationship) in sharp contrast to what he calls the dogmatic concept of reason as found in Maimonides and the skeptical concept of faith as found in the opponents of Maimonides. When Spin-

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oza argues that the Bible is to be understood or interpreted from itself alone, we shall see that he has no intention whatsoever either of subordinating the reason of the reader to biblical faith, in the tradition of medieval fideism (skepticism), or of liberating the reason of the reader from biblical faith, in the tradition of medieval (Aristotelian) rationalism (dogmatism). Rather, Spinoza formulates his concept of biblical interpretation with the express purpose of showing that the authority of the Bible is consistent with the authority of the natural light (of reason). To separate reason from faith, philosophy from theology, is to demonstrate that neither is the ancilla of the other. The Bible presupposes—upbuilds—the good faith of the authoritative reader (as an erring sinner who is subject to his affects). The reader presupposes— upbuilds—the rational authority of the Bible (as a text that is replete with errors, both textual and conceptual). Spinoza thus builds his concept of biblical interpretation, together with his concept of biblical authority, on what— uniquely and universally—constitutes the supreme good of human beings: knowledge of God. For it is solely knowledge of God that allows human beings to account for their errors. Consistent, then, with his critique of miracles, Spinoza shows in and through his concept of biblical interpretation that it is solely on the basis of their knowledge of God that human beings can properly separate themselves from God and consequently distinguish knowledge from ignorance, truth from error, and religion from superstition. The subtle and complex relationship between Scripture and interpretation (reason) and between God and human being that Kant articulates in the passage from The Conflict of the Faculties, as found at the head of this chapter, Spinoza makes central to his concepts of interpretation and the authority of Scripture. Kant points out that, when Scripture contradicts what he calls our rational concept of God, theologians have always followed the hermeneutical rule that what is expressed in human terms must be interpreted in a sense worthy of God. But to make God the criterion of biblical truth means that theologians confess—paradoxically—that reason is the highest interpreter of what is true in their religion. Even when theologians complain about the failure on the part of philosophers to observe the separation between faith and reason, they themselves, Kant observes, would hardly agree to give up reason as fundamental to their hermeneutics. (Kant would also appear to suggest that philosophers, in using the Bible to corroborate their own teachings, would hardly agree, for their part, to give up faith or claim to go beyond Abraham as a faithful thinker.) Indeed, what for Kant authenticates an interpretation is that it be moral and so “given by the God within us.”“The God within us” thus becomes for Kant the hermeneutical principle of communication (community): we can understand only those who speak to us through our own reason. For, as he explains, “it is only by concepts of our reason, insofar as they are

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pure moral concepts and hence infallible, that we can recognize the divinity of a teaching promulgated to us.” I remark on this extraordinarily rich interplay in Kant of the concepts of God, human being, theology, philosophy, religion, morality, the Bible, and hermeneutics, together with truth (authenticity) and communication, in order to indicate that it is fundamentally important to Kant, as to Spinoza, to engage the Bible and its God critically. The hermeneutical relationship between morality and God, between reason and religion, in this brief passage from Kant, allows us to anticipate the subtlety and complexity of Spinoza’s separation of philosophy from theology, of the natural light (of reason) from faith, of hermeneutics from the Bible, of human being from divine being. That Spinoza consistently holds that knowledge of God is the highest human good finds paradoxical expression in these two chapters that the divine authority of the Bible is the principle of—in both presupposing and grounding— hermeneutics. Spinoza begins chapter 7 of the Theologico-Political Treatise with the acerbic observation that, while everybody mouths the saving doctrines of the Bible, people act otherwise and theologians, in substituting their own words for the Word of God, try to impose them on others: But ambition and wickedness have finally become so great [he observes] that religion is located not so much in obeying the teachings of the Holy Spirit as in defending human commentaries, rather as religion is contained not in charity but in disseminating discords among men and in propagating the most insensate hatred, which they hide under the false name of divine zeal and ardent study. To these evils is attached superstition, which teaches men to condemn reason and nature and to admire and to venerate only that which opposes both. Wherefore, it is not to be wondered at that men, the more they admire and venerate Scripture, thus [the more] they are eager to explicate it so that it may appear that they are much more greatly opposed to these, namely, reason and nature. And, therefore, they dream that the most profound mysteries lie hidden in the Sacred Letters; and they are indefatigable in investigating these things, that is, these absurdities, and in neglecting all the rest that are useful; and, thus, whatever they, in their delirium, feign they attribute wholly to the Holy Spirit and strive to defend it with the greatest force and impetus of the affects. (88–89)

In order to liberate readers of Scripture from embracing human fictions for divine teachings, Spinoza proposes a “true method of interpreting Scripture. For, when this is ignored, we can know nothing certainly about what Scripture or the Holy Spirit wants to teach.” This method, Spinoza explains, scarcely differs from, rather, it fully agrees with, the method of interpreting nature. Just as the interpretation of nature essentially consists in assembling a history of nature, from which we arrive at the definition of natural things, so, in inter-

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preting Scripture, we need to produce a clear history of Scripture in order to arrive at the mind of the authors of Scripture. In relying solely on Scripture “anyone may always proceed without any danger of erring; and he will be able with equal security to discuss those things that surpass our understanding and those things that we know from the natural light” (89). As Spinoza has already explained in previous chapters, things that surpass the human understanding and cannot be deduced from principles known by the natural light include miracles, histories, and prophetic revelations, which are accommodated to the opinions and judgments of both authors and their audiences: Therefore [he declares], knowledge of all these things, that is, of nearly all the things that are contained in Scripture, ought to be sought from Scripture itself alone, just as knowledge of nature [is sought] from nature itself. As for moral teachings that are also contained in the Bible, although these can be demonstrated from common notions, it cannot, nevertheless, be demonstrated from them that Scripture teaches them. But this can be established from Scripture itself alone. Rather, if we want to bear witness without prejudice to the divinity of Scripture, it ought to be established for us from Scripture alone that it itself teaches true moral teachings. For from this alone can its divinity be demonstrated. For we showed that the certitude of prophets is established chiefly from the fact that they have their mind directed to what is right and good. Wherefore, this same point must also be established for us so that we can have faith in them. However, from miracles we cannot be convinced of the divinity of God, as we have already demonstrated—that I may remain silent about the fact that they can also be performed by pseudo-prophets. Therefore, the divinity of Scripture ought to be established from this alone—that it itself teaches true virtue. And this can be established from Scripture alone. If this could not be done, not without great prejudice could we embrace it and bear witness to its divinity. Thus, all knowledge of Scripture ought be sought from itself alone. (90)

In arguing that the only way in which readers of Scripture can avoid the reduction of the all-too-human word, both popular and learned, to the divine word is to establish the authority of Scripture from itself alone, on analogy with studying nature from itself alone, it is important to note that Spinoza locates us biblical readers in exactly the same position as that of the prophets. Just as the certitude of prophets rests chiefly on their advocacy of what is right and good, so our faith in the divinity of Scripture also rests on the same moral teaching. It is important to note further the critical distinction that Spinoza makes between this morality, as universally accessible to the light of reason, and the fact that the natural light cannot itself establish that Scripture teaches universal morality. Spinoza also makes clear that the divinity of Scripture, based on its true moral teaching, is closely related to his concept of accommodation. We can

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grasp the true moral content of Scripture from itself alone only insofar as we distinguish it from its histories, containing revelations and miracles, which are accommodated to the (untrue) opinions, prejudices, and preconceptions of both the prophets and their audiences. While Spinoza’s version of sola scriptura—the Bible is to be interpreted from itself alone—is clear and distinct in formulation, its meaning, as he himself proceeds to demonstrate (indirectly) in both chapters 7 and 15, is rather more complex and nuanced. Indeed, what he will show us fundamentally is that it is the Bible itself (rather than natura) that supplies its readers with the method of interpretation by which it is to be interpreted. In distinguishing between, on the one hand, the right and the good (God) to which the mind (or spirit) of the Bible is directed and, on the other hand, the content of its histories or narratives that are accommodated to the (untrue) beliefs of its original authors and audiences, the Bible accounts for its own errors (just as the prophets, with their minds turned to what is true and good, demand that their people account for their erring ways). Consequently, Spinoza’s method of interpreting Scripture is founded, like the Bible itself, on the fundamental principle that only insofar as we can truthfully account for error can we overcome the blindly arrogant reduction of (divine) truth to (human) error, that is, the superstitious conflation of truth and error. Spinoza’s theory of accommodation is precisely his way of accounting for error—in both the Bible and its readers. I shall summarize in the briefest terms possible the basic points that Spinoza stipulates as central to his method of interpreting Scripture from itself alone. He indicates that the history that exegetes of Scripture must compile contains three elements. First, this history must be based on a thorough account of the language in which the books of Scripture were written, given that all the writers of both (of what he calls) the Old and the New Testaments were Hebrews (even if the New Testament was not written in Hebrew). Second, the opinions (sententiae) of each book are to be collected so that it can be seen which agree with each other and which are ambiguous, obscure, or appear to be opposed to each other. Spinoza is careful to indicate that he considers opinions obscure or clear whose sensus is elicited easily or with difficulty from the context of the passage but not insofar as their truth is easily or with difficulty perceived by reason. For we work from the sensus alone of the passages, not, however, from their truth. Rather, we must take every precaution, insofar as we seek the sensus of Scripture, not to be preoccupied with our ratiocination, insofar as it is founded on the principles of natural knowledge (not to mention with [our] prejudices). But, so that we may not confuse the true sensus of Scripture with the truth of things, that [i.e., the sensus] will be investigated on the basis of the use alone of language or of ratiocination that acknowledges no other foundation than Scripture. (91)

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In order to exemplify his distinction between the sensus and the truth of biblical passages, Spinoza examines the statements of Moses that “God is fire” and “God is jealous.” The sense of these passages is clear, he observes, even if they are obscure in respect of truth and reason. What Moses meant by these claims is not to be established on the basis of our reason but solely on the basis of the “history” of what Moses says in Scripture. Since Moses teaches in many places, Spinoza remarks, that God has no similarity with visible things, such expressions as “God is fire” may be interpreted metaphorically. However, since fire can mean jealousy and since Moses clearly teaches elsewhere that God is jealous but nowhere teaches that God is without passions, we must conclude that Moses believed or at least taught this, even though it is opposed to reason. “For, as we have already shown, we must not be permitted to twist the mind of Scripture to the dictates of our reason and to our preconceived opinions; but the whole knowledge of the Bible is to be sought from it alone” (92). The third and last element of history to be compiled involves providing a thorough account of the circumstances of all the prophetic books, including the lives and opinions of individual prophets, their times and audiences, the manner in which the biblical books were collected into the canon, and the history of their transmission down to the present. For only then, Spinoza declares, can we tell if errors have crept into the text. Once we know the genium and ingenium (genius and character) of the prophets, we are then in a position to investigate the mind of the prophets and the Holy Spirit. Again, Spinoza calls upon an analogy with nature in stating that, just as we proceed from what is universal to the less universal, “thus also from the history of Scripture the first thing to be sought is the most universal and what is the basis and foundation of all Scripture and what finally is commended by all the prophets in the as if eternal teaching that is most useful to all mortals” (93). For example, Scripture teaches everywhere clearly, expressly, and unambiguously the following doctrines: God exists one and omnipotent; God alone is to be worshipped; and God cares for all people and loves those above all others who worship him and love their neighbor as themselves. Scripture, however, does not (philosophically) teach, Spinoza points out, what God or providence is. Since the prophets disagree about these things, such (eternal) truths must not be attributed to the prophets, even though they are known by the natural light.31 Spinoza also dismisses as lacking all certainty and thus all credibility the claims of both rabbis (“Pharisees”) and Roman Catholics to belong to traditions of unerring, interpretive authority. However, he does acknowledge that his own method of interpretation presupposes a Jewish tradition that is authoritative because incorruptible and unerring: the tradition of the signification of the words of the Hebrew language that we have received. This tradition

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is indubitable, he observes, since no one could want to change the meaning of a particular word in a language, which is not the case, however, with the meaning of particular passages in particular texts. To undertake to change a particular word in a language would mean that whatever had been expressed using the word in question would have to be rewritten. It would also mean that anyone who undertook to make changes of particular words would himself have to adhere to that imposture in his own writing and speaking. The practical result of these de facto impossibilities is that it is the people, together with the learned, who preserve the inviolable tradition of language, while it is the learned alone who preserve the sense of particular passages and books. “And, therefore,” Spinoza declares, “we can easily conceive that the learned would be able to change or to corrupt the sense of the passage of some extremely rare book which they had in their power, but not, however, the signification of the words. . . . Thus . . . we are easily persuaded that it could enter the mind of no one to corrupt some language; but, indeed, the mind of some writer [could] often [be corrupted] by changing his passages or by interpreting them wrongly” (96). Spinoza then points out that, since his method is based on the principle that knowledge of Scripture is to be sought from it alone, whatever this method cannot contribute to acquiring the complete knowledge of Scripture is plainly to be despaired as unattainable. In rejecting the learned claims of both rabbis and popes to be in possession of an authoritative tradition of interpreting Scripture that is unerring (since it is based on a conception of Scripture as unerring) and in embracing the tradition of popular language as authoritatively true and certain, Spinoza makes three interlocking points that are fundamental to his concept of interpretation. First, it is the people (including those who are learned) who, in their very use of language, preserve it. One could not undertake to corrupt one’s own language—as distinct from its use in particular passages or texts, which represent the domain of the learned—except on the basis of its incorruptibility. It is fascinating to see that here it is the people who preserve as true the tradition of language, not the learned who are in possession of speculative knowledge and virtue. This conception of language is fundamentally democratic, although Spinoza does not directly make this connection. Second, error or corruption (doubt) presupposes truth and incorruptibility (certitude), consistent with the principle that Spinoza articulates in the Ethics: truth is its own standard, the standard both of what is true and of what is false. Third, to possess the truth absolutely (to possess absolute truth) does not mean that one possesses complete truth. The authoritative tradition of language—which is fundamental to the principle of reading Scripture (or any text) from itself alone—makes one vividly aware of the ineluctably inescapable lacunae in one’s own knowledge. What ties these three points so closely together is the

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profound recognition on the part of Spinoza that truth cannot be known apart from its errors, apart from accounting for its errors. If Scripture is held not to err (or not to sin), unlike either its authors or its audiences (readers), if Scripture is not viewed as at once divine (true) and human (erring), then there will be no way of distinguishing its truth from its errors (corruptions). Another way of articulating the subtle dynamic connecting truth and error is that the divinity of the Bible depends directly on our accounting for human error, both within the Bible and within ourselves. Consistent with the third point above—that the truthful authority of linguistic tradition makes us aware of how much we do not (and doubtless will never) know—Spinoza then proceeds to outline the limitations of his own method of interpreting Scripture. First, we do not have complete knowledge of the Hebrew language. Rather, we possess only fragments of it, having lost so much of it due to the passage of time, with the result that what remains today is often obscure, ambiguous, impenetrable, and disputed. It is also the case that, while all languages possess ambiguities, the Hebrew language possesses unique elements contributing to its ambiguities.32 Spinoza is then careful to add that these many ambiguities cannot be overcome simply by comparing different passages of Scripture with each other; for the prophets, as he has already shown, do not share philosophical ideas but only moral doctrine: “There are many inexplicable passages in Scripture,” he declares (99). A second limitation of his method, Spinoza indicates, is that we are ignorant of so much of the history of the books of Scripture: the time and occasion of their writing and the manner in which they were transmitted. “If we read some book containing incredible or imperceptible things or absolutely written in obscure terms and if we do not know its author or even the time in which and the occasion for which he wrote it, in vain shall we strive to be made more certain about its true sense.” Without this information, Spinoza asks, how can we know the intention of the author? If, however, we possess this information, then we are in a position to interpret the author in question. “For it occurs extremely often that we read similar histories in diverse books, about which we have many, widely different judgments, of course because of the diversity of opinions that we have about the authors.” For example, fantastic stories of heroic adventure, which are not accessible to the intellect, are common to Orlando Furioso (in the poem by Ariosto); to Perseus in Ovid; and, in Scripture, to Samson, who alone and unarmed killed thousands of men, and to Elijah, who flew through the air and finally sought heaven in a chariot: These, I say [Spinoza continues], are plainly similar histories, yet we make a far dissimilar judgment about each: namely, the first wishes to write only nugatory

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things; the second, however, political things; and the third, finally, sacred things. And we are persuaded from no other cause than on account of the opinions that we have about their writers. Thus, it is evident that it is first of all necessary to have knowledge of the authors who wrote things obscure or imperceptible to the intellect if we want to interpret their writings. (100)

Yet a third limitation in his method of interpreting Scripture, Spinoza observes, is that we do not in all cases possess the books in the language in which they were first written.33 He summarizes the limitations of his method, as the only true method of interpreting Scripture, with the statement that “I do not doubt in affirming that either we are truly ignorant of the true sense of Scripture in many places or we divine [guess] them without certitude” (101). Still, in following this dynamic of truth and error, Spinoza then indicates that, although the limitations of method that he has outlined prevent readers from understanding the mind of the prophets regarding imperceptible (i.e., imaginary) matters, this is not the case regarding matters that the intellect can perceive and of which we can easily form a clear concept. In a note Spinoza explains that he understands by “perceptible things” both those that we demonstrate (mathematically) and those “that we are accustomed to embrace with moral certitude and to hear without wonderment, even if they can never be demonstrated.” Not only are the axioms of Euclid perceptible to anyone before they are demonstrated, Spinoza points out, but “I also call perceptible and clear the histories of things, both past and future, that do not surpass human faith, and also laws, institutions, and customs, even if they cannot be mathematically demonstrated. For the rest, I call the hieroglyphs [symbols] and histories, which appear to surpass all faith, imperceptible” (241).34 It is important to observe here that Spinoza, on the basis of what he calls “perceptible things,” effaces any significant distinction between moral certitude and mathematical certitude, while both are sharply distinguished from imperceptible things that go beyond not only intellect but also faith. Indeed, he proceeds to say that things that are easily perceived by their nature can never be said so obscurely that they are not easily understood. Once again, he evokes Euclid who, he states, wrote with such simplicity and intelligibility that he can be grasped by anyone in any language. In order to understand Euclid, we do not need to have complete knowledge of the language in which he wrote or to study the life and times of the author and to know the history of the transmission of his book. All that is required to understand Euclid is to have absolutely common and nearly puerile knowledge: And what is said here about Euclid [Spinoza adds] is to be said about all who wrote about things perceptible by their nature; and, therefore, we conclude that we are easily able to follow the mind of Scripture regarding moral teachings from

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the history that we have of it and to be certain about its true sense. For the teachings of true piety are expressed in the most used words, and indeed they are absolutely common, and, no less simple (simplicia), they are easily accessible (facilia) to the intellect. And because true salvation and blessedness consist in true acquiescence of the mind and because we truly acquiesce only in those things that we understand with utmost clarity, hence it most evidently follows that we can certainly follow the mind of Scripture regarding things that are salutary and necessary for blessedness. Wherefore, there is no reason why we should, therefore, be concerned about the rest; for the rest, since we are not able for the most part to grasp them with the reason and the intellect, have more curiosity than utility. (101–2)

Not only does Spinoza repeat here his observation that the moral teachings of Scripture, involving the things that are salutary and necessary for blessedness, that is, those in which we can truly acquiesce, are as easily accessible to the intellect as the propositions of Euclid. But it also becomes pellucid that the aim of his method of interpreting Scripture is to allow us to distinguish things perceptible by their nature from those that are imperceptible and cannot be grasped with the intellect. It is striking that things perceptible to the intellect include, besides the moral truths central to salvation and blessedness, also what in the earlier passage he called histories (of things both past and future!) that do not surpass human faith and so also laws, institutions, and customs. Thus, in addition to rendering the distinction between moral and mathematical certitude otiose, Spinoza also brings the entire area of ethics and politics within philosophical certitude. It is little wonder, then, that, in stating that he has now sufficiently explained the true method of interpreting Scripture, he adds that “moreover I do not doubt that everyone already sees that this method demands no light outside of the natural light [of reason] itself ” (102). For what characterizes the natural (as distinct from the supernatural) light, Spinoza explains, is that, following lawful consequences, it deduces and arrives at (concludat) obscure things from things that are known. Further, while acknowledging that his method is not sufficient for investigating everything that occurs in the Bible, he points out this is a failure, not of true method but of earlier generations of biblical readers to cultivate it, with the result that so much of the Bible has been irretrievably lost. Having already eroded any meaningful distinction between moral (prophetic) and mathematical (philosophic) certitude, between revelation and reason, it is not surprising, perhaps, that Spinoza indicates, yet without further explanation, that his method of interpreting Scripture from itself alone requires no light beyond the natural light of reason. If, however, it is the case that Scripture teaches what is common to the natural light, what then is the difference between biblical faith and the natural light of reason? What

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does it mean to interpret—how, indeed, can one interpret—Scripture from itself alone on the basis of the natural light? Is it to be understood that the Bible is the origin of reason no less than of faith? It is fitting that, just before Spinoza undertakes to examine the hermeneutical opinions of his opponents, he comments on the fact that everyone will have observed that his method of interpreting Scripture requires nothing outside of the natural light. Thus, in undertaking to show that those who hold opposed views on the relationship between Scripture (faith) and reason fall into contradiction, Spinoza will have the opportunity of exposing his own understanding of the separation of faith from reason, that is, of their paradoxical relationship. Spinoza uses historical figures from the Middle Ages to exemplify the two methods of biblical interpretation that, in being opposed to each other, are both opposed to his own: the great rabbinical scholar and teacher Maimonides, who died in 1204, and an obscure thirteenth-century rabbi, Jehuda Alfakhar, who wrote against Maimonides. I shall begin with his critique of Alfakhar.35 Spinoza initiates his discussion of Alfakhar by noting that he bases his method of biblical hermeneutics on the claim that the interpretation of Scripture requires, beyond the natural light of reason, the supernatural light. But what this light beyond the natural is, Spinoza remarks, Alfakhar is unable to explain. If we attend to his explanations, “we find that they contain nothing above the natural or rather that they are nothing except mere conjectures” (102). The claim that the natural light is not sufficient to interpret Scripture, Spinoza continues, is false for two reasons. First, the difficulty of interpreting Scripture, as he has already shown, arises not from any lack of strength on the part of the natural light but from the neglect of the history of Scripture over the centuries on the part of those who were in a position to compile it. Second, both prophets and apostles preached not only to the faithful but also, above all, to unbelievers and the impious, who are thereby shown to have been able to understand them. “Wherefore, those who seek the supernatural light to understand the mind of the prophets and the apostles would seem obviously to need the natural light” (103). Spinoza argues that when Alfakhar, in attempting to avoid Maimonides’ error of subordinating Scripture (faith) to reason, which we shall examine later, formulated his Rule of interpreting Scripture, he fell into the opposite error of subordinating reason to Scripture. According to his universal Rule of interpreting Scripture, Alfakhar holds that “whatever Scripture dogmatically teaches and affirms in express words is to be admitted from its sole authority as absolutely true.” Only those passages are to be interpreted metaphorically that oppose fundamental dogmas—for example, that God is one and incorporeal—not because they are opposed to reason. Spinoza remarks that, while Alfakhar is to be praised insofar as he wants to explain Scripture through Scripture, he is “surprised that

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a man endowed with reason is eager to destroy it. It is, indeed, true that Scripture is to be explained through Scripture, so long as we work from the sense alone of passages and from the mind of the prophets; but, after we have unearthed the true sense, it is necessary to use judgment and reason so that we may bestow our assent on it” (171). Spinoza then submits Alfakhar to the subtle dialectic that Kant presupposes in the passage heading this chapter. If we blindly submit reason, notwithstanding its protests, to Scripture, do we do so with or without reason? Spinoza asks. If with reason, then we act in a completely contradictory way. If without reason, then we act completely foolishly and irrationally. Besides, Spinoza asks further, “who is able in mind to embrace something against which his reason protests?” How can anybody want to submit reason, the maximal gift and divine light, to dead letters, which human ill will can pervert, and how can it not be judged a crime to speak unworthily against the mind, the true writing (syngraphum) of the word of God and to make it corrupt, blind, and lost? But to think such about the letter, the idol of the word of God, is maximally held to be a crime. They think it pious not to be faithful to reason and to their own judgment but impious to doubt the faith of those who transmitted the sacred books to us, which indeed is mere folly, not piety. But I ask: what disturbs them? What do they fear? That religion and faith cannot be defended unless men are ignorant of all the given works [of Scripture] and completely bid goodbye to reason? Further, if they believe this, they fear Scripture more than they have faith in it. May it be far from the case that religion and piety want to make reason ancillary to themselves or that reason wants to make religion ancillary to itself and that either may not be able to obtain its own domain with the highest concord [in relation to the other]. (171–72)

As I have noted earlier, in viewing the concept of human reason or mind as the gift, divine light, and true word of God, Spinoza is himself profoundly biblical. He vigorously exposes as contradictory the worship of the dead letters of Scripture as incorruptible idols and the condemnation of the mind as corrupt. It is striking that he criticizes Alfakhar for lacking faith in his own reason and judgment when at the same time he attacks as impious anyone who doubts the faith of those who transmitted the sacred books to us. It is in the context of showing that lack of faith in one’s own rational judgment embodies lack of faith in Scripture—that is, in fearing both—that Spinoza then discusses Alfakhar’s Rule of interpreting Scripture in terms of its two basic claims: (1) Everything that Scripture affirms or denies is to be accepted as true or rejected as false; and (2) Scripture never expressly but only indirectly or by implication (per consequentiam) affirms or denies in one passage what it affirms or denies in another passage. Spinoza exclaims that both of these claims are rash since Alfakhar fails to acknowledge that Scripture consists of diverse books written

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in diverse times for diverse audiences by diverse authors. He also fails to acknowledge that he proclaims his Rule from his own authority without the sanction of either reason or Scripture. Furthermore, in order for Alfakhar to support his claim that passages of Scripture do not contradict each other directly but at most indirectly (per consequentiam), he ought to have shown that they can be explained metaphorically on the basis of language and context and that Scripture came into our hands uncorrupted. Spinoza then proceeds to show that many passages of Scripture, in indicating that God is corporeal and moves and that heaven is his dwelling place, etc., are absurd unless taken metaphorically (that is, consistent with reason). “And in this mode a great number of things is said according to the opinions of the prophets and the people and which reason alone and philosophy, but not, however, Scripture, teach to be false, all of which nevertheless are to be supposed as true according to the opinion of this author, because in them there is no consultation with reason (rationi consultatio).” Spinoza also observes that, since the prophets hold opposed opinions on many subjects, it is impossible to know what opinion is to be the standard by which another opinion is to be interpreted. For “what does it matter if one passage not directly but only through consequence is opposed to another, if the consequence is clear and the circumstances and the nature of the passage do not support metaphorical explanations, of which a great number is found in the Bible, about which see chapter 2 (where we showed that the prophets hold diverse and contrary opinions) and chiefly all those contradictions that we showed to be in the Histories (namely, in chapters 9 and 10)?” (173). Spinoza terminates his discussion of the Rule of Alfakhar with the observation that there is no need to review additional passages of Scripture in order to expose the absurdities that follow from his Rule and from his falsity and haste. In demonstrating that contradictions ineluctably emerge in Alfakhar’s Rule of interpreting Scripture, given that lack of faith in the powers of the human mind, of human judgment, simply reflects lack of faith in Scripture, Spinoza thus indicates how complex and subtle is his own paradoxical rule of interpreting Scripture from itself alone. Alfakhar intends to defend faith in Scripture from the rationalism of his opponent Maimonides. But what Spinoza shows us in his discussion of Alfakhar’s Rule is that faith in Scripture, when it is opposed to faith in one’s own reason, becomes blindly contradictory. Faith in Scripture to interpret itself, Spinoza thus indicates, equally demands faith in the interpretive powers of human reason, mind, and judgment. When, then, Spinoza undertakes to examine the hermeneutical principles of Maimonides, it is striking that what he shows us is that his concept of reason, in its opposition to faith in Scripture, becomes no less blindly contradictory. While Alfakhar’s opposition of faith to reason reflects lack of faith in Scripture

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(and so undermines faith), Maimonides’ opposition of reason to faith, as we shall now see, also reflects lack of faith in Scripture (and so undermines reason). In his critique of the hermeneutical principles of Alfakhar and Maimonides, Spinoza show us that opposition between scriptural faith and human reason results in the loss of both. In contrast, the separation of reason from faith, of philosophy from theology, involves not their opposition but their “highest concord,” as we saw him write above. Whereas, according to Alfakhar, there are no passages in Scripture, even when they are opposed to reason, that are contrary to each other or thus opposed to faith, Maimonides holds, on the other hand, Spinoza observes, that “every passage of Scripture admits various, rather, contrary senses” and that the only basis of establishing their truth is to interpret them such that they agree with or are not opposed to reason. If a passage, on the basis of its literal sense, is clear yet opposed to reason, Maimonides holds, nevertheless, that it is to be interpreted otherwise, as he “most clearly indicates” in The Guide of the Perplexed. Spinoza cites a lengthy passage, in both Hebrew and Latin translation, from part II, chapter 25, of this famous work, which Maimonides wrote in Arabic. Here Maimonides states that it is not scriptural texts concerning the creation of the world that keep him from holding that the world is eternal. Since the scriptural texts that teach that the world was created are no more numerous than those that teach that God is corporeal, he could have denied creation on the same rational basis that he denied divine corporeality and perhaps even more plausibly and easily. Yet there are two reasons that prevent him from taking this approach and believing that the world is eternal: First, there is clear demonstration that God is not corporeal, and it is necessary to explain all those passages whose literal sense is opposed to that demonstration; for it is certain that they necessarily then have an explanation (other than the literal [Spinoza adds]). But the eternity of the world has not been demonstrated [by Aristotle]; and, therefore, it is not necessary to do violence to the Scriptural texts and to explain them away on account of an apparent opinion, when we would be able to incline to a contrary opinion with some persuasive reason. Second, because to believe that God is incorporeal is not opposed to the fundamentals of the Law, etc. But to believe in the eternity of the world, in the way in which it was seen by Aristotle, destroys the law in its foundation, etc. (103)

Before examining Spinoza’s incisive critique of this passage, it is important to point out, as its strained quality indicates, that Maimonides finds himself here in a difficult position. That God is not corporeal (whatever that means!) is consistent with his Aristotelian rationalism and its sharp opposition between soul and body, reason and the senses, the eternal and the temporal, the unchanging and the changing, etc.—and, as he notes, is not contrary to the

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Law of Moses. Maimonides has no obvious difficulty in interpreting biblical passages that, when taken literally, would suggest that God is corporeal, that is, that God is directly engaged in his creation, in his covenant, to mean that, in light of reason, God is incorporeal. But the biblical concept of creation is utterly opposed to Aristotle’s concept of reason. For, embodied in and embodying temporality, sin, passion, and historical action, the concept of creation disrupts (deconstructs) all opposition between eternity and temporality, reason and desire, soul and body as Scripture portrays a God who is actively and dynamically involved with his people as he both moves and is moved by them. Maimonides cannot pretend to find support in Aristotle for the concept of creation, as he can for the concept of an incorporeal God (one not involved in sinful creation). He is consequently forced to fall back on the tendentious claim that the eternity of the world, unlike the incorporeality of God, had not been proved by Aristotle.36 He can then dismiss Aristotle’s concept of the eternity of the world as destroying the very foundations of the Law (about which he is right). But what Maimonides, consistent with major Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholastics of the High Middle Ages, does not see is that the biblical concept of creation utterly eliminates the ontology of Aristotle and with it his concepts of God (as unmoved mover: thought thinking itself), reason, soul, eternity, etc. The orthodoxy of Maimonides is not at stake here. Spinoza does not challenge the orthodoxy of Maimonides. Rather, what he shows us is that Maimonides’ concept of hermeneutics is untrue to the Bible and consequently no less untrue to reason. That Maimonides makes reason the criterion for interpreting (accounting for) contradictory biblical passages, however clear they are in themselves, is abundantly evident from the above passage on creation, Spinoza observes. If it had been evident to Maimonides from reason that the world was eternal, he would have shown no hesitation in twisting Scripture, although everywhere openly protesting, to make it teach the eternity of the world. “And, therefore, he cannot be certain about the true sense of Scripture, however clear, so long as he is able to doubt its truth or so long as it is not clear to him. For so long as the truth of the matter is not clear we do not know whether it agrees with reason or whether it is truly opposed to it; and consequently we do not even know whether the literal sense is true or false.” Because Maimonides can find no basis in Scripture for knowing whether what it says is true or false, he is forced to impose on it from outside a concept of reason. Not only then, however, does he distort the clear, literal sense of Scripture, but, additionally, he has no way of knowing whether a passage in question agrees with or opposes reason or even whether its literal sense is true or false. In the passage on creation cited by Spinoza, while Maimonides comes out on the side of orthodoxy, he has no hermeneutical basis for his faith in the Bible. Indeed, if Maimonides

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were correct in his approach to the Bible, Spinoza observes, “I would absolutely concede that we needed another light outside of the natural light to interpret Scripture. For nearly all things that are found in the Writings cannot be deduced from the principles known by the natural light (as we have already shown), and therefore nothing can be established by us concerning their truth from the strength of the natural light, and consequently not even from the true sense and mind of Scripture, but for this we would necessarily need another light” (104). It is enlighteningly ironic that Spinoza reduces the concept of reason, to which Maimonides subordinates the Bible, to the very same supernatural light to which Alfakhar appeals in his opposition to Maimonides! Both the concept of reason in Maimonides and the concept of faith in Alfakhar are supernatural in that they each claim to know what Scripture does not know. Both Maimonides and Alfakhar lack faith in Scripture; for neither, according to his hermeneutical method, can find in the Bible any basis for distinguishing truth from error. While Maimonides conflates truth with error, without Scripture, Alfakhar conflates truth with error, within Scripture. It is paradoxical, however, that Spinoza, while holding that the content of Scripture, as he observes in the passage cited above, cannot be known on the basis of the natural light of reason, indicates that, if we agreed with Maimonides’ approach, we would then be able to interpret Scripture not from itself alone but only on the basis of another, that is, supernatural, light. The paradox, in other words, is that, although, or rather precisely because, the contents of Scripture are not deducible from the natural light of reason, without Scripture, Spinoza shows that his own method of interpreting Scripture makes use of no light without (beyond) the natural. But how it is that the natural light, from whose principles the content of Scripture cannot be deduced, is the basis of interpreting Scripture Spinoza certainly has not yet systematically elucidated. Indeed, central to that elucidation is the contrast that he establishes between his concept of biblical interpretation and the opposing concepts of hermeneutics as found in Maimonides and Alfakhar and thus between how he and how they conceive of the relationship between reason and faith. Having shown that Maimonides, in his discussion of creation, makes use of a concept of hermeneutics that leaves both faith and reason in doubt, Spinoza then advances three more general criticisms of his understanding of the Bible. First, Maimonides claims that the prophets agreed among themselves about all things and that, as outstanding philosophers and theologians, they arrived at their conclusions on the basis of the (rational) truth of things. All this, Spinoza recalls, he shows in chapter 2 to be false. Second, Maimonides “supposes that the sense of Scripture cannot be established from Scripture itself; for the [rational] truth of things may not be

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established from Scripture itself (since it demonstrates nothing, nor does it teach things about which it speaks through definitions and their first causes). Wherefore, from the opinion of Maimonides its true sense cannot be established from itself, and, therefore, it will not be sought from itself ” (105). This claim is also false, Spinoza declares. For he has already demonstrated on the basis of both reason and biblical examples, again in chapter 2, that the sense of Scripture is established from Scripture alone, even when it speaks about things that are knowable by the natural light. It is worth noting here that we can well understand why Maimonides wrote his Guide for those philosophers perplexed by (what we know to be) the unbridgeable gap between Aristotle and Scripture when he claims, on the one hand, that the prophets were outstanding philosophers and theologians who reached their conclusions on the basis of reason and, on the other hand, that Scripture cannot be understood on its own terms since it does not proceed rationally on the basis of definitions and first causes. It is important to see that Spinoza agrees with Maimonides that “rational” (mathematical, natural, philosophical, or speculative) truth cannot be based on Scripture, since it does not operate by means of rational demonstration. However, while this conception of the Bible leads Maimonides not to trust Scripture, whose result is to render his Aristotelian concept of reason untrustworthy (because he has no sure method of distinguishing truth from error), it leads Spinoza to trust in the authority of Scripture as knowable from itself alone (given his sure method of distinguishing truth from error). Again we encounter the strange paradox that, precisely because the Bible is not “rational” or philosophical (mathematical), it is true and that the true method of biblical interpretation depends solely on the natural light of reason. Spinoza’s third criticism of Maimonides is that “we are permitted [by him] to explain and to twist the words of Scripture according to our preconceived opinions and to deny the literal sense, although utterly clear and express, and to change it into something else.” In addition to the fact, Spinoza declares, that he has demonstrated the falsity of this license, everyone will view it as extreme and rash. Furthermore, even if this great liberty of interpreting were granted to Maimonides, it would achieve nothing; for reason cannot investigate and explain the maximum, that is, the indemonstrable, part of Scripture, while “our” method can. “The sense of those things that, however, are perceptible by their nature can easily be elicited from the context alone of the passages, as we have also already shown. Whence this method [of Maimonides] is plainly useless” (105). Spinoza has yet another, and surprising, criticism of Maimonides. If his concept of hermeneutics were true, Spinoza points out, then the people, who are largely ignorant of or lack free time for speculative demonstrations, would

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have to depend on the authority of philosophers for understanding Scripture and would have no alternative to accepting their interpretation of Scripture as unerring. The result, then, would be a new type of priestly authority that the people would rather deride than venerate. The people originally understood and today understand the mind of the prophets and apostles, that is, what they preached, but not the philosophical reasons of the things that they preached, which, according to Maimonides, they would have to know in order to understand the mind of the prophets. “By reason, therefore, of our method it does not follow that the people necessarily have to acquiesce in the testimony of interpreters” (104). Spinoza then comments that, while it is true that, unlike the ancient Israelites, people today do not know Hebrew, “we have already shown that all the things necessary to salvation, although their reasons are not known, can nevertheless be easily perceived in any language and that, moreover, because they are common and familiar [in expression], people acquiesce in this perception and not, indeed, in the testimony of interpreters. As to what pertains to the rest [i.e., to the nonessential, hieroglyphic portions of Scripture], the people follow the same [uncertain] fortune as the learned” (105). Spinoza’s final judgment of Maimonides is unsparing. His method of biblical interpretation “plainly removes from the people all the certitude that they can obtain from the sense of Scripture on the basis of sincere reading and of following an altogether different [i.e., Spinoza’s own] method. Therefore, we reject (explodimus) this opinion of Maimonides as harmful, useless, and absurd” (105–6). The distinction that Spinoza draws here between his method of biblical interpretation and that of Maimonides remains consistent and consistently not easy to construe. Why it is difficult to grasp is due to the fact, I think, that, while, according to Spinoza, both he and Maimonides distinguish between the sensus of Scripture and its “philosophical” (or rational) truth, they construe that distinction or difference in utterly opposed ways. In opposing sensus to reason, Maimonides removes all possibility of certitude from the Bible. Since the biblical sensus cannot be known on the basis of itself alone, it remains blindly dependent on a notion of arbitrary reason that, as Spinoza shows, is actually supernatural and that consequently presupposes a superhuman authority whose interpretation of Scripture is unerring. Spinoza, by contrast, in separating the biblical sensus from reason—but in not opposing them to each other—invests the biblical sensus with certitude such that it makes Scripture equally accessible to all readers, that is, which renders all readers of the Bible, as erring human beings, equal in their interpretive authority. Nevertheless, as we continue to see, Spinoza is not (yet?) forthcoming about the relationship between the biblical sensus, on whose basis the people can easily perceive the saving doctrines of Scripture, and the natural

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light of reason that all individuals possess. Up to now he has just barely indicated that the true content of the sensus of Scripture, that is, of the things necessary to salvation, is caritas or love of neighbor. But at least we do know that, in separating moral from philosophical certitude, Spinoza intends to eliminate the opposition between faith (love) and reason that is fundamental to Maimonides, as it is to Alfakhar. In any case, what is striking here is that Spinoza locates certitude in both Scripture (the prophets) and the people, while demonstrating that certitude is unobtainable on the basis of the method of Maimonides. Indeed, as I have already indicated, what Spinoza actually shows us is that Maimonides, in removing certitude from the Bible, or from faith, equally eliminates it from reason. In contrast, it is Spinoza’s aim to demonstrate that to have faith in the certitude of the Bible is consistent with, rather, it demands faith on the part of the readers of Scripture in their own certain powers of reason. Having exploded Maimonides’ method of biblical interpretation as stripping readers of faith in the certitude of Scripture, with the result that they are left blindly dependent on the arbitrary reason of a caste of unerring philosophers who confound truth with error, Spinoza fittingly concludes chapter 7 with the ringing declaration that the authority of interpreting Scripture is a right possessed by every individual. While denying that the Roman pontiff can today claim public authority by analogy with the high priest of the ancient Israelites, he observes that the laws of Moses, because they were the public laws of the patria, needed a public authority to maintain them: “For if anyone had the liberty of interpreting public laws (jura) from his own will, no republic would be able to stand but would from this be immediately dissolved, and public right (jus) would be private right (jus).” But today, he declares, religion does not belong to public right (jus) or authority. It consists not so much in external actions as in the simplicity and veracity of mind, which do not result from public authority. Having thus distinguished between public (external) right and private (internal or personal) right, Spinoza then declares that absolutely no one can be driven by force or laws (legibus) to become blessed; but what is required for this are pious and fraternal admonition, good education, and, above all, one’s own free judgment (proprium and liberum judicium). Since, therefore, the supreme right (jus) of thinking freely, even about religion, belongs to each individual (penes unumquemque) and since it cannot be conceived that someone could by right give this up (hoc jure decedere), there will also belong to each individual the supreme right (jus) and supreme authority of freely judging about religion, and consequently of explaining and interpreting it for himself.37 For from no other cause does the supreme authority of interpreting laws (leges) and the supreme judgment about public matters belong to the magistracy than because they belong to the public right (publici juris). And, therefore, from the

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same cause the supreme authority of explaining religion and of judging about it will belong to every individual, of course, because it is the right of every individual (uniuscujusque juris est). (106–7)

This remarkable passage possesses extraordinarily rich and complex ideas. The supreme right and authority of freely thinking, even about religion, belongs to every individual, Spinoza holds. It is inconceivable that anyone could give up this right (authority). Spinoza, like Rousseau later, does not mean that individuals do not in practice (with unhappy frequency) give up their own right and authority of thinking freely. Rather, this right (authority) is inalienable; for the very idea that we alienate or give up our own and right authority, that we enslave ourselves to others (including ourselves), presupposes a concept of right (authority) as its own standard. This right (authority) is its own standard, the standard both of right (authority) and of unright (authority). We could not even conceive of giving up or of having given up our supreme right and authority of thinking (of conceiving) freely—we could have no concept of it—if it were not inalienable, if it were not inconceivable that we could give it up. For the only way in which we can know (think or conceive) that we have given up our right and authority is on the basis of a concept of right and authority that we have not given up, that we cannot give up, that is inalienable. If the very concept (or definition) of what constitutes human beings is that they all have the supreme (and equal) right and authority of thinking freely for themselves, with the result that they are not dependent on a hierarchical caste of unerring interpreters (religious, political, social, or otherwise); if human beings do not have the right of giving up (or alienating) this right (authority); if human beings can be conceived of as human only insofar as they possess and maintain this right (authority)—how, then, are we to understand the distinction that Spinoza makes between private right and public right, between religion as internal to the mind and external actions? If I cannot conceivably give up, if I cannot conceive of giving up my right and authority of thinking freely, then this right (authority) is surely no more private than it is public. For it is inconceivable that I could give it up to some public authority and yet maintain it privately. Equally, how can religion be private (internal), expressing tranquility of mind, and not public, expressing “external” actions, when it involves, as Spinoza always insists, the works of charity or love of neighbor? While Spinoza does not directly address these questions here,38 he has shown that the contradictory methods of interpretation that he associates with Maimonides and Alfakhar result in opposed concepts of faith (Scripture) and reason (philosophy) and that all human beings possess the supreme right and authority of freely thinking about (interpreting) religion. In the sections

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of chapter 15 that still remain to be analyzed, he gives his final views on the separation of philosophy from theology and thus on the authority of Scripture. He opens the chapter with the firm pronouncement that those who do not recognize the importance of separating philosophy from theology continue to dispute whether Scripture, that is, its sensus, ought to be ancillary (accommodated) to reason or whether reason ought to be ancillary (accommodated) to Scripture. Spinoza calls the latter view skepticism (Alfakhar’s denial of the certitude of reason) and the former view dogmatism (Maimonides’ denial of the certitude of Scripture). Both views, he observes, are equally and totally in error. “For if we follow either opinion it is necessary to corrupt either reason or Scripture.” Spinoza recalls that he has shown that Scripture teaches piety, not philosophy, and that its contents are accommodated to the understanding and preconceived opinions of the people. If, therefore, exegetes follow Maimonides in accommodating Scripture to philosophy, they will ascribe to the prophets many things that they did not know, even when dreaming, and will distort their teachings. If, on the other hand, exegetes follow Alfakhar in making reason and philosophy the ancilla of theology, they will confuse the prejudices of the ancient Israelites with divine things and be blinded by them. “And, therefore, either [of them] will rave—of course, the latter one [the skeptic following Alfakhar] without reason, the former one [the dogmatist following Maimonides] truly with reason” (170). What is particularly striking here in Spinoza’s formulation of the “raving” (mad) opposition between skepticism, the subordination of reason to faith (Scripture), and dogmatism, the subordination of faith to reason (philosophy), is that neither skeptic (Alfakhar) nor dogmatist (Maimonides) has a sure way (method) of distinguishing truth from error (belief from idol). Whether they reduce the errors of the Bible to faith (Alfakhar) or the errors of the Bible to reason (Maimonides), neither skeptic nor dogmatist can distinguish what is true in the Bible—its moral teachings—from what Spinoza calls the preconceived opinions or prejudices of the ancient Israelite people. The method of interpreting the Bible that Spinoza proposes in order to overcome the blind opposition between having no reason at all (Alfakhar) and having a false reason (Maimonides)—and so equally between having a false faith and having no faith at all—bears implicitly within itself a concept of universal history as the story of liberating the right and authority of thinking freely on the part of all human beings from their prejudices, preconceptions, and distortions.39 Indeed, it is particularly instructive to see Spinoza struggle, not yet fully successfully, in the final sections of chapter 15 of the TheologicoPolitical Treatise to explain how revelation (Scripture) is necessary (historically), yet universal, while reason is universal, yet unable to explain the (historical) necessity of revelation. The profound (dialectical) connections among

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the key relationships here—reason and faith, truth and error, universal and historical, God and human beings—will not be comprehensively brought together into a conception of history as the story of human (and divine!) liberation until the nineteenth century (with Hegel and his two great disciples, Kierkegaard and Marx). While reason, Spinoza explains, does not extend itself so far as to be able to determine that human beings are blessed from obedience to God alone, without philosophical understanding of natural things, theology, in commanding nothing outside piety and faith as revealed in Scripture, neither wants nor is able to oppose reason. Since theology, when properly understood, is the Word of God, it cannot be said to consist in a certain number of books (as Spinoza argues in chapter 12, as we shall see). Indeed, when theology is thus accepted, “if you consider its precepts or teachings (documenta) of life, it agrees with reason; and if you judge its intent and end, you find that in no thing is it opposed to reason, and, moreover, it is universal in all men.” Immediately following these claims that theology, when truly understood as the revealed teaching of life found in Scripture, agrees with reason, opposes reason in nothing, and, finally, is universal (as is reason) in all human beings, Spinoza restates its scriptural singularity. He recalls that what he has shown in chapter 7 is that the sensus of Scripture “is to be determined from its history alone and not from the universal history of nature, which is the foundation of philosophy alone.” Were readers, when studying Scripture from itself alone, to find passages that did not agree with reason, it would make no difference, he observes, if they understood them or what opinions they held about them. Such passages, in not touching upon love of neighbor, would not involve theology or the Word of God. “Therefore, we conclude absolutely,” Spinoza declares, “that neither is Scripture to be accommodated to reason, nor reason to Scripture” (174). But how it is that the revealed (faithful) teachings of Scripture are at one with reason in both their content and their universality and yet are determined from their singular history alone, unlike philosophy, whose foundation is the universal history of nature, Spinoza now undertakes to address directly. Since he holds that reason cannot demonstrate whether the foundation of Scripture—that human beings are saved by obedience to God alone—is true or false, “it can also, therefore, be objected to us why we believe it if, without reason, as if blind, we embrace it and, therefore, also act foolishly and without judgment. If, on the other hand, we wished to hold that this foundation can be demonstrated by reason, theology would, therefore, be part of philosophy and not separated from it” (175). It is important to see that Spinoza poses the objection of why “we believe” in the saving doctrines of Scripture in the terms of the two opposed methods of biblical interpretation that he associates with

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the skeptical fideism of Alfakhar and the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides. Since Alfakhar reduces reason to (scriptural) faith and Maimonides reduces (scriptural) faith to reason, neither method appears to encounter any problems, for each has simply eliminated one of the terms of the dialectic— except for the fact that the result for each is blind contradiction, as we have seen Spinoza demonstrate. The perplexing problem of explaining why “we believe” in Scripture emerges, however, for Spinoza from circumstances that do not exist either for skeptical Alfakhar or for dogmatic Maimonides. Although Spinoza holds that reason and faith universally share common content, he also argues that they have different grounds: reason, universal nature, that is, what is given universally in human nature; and faith, particular history, that is, what is historically unique to biblical revelation. (Even though Spinoza claims, as we saw earlier, that all peoples have prophets, we also saw him scrupulously and tellingly avoid giving any examples of extra-biblical prophets.) Since reason cannot prove from itself alone that Scripture is true or false and since Scripture can be known solely from itself alone, that is, solely on the basis of its prophetic teachings of morality, how and why do “we believe” in Scripture? It is critically important to see that the question posed here by Spinoza is, to formulate it in Kantian terms: how is the Bible possible?40 Or: given that the Bible exists, how is it possible? Spinoza does not ask why (or if) the Bible is possible. For then, in undertaking to explain the Bible on the basis of universal reason, he would have returned to the contradictory position of Maimonides. It is no less important to see that there are two fundamental reasons why Spinoza does not and cannot dismiss the Bible as if it had been rendered scientifically and rationally otiose in modernity such that now, given its desuetude, it could simply be abandoned. In the first place, he does not, in the fashion of the so-called radical philosophers of the Enlightenment, dismiss the Bible by reducing it either to mythology (superstition), which has become hopelessly outdated, or to errors (conspiracy), which a corrupt priesthood (supported by corrupt rulers) use to keep the people blindly under their domination (as I have indicated before).41 For Spinoza, the very basis and aim of his method of interpreting Scripture, as distinct from both the dismissal of reason on the part of skeptics and the dismissal of faith on the part of dogmatists, is to provide a systematic way of distinguishing truth from error. He undertakes to separate philosophy from theology in order to show that they are not opposed to each other as truth and error are opposed to each other. Precisely because both skepticism and dogmatism are blind to the truth of the other, each remains blindly dependent on (and so indistinguishable from) the error of the other. (Spinoza has already shown that Maimonides’ concept of reason turns into a concept of supernatural faith and that the concept of su-

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pernatural faith found in Alfakhar blindly depends on a concept of natural reason for which he cannot account.) The second reason why Spinoza cannot and does not dismiss the Bible is that central to his separation of philosophy from theology is the fact that, as he has been scrupulously careful to make clear, philosophy cannot, on its own rational terms, account for Scripture. The issue that the objection raises for Spinoza, then, is to explain how it is possible for us to believe in the saving doctrines of Scripture without falling into the very contradictory opposition of faith and reason that besets Alfakhar and Maimonides. It is evident that we can believe in Scripture solely on the basis of the (paradoxical) separation of reason from faith, not on the basis of their (contradictory) opposition. But how are we to understand that separation when reason and faith are both universal and, in agreeing with each, are not opposed to each other, yet when one is universal and natural and the other is universal and historical? Spinoza initiates his response to the objection that he has raised by repeating his basic point that, because the fundamental dogmas of theology cannot be investigated by the natural light, “therefore, revelation was maximally necessary. But, nonetheless, we are able to use judgment in order to embrace what has already been revealed with at least moral certitude” (175). He explains that he says “with moral certitude” because we cannot be more certain than the prophets to whom the fundamental dogma of theology was first revealed (and whose certitude is only moral, as he showed in chapter 2). The reason that those who attempt to demonstrate the authority of Scripture mathematically totally err is that they think that they can provide stronger arguments than those that were used by the prophets to persuade the people of the certainty and authority of faith. Spinoza recalls that he showed in chapter 2 that the certitude of prophecy depends on three marks: a distinct and vivid imagination; a sign; and, last and chiefly, a mind turned to the just and the good. As the prophets originally demonstrated their authority to the people viva voce, today they do so to us scripto. Indeed, the only way in which to distinguish true from false prophecy is on the basis of doctrine (the just and the good); for, as he noted earlier, false prophets also had visions and effected miracles. Because the prophets had no other intention than to commend charity and justice, above all things, and truly taught “that men can become blessed by obedience and faith . . . , we are persuaded that they did not speak these things rashly or rave while they were prophesizing. In this we are even further confirmed when we attend to the fact that they taught nothing morale that does not very plainly agree with reason. For it is no accident (non temere est) that the word of God in the prophets altogether agrees with the word itself of God speaking in us” (176).42 Spinoza’s final response, then, to the objection of how he can embrace Scriptural faith while maintaining the separation of philosophy from theology

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(and so not blindly oppose reason and faith in the manner of Alfakhar and Maimonides) is that, while reason cannot mathematically demonstrate the foundation of theology and Scripture, we can, nevertheless, embrace it “with sane judgment (sano judicio). For it is, indeed, unthinking (inscitia),” he declares, “nevertheless, not to wish to embrace—solely for the reason that it cannot be mathematically demonstrated—what is confirmed by the testimonies of so many prophets and from which arose a great comfort for those who thus are not distinguished in reason and that brings not mediocre utility to the republic and which we can absolutely believe without danger or injury.” He observes further that, “in wisely instituting life,” we never admit something as true simply because it could never for any reason be called back in doubt or because most of our actions are not absolutely uncertain and full of chance (176). Then, in a quite intricate passage, Spinoza proceeds to show the contradictions into which theologians fall when, failing to grasp the import of the separation of reason from faith, they misconstrue reason. He begins by noting how ironic the results are when, understandably, theologians, who think that philosophy and theology contradict each other, with the result that one of them is driven from its domain and given its valediction, strive not unreasonably to use mathematical demonstration to give a firm foundation to theology. For who, except the desperate and the insane, he asks, would rashly wish to say goodbye (valedicere) to reason or to condemn the arts and sciences and to deny the certitude of reason? Still, Spinoza observes (as he did earlier), it is contradictory on the part of theologians to make use of reason in order to reject reason or to profess the certainty of reason while rendering it uncertain. In claiming to demonstrate mathematically the truth and authority of theology, while at the same time excluding them from the natural light of reason, these theologians “do nothing other than drag theology itself under the imperium of reason and plainly appear to suppose that the authority of theology has no splendor unless it is made lustrous (illustretur) by the natural light of reason” (177). In contrast to the theologians who ironically pervert theology by falsely claiming to base it on reason are the theologians whose claims to follow the internal authority and testimony of the Holy Spirit and to use reason solely for convincing unbelievers are simply empty words. Spinoza recalls that he has shown in chapter 14 (as we shall see) that the Holy Spirit testifies to its fruits solely through good works or actions. Further, concerning the truth and certitude of speculative matters, the Spirit gives no testimony outside of reason. When, therefore, theologians claim to have another (internal) Spirit, all they do, in fleeing to the protection of the sacred, is to show their great fear of being conquered by philosophers and exposed to public ridicule. “But in vain, for

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what altar can he prepare for himself who injures (laedit) the majesty of reason?” (177). Spinoza brings chapter 15 to a close by restating how important it is to separate theology from philosophy—so that neither is ancillary to the other and each occupies its own domain without opposition to the other—and thus to avoid the “absurdities, inconveniences, and harm” that result from confusing them (177). Then, in repeating what he has already written, he concludes by expressly warning that he holds Sacred Scripture, or revelation, to be of the greatest utility and necessity. Since it is not the natural light of reason but revelation that teaches obedience to be the way to salvation,43 “Scripture brings absolutely great comfort to mortals. Indeed, all men are absolutely able to obey [God], and only the fewest . . . can acquire the habit of virtue from the guidance alone of reason; and, therefore, unless we had this testimony of Scripture, we would doubt the salvation of nearly all men” (177–78). Having shown that philosophy and theology are both universal and that each is in agreement with the other—for reason and the moral teachings of Scripture do not oppose each other—Spinoza thus concludes his argument for the separation of philosophy from theology, of universal nature from historical Scripture, with yet a further paradox. Scripture is both useful and necessary because from it alone do we learn what universal reason does not and cannot impart: the sacred teaching that all individuals are universally able and must be able to obey God absolutely, that is, to live by the precepts of charity and justice. What I call paradoxical is the fact that Spinoza presupposes here two different notions of universality. While these two notions of universality—natural or eternal, on the one hand; and historical or necessary, on the other—co-exist in great tension in Spinoza, they are not ultimately, or in principle, I believe, opposed to or contradictory of each other. Philosophical, or rational, truth is universal (and naturally eternal), yet it is (and can be) embraced only by exceedingly rare individuals. Theological, or revealed, truth is universal (and historically necessary), and it is (and ought to be) embraced by all human beings (including, presumably, the rare philosophers). It is typically held by scholars that Spinoza simply intends to dismiss as vulgar, as belonging to the people or vulgus, both theology, together with its accommodation to the people, and its universal teaching, in contrast with the eternal truths of philosophy that are knowable only to the rarest individuals. But we continue to see that his fundamental idea of the separation of philosophy from theology involves (paradoxical) accommodation, not (contradictory) opposition; for only then, we might say, can the truth of the people and the truth of the philosopher not end up in hierarchical, contradictory opposition to each other (as they do in the tradition of Maimonides’ Aristotelianism).44

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To see that Spinoza’s concept of biblical interpretation, in separating philosophy from theology, implicitly bears a concept of history, as I indicated above, is to grasp the fact that the two notions of universality—learned and popular, natural and historical, philosophical and theological, rational and faithful—are to be separated from and not opposed to each other. But what Spinoza never directly descries or acknowledges, and what no thinker will clearly articulate until Hegel, as I have already indicated, is that the universality of reason is not natural but historical. In other words, while Spinoza insists upon the concord and agreement of philosophy and theology, in their very separation, he cannot yet conceive of the idea that the very basis of reason— its definition, its principle, and its origin—is the practice of biblical ethics: love of God and neighbor. Yet there is nothing in the thought of Spinoza that is opposed to or cannot be accommodated to this concept of history (to this history of the concept, to understanding that concepts are eternally true only insofar as they are historically true). Spinoza presupposes, or keeps open the ground for, the separation of universality (universal reason) from history (historical faith) such that their relationship is reciprocally paradoxical, not oppositionally contradictory. He rigorously maintains that reason cannot from itself alone explain or determine what can be known from Scripture itself alone. Implicitly, therefore, Spinoza recognizes that it is Scripture itself that limits the universality, the eternal nature, of reason; for there is one thing that reason cannot explain, and that is the historical (and universal) truth of biblical faith. In other words, the one thing that universal reason cannot explain is how and why all human beings have the universal obligation of obeying God in and through their good works or actions, which are the true fruits of the Holy Spirit. Another indication that Spinoza does not fully discern the basis of the tension between universal reason and historical faith, the first of which is eternal (but rare) and the second of which is historical (but common), is that he does not evidently show how it is (although he clearly holds) that we use the natural light (of reason) in judging, in acceding to, the moral demands of scriptural faith. That all human beings have the supreme right and authority of freely thinking—about religion—means that all human beings possess universal (natural) reason in judging freely the moral contents of Scripture. But then there are two critically important issues that Spinoza does not directly address or explicate: (1) the relationship between the natural light of scriptural readers or believers and the moral truth of Scripture; and (2) the relationship between the universality of the natural light, which is presupposed in and by all scriptural readers and believers, and the universality of the natural light, which only the rarest few can follow in acquiring the habit of eternal virtue. Here, consequently, the problematic of the universality of both reason

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and faith—one eternal, the other historical—is doubled. In the first case, scriptural faith, as universal (and common), presupposes the natural light, as universal (and common). In the second case, the natural light, as universal (and rare), does not presuppose scriptural faith, as universal (and common). Once again, if it were not for Spinoza’s fundamental doctrine of the separation of faith from reason (and not their hierarchical opposition), his two concepts of universal reason would collapse into contradiction (as they do in Alfakhar and Maimonides). As it is, the tension in the complex attitudes that Spinoza holds regarding universality awaits its (still implicit?) resolution in and through his concept of democracy (and finally in and through an explicitly articulated concept of history as the paradoxical separation of the eternal from the temporal in Hegel and Kierkegaard). The tension that exists among the various contexts to which Spinoza applies his concept of universality—as common (popular) in both faith (historical) and reason (natural); as eternal (rare) in reason (natural)—is also found in two of the additional elements that we saw Spinoza call upon in addressing the objection of how he can justify the use of reason in believing in scriptural faith and that we have not yet discussed. Both he just barely touches upon (and to both we have also seen him appeal on previous occasions). Spinoza introduces the first element in the context of observing that the prophets taught nothing in morality that did not altogether agree with reason: the fact that it is not accidental (i.e., that it is necessary), “that the word of God in the prophets altogether agrees with the word itself of God speaking in us.” I have commented before on the fact that the concept of universal (eternal) reason to which here Spinoza appeals is ironically (and implicitly) based on analogy with Scripture. In the present context of discussing Spinoza’s complex view of universality, we again see how problematic it is that the Word of God in Scripture, in whose terms the prophets addressed their people, is universal, necessary, and historical (but not an eternal truth) and that the Word, through and in which God speaks in us human beings, is universal, necessary, and eternal (but not a historical truth). For what Spinoza does not acknowledge here is that the concept of the Word of God speaking in us is historically rooted in the revealed Word of the biblical God. Kant propounds the same point of view in the passage cited at the head of this chapter. What is moral—in religion—is authenticated by God speaking not (solely) in the Bible but (also) in ourselves. “We cannot understand anyone unless he speaks to us through our own . . . reason.” It is only by the moral concepts of our human reason “that we can recognize the divinity of a teaching promulgated to us.” Kant, like Spinoza, articulates the reciprocity of reason and divinity, individual and God, morality and religion, reader and text. But also, like Spinoza, he does not yet (he is not yet able to) acknowledge that his concept of reason, in its separation from

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(and not in its opposition to) God, presupposes that its universality is historical, that it came into existence in and through the Bible. The second element that Spinoza mentions briefly in justifying the use of reason in acceding (and adhering) to scriptural faith involves what he calls life in the republic or “in wisely instituting life.” He simply states, in sparest fashion, that obedience (to God)—that is, in living by the precepts of charity and justice—is relevant to our political life and that “in wisely instituting life” the fact that we live by moral, but not mathematical, certitude is consistent with the elements of doubt, uncertainty, and chance in politics. These terse references to the political realm call for detailed exposition (which they will in part receive when Spinoza expounds his theory of democracy in chapters 16–20 of the Theologico-Political Treatise). What is lacking here is any explicit indication on Spinoza’s part either that the concepts central to civil life are precisely the biblical principles of charity and justice, whose certitude is moral, not mathematical (natural or philosophical), or that doubt, uncertainty, and chance, as central to the life of politics, cannot be meaningfully opposed to ethical (or eternal) virtue. (As I have indicated before, I show in volume II of this study that central to Spinoza’s concept of both politics and ethics is the paradoxical transition that human beings make from living passively under the control of their affects in the natural state to living actively under the guidance of reason in the civil state of democracy. For to live by the guidance of reason—by the precepts of charity and justice—is not just eternal principle but also, fundamentally, the way of practice, i.e., the practical way of temporal life, both social and political, where doubt, uncertainty, and chance are constantly to be encountered.) In thinking through the overall concept of biblical interpretation that Spinoza expounds in chapters 7 and 15 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, surely its most striking feature is its founding and being founded on the authority of both reader and Scripture. The principal idea supporting the supreme authority and right of freely thinking on the part of every individual, on the one hand, and the divinity of Scripture such that it is to be interpreted from its own authority alone, on the other, is the separation of philosophy from theology, of reason from faith. I have emphasized that it is the separation of philosophy from theology, and not their opposition, that provides Spinoza with a sure method of distinguishing truth from error. In other words, the separation of philosophy from theology, in not being reducible to the opposition between truth and error, indicates that both philosophy and theology, and so also both reader and text, are equally and reciprocally engaged in upholding (upbuilding) truth as its own authoritative standard of biblical interpretation. Perhaps the most arresting way in which Spinoza formulates his idea that both the individual reader and the Bible are sovereign authorities is by way of his

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paradoxical claim that, insofar as the Bible is understood from itself alone, it presupposes a concept of the natural light (of reason) on the part of the reader, one that is neither external nor internal to Scripture. We saw Spinoza acknowledge how perplexing it is that the hermeneutical principle that Scripture is to be understood from itself alone presupposes the use of the natural light on the part of the reader when he raises the objection of how he can justify the use of reason in believing in scriptural faith. The separation of reason from faith—in thus presupposing their paradoxical relationship—is both further supported and further complicated by Spinoza’s insistence that reason from its own authority alone cannot explain the necessity of revelation, which is to be understood from the Bible alone. I explicated the tensions that arise here in terms of the fact that reason is universal, natural, and necessary, while scriptural faith is also universal yet at the same time historical, while no less necessary. There are two ways, broadly, in which Spinoza deals with the objection that he raises about the relationship between reason and faith, between reader and biblical text. They at once inform and are informed by the concept of the separation of philosophy from theology, which, as we have now learned, allows him to distinguish truth from error in both reason and faith, in both the individual (reader) and the text (of the Bible). The first way is indirect but powerfully persuasive: his masterfully incisive critique of the opposed methods of biblical interpretation that he associates with the skeptical fideism of Alfakhar and the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides. The second way is direct but still rather hesitant and ambivalent in its assertiveness: his repeated claims that reason and faith contain common moral content, notwithstanding the fact that he calls the first universal and natural and the second universal and historical. Once we (modern) readers come to understand how and why the opposed views of Alfakhar and Maimonides on the relationship of faith and reason are not only mutually contradictory but also self-contradictory, we are then in a position to think through how the separation of philosophy from theology, in positing the paradoxical authority of each, overcomes (appropriates) their contradictory opposition. Spinoza is masterful in showing, as we have seen, how both Alfakhar and Maimonides equally abolish, from opposed points of view, the authority of Scripture by reducing its all-too-human errors to faith (that of both text and reader) or to reason (that of both reader and text). Because neither Alfakhar nor Maimonides, on the basis of his method of interpreting Scripture, can account for error by distinguishing it from truth (whether of text or reader), they end up undermining the authority of both Scripture (faith) and reader (reason). Indeed, their positions become indistinguishable from each other, as skepticism (blind faith) and dogmatism (blind reason), in their contradictory opposition to each other, inevitably turn

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into each other. For each, in being blind to (or blinded by) the truth of the other, simply reflects its own errors back upon the other. In magisterially showing how his own concept of the (paradoxical) separation of philosophy from theology is to be distinguished from their (contradictory) opposition in Alfakhar and Maimonides, Spinoza demonstrates powerfully, if indirectly, how his own concept of biblical interpretation preserves the supreme authority of both reason and faith, of both individual reader and Scripture. Spinoza is the absolute master of the argument reductio ad absurdum. In reducing the arguments of his opponents to absurdity, in exposing the contradictions to which their concepts of faith and reason are reducible, Spinoza clears the ground for an alternative method of interpreting Scripture, which, if it is to avoid the contradictions of his opponents, will have to justify the authority of both philosophical reason and theological faith. It will have to justify both the authority of the individual to think freely about religion (as about all things) and the authority of Scripture to impart obedience to God (as love of neighbor). But the very terseness that Spinoza adopts when he directly raises and then undertakes to address the objection as to how he can justify the rational comprehension of faith, given that the Bible is to be understood from itself alone, reflects, as I indicated earlier, considerable hesitation and ambiguity on his part. His assertion that reason and faith contain the same moral content is correct. Still, not only does he not explicate in any fullness how and why this is the case,45 but he also leaves unexplained how reason and faith can universally share the content of morality when the universality of reason is natural and the universality of faith is historical. It also turns out not to be the case (mathematically or demonstratively!) that reason is universal, since, as I indicated before, there is at least one thing that reason cannot explain on the basis of its own universally natural principles, which is the historical necessity of revelation. (That is, reason cannot explain that Scripture teaches true obedience to God.) The ambiguity of what I am calling his direct way of explaining the relationship between the authority of the natural light and the authority of Scripture is compounded by the distinction that Spinoza makes between the internal virtue of the mind (ethics) and external practice (politics), between private right (religious freedom) and public right (the only example of which he gives is the commonwealth under Moses, although ultimately he will argue for it in terms of the democratic res publica). This ambiguity is further compounded when he appeals, so very briefly, to the realm of politics—to instituting life wisely—as support for the utility and necessity (the truth) of the prophetic teaching of charity and justice. The ambiguous distinctions between universal (natural) and historical, private and public, internal and external, ethical (mind) and political will be re-

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solvable, in part, in terms of their separation, and not of their opposition, when Spinoza explicates his theory of democracy in chapters 16–20 of the Theologico Political Treatise (although he will not there make the connections between biblical hermeneutics and democracy explicit). In part, they will be resolved, as I indicated above, only when, in modernity, the universal has been freed from nature and its separation from history explicated as the biblical story of liberation from idolatry. There are no concepts more fundamental to modernity than democracy, universality, and history. There are also no concepts more fundamental to the biblical story of liberation from idolatry than democracy, universality, and history. Before going on to discuss chapters 12–14 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, I want to be clear that, in exposing what I see to be ambiguities (hesitations) in the hermeneutical theory of Spinoza, I understand these to enhance (and not to diminish) our sense of him as a thinker. In addition to the range of his penetrating acuity and the profundity and comprehensiveness of his insight, Spinoza possesses an intellectual probity that is exemplary. We are all creatures of our times, and none of us escapes the gravity of their pull or sees directly beyond the orbits in which we are moved. But Spinoza thinks through the prevailing dualisms of his time—such as those between faith and reason—with an independence of spirit that allows him to separate one side of the opposition from the other such that he can distinguish what is true and what is false in each (instead of reducing the two sides to the contradictions of opposition in which truth and error become indistinguishable). Spinoza’s probity in overcoming the contradictions of dualistic opposition in and through the dialectic of separation embodies the paradox of his hermeneutics that the Bible is to be understood from itself alone and that, therefore, the concept of reason that the reader brings to the Bible must itself have its original principle expressing love of God and neighbor in the Bible and its traditions, not in Greek philosophy. That Spinoza does not yet know (acknowledge) that Abraham is the father of the separation of faith from reason—with idolatry understood as their contradictory opposition—makes Spinoza characteristically modern. That Spinoza, in his intellectual probity, allows for no other possibility—as he demonstrates, above all, in and through his critique of Alfakhar and Maimonides—makes him paradigmatically modern.

On the True Teaching of Scripture: Chapters 12–14 Having demonstrated in chapters 7 and 15 of the Theologico-Political Treatise that his method of interpreting Scripture depends on making an absolute distinction between the (paradoxical) separation of philosophy from theology

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and their (contradictory) opposition, in chapters 12–14 Spinoza draws out the radical implications of this distinction. Above all, he is concerned to show that it is only insofar as we distinguish between truth and error in Scripture that we can see that obedience (to God), when understood as charity or love of neighbor, is opposed to obstinacy, not to speculative ignorance (of God). With regard to speculations on the attributes of God, Spinoza distinguishes sharply between those that are false, as based on the preconceived opinions and prejudices of the prophets, and those that are true, as based on the common notions of reason. It might thus appear that the separation of the knowledge of God (the attributes of God known to philosophers on the basis of rational demonstration) from piety (the practice of justice and charity on the part of all people) implies or even entails opposition between (speculative) knowledge of God and (practical) piety, that is, between knowledge and ignorance. But, as we have already seen, to separate philosophy from theology (i.e., from Scripture, revelation, prophecy, faith, obedience, piety, the practice of charity and justice) is to understand them such that they cannot be opposed to each other as truth and error (superstition or obstinacy) are opposed to each other. Since philosophy and theology are both true in their own separate realms; since there are also false versions of each; and since, as we shall see, Spinoza will, most tellingly, praise true piety in liaison with ignorance (if not with false knowledge), but not (true) knowledge in liaison with false piety, it turns out that the ultimate criterion or standard of truth can only be the practice of piety, that is, that which is not only accessible to but also commanded of all human beings: love of neighbor. Once again, therefore, we find raised for ourselves the issue of the principle or origin of the demonstrative (natural, scientific, philosophical, mathematical, or speculative) knowledge of the true attributes of God. If these attributes were unknown to the prophets (and to the apostles), that is, if they are based, not on Scripture, which, as historical, is not universal (although it is necessary, as we have seen Spinoza insist), but on universal human nature, how are we to understand their relationship to the moral doctrines of justice and charity? For it is justice and charity, Spinoza indicates, that ultimately (originally) provide the criterion of truth, given that one can live faithfully in ignorance of the true attributes of God but that one cannot live faithfully in ignorance of the doctrines of charity and justice, even though possessing true knowledge of God. Still, we shall see that ultimately Spinoza does not countenance a fundamental opposition between good faith and knowledge of God. Just as knowledge of God is not found outside of love of neighbor, so it also turns out that love of neighbor is not found outside of knowledge of God. What I think the separation of knowledge of God from piety ultimately means, therefore—for our understanding of not only the Theologico-Political Treatise but also the

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Ethics—is that Spinoza, as a modern philosopher, is not (yet) prepared to contemplate the possibility that philosophically demonstrable knowledge of God rests on or presupposes Scripture. What he shows us, however, is something very different. Precisely because the separation of (demonstrable) knowledge from (narrative or historical) Scripture overcomes their contradictory opposition, modern ethics, as it involves the ontological argument for the existence of God, cannot be other than the philosophical expression of biblical theology. It is little wonder, then, that we have already seen Spinoza indicate that the moral doctrines of Scripture are (also) universal in human nature. The wonder, then, for us moderns is to learn to separate the universality of philosophy from the history of revelation such that they are not opposed to but rather presuppose each other. In chapter 12 of the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza undertakes to address the three issues that are summarized in its title: on the writing (syngrapho) of the divine law; why Scripture is called sacred and the Word of God; and that Scripture, insofar as it contains the Word of God, has reached us uncorrupted. Spinoza bases the concatenation of arguments involved in showing that divine law as Scripture is true, sacred as the Word of God, and uncorrupted on the extraordinary demonstration that Scripture is full of errors, that its original(s) vanished long ago, and that its truth rests not on itself but on the mind of the reader. It is arresting to see that these claims lead Spinoza not to dismiss but rather directly to embrace Scripture as the true (and historically necessary) Word of God. What he shows us further, although indirectly, is that, unless we possess a sure method of interpretation whereby we can truthfully account for error in Scripture (as in the reader), the result will surely be the conflation of the Bible with and its consequent reduction to error (on the part of the superstitious) and so also its dismissal (on the part of unbelievers or atheists). Spinoza initiates chapter 12 with the observation that “those who consider the Bible, in its present form, [to be] an epistle of God sent [down] from heaven to men, will without doubt cry out that I have committed a sin against the Holy Spirit, I who of course have argued that the Word of God is faulty, truncated, adulterated, and not consistent with itself, that we have only fragments of it, and, finally, that the writing (syngraphum) of the covenant (pacti) that God made with the Jews has perished.” But Spinoza says that his opponents will cease their clamor when they consider that both reason and the prophets and apostles “openly claim (clamant) that the eternal word and covenant of God and the true religion are divinely inscribed in the hearts of men, that is, in the human mind, and are the true writing (syngraphum) of God, which he himself sealed with his seal, namely, with the idea of himself, as if with the image of his divinity” (149).46 Still, while his opponents agree

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that the divine law is inscribed in the human heart, they hold that it can no more be said about Scripture than about the Word of God that it is truncated and distorted. Spinoza indicates that it is his fear that his opponents, in their zeal to be holy, will convert religion into superstition by worshiping simulacra and images, that is, paper and ink, as the Word of God. While insisting that he has written nothing unworthy about Scripture or the Word of God, Spinoza acknowledges that profane individuals, for whom religion is a burden, can twist his words into a license for sinning by saying that, because Scripture is everywhere faulty and falsified, it has no authority: “Truly, it is impossible to help similar men according to that well-worn saying that nothing can, therefore, be said correctly that badly interpreted cannot be distorted.” Yet it is also the case, he observes, that the ancient Israelites, who once possessed the original Ark of the Covenant, not to mention the prophets and the apostles, were not themselves better or more obedient: “But all [people], Jews as well as gentiles, were always the same, and in every age virtue was absolutely rare” (150). In order to clear away all misconceptions Spinoza states that he will undertake in chapter 12 to demonstrate the following three points: (1) why Scripture and any “mute thing” ought to be held as sacred and divine; (2) why Scripture is called the Word of God; and (3) why the things necessary for obedience and salvation cannot be corrupted. In taking up the first point concerning what ought to be held as sacred and divine, Spinoza states in all apparent simplicity that the exercise of piety and religion depends on human use. So long as human beings use something religiously it will be sacred. But if they cease being pious, then the thing that they worship will also cease being sacred. It is equally the case, he continues, that, if people impiously use something that is sacred, then what was sacred will be rendered unclean and profane. Thus, Spinoza indicates, words (and so also texts, including human speech) gain their signification from their use or their abuse alone. If words move human beings to devotion, then the words and the texts in which they are written will be sacred. If, however, there comes a time in which the words no longer possess any meaning or the books in which they are written are neglected, whether from malice or from lack of need, then the words (and the books) will have no use or holiness. It is also the case that, if the words (and the books) are taken in a contrary signification, then the words (and the books), which before were sacred, will be impure and profane. “From this it follows,” Spinoza declares, “that nothing outside of the mind (mentem) but only in respect to it is absolutely sacred or profane and impure” (151). He points out that many passages of Scripture abundantly testify to the fact that sacred things are rendered profane and impure by human abuse, for example, when Jeremiah shows that the holy Temple itself was turned into an idol of false worship (7.4).

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The consequence of the fact that it is solely in relationship to the “mind” that something is absolutely sacred or profane is that Scripture itself is sacred and its words divine only so long as they move people to devotion to God. But if human beings neglect or profane Scripture, then it becomes nothing but an idol of paper and ink. Spinoza is careful to note, however, that in the time of Moses or Jeremiah it was not the Word of God or the law itself that was profaned. When Moses, in his anger, broke the first tablets of the law, he did not break the Word of God but only the stones, which previously had been sacred because on them were inscribed the covenant under which Israelites obligated themselves to obey God. In worshipping the golden calf, the Israelites made the covenant worthless; and it was for the same reason, Spinoza observes, that the second tablets along with the ark of the covenant also perished. “Thus it is not wondrous if the first originals of Moses are no longer extant,” Spinoza declares, “and that what we said above has also happened to the books that we possess, when the true original (verum originale) of the divine covenant and the most holy of all things was able to perish totally.” He concludes by noting that it is clearly not he who, in defending the Word of God, is impious but rather those who profane what is sacred. “Let them cease worshipping the letter and being, therefore, anxious about it,” consistent with what Paul says (in II Cor. 3.3) that “they have the epistle of God in themselves, written not with ink but with the spirit of God, not in stone tablets, but in the fleshly tablets of the heart” (152). What is so remarkable about Spinoza’s simple but profoundly penetrating demonstration that nothing is absolutely sacred or profane in itself but only in relationship to the “mind”—to our use and abuse of the things of the world—is that this teaching itself is fundamental to the Bible, as he himself points out. It is the Bible itself that brings into the world the radical—the modern!—teaching that there is nothing in itself that is sacred or profane but only in our relation to it, that is, in and through the covenant. The Bible proclaims that the law, or the Word of God, is absolute, not in itself but in how human beings relate to it, that is, whether they use it piously and lovingly or abuse it profanely and impurely. Just as Spinoza remarks at the beginning of chapter 12 of the Theologico-Political Treatise that Scripture is replete with error, still he will teach at the end of this chapter that the Bible, in bearing the absolute Word (mind) of God, has arrived in our human hands—yet it has never left human hands!—unerring, so the Bible, precisely because it bears the absolute Word of God, is itself the unique and universal source of idolatry. Since nothing in itself is absolutely sacred or profane but only in absolute relation to our mind, so there is nothing in itself—no word, no image, no ritual, etc.—that we humans cannot make idolatrous by our perverted relation to it, by our abuse of it. It is also the case that, since the Bible brings the sacred into

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existence in and through the absolute relationship, the covenant, there is no word, no text, no ritual, etc., that cannot be rendered sacred (as the Bible is sacred) insofar, as Spinoza would say, it teaches devotion or obedience to God as love of neighbor or, we might say, insofar as it expresses and fosters loving commitment to existence, to human respect and dignity. That the (major) plays of Shakespeare or the (major) paintings of Corot, for example, are sacred as the Bible (in its major sections) is sacred, so long as we commit ourselves in full mind to their study, does not detract from but rather enriches and amplifies the sacredness of Scripture. We have already seen Spinoza indicate (at the beginning of chapter 3) that the good in which the true happiness and blessedness of all human beings exist is absolute (infinite), not comparative (finite). That you enjoy this good as I enjoy it does not (relatively) diminish or increase it for you or for me but (absolutely) magnifies it for both of us in our mutual relationship to it. It is also remarkable how simple yet profound, how abstract yet concrete is Spinoza’s invocation of “mind” (mens) as the absolute (sovereign) standard or authority of the sacred and the profane. This mind is the mind of the reader, the mind of every individual; but it is the mind also of Scripture and of God. It is the mind of the community, of the whole of humankind. Whose mind, then, is it? It is certainly “my” mind; but it is not “my” mind in opposition to your mind but my mind as separate from—as both distinct from yet united with—your mind. It is fitting, here, I think, to restrict my commentary on “mind” to its immediate hermeneutical context as it involves the interpretation of Scripture. But “mind” has enormous ramifications in Spinoza, including its central role in the ontological argument (there is one thing that cannot relate to my mind without existing, and that is God: i.e., my mind does not exist outside of the absolute relation to the absolute) and in his theory of democracy: the mind of both one (the individual) and all (the community) is sovereign. When Spinoza takes up the second point to be examined in chapter 12, he gives three reasons why Scripture is called the Word of God and also discusses the relationship between the divine Word and the sacred writings, including the division of Scripture into (what he calls) the Old and the New Testaments. First, Scripture teaches true religion of which God is the eternal author. For the Word of God is the divine law (as discussed in chapter 4) that is universal to the whole human race. For example, Isaiah (1.10, etc.), in teaching that the true way of life consists not in ceremonies but in charity and true mind, calls it both the law and the Word of God.47 Second, Scripture narrates prophecies of future things as the decrees of God, which are metaphors for the eternal decree of divine nature. Third, the Word of God is taken for the edicts of individual prophets insofar as they perceived it by their singular virtue or

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prophetic gift and not from the common natural light. For the prophets introduced God speaking his decrees to them. In sum, although “Scripture contains much that is merely historical and perceived by the natural light, nevertheless, it takes its name from the more important [content]. Thus, we clearly see why God is understood to be author of the Bible, namely, on account of the true religion that is taught in it, but not because God wanted to communicate a certain number of books to men” (153). Regarding why the Bible is divided into Old and New Testaments, Spinoza indicates that before the advent of Christ the prophets preached religion as the law of the patria on the basis of the covenant begun in the time of Moses, while after the advent of Christ the apostles preached it to all people as universal law on the strength alone of Christ’s passion. But Spinoza hastens to add that the New Testament does not contain a different teaching and was not written as a covenant and that universal religion, as natural, was not new except with regard to those who did not know it. He cites John 1.10: “It was in the world, and the world knew it not.” Spinoza’s conclusion is that even if, therefore, we possessed fewer books, of both the Old and the New Testaments, we would not, nevertheless, be deprived of the Word of God (through which, properly, as we said above, true religion is understood), just as we may not think ourselves to be deprived of it even if we lack many other extremely important writings, such as the Book of the Law, which, as the writing of the covenant, was religiously guarded in the Temple, and, further, the books of the Wars, of the Chronicles, and many others from which those that we do possess of the Old Testament were excerpted and collected. (153)

Spinoza gives yet further reasons in support of his argument that the Word of God, while found in Scripture, is not reducible to any finite collection of scriptural words or books. First, the books of neither the Old nor the New Testaments were written by express command in one time for all ages. They are fortuitous works by particular authors who wrote in conformity with their own age and character, as is evident in the diverse callings of the various prophets and in the diverse letters of the various apostles. Second, as he showed in chapter 2 (about the prophets) and in chapter 6 (about miracles), while we have to make a critical distinction between the mind of Scripture and the prophets and the mind or truth of God, this is not at all the case regarding the passages of Scripture on true religion and true virtue. Third, when Jews and Christians, who were learned but not prophets, met to form their respective biblical canons by admitting some books and rejecting others, “it is necessary to confess that in their choice they had the word of God for their standard, and, that, therefore, before they approved of all the books, they had necessarily to have knowledge of the word of God” (154).

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I understand Spinoza’s extremely subtle observation here to be along the following lines. If I argue, for example, that the concept of God as found in Job, Ecclesiastes, or the Gospel of Thomas, books whose canonical authority was challenged or rejected, is or is not consistent with the concept of God as found in the Hebrew Bible or the four canonical Gospels, I still have to ask how I know that the concept of God that is found in the Hebrew Bible or in the four canonical Gospels is true. For, as Spinoza has already demonstrated in chapter 12, nothing is sacred or profane in itself outside of the mind but only in relationship to it. Interpretation, Spinoza thus shows us, is built into the very process of forming the biblical canon for both Jews and Christians. Fourth, as Spinoza indicates he showed in chapter 11 (on the New Testament epistles), because the apostles wrote not as prophets but only as learned men, they accommodated their teaching to their followers. From this it follows, he says, that their teaching contains many things “with which now, by reason of religion, we can do without” (154). Fifth and last, although there are four Evangelists, who believes, he asks, that God wanted to narrate the history of Christ in four written versions? While it is true, Spinoza acknowledges, that one Gospel contains things that are not found in another Gospel and that one Gospel can help us understand another Gospel, it does not follow that everything narrated in the four Gospels is necessary to know or that God chose the four Evangelists in order to make the history of Christ better understood: For each one [he declares] preached his own gospel in a different place, and each one wrote what he preached simply in order to tell the history of Christ lucidly and not to explain the rest. If sometimes they are more easily and better understood on the basis of their mutual collation, that happens by chance and only in a few places; but if these passages were ignored, the history would, nevertheless, be equally clear and men not less blessed. With these [things] we have shown that Scripture is properly called the Word of God by reason only of religion or by reason of the divine, universal law. (154–55)

Spinoza has now demonstrated the first two of the three major points to which he devotes chapter 12. First, there is no mute (or finite) thing, including Scripture, that is sacred or profane in itself but only in relation to the mind (of the reader or God). Second, Scripture is the Word of God, not because it contains a finite number of words or books but only because these words or books contain the critical, hermeneutical distinction between the (finite) mind of Scripture or the prophets and the (infinite) mind or truth of God (which is also the mind of the reader). Having through these first two points shown that Scripture is true, not in itself but only in relation to the mind—of the reader and God equally—Spinoza has prepared the reader for his third and last major point: that Scripture, however faulty, perverted, and mutilated,

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cannot, as the Word of God, have arrived in our hands—from the hands of our predecessors—in corrupt form. If there are passages of Scripture that today cannot be intelligibly known from their history alone or if there are words in Scripture that have changed their meaning, such limitations in no way detract, Spinoza declares, from the divinity of Scripture; for Scripture would be equally divine even if it were written in other words or in another language. That thus we have received the divine law uncorrupted for this reason no one can doubt. For from Scripture itself we perceive without any difficulty or ambiguity that its summa is to love God above all and the neighbor as oneself; and this [doctrine] could not be adulterated or written with hasty or erring pen; for, if Scripture ever taught something else, it would necessarily also have to teach all the rest otherwise, since this is, indeed, the foundation of all religion, which, if removed, its entire fabric would fall into ruin. And, therefore, such a Scripture would not be the same about which we are here speaking but a completely different book. It, therefore, remains unshaken that Scripture has always taught this; and, consequently, here no error could occur that could corrupt the sense without at the same time being noticed by everyone; nor could anyone, whose wickedness was not clear on that basis, have been able to pervert this sense. (155)

Once again, Spinoza shows us that it is only on the basis of truth—here the Bible’s summa: love of God and neighbor—that error can be discerned and accounted for. If the doctrine of love itself were falsified, that is, completely forgotten (eliminated), the Bible would be a totally different, that is, a pagan book. Knowledge of God would then metamorphose into a doctrine of ignorance of God so complete that no historical memory or transmission of the truth would be possible. It is critically important to see that in the above passage the mind—of the reader and of God (in relationship to which something is sacred or profane, true or false)—turns out to be the content itself of Scripture: the summa of loving God above all others and your neighbor as yourself. Love—the covenant—is not given in itself but in relationship. (It will hardly be unexpected, as I show in volume II of this study, that it is the Word or the mind of God—divine, eternal law as charity—that will form the basis of politics no less than of ethics for Spinoza. What other possible basis could there be for politics and ethics than the Word of God, which is also the sovereign human mind that is at once individual and universal?) Spinoza points out further that, since charity, as the foundation of Scripture, is unshakeable, so also are the fundamental doctrines that follow from it: God exists, God foresees (provides for) all things, God is omnipotent, God’s decrees are good to the pious and evil to the impious, and our salvation depends on God’s grace alone. The rest of the moral teachings also follow unshaken from

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the universal foundation of Scripture: to defend justice, to help the needy, to kill no one, not to lust for what belongs to the other, etc. “Of these, I say, there is nothing that either the wickedness of men can pervert or the decay of time can blot out. For whatever was blotted out from these [teachings] their universal foundation would immediately again dictate and, chiefly, the teaching of charity, which is highly commended everywhere in both Testaments” (156). Particularly important here is Spinoza’s insight that time (as history and tradition) supports the good will, the charity, not the ill will or malice, of human beings. Indeed, it is time as creative, and not as destructive, which constitutes history as the story of charity. Surely, the concept of temporality as charitable, as salvation-bearing, as liberating is the properly modern meaning of human progress, of moving forward in and through time. Is it not the responsibility of all human beings, within the modes of their own time, not to think that they can go further than Abraham in loving God and neighbor but rather to get at least as far as he by not standing still in their love? The fact that not even human malice (bad faith) can escape the temporal accounting of charity Spinoza then expounds with profound, psychological insight. He points out that, while we cannot think of a crime so execrable that it has not already been committed by someone, “nevertheless, there is no one who, in excusing his crimes, would attempt to blot out the laws or to introduce something that is impious as if [it were] an eternal and salutary teaching.” Human nature is so constituted, Spinoza remarks, that all individuals, whether king or subject, adorn their base deeds in order to make them appear just and acceptable to others (including to themselves, we might add). “We thus conclude absolutely,” he declares, “that the whole, divine, universal law, which Scripture teaches, has arrived uncorrupted in our hands” (156). The strangely disturbing paradox, which Spinoza articulates here and which Machiavelli never fundamentally grasped, is that, if I undertake to deceive others or, in other words, if I undertake to destroy the law or the eternal Word of God, I must presuppose the truth, the law, or the Word of God (however much I may twist or pervert them). I can do evil only on the basis of good. Without (outside of) good, there is no evil. Such is the discovery that both Satan and Adam (together with Eve) make in Paradise Lost. This truth is damning for Satan, the perverse logic of whose position in hell compels him to acknowledge that God brings good out of (his) evil. This truth is liberating for Adam and Eve, the charitable logic of whose position on earth empowers them to recognize that God brings good out of (their) evil. At the end of Milton’s great poem Adam and Eve walk hand and hand in(to) the temporality of love, freedom, and justice, creating the very image of the covenant as paradise regained, as time redeemed. The image of Satanic hell, on the other hand, is that of time lost, of paradise lost. Hell is not other people (from whom there

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is no Sartrean exit) but the absence of a concept of time expressive of otherness, of a concept of temporality in which we can hope for things to be otherwise than they have been. It is highly significant that, just as Spinoza indicates that neither human malice nor the erosions of time can blot out the divine law, so now, having shown that the scriptural foundation of charity is indestructible, he also points out that we cannot doubt that there are traditions (tradita) that have come down to us in good faith: “namely, the chief things of the histories of Scripture (summae Historiarum Scripturae), because they were the most [widely] known by all [people]” (156). Not only were the ancient Israelites accustomed to sing the antiquities of their nation in the Psalms, Spinoza notes, but also the chief things done by Christ and his passion were immediately divulged (vulgata) throughout the whole of the Roman Empire: Wherefore [he declares], it is least of all to be believed, unless the greatest part of men would agree in this—which is incredible—that what are the chief things in these histories later generations otherwise transmitted than they received them from earlier generations. Therefore, whatever is adulterated or faulty can have occurred only in the rest—of course, in one or another circumstance of a history or prophecy, in order to move the people to greater devotion; or in one or another miracle, so as to torture philosophers; or, finally, in speculative matters, after they began to be introduced into religion by schismatics, so that thus everyone might establish his own figments by abusing divine authority. But it has little bearing on salvation whether such are distortions or not. (156)48

It is important to see that Spinoza is not simply stating here that the eternal Word of God is impervious to the malicious deeds of human beings or to the erosions of time. Rather, he is formulating a concept of tradition or history that, like his concept of language (communication), invests both the community (“the greatest part of men”) and temporality with the good faith of eternal salvation (charity and freedom). Although Spinoza does not analyze in detail how the eternal Word of God is communicated temporally, or historically, in and through the community of humankind, in fact, what he is formulating here is a concept of temporality as history. Time, he indicates, is not sacred or profane in itself but only in relation to the mind (of the community). Either we make time meaningful, or we abuse time by wasting it, by merely passing the time, by viewing time as pastime, as Montaigne writes in “Of Experience” (853). In the passage cited above Spinoza distinguishes between, on the one hand, the community (i.e., most individuals), which receives, preserves, and passes on tradition in good faith, and, on the other hand, experts, who can distort Scripture. This is the same distinction that he made between the people who

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preserve language uncorrupted and experts who (on the basis of uncorrupted tradition) can corrupt individual passages in a text but not the whole of the text of, say, the Bible without being immediately exposed in and by their own lack of charity. In showing that Scripture as the Word of God both establishes and is established on incorruptible foundations—language, charity, “the greatest part of men,” and temporality as historical tradition (that which is transmitted by one generation to another in good faith)—Spinoza continues to prepare us for the second, the other, the political, the democratic part of the Theologico-Political Treatise. In the eternal perspective of the scriptural Word of God, time in itself is neither sacred nor profane. In other words, since time is not sacred or profane in itself outside of the mind but only in relationship to it, either we make time sacred by using (redeeming) it historically (by revealing the truth of our deeds in and through historical time) or we profane time by abusing (perverting) it unhistorically (by covering up the malice of our deceptions in and through historically distorted time). History, we can say, is the temporality of democracy, for it is open and accessible to—it can be related to (and by) the mind of—all. When time is viewed as sacred in itself, it is the sacred time of mythical kings and heroes, together with their human imitators, in opposition to the profane time of “the greatest part of men” who do not enjoy the relative good of hierarchical privilege. In defending Scripture as the incorruptible, although corrupted, Word of God in chapter 12 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, it is striking that Spinoza continues to make subtle use of his critical hermeneutical principle of the separation of philosophy from theology (although he does not directly invoke it here). He shows that it is the readers of (or believers in) the text of Scripture who, in their very separation from it, determine whether it is sacred or profane. But what is so extraordinary is that the demonstration on the part of Spinoza that something is sacred or profane not in itself but solely in relationship to the mind is itself the very teaching of Scripture (as he himself acknowledges). Indeed, precisely as the mind (of the reader, of the community of readers, of God) cannot be corrupted, because it is the standard of all relations as either true or corrupt, so the mind embodies the very doctrine of Scripture—charity, or love of God and neighbor—that is the incorruptible standard of all relationships. The mind, as separate from the (biblical) text, is not opposed to the text, as if it were something given in itself “outside of ” Scripture. Rather, the mind involves and expresses relationship. We know the mind—the mind knows itself—only by how it relates, by its relationships. The mind relates well or badly, charitably or hatefully. But it is equally the case that the Bible, in its very separation from its readers (believers), is not opposed to them. It is not outside of its readers but exists only in (the amplitude or the narrowness of) the relationships that it establishes with its readers and that its

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readers establish with it. The Bible, in introducing the standard of what is sacred and what is profane into the world, is not sacred or profane, true or false in itself but solely in how it relates to us or, in other words, in how we relate to it—whether we use or abuse it, whether we interpret and embody (live) its doctrine of charity lovingly or hatefully, whether we verify or falsify it in our lives. That the Bible’s doctrine of charity is the absolutely incorruptible standard of all relationships—loving or hateful—and that the (separate) mind (of the reader) is the absolutely incorruptible standard of all relationships—sacred and profane—together constitute the eternal truth that time cannot and does not wipe out, however many faults and lacunae it may introduce along the way, including the (always already) irrevocable loss of the original words, covenant, and documents of Scripture. For there are no first, that is, no primal, primary, or principal words as originally founding documents in the sense that they are true in themselves outside of time, outside of their temporal relationships. The words of Scripture—the words of readers—are not sacred or profane in themselves but only in the relations that they bear in and through historical time. Time, as historically incorruptible tradition, thus bears witness to the very eternity of mind and love (what Spinoza at the end of the Ethics calls the intellectual love of God). Mind and love as the standard of the sacred and the profane are knowable (communicable) only in and through historical tradition and are not found apart from it. Indeed, it is only in time as historical relation—as that in and by which we account for ourselves in history—that readers can bear witness to the charitable truth of Scripture and that Scripture can bear witness to the loving relationships of its readers. With his sophisticated demonstration in chapter 12 that the eternal Word of the biblical God cannot be falsified by either human malice or the erosions of time and that the mind, in embodying the scriptural doctrine of love of neighbor, is the standard of the sacred and the profane now behind him, Spinoza proceeds to argue in chapter 13 of the Theologico-Political Treatise that Scripture teaches “the simplest things” and that all people can incorporate them into their plan of living (ratio vivendi). He begins by summarizing key points made in earlier chapters: • In chapter 2: The prophets possess the singular power of imagining, not of understanding, that God revealed to them, not the arcana of philosophy but only the simplest things and accommodated them to their preconceived opinions. • In chapter 5: Because Scripture conveys and teaches things in the manner by which they are most easily perceived by everyone, it does not deduce and

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concatenate things by means of axioms and definitions. In speaking simply in order to bring about faith, Scripture confirms its sayings with experience alone, that is, with miracles and histories, which also are narrated in such a style and with such phrases that the mind of people can most effectively be moved. (Spinoza also refers here to chapter 6 on miracles.) • In chapter 7: The difficulty of understanding Scripture is located in language alone, not in the sublimity of argument. Spinoza adds that, since the prophets preached not solely to the learned but to all Jews alike and since the apostles taught their doctrines in churches as common assemblies of all people, it is evident that scriptural teaching contains the simplest things, not sublime, philosophical speculations: Thus [he declares], I cannot sufficiently wonder at the ingenuity of those . . . who, of course, see such profound mysteries in Scripture that they can be explained in no human language and who then introduce into religion so many matters of philosophical speculation that the Church seems [more] like an Academy and religion [more like] a science or rather a [learned] discussion. Truly, what I wonder about is that men, who vaunt themselves on having a supernatural light, do not wish to yield in knowledge to philosophers, who have nothing beyond the natural. I would be completely surprised if they taught something new as solely speculative that was not once utterly trite among gentile philosophers (who, nevertheless, they say were blind). For, if you inquire into what mysteries they see hidden in Scripture, you indeed find nothing outside of the comments of Aristotle or Plato or another similar one, which often some ignorant individual (idiota) could more easily dream up than the most lettered individual could investigate on the basis of Scripture. (157–58)

Spinoza had already noted with considerable asperity in the preface of the Theologico-Political Treatise that theologians, in degrading human reason, in claiming to possess a supernatural light, and in undertaking to transform the simple teachings of Scripture into lofty mysteries, had succeeded in turning the Bible into an instrument that was used, not to teach charity and justice but rather to support impiety, superstition, strife, intolerance, hatred, and persecution. Consequently, instead of manifesting the supernatural light, the commentaries of theologians contain nothing, “I see, outside of the speculations of Aristotelians or Platonists; and to these they accommodate Scripture so as not to appear to follow the pagans. It was not enough for them to rave with the Greeks, but they [also] wanted the prophets to share their delirium” (5). While Spinoza does not comment in detail on the false speculations, which he associates with Greek philosophy and to which, he says, theologians accommodate the simple teaching of the prophets, it is clear that this type of ac-

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commodation is totally different from and opposed to the type of accommodation according to which the true revelations of God are accommodated to the preconceived (false) opinions of both prophets and people. In the first case, the very content of revelation, the doctrine of charity and justice, in being accommodated to the ravings of Greek philosophy as the truth of the arcane mysteries of Scripture, is falsified. Indeed, theologians accommodate Scripture to the speculations of Greek philosophers “so as not to appear to follow the pagans.” In the second case, the idea that divine revelation is accommodated to the preconceived opinions or prejudices of both prophets and people indicates that the truth of revelation is to be distinguished from and not conflated with error. In the first case, the accommodation of the preconceived opinions and prejudices of prophets and people, as if they were sublime mysteries, to Greek philosophy falsifies both prophetic truth and theological speculation (not to mention Greek philosophy). In the second case, the accommodation of revelation to the preconceived opinions or prejudices of prophets and people preserves the truth of revelation from confusion with error. In the first case, the false opinions of the prophets, considered as true, are falsely accommodated to the false speculations of the Greeks, which are also considered as true. In the second case, revelation as true is truly accommodated to the false opinions of the prophets. The first concept of accommodation results in the total confusion of truth and error. The second concept of accommodation accounts for the distinction between truth and error. Having dismissed the speculations of Greek philosophy, to which Scripture is falsely accommodated, Spinoza is careful, however, to note that he by no means claims that Scripture is completely devoid of speculative truths. Still, while Scripture does contain fundamental truths about God, as he had indicated in chapter 12, they are both absolutely few and absolutely simple, as he now proposes to show. Because it is not, he says, the intent of Scripture to teach the scientias, the speculative truths that it does contain demand only obedience and condemn obstinacy, not ignorance. Furthermore, since obedience towards God consists in love alone of neighbor (for he who loves his neighbor, of course with the end of obeying God, fulfills the law, as Paul says in Romans 13.8), hence it follows that in Scripture no other science is commended than that which is necessary to all men to be able to obey God according to this commandment. . . . The rest of the speculations, which do not directly tend to this end—either those concerning God or those concerning knowledge of natural things—do not, however, touch Scripture and are to be separated, therefore, from revealed religion. (158)

That the remaining speculations, both divine and natural, are to be separated from revelation raises, yet again, the question of their status and origin,

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about which I want to make three observations (as proposals that I examine in volume II of this study). First, because the speculations of philosophy are separated from but not, thereby, opposed to the speculative truths of divine revelation, surely philosophical truths share a fundamental affinity with revealed truths. Second, surely it is also the case that the speculations of philosophy, since they, too, center on the God of the Bible, can share no significant content with the “ravings” of Greek philosophy, consistent with Spinoza’s decisive dismissal of the Aristotelian rationalism of Maimonides. Third, while Spinoza is sensitively attentive to both the intention and the style of Scripture—“it does not deduce and concatenate things by means of axioms and definitions,” as he indicates at the beginning of chapter 13 (and frequently repeats, as we have seen)—it is by no means patent that the separation of philosophical from revealed speculations, of knowledge from obedience, is not fundamentally a separation, not in content, but in form, that is, of “mathematical” demonstration from prophetic revelation and history (157). Indeed, just as Spinoza holds that Scripture does contain speculative truths (although they are simple and few), he will also show here and also in chapter 14, as we shall see, that biblical faith demands (entails) knowledge of God, as I indicated above (and as is consistent with the Ethics, according to which all human beings possess adequate knowledge of God). With these preliminaries behind him, Spinoza devotes the rest of chapter 13 to showing, by means of two points, that it is easily demonstrated that Scripture teaches from itself alone “the simplest things” as are required for a true plan of living: 1. “Intellectual or accurate knowledge of God is not a gift common to all believers, as is obedience.” 2. “The knowledge that God through the prophets universally demands of all men and that each individual is held to know is nothing except the knowledge of his divine justice and charity.” Both of these points are easily demonstrated “from Scripture itself,” as Spinoza proceeds to show (158). Scripture, he states, does not bind people by commandment to know the attributes of God, for this peculiar gift was conceded only to certain faithful individuals. Besides, “who does not see that divine knowledge was not equal in all the faithful and that from command no one was able to be wise any more than to live and to be? Men, women, children, and all human beings are, indeed, equally able from command to obey, not, however, to know” (159–60).49 To say that it is solely knowledge of his divine justice and charity that God through the prophets demands of people is simply to invoke “the attributes of God that men can imitate with a certain plan of living” (160).

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Spinoza calls upon Moses, Jeremiah, and I John in support of his claim that what everybody is held to know about God is that he “is supremely just and supremely merciful or that he is the unique exemplar of the true life.” Because Scripture does not expressly provide a definition of God or prescribe knowledge of other divine attributes, “we conclude that the intellectual knowledge of God, which considers his nature as it is in itself, and that this nature, which men cannot imitate by a certain plan of living or take as an example for the institution of a true plan of living, pertain in no manner to faith and revealed religion and, consequently, that men can completely err concerning this without crime” (161). It is not, therefore, surprising, Spinoza remarks, that God accommodated himself to the imaginations and preconceived opinions of the prophets and that the prophets had diverse judgments about the nature of God (as he showed in chapter 2). It is also not surprising that Scripture improperly attributes hands, feet, eyes, local motion, emotions, etc., to God and views him as sitting on a royal throne with Christ on his right hand. For the sacred volumes “simply speak according to the understanding of the people (captum vulgi), whom Scripture seeks to make not learned but obedient.” But Spinoza then observes that, nevertheless, common theologians contend that whatever in these passages they can see by natural light does not agree with the divine nature is to be interpreted metaphorically and that whatever flees their grasp is to be accepted according to the letter. But if all the things of this kind that are found in Scripture were necessarily to be interpreted and understood metaphorically, then Scripture would be written not for the people and the rude masses (plebi and rudi vulgo) but only for the most learned individuals and, above all, for philosophers. Indeed, if it were impious to believe piously about God and with simplicity of mind about the things that we have just recounted, surely the prophets ought most of all to have avoided similar phrases, at least on account of the weakness (imbecillitatem) of the people, and, on the contrary, to have taught clearly and, before all, formally the attributes of God, since everyone is held to embrace them, which nowhere is done. Therefore, it is least of all to be believed that opinions are to be considered as absolutely pious or impious without regard to [the] works [of charity and justice]. (161–62)

Opinions, Spinoza continues, are to be considered pious or impious insofar as they move people to obedience or give them license for sinning. If people, although believing true things, are made obstinate, their faith is impious. On the other hand, if people, although believing false things, are made obedient, their faith is pious. Spinoza then concludes chapter 13 with the declaration that he has shown that true knowledge of God is not a divine mandate commanded of all human beings but a divine gift of the few and that “God seeks from men nothing other than knowledge of his divine justice and charity, which is necessary, not to the sciences but only to obedience” (162).

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There is a sense in which Spinoza does not introduce anything new in chapter 13. Still, in demonstrating that Scripture contains only “the simplest things,” those which all human beings can and must make the basis of their true plan of living, he articulates with a newly stark clarity what he understands by the separation of philosophy from revealed faith. His most striking formulation of that separation is, as we saw, that “people cannot imitate by a certain plan of living or take as an example for the institution of the true plan of living” the divine “nature as it is in itself ”; that the divine nature pertains “in no manner to faith and revealed religion”; and that, finally, it is no crime if “men can completely err concerning this.” What is this philosophical (speculative, mathematical, natural, or “scientific”) knowledge of God, which, as the divine gift of the wise few, is based on the definition of God, that is, on the divine nature as it is known in itself, together with the speculative attributes of God? It is not found in the Bible (since it was not preached by the prophets or the apostles as revealed to them by God). It is beyond the capacity of ordinary people. It does not institute the true plan of living as based on the mandated knowledge of divine justice and charity. It cannot be imitated as the divine exemplar of true life. Finally, it can be falsified without ill consequence. (Once again, we broach the question that is central to volume II of this study—the question of the relationship between the wise few and the pious many, between ethics and politics, between the intellectual love of God as found in part V of the Ethics and the democratic civil state in which all human beings commonly live under the universal mandate of justice and charity.) It is important to note that the reason Spinoza so sharply criticizes theologians and philosophers for elevating the preconceived opinions and prejudices of the prophets and their people to the status of esoteric mysteries is because, in obscuring the divine mandates of charity and justice that all people can and must understand and obey, they make the people blindly dependent on the opinions of learned experts who profoundly distort biblical teaching. (This is the same criticism that we saw Spinoza make of Maimonides.) Today, scholars typically hold that, in separating philosophy from revealed faith, Spinoza is then in a position to treat philosophy independently—in the Ethics. But, as I continue to note, the separation of philosophy from theology is not their opposition. Furthermore, we have already seen Spinoza indicate in chapter 15 that reason and faith, or philosophy and the moral doctrines of the Bible, fundamentally agree with each other in teaching universal truth. We have also noted that, just as Spinoza does not deny that the Bible contains speculative truths, so he will also continue to argue that piety, although demonstrated in and through the works of charity and justice, not opinions, presupposes knowledge (not ignorance) of God. Perhaps most important is his observation that true belief, when not accompanied by just and charitable works, is

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impious and that just and charitable works, even when accompanied by false belief, are pious. But can true (philosophical) knowledge of God be found outside of justice and charity? Can the true works of justice and charity (as mandated in and through biblical revelation) be found outside of knowledge of God? As I show in volume II of this study, there is in Spinoza’s theologicopolitical thought absolutely no place for the philosopher-king. All people, we saw him eloquently declare, have the supreme right and authority of thinking freely and so of interpreting the Bible. They are not to depend as ancillae on philosophers. It is the people, not philosophers, who hold the supreme right and authority of democratic sovereignty. Indeed, Spinoza undertakes to separate philosophy from theology with the express purpose of clearing a free space for both philosophy and religion within the democratic commonwealth. What, then, is the relationship between the gift of knowledge and the mandate of charity and justice, when they are separated from but not opposed as ancillary to one another? Is this the same question as asking about the place of philosophy and of the philosopher in modern democracy? We begin to suspect, I think, that, in distinguishing the false accommodation of the preconceived opinions and prejudices of the Bible to philosophy (in the tradition of Maimonides) from the true accommodation of divinely revealed charity and justice to the preconceived opinions and prejudices of the prophets and the apostles (in contrast to the tradition of Alfakhar), Spinoza intends to uphold the truth of both biblical faith and philosophical speculation. For, in separating philosophy from theology, he does not oppose them one to the other as truth is opposed to error. Does not Spinoza show us that he cannot advance the truth of one without advancing the truth of both and that, if he equates one with error, then he will not be able not to equate the other, too, with error? Does he not show us that the very possibility of a true philosophy depends upon a concept of faith to which it is not opposed, and so not ancillary, and that the very possibility of a true faith depends upon a concept of philosophy to which it is also not opposed, and so, too, not ancillary? Indeed, we have already seen Spinoza demonstrate that the sole alternative to the contradictory opposition between the falsely dogmatic philosophy of Maimonides and the falsely skeptical faith of Alfakhar is the separation of philosophy from theology such that the truth of one does not entail and so blindly mirror the error of the other. It may well be the case, as I suggested above, that Spinoza is not yet fully able to account for how the separation of philosophy from theology implies (rather, entails) their common history. Nevertheless, just as he is careful not to distort biblical prophecy by reading its revealed teaching of charity and justice in terms of particular pagan texts and their utterly opposed concepts (notwithstanding his claim that prophets are universally found in all peoples),

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so Spinoza also does not undertake to relate what he calls his universal philosophy to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics in the tradition of Maimonides and the high scholastic tradition.50 What Spinoza shows us, rather, is that he can develop a true concept of philosophy only insofar as he separates it from, and so does not oppose it to, biblical faith. In other words, biblical faith creates and preserves the very conditions of true philosophy, and (although not yet directly known to or acknowledged by Spinoza but what we may call) biblical philosophy creates and preserves the very conditions of true faith. In chapter 14 of the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza shows how obedience to God as love of neighbor, in embodying the revealed truths of justice and charity, involves and expresses what he now proceeds to outline as the Seven Dogmas of Faith. According to the chapter title he will explain what faith and the fundamentals of faith are; who the faithful are; and, finally, that faith is separated from philosophy. Spinoza begins with his familiar claim that, in order to have “true knowledge of faith,” we must recognize that Scripture is accommodated to the understanding of both the prophets and their people. Otherwise, he declares, “he who promiscuously embraces all the things that are had in Scripture as the universal and absolute teaching (doctrinam) about God and does not accurately know what is accommodated to the understanding of the people is not able not to confuse the opinions of the people with divine doctrine, not to defend the comments and decisions of men as divine documents, and not to abuse the authority of Scripture.” The result today is that sectarians, in defending their contrary opinions about the teachings of faith (documenta) with scriptural examples, abuse the authority of Scripture by advancing human opinion—both that of prophets and people and their own—as divine. The resultant confusion of the human with the divine, of error with truth, is aptly captured, Spinoza remarks, by the common Dutch proverb: “No heretic without a text” (163). Still, Spinoza observes, he does not accuse the sectarians of impiety because they accommodate Scripture, in the tradition of prophets and people, to their own opinions insofar as they are moved thereby in mind to embrace justice and charity more fully. However, he does accuse those who do not wish to grant this same freedom to others but who persecute all those who do not think like them, although they are utterly honest and obedient to true virtue, as if they were, nonetheless, the enemies of God; and, on the contrary, nevertheless, they love as the elect of God those who agree with them, although they are utterly impotent of mind, than which nothing, indeed, can be thought more wicked and more pernicious to the republic. Faith and its fundamentals are, therefore, to be determined in order to establish how far, by reason of faith, freedom of thinking extends to each individual to think what he wants and who are those, although thinking diversely, we are, nevertheless, held to view as faithful. (163–64)

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Spinoza indicates that the fundamentals of faith can be determined solely on the basis of what is “the supreme intent of the whole of Scripture,” that is, of the true norma of faith. The determination of the fundamentals of faith will also allow him to propound “the chief intent of the whole” of the TheologicoPolitical Treatise, which is to separate faith from philosophy. For who does not clearly see, he asks, that, as he has already demonstrated in chapter 13, the sole intent of both the Old and the New Testaments is “that men obey [God] from true mind?” It is equally clear, he says, that to obey God consists solely in love of neighbor. “Wherefore, no one can even deny that he who, from the command of God, loves the neighbor as himself is truly obedient and blessed according to the law and that, on the contrary, he who holds [his neighbor] in hatred or neglects him is rebellious and obstinate.” Since Scripture was written not for the learned alone but for all people of every age and type and since we are held to believe nothing beyond what is absolutely necessary to follow this command, “this command itself is the unique norma of the whole of universal faith; and through it alone are all the dogmas of faith, which of course every individual is held to embrace, to be determined” (164). Spinoza observes that readers may judge for themselves how it was possible for so many dissensions to have arisen in the Church when the norm of faith is utterly manifest and when all things can be legitimately deduced “from this foundation alone or from reason alone.” Still, he asks, can there be any other causes of dissensions than those he outlined at the beginning of chapter 7 and that can be summarized as the obstinacy of teaching human opinion as divine truth? It is these very dissensions, Spinoza states, which drive me here to show the manner and reason of determining the dogmas of faith from this discovered foundation. For if I did not do this and did not determine the matter with certain rules, I would be believed with merit to have promoted little in this area; and, indeed, anyone would be able to introduce what he wanted, even under this pretext, of course, as the means necessary to obedience—chiefly when it is a question concerning divine attributes. (165)

Spinoza initiates his discussion, therefore, with the following definition of faith: to think (sentire) such things about God that, if we are ignorant of them, obedience to God is removed and that, if obedience is given, then they are posited. Spinoza remarks that this definition is so clear and that it so manifestly follows from the things demonstrated that it needs no explanation. Still, he will show that three things follow from it: 1. Faith is salvation-bearing (salutiferam), not through itself but solely by reason of obedience, consistent with James 2.17: faith through itself without works is dead.

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2. He who is truly obedient necessarily has true, salvation-bearing faith. Here Spinoza cites I John 4.7–8 (to love your neighbor is to know God, for God is love), in addition to James. It follows from this, Spinoza declares, “that we can judge no one as faithful, or unfaithful, except from works. Namely, if the works are good, although he dissents in his dogmas from other believers, he is nevertheless faithful; and, on the contrary, if the works are bad, although he agrees in words, he is nevertheless unfaithful. For, with obedience posited, faith is necessarily posited; and faith without works is dead” (165). He additionally cites I John 4.13 (no one can see God or know any attribute of God except through love of neighbor) and 2.3–4: “‘We know (scimus) that we know (novimus) God if we observe his commandments. Who says that he knows him but does not observe his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.’” Spinoza also calls upon I John in stating that the true Antichrists are individuals who persecute honest men and those who love justice because they dissent from them. “For those who love justice and charity we know to be faithful through this alone; and he who persecutes the faithful is Antichrist” (166). 3. Faith requires not so much true as pious dogmas, that is, those that move the mind (animum) to obedience. Not only do human beings sincerely err but, as Spinoza has already shown, Scripture condemns not (speculative) ignorance but obstinacy and solely advocates obedience, that is, love of neighbor. Since human beings have infinitely diverse opinions and since we are to judge our neighbors by their works alone, it follows, therefore, he declares, that only those dogmas pertain to the universal (catholica) faith that make obedience towards God absolute and that, if we are ignorant of them, obedience is absolutely impossible. As for the rest, however, each individual, because he knows himself better, ought to think about them according to how he views them as better for confirming himself in the love of justice. And from this reason, I think, no place would remain for controversies in the church. (166–67)

Having thus shown that the norma and intent of Scripture rest on obedience to God as love of neighbor, Spinoza now proceeds to enumerate what he calls “the dogmas of universal faith” or “the fundamentals of the intent of universal Scripture” (167). Their foundation, he states, is the supreme being who loves justice and charity and whom all people, in order to be saved, are held to obey and to worship (adorare) in the cultus of justice and love towards the neighbor. The Seven Dogmas of Faith are as follows:

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1. God, the supreme being, the very summit of what is just and merciful, the exemplar of true life, exists. Whoever does not know or believe that God exists is not able to obey him or to know him as judge. 2. God is one (unicum), which absolutely requires supreme devotion, reverence, and love towards God. For devotion, reverence, and love arise from the excellence alone of one above the rest. 3. God is everywhere present. That is, all things are patent to him. If things were believed to hide (from) him or if it were not known that he sees all things, the equity of his justice, by which he directs all things, might be doubted or not known. 4. God has supreme right and dominium over all things. He is not driven by right but acts from his absolute decree and singular grace. 5. Worship of God and obedience to him consist in justice and charity alone, that is, in love towards the neighbor. 6. All who obey God by this reason of living (plan of life) are the only ones to be saved. The rest, who live under the imperium of pleasures, are lost. If men did not firmly believe this, there would be no reason why they would prefer to obey God rather than pleasures. 7. God forgives (condonare) the penitent their sins. For there is no one who does not sin. If this dogma were not established, all human beings would despair over their salvation, and there would be no reason why they would believe God to be merciful. He who firmly believes that God, from his mercy and grace, by which he directs all things, forgives the sins of men, and thereby is more inflamed with the love of God truly knows Christ according to the spirit, and Christ is in him. Before commenting on these seven dogmas of faith, it is important, first, to take into account the fact that Spinoza views them as at once minimal and maximal. On the one hand, they constitute the doctrinal minimum that all human beings are required to know. If any one of the seven dogmas were removed, he declares, then all obedience would vanish. On the other hand, the seven dogmas constitute the doctrinal maximum that human beings are required to know. Regarding all the rest—especially the divine attributes: that is, what God is in himself—people may believe as they find consistent with obedience. For, Spinoza declares, just as faith was once revealed and written according to the understanding and opinions of the prophets and the people of that time, so also now each individual is held to accommodate it to his opinions, so that he may embrace it without any opposition of mind or hesitation. For we have shown that faith demands not so much truth as piety and that it cannot be pious and salvation-bearing except

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by reason of obedience; and, consequently, no one can be faithful except by reason of obedience. Wherefore, the one who shows the best faith is not necessarily the one who shows the best reasons but the one who shows the best works of justice and charity. How salutary this teaching (doctrina) is and how necessary it is in the republic, so that men may live peacefully and in concord and, I say, how many causes of disturbances and crimes it may prevent, I leave to all to judge. (168)

It is also important, second, to keep in mind, before discussing the Seven Dogmas of Faith, that Spinoza presents them within the overall aim of the Theologico-Political Treatise, which is to separate faith from philosophy. He states in the last paragraph of chapter 14 that “between faith, or theology, and philosophy there is no commerce or affinity” and that, in light of their scope and foundation, they “are completely discrepant.” Spinoza gives two reasons here for the separation of philosophy from faith. First, they have different ends: philosophy, truth; and faith, obedience and piety. Second, they have different foundations: philosophy, common notions, which are to be sought from nature alone; and faith, history and language, which are to be sought from Scripture alone (as he showed in chapter 7, he points out). The result of the separation of faith from philosophy is that faith, therefore, grants to everyone the highest freedom to philosophize so that he can think whatever he wants about whatever things without [being accused of a] crime and condemns only those, as heretics and schismatics, who teach opinions that promote obstinacy, hatred, strife, and anger; and, on the contrary, it holds only those to be faithful who promote justice and charity with the powers of their reason and with their faculties. Finally, since these things, which we have shown here, are the main items that I intend in this treatise, I wish, before I continue further, to beg the reader most ardently to read these two chapters [13 and 14] attentively and to deign to ponder them again and again. May he be persuaded that we have written them with a mind, not to introducing novelties but to correcting abuses, which, finally, we may hope sometime to see corrected. (169)

Although Spinoza here formulates the separation of philosophy from faith in extremely oppositional terms, we have already learned that separation is not opposition as truth and error are opposed to each other. We also saw Spinoza indicate (in chapter 15) that philosophy and faith are both universally true and that they fundamentally agree with each other. It is also worth pointing out, as I have noted before, that we have yet to determine the status and origin of what Spinoza here calls the common notions of philosophy. He invokes nature as their origin (principle); but it is important to remember that nature, understood as divine and eternal, is (a philosophical term for) God. Once again, we are brought face to face with the question of the relationship be-

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tween the God of philosophy and the God of the Bible, who are clearly not opposed to each other as are the God of Maimonides and the God of Alfakhar. Let us now turn back to consider the Seven Dogmas of Faith that Spinoza formulates. It seems to me that, in order to engage them thoughtfully, in the context of what he views as the norma (intent) of Scripture and of his concepts of freedom, accommodation, and the separation of philosophy from faith, we need to examine the relationship between the minimal and the maximal limits of faith with care. Spinoza tells us two things about these limits. First, faith is neither less nor more than the content of these seven dogmas. Second, faith leaves all individuals free to think whatever they want to think about anything—within the limits set by the difference between the schismatic and the faithful individual. Since the faithful individual would be the one who adheres to both the minimal and the maximal limits of the Seven Dogmas of Faith, the schismatic, on the one hand, would be the individual who falls below the minimum limit of the seven dogmas of faith into disobedience. Spinoza makes it clear, as we have seen, that, if any one of these dogmas were eliminated, then all obedience would vanish, which would be the equivalent of the schismatic position. It would also seem impossible for the schismatic, on the other hand, to exceed the maximum content of faith. For to go beyond the seven dogmas would surely be to confuse the content of one or more of them with a non-dogmatic claim and so to fall once again below the minimum of faith into disobedience. But how, then, would philosophy fit into these limits? Surely, the philosopher cannot think with content more minimal than the seven dogmas. For, as I just noted, if any one of these dogmas were eliminated, then all obedience would vanish, and the philosopher would become a disobedient schismatic. But can the philosopher think beyond or outside of the maximum of faith as found in the seven dogmas? One can loosely claim to think—in the sense of saying (mouthing)—anything, something that in itself would be neither schismatic nor faithful but simply trivial, irrelevant, stupid, foolish. . . . But one cannot—and the philosopher cannot simply—think anything. There are limits to philosophy as there are to faith. Can their limits be truly different from and in that sense opposed to each other as truth and error are opposed to each other? But then we would simply be replicating the contradictory opposition between Maimonides and Alfakhar, according to which philosophy (reason) and faith (the Bible) contradict both each other and themselves. It is surely not so obvious, then, that philosophy can think beyond or outside of the minimal and the maximal limits of faith that Spinoza establishes in his seven dogmas. As I have asked before, does biblical faith set the limits, or the framework, for philosophy, for rational thinking (and, therefore, does philosophy no less set the limits, or the framework, for faith, for faithful thinking)?

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Does Spinoza entitle his “philosophical” work Ethics because human beings do not and cannot think beyond or outside of the ethical minimum and the ethical maximum of charity and justice? I shall not be able to deal further with the issue of the separation of philosophy from the Seven Dogmas of Faith until I discuss the Ethics, beginning in the next chapter. But, it is clear, the stakes are high! From the Middle Ages through the tumultuous period of religious reform, counter-reform, controversy, conflict, and wars leading up to the time of Spinoza in the later seventeenth century, there were many summaries of faith, on the part of Christians of many different persuasions, from the massive Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, within the tradition of (what we now call) Roman Catholicism, to credal confessions of adherents of the radical reformation. But it is hard to imagine a more comprehensive statement of biblical faith than the one formulated in seven dogmas by Spinoza, a non-observant Jew, yet it occupies less than a single page in the standard Latin text of his works. I suspect that the fundamental reason that the Theologico-Political Treatise sparked such prolonged, inflamed, and bitter controversy for more than one hundred years (and thereafter went largely unread by both theologians and philosophers) was the fact that Christians of all persuasions, and also Jews, not to mention deists, philosophers, and doubtless even atheists of all possible persuasions, in seeing themselves in the mirror of its seven dogmas of faith, could not distinguish themselves from their opponents. Yes, they endlessly contested endless details concerning Scripture, belief, ritual, and history. But what the controversialists—Christians of every possible sect, Jews, non-believing deists, atheists, philosophers of all the schools, scientists . . . — would have to admit, if they showed a modicum of honesty, was that they conducted their debates with each other on the common ground that Spinoza established in his seven dogmas of faith. In holding that all individuals are free to think what they will—within but not without the minimal and the maximal limits of the Seven Dogmas of Faith—Spinoza establishes the reciprocal grounds of obligation (obedience) and toleration (freedom) that became and remain fundamental to modern democracy. What the non-democratic regimes of our world today, whether formally atheist or officially religious, together with their supporters, so deeply fear about modernity is Spinoza’s demonstration that obligation entails freedom and that without toleration there is no obedience. It is the fundamental argument of this study that we—moderns—cannot go further than the Bible, further than Abraham, further than the minimum and the maximum limits of faith that Spinoza establishes in his seven dogmas. I understand that the framework of these limits presupposes, as it articulates, the concept of biblical interpretation that Spinoza develops, including his

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principles of accommodation, freedom, the separation of philosophy from faith, and, ultimately, as I show in volume II of this study, democracy. The Seven Dogmas of Faith of Spinoza are a remarkable synthesis, digest, summation, critique, and abstract of the Bible. But, in presupposing deep, sustained knowledge of and engagement with the Bible (which Spinoza himself demonstrates throughout the Theologico-Political Treatise), the seven dogmas in no sense replace the Bible. What doubtless is not found (directly) in the Seven Dogmas of Faith is history, the story of how Spinoza and how the individual reader are empowered to articulate their experience of reading the Bible in such simple yet profound terms and how the Seven Dogmas of Faith need constantly to be thought through yet again by readers in renewed and renewing study of the Bible. There is perhaps a sense in which Spinoza believed that, once he had arrived at this critical abstract of the Bible, he—and we—could then put the Bible aside (as perhaps Descartes also felt that, once he had established his metaphysical, first principles of the sciences, then the sciences could proceed without further metaphysical inquiry). Be that as it may. All that counts in this study is the challenge for thinking—modernity—that the seven dogmas, together with their minimal and maximal limits, present to the reader. The extended commentary on the Seven Dogmas of Faith is represented by my study as a whole (and, above all, by my discussion of the Ethics). But I want to note here one of the arresting ironies that emerges from engagement with them. In formulating the seven dogmas, Spinoza indicates that, consistent with prophetic revelation itself, he writes in the simplest terms for all of us (common) readers and that he does not make use of rational demonstration on the basis of common principles that are accessible only to the philosophic few. Outside of the fact, however, that the concepts central to his seven dogmas are among the most difficult of all to grasp and to articulate in meaningful ways— from the existence of God to the forgiveness of sin and hence salvation—the seven dogmas also contain all the significant, divine attributes: infinity, eternity, unchangeableness, omniscience, omnipotence—“in short . . . all the perfections I could discern in God.”51 I cite the short list of divine attributes that Descartes gives in the Discourse on Method. They can be multiplied beyond necessity, but these suffice. Although Spinoza does not directly mention infinity, eternity, or unchangeableness in his presentation of the Seven Dogmas of Faith, they are presupposed (while they are brilliantly explicated in part I of the Ethics, “Concerning God”). The entire Bible is conceptually present in the Seven Dogmas of Faith.52 The first dogma sets the stage for the rest. God exists as supreme justice and mercy. He is the exemplar of true life. Human beings do not have the right not to know God. In other words, there is not and cannot be human right—justice or

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mercy, commitment to existence—outside of knowing, acknowledging, or recognizing divine existence. (Human beings, insofar as they embrace their being as human, do not have the right of not knowing God.) But who or what is God? “Who is the man so wise that he can understand this? To whom has the mouth of the Lord spoken, that he may declare it?” (Jer. 9.12). God is the exemplar of true life precisely because he represents (creates) existence, as founded on justice and mercy. For (to invoke the ontological argument) there is one thing that cannot be thought without existing, and that is God, together with human being. Yes, it is true: if human beings remain thoughtless, Spinoza’s abiding fear and horror, and do not emulate Descartes in saying “I think, ergo I am”—then God does not exist (for them). God is not an abstract principle whose being is outside of time and existence (in the tradition of Neoplatonism). Rather, God is the very exemplar of true life who exists in and through human justice and mercy. When Spinoza, in the second dogma, states that God is one above the rest, we are to understand God’s relationship to others in absolute or infinite terms, not in comparative, finite, or hierarchical terms. God is the absolute good— mercy, justice, charity—that can and must be shared, at once individually and universally, by all human beings. My knowledge (possession) of God does not reduce but enlarges your knowledge (possession) of God, and vice versa. That God is everywhere present—the third dogma—means that there are no secrets, that knowledge is not the privilege of the few (philosophers) but, in principle, is absolutely accessible or common to all human beings. God’s justice is founded on equity, on the equality of all human beings. The fourth dogma, that God has supreme right and dominium over all things, that he is driven not by right but from his own absolute decree and singular grace to do anything, restates the sovereign oneness of God—his individuality and universality— above the rest, that is, in relationship to all others. The fourth dogma also articulates, by presupposing, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. There is no right, there are no principles that precede God. God, we read in the opening of the Ethics, is the cause of himself. God, as absolutely infinite, does not depend upon prior causes (and he is not the first cause of a chain to which he is finitely bound, as in Neoplatonism). To worship and to obey God, we read in the fifth dogma, consists solely in the ethical and the political life of charity and justice, that is, in love of neighbor. What could be more biblical than the notion that to know God is to practice the divine—life in the covenant? The sixth dogma declares the life of charity and justice to be salvation, while life not lived in love of neighbor but in what are called pleasures (and passive affects in the Ethics) is lost—in damnation (hell): to live without giving or receiving love. But when and where do human beings experience (possess or attain) salvation or eternal life? Speculation is rife (free). But surely it is clear

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that God is the exemplar of the true life now, here—not in a timeless afterlife but in and through the fulfillment of temporal existence. The concept of temporality that is implied by salvation, by eternity, by eternal salvation has always been one of the most difficult to articulate (and, as is well known, Spinoza’s own presentation of it in part V of the Ethics has always been extremely difficult for philosophers to understand, insofar as they fail to see that, for Spinoza, the separation of philosophy from faith is not their opposition). The seventh dogma on the forgiveness of sins is closely related to the sixth dogma on salvation and damnation. Because there is no one who does not sin, belief in forgiveness of sins is mandatory. But what is forgiveness? What does it mean to say that “God” forgives human sins? When is the forgiveness of sins complete(d)? Is history the story of sin redeemed? Does all history repeat the story of Adam and Eve, the story of sin and redemption? Again, the issue of the temporality of sin and forgiveness (salvation) is critical. Spinoza concludes the seventh dogma and thus his entire abstract of biblical dogmas with the statement that those who believe that God directs all things from his mercy and grace and forgives the sins of human beings know Christ according to the spirit and Christ is in them. While Spinoza invokes Christ a number of times in chapters 1–15 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, as we have seen, I discuss his conception of Christ, whose place in his thinking is highly controversial, in the context of his examination of the relationship between politics and religion in volume II of this study. Here, let it suffice to say that we have seen Spinoza, the non-observant Jew, cite, in addition to Hebrew Scripture, key New Testament passages from Matthew, Paul, James, and I John, and that, while Spinoza always professes ignorance of Christology, he shows lively interest in the history, passion, and teachings of Christ as found in the Gospels. Christ represents for Spinoza the universality of religion, separated from politics, in contrast to Moses whose religion, while also universal, was covenant-specific and so not binding on his post-biblical descendants. Still, as I have previously noted, Spinoza will argue that religious authority or sovereignty does not exist outside of political authority or sovereignty. I take up in volume II of this study how the distinction between Christ and Moses (together with all the prophets and also the apostles) is to be understood or how Christ (as teaching the universality of religion outside of politics) is to be located between the prophet (who teaches the universality of religion within a particular political regime) and the philosopher (who teaches the universality of truth—outside of politics?). We have now seen Spinoza, in chapter 14 of the Theologico-Political Treatise, sharply separate philosophy from faith (theology) in light of the separation of truth from piety (obedience) and of the common notions of philosophy, which are universally true in nature, from the historical and linguistic particularities

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of Scripture. The separation of philosophy from faith is closely related to the concept of accommodation, which, as we have seen, he uses in three distinct contexts. First, Spinoza tirelessly shows that we shall be able to distinguish truth from error, both in the Bible and in our interpretations of the Bible, only insofar as we recognize that the truth of divine revelation—mandating the doctrines of charity and justice—is accommodated to the diverse, often opposed opinions, prejudices, and preconceptions of both the prophets and their people in such a way that it is not conflated with or assimilated to them. Second, Spinoza is sharply critical of theologians—in the opposed traditions of Maimonides and Alfakhar—who obstinately reverse the concept of accommodation by assimilating human opinion—both that of the Bible and their own—to divine truth. They falsify the content of both the Bible and their own thought. The third context in which Spinoza applies his concept of accommodation shows how intimately he views the relationship of his concept of the separation of philosophy from faith with freedom. Today, all individuals, in the tradition of the biblical prophets and their people, are free to accommodate the divine truths of revelation—as formulated in the Seven Dogmas of Faith—to their own opinions. They are free to think whatever they want about whatever they want. Still, as I indicated above, because the Seven Dogmas of Faith establish the minimal and the maximal limits not only of faith but also of philosophy— of both faithful and rational thinking—it is clear that there is also a fourth context of accommodation, although Spinoza does not mention it explicitly. One cannot just think anything. There are limits to thought. If individuals were to exceed those limits, they would then accommodate the Seven Dogmas of Faith to their own opinions, in the tradition of falsely perverse interpretations of the Bible, with the result that they would then be lost in (condemned to) schismatic disobedience. The fourth context to which the concept of accommodation also applies clearly indicates that, while all human beings possess the supreme right and authority of thinking freely—about religion—they are not free to disobey God by violating the biblical norma of charity and justice. Although Spinoza refers only briefly to politics in chapter 14, he makes abundantly evident how important the minimal and the maximal limits of faith are to the life of the (democratic) res publica. The concept of the separation of philosophy from faith, together with its closely related ideas of accommodation and freedom (and ultimately democracy), involves a complex understanding on the part of Spinoza of the relationship between God and human beings, one that is embodied in the ontological argument, as we shall see. On the one hand, he sharply attacks theologians who abuse the authority of Scripture by reducing its revealed truths to the errors of human opinion (or who elevate merely human opinions to the status of divine mysteries that are perversely said to be accessible

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solely to a light that is above the natural). On the other hand, in addition to his concept of accommodating divine truth to human opinion, he makes the norma or intent of Scripture the divinely revealed doctrina of charity and justice. Obedience to God is found uniquely and universally in love of neighbor. What counts in life are works, not words; piety, not knowledge. Still, we have seen that the separation of the (philosophical) knowledge of God from the (faithful) practice of loving your neighbor is itself qualified in the first dogma of faith. In indicating there that obedience does not exist outside of knowing (or believing) that God exists, Spinoza makes it clear that the works of charity and justice are not done in ignorance of God. Thus we see that, for Spinoza, knowledge of God is the standard of human practice. But he also views human practice—the works of charity and justice—as the standard of our knowledge of God. The difference between the separation of God from human beings and their opposition—such that the truth of one cannot be distinguished from the error of the other—is at once exquisitely subtle and utterly absolute.

Conclusion In the first fifteen chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza propounds a concept of biblical interpretation whose purpose is to advance the fundamental aim of his work: the separation of philosophy (the natural light of reason) from theology (prophecy, revelation, faith, Scripture), of the human from the divine. But it turns out that the separation of philosophy from theology itself depends on or presupposes the very concept of biblical interpretation that Spinoza makes central to his principle of separation. For his main concern, in working out a systematic and comprehensive concept of biblical interpretation, is to distinguish religion from superstition. As I have emphasized throughout this chapter, philosophy is not distinguished from religion as religion is distinguished from superstition or as truth is distinguished from error. Indeed, it is the principle of the separation of philosophy from theology, of reason from faith, that allows Spinoza to show that they are not opposed to each other as truth and error are opposed to each other in the mutually contradictory hermeneutics of Maimonides and Alfakhar. He insists that philosophy is not ancillary to (or dependent on) theology and that theology is not ancillary to (or dependent on) philosophy. When reason and faith are opposed to each other, in their ancillary (hierarchical) dependence on each other, the result is that neither reason nor faith has a method of interpreting Scripture such that truth can be distinguished from error. While Maimonides assimilates (or accommodates) the errors of the Bible to reason,

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Alfakhar assimilates (or accommodates) reason to the errors of the Bible. In presupposing a light that is beyond the natural (i.e., it is supernatural), each of these opposed methods of interpretation, Spinoza shows, is equally unable to account for the errors of either Scripture or interpretation. Indeed, it is Spinoza’s fundamental critique of both the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides and the skeptical fideism of Alfakhar that they abuse the authority of Scripture by reducing the truth of its divinity to human error. The superstitious result of their concepts of reason no less than of faith is that they trumpet human error as divine truth. The paradoxes central to Spinoza’s concept of the separation of philosophy from theology as the very principle of biblical hermeneutics abound. It is only when we have a method of interpretation that allows us to account for the errors of both the biblical text and biblical interpretation that we can distinguish between the truth of religion and the falsity of superstition. We must separate the human from the divine, for only then do we not oppose them as truth and error are opposed to each other and so lose our ability to account for both truth and error. Just as philosophy is no more or less true than theology (and vice versa), so it also follows that God is no more or less true than human being (and vice versa), when each is properly separated from each other such that they enjoy a truthful relationship with and are not superstitiously opposed to each other. What is so arresting, then, about the method of biblical interpretation that Spinoza propounds is that it presupposes (by articulating) the very principle that he views as the norma or intent of Scripture: charity or love of neighbor. It is striking how clearly Spinoza shows that, if we do not acknowledge that the biblical text (like its authors, not to mention its readers!) is flawed, unoriginal, corrupted, perverted, and distorted (by both human malice and the erosions of time), and thus is replete with errors, we shall be unable to acknowledge and to live in obedience to its truth: the love of neighbor. If we do not have a method—that of reading the Bible from itself alone—whereby we can account for the errors of the text, then, in following the opposed methods of Maimonides and Alfakhar, we shall simply reduce truth to error and elevate error to truth. It is equally striking that Spinoza, in expounding a method that reveals not only that the Bible is full of errors but also that we shall never possess (because we never did possess) it in its original form, shows that the text of Scripture cannot have arrived in our hands corrupted or perverted. For its fundamental norma or intent—charity, as love of neighbor—is inviolable. The doctrine of love of neighbor could never have been corrupted or perverted. For, if the biblical standard of charity had ever been corrupted or lost, not only would we have a totally different (that is, a pagan) text, but we would also be (and remain) totally ignorant of the concepts of truth and error and

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thus of their opposition, not to mention of the separation of philosophy from theology, that are fundamental to Scripture. We thus see that central to the principle of the separation of philosophy from theology, and to the concept of hermeneutics to which it is fundamental, is knowledge of God, not ignorance of God, on the part of human beings. The knowledge of God that human beings possess is absolute, its certitude inviolable (God does not deceive his pious believers, we saw Spinoza declare). But knowledge of God on the part of human beings is not complete in the finite sense of being at one with its end. Knowledge of God is, rather, progressive. Not only is knowledge of God in historical transition from beginning to end, but it also constitutes the transition, the history, by which human beings live the relationship between beginning and end. Also central to the concept of hermeneutics that Spinoza develops, with its attendant notion of the separation of philosophy from theology, such that they are not opposed to each other as truth and error, is his concept of accommodation. He demonstrates that it is only when we understand that the revealed truth of Scripture is accommodated to the preconceived opinions and prejudices of the prophets and their people that we can distinguish between what is true and what is false in Scripture. Indeed, he shows that superstition arises precisely when readers of Scripture, in reversing the notion of accommodation, elevate the diverse, often opposed, and historically false views of the prophets to speculative mysteries and then advance them as divine truths. The result of accommodating human error to divine truth is that the authority of both Scripture (faith) and reader (reason) is lost. It is, consequently, the concept of accommodation that allows Spinoza to account for the truth no less than for the errors of Scripture (and of the reader). It is also important to see that the concept of accommodation is closely related to the complex attitudes that Spinoza holds regarding history, time, eternity, and also language. While he frequently appears to disparage words and images, especially when he condemns the idolatry of what he calls ink and paper, compared to the Word (or idea) of God as found in the human heart or mind, his concept of accommodation, in fact, allows him to separate truth and history without ultimately opposing them as truth and error are opposed. Spinoza holds that, insofar as we understand that the revealed (eternal, divine) truth of Scripture is accommodated to the false (historical) preconceptions of the prophets and their people, divine truth is not conflated with human error. But he also holds that the revealed (eternal, divine) truth of Scripture arrives in our hands uncorrupted by means of the historical transmission of language. What he shows us, in other words, is that the language and temporality of the transmission—the historical traditions—of Scripture possess the very certitude that the moral teachings of the prophets themselves possess. It

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is inconceivable, Spinoza points out, that the revealed truth of charity, the very norma and intent of the Bible, could have been corrupted by either human malice or the erosions of time. For their corruptions would immediately have been exposed in, by, and through the transmission itself. Spinoza thus makes it clearly understood that the transmission of Scripture—including its revealed, eternal truth—presupposes, in every generation (in every moment of history), the very doctrine of love of neighbor that is the standard of scriptural truth. The eternal doctrine of charity cannot be known separate from its transmission in history, separate from its accommodation to the times in which it is written and transmitted. It equally follows that the history of the Bible cannot be known separate from the doctrine of its transmission—love of neighbor. It is striking, then, to discover that Spinoza has two concepts of time (or history) that mirror the opposition between truth and error. On the one hand, the Bible and its traditions of transmission are subject to the vicissitudes of history, to the errors produced by the malice of human beings and the erosions of time. On the other hand, it is time, the transmission of Scripture in and through time, which certifies and guarantees the divine, eternal truth of Scripture. That the Bible is redeemed by and through time in the very same manner as it redeems time by its doctrine of charity indicates that time is not sacred or profane in itself but only in its relationship, as Spinoza puts it, to the mind—to the mind of the individual reader, of the community of readers, of God. Do we use time (fruitfully) or do we abuse time (wastefully)? The paradox of time is precisely like that of truth. It is only in recognizing that we are mortal, that we are subject to error and to time, and thus also to death—it is only in recognizing that we are not God—that we can have a concept of truth that is eternal and a concept of eternity that is truthful. If, however, we oppose truth and history to each other as truth and error are opposed to each other, then truth as eternal will be reduced to the errors of history, and historical errors will be elevated to the truth of eternity. Not only are human beings subject to yet redeemed in and through time, but also what Spinoza understands by eternity, the eternity of God, is deeply implicated in his recognition of the role that language and temporality play in transmitting and so in preserving the divine, eternal truth of revelation. We saw that, in separating philosophy from theology, he argues that, while philosophy is universal, natural, and necessary, the revealed truth of Scripture is universal but historical, yet also necessary. In other words, reason is unable from its common principles of nature alone to demonstrate that Scripture necessarily but historically contains the universal truth of morality. Revelation is (separately) necessary—to human salvation (to the salvation of common humanity, of the multitudo of humankind). Revelation cannot be explained

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(away) by reason. The natural necessity of eternally true reason is separate from (but not opposed to) the historical necessity of eternally true faith. The naturally universal is separate from (but not opposed to) the historically universal. Spinoza does not yet have a fully articulate concept of the relationship between truth and history. But, with his intellectual probity in adhering to the principle of interpreting Scripture from itself alone, Spinoza acknowledges the necessity of history, of temporality, of tradition, of transmission, of what he will formulate in the Ethics as the transitio, the passage, from passive affects to active affects (from the natural state to the civil state in his theory of democracy). It is remarkable to see that the concept of the separation of philosophy from theology allows Spinoza to defend the truth not only of philosophy but also of the Bible. Indeed, he is fundamentally aware that he cannot defend the truth of either without upholding the truth of both. In preserving—in accounting for—the necessity of Scripture, the necessity of history, he keeps in play the idea, without yet being fully aware of it, that both reason and God, as universal and eternal, are historical, that is, that the Bible is no less the origin (or principle) of reason than of faith. Indeed, what he will demonstrate to us in the Ethics (as in his account of democratic sovereignty) is that the concept of love of neighbor is no less rational than it is faithful. Furthermore, in the next chapter I shall undertake to show that the ontological argument proving the existence of God is fundamentally ethical and that it presupposes a concept of temporality as history. For there is one thing that cannot be thought by human beings, in their separation from God, without existing necessarily—and that is God. In other words, there is one thing that cannot exist without being thought as necessary—and that is God. Once again we return to the notion that there is nothing sacred or profane in itself, not even (the idea of) God, except insofar as it relates to, except insofar as it is known and loved by, the human mind. The mind here is not a metaphysical abstraction but the representative of thinking, faithful—hermeneutical— subjects who determine whether time is sacred or profane by their relationship to God and neighbor. That it is the mind, in its relationship to God and neighbor, that determines what is sacred and what is profane Spinoza also demonstrates by means of the Seven Dogmas of Faith. For the seven dogmas articulate, he shows, the minimal and the maximal limits of the norma and intent of Scripture—love of neighbor. But they also articulate, as I indicated, the minimal and the maximal limits of philosophy. For it is inconceivable that one could think beyond either the minimum or the maximum limits of faith, beyond love of God and neighbor. Remarkably, it is precisely within the limits established by the norma and intent of Scripture—love of neighbor—that individuals possess the

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supreme right and authority of freely thinking about religion as about anything else whatsoever. In the next chapter I shall show that, in propounding the ontological argument for the existence of God in parts I and II of the Ethics, Spinoza presupposes the distinction between separation and opposition that we have seen is fundamental to the Theologico-Political Treatise. As always, he will articulate his formidably demanding philosophical propositions in pairs of sharply opposed terms, in, above all, the distinction between substance (God) and modes (all beings, including human beings). Yet the fundamental thesis of the Ethics, as already enunciated in the Theologico-Political Treatise, as we have seen, is that God is not self-evident. In other words, God is known only in relationship to the (human) mind. It is precisely this principle that constitutes the ontological argument for the existence of God. “Man thinks” is the second axiom of part II of the Ethics. But Spinoza demonstrates that there is solely one thing that human beings can truly think (or know), and that is God. Outside of (without) the existence of God there is no human thought. It is equally the case, however, that outside of (without) human thought God does not exist. In separating God from the human being, yet in not opposing them to each other as truth is opposed to error, will Spinoza be contradictorily modern in going further than Abraham, further than the minimum, that is, the maximum content of the Seven Dogmas of Faith? Or shall we find, rather, that he is paradoxically modern in propounding the ontological argument as the paradoxical separation of God from human being and consequently in not viewing (divine) existence and (human) thought as mutually contradictory opposites? Will he be able, if not to go further than Abraham, at least not to stand still in getting as far as the father of the separation of faith from reason?

Notes 1. Emphasis is in the original. In all citations in this study emphasis has been added, unless otherwise indicated. 2. Still, Scruton initiates the final chapter of his book on Spinoza with the claim that “Spinoza’s metaphysics contains a fatal flaw [i.e., as based on the presupposition that reality corresponds to our adequate ideas]” (111). He concludes his study with the observation that “whatever the weaknesses of Spinoza’s system, one is tempted to think that a philosopher cannot be wholly wrong who calls forth such a quantity of spite in someone who would have agreed, had he understood his argument, with so much of what he said” (118). I have two simple comments: i. Would we not live in a fatally determined and arbitrary world if reality did not correspond to our adequate ideas (and vice versa)?

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ii. What is the purpose of studying the ideas of a thinker when they are fatally flawed and when the best thing that we can say about them is that perhaps they are not wholly wrong? 3. I use the following citation conventions in my study: • Ethics—for example, I.4 part I, proposition 4 I.Ap part I, appendix II.17C part II, proposition 17, corollary III.31S part III, proposition 31, scholium (note) IV.D3 part IV, definition 3 V.A2 part V, axiom 2 • TPT Theologico-Political Treatise • PT Political Treatise I provide my own translations of the passages that I cite from Spinoza. In the case of TPT, I refer by page number to the translation of Shirley for ease of availability. References to Ethics are self-explanatory. References to PT are by chapter and section (e.g., 2.3). References to Spinoza’s letters are by letter number. When, within a single paragraph of my study, two or more consecutive passages are cited from the same page or from the same section of a particular text, their location (consistent with the above) is indicated at the end of the last passage cited. 4. Spinoza points out another reason for considering law as depending on the decision of men: “we ought to define and to explain things through their proximate causes, and the universal consideration of fate and of the concatenation of causes cannot at all serve us in forming and in ordering our thoughts about particular things. Furthermore, we are completely ignorant of the coordination and the concatenation itself of things, that is, how things are truly ordered and concatenated. And, therefore, for the use of life it is better, rather, it is necessary to consider things as possible” (49–50). 5. Here Spinoza formulates the essence of Ethics V.24, merely one of many instances indicating how closely the TPT is related to the Ethics. 6. Spinoza cites the Latin translation of John Immanuel Tremellius from the Syriac, first published in 1569. Tremellius was a Jewish convert to Christianity (first Roman Catholic, then Protestant). His translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Syriac into Latin long served as the standard Latin translation for Protestants. (Syriac, a branch of Aramaic, was widely used in the Eastern Church in the early Christian era.) 7. I cite here the RSV. 8. Anselm cites Rom. 1.20 in his “Reply to Gaunilo” (120). Descartes cites Rom. 1.20 in the Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonnne preceding his Meditations on First Philosophy (3). 9. Spinoza refers to the seven precepts which, he says, Jews believe that God gave to Noah and by which all the nations are solely bound (while Jews also believe that God, in bestowing many additional precepts on the Hebrew nation, made it more blessed

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than the rest). Those who follow the seven precepts are said to belong to the pious among the nations and to be heirs to the world to come—insofar as they follow them because God ordained them in the law that he revealed to Moses. If, however, they follow the seven precepts through the guidance of reason, they do not belong to the pious or the wise of the nations. 10. Rabbi Joseph, son of Shem Tob, was a fifteenth-century scholar who wrote about Aristotle in his book Kebod Elohim (Glory to God). 11. Or vice versa. 12. I have changed the singular tense of the original to the plural tense. 13. Although the principles with which Spinoza typically initiates the chapters of the TPT are not formulated in the strict terms of definitions or axioms, etc., the style of argumentation that he uses there in educing the implications of basic principles is not fundamentally different from that of the Ethics. 14. Spinoza consistently adhered to this position. See Letter 73 to Henry Oldenburg: “For the rest, what some churches add to these, that God assumed human nature, I have expressly warned that I do not understand what they say. Indeed, to tell the truth, they seem to me to speak no less absurdly than if someone told me that a circle had taken on the nature of a square.” 15. I paraphrase, while reversing, the paradoxical formulation about knowledge that we find at the beginning of the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason: while all knowledge begins with experience, not all knowledge arises from experience. 16. How Spinoza might distinguish the claim to know God on the basis of created things (while being ignorant of their causes) on the basis of Romans 1.20, to which he appealed, as indicated earlier, I shall discuss later. 17. In chapter 1 Spinoza indicates that, when Maimonides and other commentators claimed that no one could see an angel with open eyes, that is, that the apparition of angels to prophets could take place only in dreams, they simply raved. “For they had no other concern than to extort Aristotelian nonsense (nugas) and their own individual fictions (figmenta) from Scripture, than which nothing indeed seems to me more ridiculous” (13). 18. I take up in volume II of this study two of the most important passages involving Adam and Moses (the second, in his relation to his people). 19. In note 5 Spinoza writes that “it is clear from Mark 10.21 that for eternal life it is not sufficient to observe the commandments of the Old Testament” (240). 20. It is clear from Scripture, however, Spinoza observes, that other nations also possessed an imperium and particular laws from the external direction of God. 21. Thus, the notion that only the few in possession of intellect among the Hebrews were elected is equally suspect. 22. I am not directly concerned here with Spinoza’s polemical application of his artificial distinction between individual (Jew) and society to his own time. This distinction does not bear upon his discussion of the ancient Israelites. 23. I do not discuss here the many scriptural passages that Spinoza cites in support of his claims or assess his commentary on them (including passages brought forward by the “Pharisees” to support the uniqueness of the divine election and prophecy of the Hebrews and also passages from Paul).

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24. Hamlet comments that “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” and “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow” (5.2.10, 157–58). 25. Spinoza points out that earlier, when he discussed prophecy, “I affirmed nothing except that which I could conclude from foundations revealed in the Sacred Letters. But here [in discussing miracles] I have elicited the chief things from principles that alone are known by the natural light.” In discussing prophecy, he relied on revealed foundations, “since it itself indeed surpasses human understanding and is a purely theological question.” However, because, in inquiring into miracles, we ask “whether we are able to concede that something happens in nature that opposes its laws or that is not able to follow from them,” the question is philosophical and rests on the foundations known by the natural light (85). Still, Spinoza assures the reader that he could have easily resolved the issue of miracles on the basis of the dogmas and foundations of Scripture; and, in support of this claim, he proceeds to cite biblical passages showing that nature preserves a fixed and immutable order. 26. Spinoza comments in note 6 that “we doubt about the existence of God and consequently about all things so long as we do not have a clear and distinct but [only] a confused idea of God. For . . . he who conceives of the divine nature confusedly does not see that it pertains to the nature of God to exist. But, so that the nature of God can be conceived clearly and distinctly by us, it is necessary for us to attend to those utterly simple notions, which they call common, and to concatenate with them those which pertain to the divine nature. And then it first becomes perspicuous to us that God necessarily exists and that he is everywhere. And then at the same time it appears that all that we conceive involves and is to be conceived through the nature of God in itself and that, finally, all things are true that we adequately conceive” (240). While Spinoza then refers the reader to his earlier Principles of Descartes, I shall defer discussion of what is in fact an articulation of the ontological argument—that God is not known in himself but only in and through our idea (thought) of God—to the next chapter. 27. As I have noted before, Spinoza is critical of the concept of “creation,” not when it is used in its proper theological sense, according to which God is dependent on nothing outside himself, but rather when it is improperly conflated with final causes, with the consequence that it signifies divine impotence. “Therefore nothing happens in nature [Spinoza here adds a note in which he observes: “I understand through nature not only matter and its affections but beyond matter infinite other things] that could oppose its universal laws. . . . For whatever is done is done through the will and eternal decree of God, that is, . . . whatever is done is done according to the laws and rules that involve eternal necessity and truth. Thus nature, nevertheless, always observes the laws and rules that involve eternal necessity and truth, although not all are known by us, and, therefore, also a fixed and immutable order. Nor does any sane reason persuade us to attribute limited power and virtue to nature and to hold that its laws are applicable only to certain and not to all things. For, since the virtue and power of nature are the virtue and power themselves of God and since, however, the laws and rules of nature are the decrees themselves of God, it is altogether to be believed that the power of nature is infinite and that its laws, therefore, extend themselves widely to all things that are conceived by the divine intellect itself. For otherwise it would be held that God, therefore, created nature so impotent and, therefore, established its laws and

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rules so sterile that often he would be driven once again to come to its aid, . . . which I think is utterly alien to reason” (74). 28. Spinoza gives more examples from Scripture, including the Gospel of John, to indicate that miracles need something beyond the so-called command of God and also that the circumstances surrounding miracles and their natural causes are not always or fully narrated. In response to the claim that Scripture has many incidents without natural explanation, for example, miraculous healings, Spinoza recalls that he earlier pointed out that Scripture does not explain things through their proximate causes: “It only narrates things in that order and with those phrases with which it can most of all move men and chiefly the people to devotion; and from this cause it speaks altogether improperly about God and things, because it is eager to convince not the reason but to affect and to occupy the fantasy and the imagination of men. For if Scripture narrated the destruction of some state, as political historians are accustomed to do, it would not at all move people. But, on the contrary, they are greatly moved if Scripture depicts all things poetically and refers them to God, as it is accustomed to do. When, therefore, Scripture narrates that the earth is barren because of men’s sins or that blind men are healed from faith, these ought not to move us more than when it narrates that God is angry because of men’s sins; that he is grieved; that he repents of his good promised or done; or that God, on the basis of a sign he sees, remembers his promises, and numerous other examples. Either these things are said poetically, or they are related according to the opinions and prejudices of the writer. Wherefore, we here conclude absolutely that all things, which are truly narrated in Scripture, happen according to the laws of nature, as all things happen necessarily. And if anything is found which can be apodictically demonstrated to oppose the laws of nature or not to have been able to follow from them, it is plainly to be believed that it was added to the Sacred Letters by sacrilegious men” (81–82). See the exchange between Spinoza and Henry Oldenburg on biblical miracles in letters 71, 73–75, 77–79. 29. I refer to the reflection entitled “Love Builds Up” in Works of Love. 30. See note 25. 31. But now Spinoza appears to make a move with which we are already familiar. In proceeding from the universal teaching of Scripture to less universal matters, we arrive, he says, at things that involve the common use of life such as “all the particular, external actions of true virtue that can be exercised only on a given occasion” (93). Given, however, that love of neighbor is both universal and (as I show in volume II of this study) central to politics as “the common use of life,” it is not at all clear that Spinoza will, in the end, want (or be able) to maintain the distinction that he makes here between the universal teaching of Scripture and what he calls its derivative rivulets. 32. Spinoza mentions many sources of ambiguity in the Hebrew language, including the absence of tenses, letters for vowels, and punctuation. 33. Spinoza believed that the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle to the Hebrews were originally written in Hebrew and that the language in which Job was written was doubtful (he notes the opinion of Ibn Ezra that Job was translated into Hebrew from another language), to say nothing about the apocalyptic books whose authority, he says, is of a very different kind.

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34. Spinoza adds that his method also supports the investigation of many imperceptible things, thus giving further access to the mind of biblical authors. 35. In chapter 7 Spinoza first discusses (a) the position of those who (left unnamed) claim that interpretation of Scripture requires the supernatural light. Then he takes up (b) the opposed position of Maimonides. In chapter 15 he examines (c) the position of Alfakhar, who opposed Maimonides. I shall treat (a) and (c) together. In a note Spinoza recalls that he read the critique of Maimonides by Alfakhar in one of his letters that was included in a collection of Maimonides’ letters. The letter of Alfakhar (which he wrote to Rabbi David Kimhi) is found in “Letters of Judah Alfakhar and David Kimhi” (150–64). Let me add that Spinoza is scrupulously fair in representing the positions of Alfakhar and Maimonides. 36. It is highly misleading on the part of Maimonides to claim that Aristotle did not “prove” the eternity of the world. For the eternity of the world is absolutely fundamental to the ontology of Aristotle (as of all Greek thinkers), and it underlies all of his ideas (“proofs”). 37. Spinoza will conclude chapter 7 by again insisting on the intimate relationship between the right of all individuals to interpret Scripture and their common possession of the natural light of reason: “For, since the maximal authority of interpreting Scripture is in every individual, the standard of interpreting ought, therefore, to be nothing outside of the natural light common to all, not any supernatural light or any external authority. For the standard also ought not to be so difficult that it can be set up only by the most acute philosophers but is to be accommodated to the natural and common character and capacity of men, as we showed ours to be” (107). 38. Spinoza argues, as I show in volume II of this study, that religion exists only in the civil (public) state and that it owes its legitimacy solely to the imperium of civil authority (of politics). Religion does not exist in the natural (private) state, where human beings, ruled by their passions and not living by the sovereign authority of reason, are each the enemy of the other (including themselves). Because ethics, like religion, although personal, cannot be private, it is also public like politics, so long as “public” means the personal responsibility that all individuals have to and for each other. Notwithstanding the dualistic formulations that Spinoza uses, what is clear in the end is that the separation of religion (and ethics) from politics, of the private (internal) from the public (external), signifies not their hierarchical opposition but their reciprocal concord. In concluding the TPT with his concept of democracy as preserving, on the part of all human beings, the right and authority of thinking freely about not only religion but absolutely all aspects of human life, Spinoza brings together his ideas on religion and the Bible into a coherent whole by working out their truly radical implications in terms of his concept of democracy. 39. I intend to signal here the difference between Hume (whose skepticism is indistinguishable from dogmatic or blind dependence on habit) and Hegel (whose comprehension of the dialectic of reason and revelation grounds his concept of history as the story of freedom). I paraphrase the melancholic acknowledgement of Hume in the conclusion of book I of A Treatise of Human Nature that his philosophy has ended in a contradictory impasse from which there is no exit: “We have, therefore, no choice left but betwixt a false reason and none at all” (268).

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40. Kant asks how synthetic a priori judgments, that is, judgments that are at once historical (individual) and universal (necessary), are possible. He does not ask why they are possible. 41. While Spinoza had good reason to fear clerical domination in both personal and political life (given his expulsion from the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656 and the way in which the city’s people were whipped into a frenzied mob by fanatical priests, resulting in the murder of the De Witt brothers in 1672), we could say that he was prescient in foreseeing Hegel’s critique, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, of the Enlightenment. Hegel argues that if theology (faith, revelation, Scripture) is not defended independently (as independent) of philosophy, then philosophy will be reduced to a formalism emptied of the rich content of life that is uniquely found in theology. (It is also the case, however, that Spinoza avoided the error into which Hegel subsequently fell. In rescuing theology from its submission to Enlightenment, that is, to pre-Kantian, philosophy, Hegel then proceeds to claim that philosophy is superior to religion in that solely reason can render self-conscious the content of biblical faith that does not know itself as truly rational.) 42. Spinoza adds here that he showed in chapter 12, as we shall see, that Scripture has arrived uncorrupted in our hands thanks to the incorruptibility of both its doctrine and its chief histories. 43. Spinoza writes in an accompanying note: “That is, not reason but revelation can teach [us] that it is sufficient for salvation or blessedness to embrace divine decrees as laws or commands and that there is no need to conceive of them as eternal truths” (247). 44. As I show in volume II of this study, what the separation of philosophy from theology finally presupposes and is presupposed by is Spinoza’s concept of democracy, where it is the populus (no longer called the vulgus!), and not the philosophus, who holds the sovereign imperium. Indeed, Spinoza knows fundamentally that it is solely within a democratic regime, where the principle that every individual is sovereign legitimizes (legislates) the principle that all individuals enjoy the supreme authority and right of thinking freely, that the philosopher can be and will be truly secure and equally that it is solely within a democratic regime, which fosters philosophic wisdom, that the people can be and will be truly secure. 45. It is important to note, however, that I have yet to discuss chapters 12–14 of the TPT. 46. Spinoza observes that religion was transmitted to the first Jews by Moses as if law because they were held to be infants, although it was later predicted that God would write his law in their hearts. 47. In citing “Isaiah 1.10 etc.,” Spinoza appears to refer to Isaiah generally, not simply to this particular verse. 48. Spinoza adds that he will deal with this issue in full in the following chapter, even though he thinks that he has already done so, especially in chapter 2. 49. Spinoza adds that, “if someone says that indeed it is not necessary to understand the attributes of God but altogether simply to believe them without demonstration, his speech is nugatory. For invisible things and those that are objects of the mind alone can be seen with no other eyes than through demonstrations. Thus, those who

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do not have these demonstrations plainly see nothing of these things. And, therefore, whatever they bring forward as heard about like things, this no more touches or indicates their mind than the words of a parrot or an automaton that speaks without mind or sense” (160). 50. Spinoza is here a true disciple of Descartes, who was profoundly aware that his methodological doubt, in at once proving and presupposing the certitude of the relationship between thought and existence (both human and divine), was totally different from the suspended judgment of classical skepticism. This is a distinction that his scholastically trained critics, in their Objections to the Meditations, had the greatest difficulty in comprehending. Near the beginning of his dialogue on The Search for Truth Descartes indicates, consistent with the earlier parts of the Discourse on Method, that the truths he presents here will not be “derived from Aristotle or Plato” (401). In the dialogue, Polyander (“everyman” as the true Cartesian disciple) follows the teaching of Eudoxus (who represents Cartesian philosophy) and not the teaching of Epistemon (who represents scholastic philosophy). At one point in the dialogue Eudoxus points out to Epistemon that, if like Polyander, you learn how to make use of your own doubt, “you can use it to deduce facts which are known with complete certainty [i.e., the existence of the soul and of God]—facts which are even more certain and more useful than those which we commonly build upon that great principle, as the basis to which they are all reduced, the fixed point on which they all terminate [as distinct from deriving “from this universal doubt, as from a fixed and immovable point . . . the knowledge of God, of yourself, and of everything in the universe”], namely, ‘It is impossible that one and the same thing should exist and at the same time not exist’” (409, 415–16). Descartes is supremely conscious, in other words, that his philosophy, unlike that of the Greeks, is not founded on the logic of contradiction. 51. Descartes, Discourse on Method, 19. 52. Consistent with the tradition of Strauss Yaffe holds that what we encounter in the Seven Dogmas of Faith are “evident theological triviality” and “evident moral obtuseness” and that in them “the Bible’s theologically mandated minimum is the same as its theologically mandated maximum. . . . In themselves, the seven dogmas are morally indifferent component parts in the Treatise’s new-and-improved promotional scheme for justice and charity among present-day sectarians; they are instruments of behavior modification in biblical guise” (328–29).

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3 The Ontological Argument and Modernity: The Relationship between Thought and Existence Ethics, Parts I–II

What do I know? Montaigne, “Apology for Raimond Sebond” [1580] (393)1

Introduction: The Ethics in Light of Descartes, Montaigne, and Socrates In this introductory section I shall outline the overall structure of the Ethics in order to help readers understand that for Spinoza ethics is the movement from God (in part I) to human freedom (in part V). How Spinoza conceives of and develops this movement is not easy to grasp, given the extraordinary density of his argumentation concerning the relationship of God and human beings. I shall then devote the rest of this chapter to analyzing parts I and II of the Ethics (on God and the mind).2 Because this is a study of Spinoza and modernity—of Spinoza in light of modernity and of modernity in light of Spinoza—I shall also include in this introductory section a discussion of two of his great predecessors, Descartes (brief) and Montaigne (more extended). The difference between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging, which Montaigne articulates in “The Apology for Raimond Sebond” in response to his question that I have placed at the head of this chapter—“What do I know?”—is the absolute difference, I shall argue, between modernity, as biblical, and antiquity. While Montaigne distinguishes his biblical (modern) position from that of antiquity in the context of discussing, in particular, the ancient skeptics, Plutarch, and Seneca, I

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shall introduce Socrates prior to his discussion of the ancients so as to be able to develop more comprehensively the critical distinction that he makes between judging absolutely (Spinoza’s idea that truth is its own standard) and absolutely not judging (Socratic ignorance). The Ethics opens, abruptly and dramatically, with the definition of “the cause of itself ” (causa sui) and closes, in the scholium to proposition 42 of part V, simply and movingly, with sapiens, the sapient human being. It is with no ordinary definition that Spinoza initiates the Ethics: “Through the cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence or that whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing.” It is also with no ordinary human being that Spinoza concludes his magisterial work. In contrast to the ignorant individual who is said by Spinoza to live as if inscius (unconscious) of self, God, and things and who, in ceasing to suffer (external causes), also ceases to be, is the wise individual who, “conscious by a certain eternal necessity of self, God, and things, never ceases to be but always possesses true acquiescentia (active acceptance) of mind (animi).” It is striking that Spinoza, both in beginning with the cause of itself and in concluding with the sapient individual, underscores (as shown above) the intimate relationship between thought (conception, consciousness) and existence (being). It is the fundamental argument of this study, as I have already indicated, that the ontological argument for the existence of God, on which, like Anselm and Descartes before him, Spinoza establishes his philosophy, constitutes the ontology of modernity by founding it on and showing that it founds the necessary relationship between thought and existence. The issues here are momentous. The classical formulation of the ontological argument is that there is one thing that cannot be conceived or thought (there is one thing that I cannot conceive or think) without existing—which is God. It is presupposed (that is: demonstration is the elaboration of the presupposition) that I, as an existing human being, cannot not think; that in thinking I think something—which exists. But if I cannot think without thinking something that exists—God—then it turns out that what (ever) I think is God. Just as my thinking is not found outside of the existence of God, so God does not exist outside of my thought. It may well be, then, that what I think—God—is not adequate (that my thought of God is idolatrous, that the God of my thinking is an idol). In such a case my thinking is also not adequate. In other words, it is idolatrous. We shall find that it is precisely within the framework of the relationship between thought and existence that Spinoza works out his concept of adequate and inadequate ideas (and also his concept of active and passive affects in parts III–V of the Ethics). In his initial definition Spinoza enriches the ontological argument with the extraordinary concept of causa sui (which Descartes had first invoked in his

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Replies to the Objections to the Meditations). The cause of itself is what Spinoza also calls substance and thus God. We shall see how the cause of itself—that which is its own effect: what Kant calls self-determination—transforms all notions of first cause (principle, origin). The cause of itself is that whose essence (or nature)—what something is—involves or expresses existence, necessarily. But it is important to see that Spinoza’s addition of the phrase “I understand through the cause of itself ” is not gratuitous or superfluous. For he means to signal to us—in his typically terse fashion—that the cause of itself, which he will also say is in itself and not in another, is not found outside of my thought (conception, intellect, understanding, mind). While formulating the cause of itself as that whose nature, or essence, cannot be conceived—by me—without existing, he goes on to indicate more precisely his intention when he states that there is one thing—the cause of itself—whose essence necessarily involves or expresses existence. We can think and speak (and imagine and dream) of countless things that do not essentially (necessarily, by their very nature) exist. But the cause of itself is that whose very essence is to exist, that which essentially exists, that whose existence is essential, necessary, and “natural.” But it remains striking that the cause of itself—that which exists in itself—is that which I understand or conceive. The cause of itself, as that whose very essence is to exist, necessarily, does not possess existence outside of human thought. Given the dramatic interplay between existence and thought, between God and human being, our task in reading the Ethics is, in a fundamental sense, to see how Spinoza moves (us) from the opening definition of the cause of itself (God) to, at the end of the work, the sapient individual whose consciousness (thought, conception), in his active acceptance of spirit, is endowed with the divine attributes of eternity and necessity. (We shall see that, according to definition 8 of part I, eternity is identified with existence.) It is appropriate that part I of the Ethics is entitled “Concerning God” and part V “Concerning Human Freedom.” How does beginning with God as the cause of itself involve and express our end as human freedom? The very beginning of the work, of our work, with God, puts us on notice that to begin with God is to conclude with the human being. But to conclude (to finish) with the human being does not mean that we humans are the (finite) end of God. It means, rather, that to begin with God is (no less than) to begin, simultaneously, with ourselves, to begin with the thought that to think is to think the one thing that cannot be thought without existing; and that is the cause of itself whose essence involves and expresses—our—existence. It also means to end with ourselves in full consciousness, in the acquiescentia animi, of having begun with the cause of itself as the concept of necessary, eternal existence. In the last lines of the Ethics Spinoza notes that, if the way, which, as he has shown, leads on our part to the conscious, active acceptance of the cause of

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itself as involving and expressing, necessarily and eternally, the life of freedom, appears truly arduous, it can, nevertheless, be found. For how can the arduous not be rare, he asks, when salvation, if it were at hand and could be found without great work, would not be neglected by nearly everybody? There is no doubt that the via in and through the Ethics—from the cause of itself, as that which cannot be thought without necessarily and eternally existing, to the sapient individual, whose consciousness involves and expresses the cause of itself as necessarily and eternally existing—is, as Spinoza remarks, perardua. The way is especially arduous because Spinoza continues to articulate his ideas through pairs of opposed terms, above all, those of substance (God, the cause of itself) and modes (all natural beings, including human beings), infinite and finite, what is in itself (as the cause of itself) and what is in another (as caused by another), natura naturans (nature as actively producing, causing, and effecting) and natura naturata (nature as passively produced, caused, and effected). Still, on the way from the cause of itself to human freedom we learn to see that these pairs of opposed terms are disrupted (deconstructed) by the very demands of the ontological argument proving the existence of God: it demands the separation of (divine) existence and (human) thought, not their opposition. Indeed, in examining in this chapter the first two parts of the Ethics—“Concerning God” and “Concerning the Nature and the Origin of the [Human] Mind”—we shall see that human being as a merely finite mode would not be able to possess knowledge of God as infinite substance. Yet, Spinoza concludes part II with the demonstration that the human mind possesses adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God, which is nothing less than the necessary existence of God. It is instructive to observe that Spinoza begins with what I know—God— and proceeds to show how this is possible in light of the transition from inadequate to adequate ideas. In contrast to Spinoza would appear to be both Descartes and Montaigne. Descartes begins famously in doubt, and Montaigne asks the famed question of the skeptic, as indicated at the head of this chapter: What do I know? Descartes launches modern philosophy by doubting, or calling into question, everything known—in history and tradition (while omitting the domains of ethics and faith): bodies, mathematical axioms, the laws of logic (including the law of contradiction, the very basis of the Greek opposition between ignorance and knowledge, between consciousness and existence), the self, and, finally, God (who is first revealed in the Meditations as a demon deceiving human beings). But Descartes pulls the philosophical rabbit out of the hat that he had seemingly emptied through methodical doubt by showing that doubt is itself the very basis of the most rigorous demonstration of certitude (truth) possible. To doubt is methodical:

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one doubts something (what is known). To doubt (in good faith) is not simply to mouth empty words: it is to say (communicate) something meaningful(ly). Thus, as I noted before, St. Anselm, in launching the ontological argument, had indicated that, if the fool of the Psalms (14 and 53), in saying in his heart “There is no God,” is held to be communicating something (in good faith) to us (and to himself), and not merely mouthing words, he cannot escape the ontology of his own argument. There is one thing that the fool cannot think (communicate) without existing—and that is God (however adequate or inadequate his idea of God may be). Anselm, like Spinoza, begins with what I (must) know in order to begin to speak, to communicate, to think—at all: God—that than which no greater reality or existing thing can be conceived. Descartes, however, appears to reverse this beginning and to begin with the self. In doubting the existence of whatever it is that I doubt, he shows that I do not (cannot) doubt my own existence. That is, in doubting even my own existence, I, like the insipiens of the Psalms (the very opposite of the sapiens, who emerges triumphant at the end of the Ethics), demonstrate existence by presupposing, by enacting it. To doubt, for Descartes, is not passive but active engagement with existence, precisely as the active affects in Spinoza demonstrate the rationality of existence—ethical and political—by overcoming passive bondage to existence (what is knowable) as external to the self. But doubting (thinking) for Descartes demonstrates the existence not only of myself but also of what is other than myself: I doubt something, even if the something that I doubt is my own existence, as separate from—but not opposed to—my thought. Because “I think” is separate from (but not opposed to) “I am,” because thinking necessarily involves and expresses existence (just as existence always, expressly, involves thought), Descartes flummoxes modern philosophers by showing, therefore, that his real beginning is not with the thinking self but with the true object of his mind, which is the real, existing subject of which he possesses an idea—that is, God. Thus Descartes holds that there is, indeed, one thing that he cannot think without existing—which is God—the demonstration of whose existence, he indicates, is utterly different from mathematical or geometrical proofs whose logic does not involve and express existence. God is what I think—the object (subject) of my thinking—as I doubt everything possible. In other words, Descartes demonstrates (by articulating) the reciprocal relationship of self and God, of thought and existence. We thus see that, although Descartes appears to begin with the self—I think, ergo I am—he actually holds that his real beginning is with God, of whose existence he has a perfect idea in his mind. Spinoza, in contrast, appears to begin with God and to end with the sapient individual. But what both thinkers truly demonstrate, in and through the ontological argument, is that

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there is no beginning with God that is not also a beginning with the human being. For, just as God does not exist outside of the thought of human beings, human beings do not think outside of (they do not think in opposition to) the existence of God. It is also the case that, notwithstanding the fact that Spinoza is consistently critical of Descartes’ claim that demonstration of the truth begins in doubt, the beginning that Spinoza makes in the Ethics, as I have already intimated and as I shall show in detail, is no less doubtful. The consciousness of self, God, and things that the sapient individual in the end possesses “by a certain eternal necessity” emerges solely from beginning, if not in doubting all things known, at least in contradictory bondage to all things known (they are not properly or truly known). Just as Descartes demonstrates that to doubt all things universally not only is self-contradictory but also reveals certitude to be founded on the paradoxical relationship of thought and existence, not on their contradictory opposition, so Spinoza shows that to begin in contradictory bondage to the affects is to begin in doubt, that is, in error so universal, so necessary, so exigent that the one thing it demonstrates is that the truth of the golden rule of justice and charity cannot be contradicted (perverted or falsified). Just as Descartes’ beginning in doubt is not skeptical (or solipsistic) but the active founding of truth on the paradoxical relationship of thought and existence, so Spinoza’s beginning with the truth of the ontological argument is not dogmatic (or authoritarian); for it, too, as I have indicated and discuss in volume II of this study, presupposes the transition from passive to active affects. Both Spinoza and Descartes, in contrast to Socrates, demonstrate that knowledge—of self, God, and things—is based, not on the law of contradiction but on the ethics of the ontological argument: there is one thing that cannot be thought, or loved, without existing—and that is the neighbor.3 The paradox of the law of contradiction, the paradox that is unknown to the law of contradiction, is that what the law of contradiction is ignorant of is the law of contradiction. Socrates knows that he is contradictory, that he is contradicted by all that he knows. But he does not know what he is contradicted by. He is ignorant of that by which he is contradicted—the law of contradiction. The fact that in the Greek world human beings are blind to and blinded by the law of contradiction is brilliantly represented by Alcibiades in the Symposium. Alcibiades contradicts at once himself and Socrates in praising Socrates as the sublime philosopher by whom he is moved (loved) but whom he is never able to move (love). Socrates, Alcibiades shows us, is the unmoved mover, the unloved lover, the uncontradicted contradictor. In contradictory opposition to Socrates, Alcibiades shows himself to be the moved nonmover, the beloved nonlover, and the contradicted noncontradictor of Socrates. In praising him by whom he is moved but him whom he does not move, in praising him

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whom he loves but him by whom he is not loved (although Alcibiades is Socrates’ beloved), Alcibiades speaks the contradictory truth of Socrates precisely insofar as he is ignorant of Socrates. Does the wildly drunk Alcibiades, then, like the Cretan liar, lie or tell the truth about Socrates? If (as) he lies about Socrates, he tells the truth (in speaking falsely about Socrates, in speaking in ignorance of his subject). If (as) he tells the truth about Socrates, he lies (in speaking truly about Socrates, in speaking in knowledge of his subject). Each of Alcibiades’ opposed or contradictory representations of Socrates is true, and each is false—from opposed (contradictory) points of view. For there is never to be found in the Greek world a common point of view, a universal perspective that comprehends both itself and the other, both thought and existence, in a mutually reciprocal relationship, one in terms of which truth can be distinguished from falsehood. Consistent with the contradictory—the knowledgeable but ignorant, the true but false—description that Alcibiades gives of him, Socrates fittingly indicates in the Apology that he is never contradicted by his daimonium, the god with whom he is identical, since it always tells him what not to do. So long as Socrates does not act or render a judgment, so long as he professes ignorance, so long as he is passionless, he is beyond contradiction (by others, for example, Alcibiades). He is beyond life; and, in deathless death, he is eternally prepared to continue his contradictory examination of others in the underworld. For it is only in seeking and desiring, in knowing and acting, in thinking and existing, in both moving others and being moved by others—in loving the neighbor as oneself—that one exposes oneself to contradiction (by others). The stance of Socrates is not fundamentally different from that of the skeptics and of the Stoics, for whom, also, the sole liberation from contradiction (of and by the senses) is suspension of judgment, suspension of the passions— whence the passionless identity on the part of the Stoics of their reason with the logos of the cosmos. As for the Epicureans, they, too, suspend their judgment in contradictory opposition to their enemies, the skeptics and the Stoics. In following in the tradition of Heraclitus and thus in reducing their reason to the passions (to the pleasures of the natural senses), the Epicureans render everything that is knowable to the senses a dogma of knowledge that cannot be doubted or judged by reason. Everything sensible is knowable. Everything knowable is sensible. All is flux. The way up is the way down. The senses are contradiction. This schema, according to which passion and reason are contradictory opposites in the Greek world and thus, in order for one to exist or to be thought, the other must be reduced to death or to ignorance, is consistent with the divided line in the Republic. (The reduction of reason to sense perceptions, that is, to the natural pleasures, on the part of the Epicureans, is but

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another reflection of this contradictory schema.) Above the line is reason, and below the line is (what I am here calling) the passions, notwithstanding Plato’s (contradictory) “middle” category of doxa (right opinion) as represented, for example, in the Phaedrus by the figure of the charioteer and his two horses, one rational and the other passional. This middle character is not mediating (dialectical or paradoxical), as it is for Hegel or Kierkegaard. Rather, it is simply one more contradictory representative of the “one change” of which Socrates speaks, with mysterious awe, in the Republic, the one change by which the philosopher (reason) is to be rendered identical with his contradictory opposite, the politician (passion), consistent with Heraclitus’ figuration of Zeus as the contradictory identity of might (violence) and right. But the notion of “one change” is itself contradictory. For one (as unchanging, immortal, and finite: it is at one with its end) is defined in opposition to change (as multiple, mortal, and in-finite: it is not at one with its end). It would take—suddenly, outside of all time, solely in the words of myth, and thus in the figure of a deus ex machina—“one change” in order for reason (above the divided line, which eternally divides Greek thought and existence from and opposes them as contradictions to each other) to be identified with the passions (below the divided line). This “one change” takes place solely in the contradictory speech of the Republic. It is speech that has no reality (“one change” does not exist and is inconceivable), unlike the biblical logos, which bespeaks the covenant of the Hebrew tradition and the incarnation of the Christian tradition as that which cannot be spoken (thoughtfully) without existing. Aristotle, for his part, typically oscillates between the contradictory opposites of the one of Parmenides (reason) and the flux (many) of Heraclitus (passion). In the one case, the rational, unchanging one of the Metaphysics— God: thought thinking itself—reduces the multiple, changing passions to ignorance of the one. In the opposite case, the real figures of the Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics and the fictional figures of Homer and of the tragedians, as celebrated in the Poetics, constantly discover that, in being ruled by the multiple, changing (contradictory) passions and thus in lacking the oneness of rational virtue, they are the enemies of the gods by whom, in fact, they are constantly contradicted, reversed, blinded, and destroyed. I want briefly to note here that, unlike Greek thinkers, who view passion and reason in contradictory opposition to each other, Spinoza, with his concept of affects as at once passive and active (rational), views reason as the paradoxical appropriation of the passions, as I show in volume II of my study. While Greek philosophers, in the name of reason, reduce the passions to contradictory death (knowledge of the good presupposes the death of the passions),4 the Greek tragedians, in the name of the passions, reduce their ra-

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tional heroes to contradictory death (count no man happy until his reason is dead, the chorus sings at the end of Oedipus the King). Spinoza, in contrast, conceives of the passions, not in contradictory opposition but in reciprocal relationship to reason. Consistent with the biblical concept of creation, according to which everything existing and everything thinkable is good, Spinoza conceives of reason as emerging in and through the passive affects and consequently as the rational appropriation, the free embodiment, and the active employment of the passions. In light of the opposition between reason and passion in Greek thinkers, it is not surprising to find Socrates arguing in the Phaedo that the philosopher— the one who (passionately) loves wisdom (and so who will always be ignorant of wisdom)—thinks of nothing except (unless, beyond) death. In other words, only in death is one apparently beyond the contradictions of reason and passion, of thought and existence. However, even in death, it turns out, one is not beyond contradiction. Even death is contradictory. Thus Socrates tells his interlocutors at the end of the Republic that, as a reward of the philosophic life, he happily anticipates an upward journey of a thousand years. Still, it is clear that he, like all those who have received their rewards and punishments in the afterlife, will be fated (after an in-finite period of a thousand years) to return downward to earth—consistent with Heraclitus that the way up is the way down. With his memory washed out by the River Lethe, Socrates will be rendered ignorant, yet one more time, of all things that exist and of all things that can be thought. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic contrast with the ontological argument, which teaches that one cannot think except (unless, without) existing. We can also then understand why the gods, who are wise, are not philosophers, as Socrates reports the teaching of Diotima to his interlocutors in the Symposium. To be a philosopher is to love wisdom, and to love wisdom—to desire wisdom, to seek wisdom—is to lack wisdom. Consistent with the opposition between reason and the passions, Socrates, from the Apology to the Gorgias, shocks his interlocutors with the unheroic contradiction that it is better to suffer wrong—in the name of philosophic reason—than to do wrong—in the name of the heroic passions. In other words, in demonstrating that it is better to suffer wrong (done to you by others) than (for you) to do wrong (to others), Socrates remains consistent with the contradictory opposition between reason and the passions, between life and death. He opposes—he reverses—the heroic stance of epic and tragedy that it is better for the hero to do wrong (to others) than to suffer wrong (done to him by others). But Socrates does not fundamentally alter the terms of heroic contradiction. Indeed, he replaces the hero of epic and tragedy with the hero of philosophy, the one who can never be in the wrong; for all wrong is done to him while he does wrong to no one. (All wrong is done in ignorance

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of the good, Plato holds.) The philosophic hero, in giving up all claims to possessing contradictory knowledge, knows (unlike others) that he knows nothing. He is ignorant of the other (including himself). The very passivity of the philosophic hero—for whom it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong— represents the death of the passions, as he compels others, from his own point of view, to inflict wrong on him. From their point of view, however, they are always in the right, as they follow the dictum of Socrates that it is better for him to suffer wrong done to him by them than for him to do wrong to them. But they are also in the wrong, from the Socratic point of view. For they simply represent the position of the epic and tragic hero in holding that it is better to do wrong (to others) than to suffer wrong (from others). We thus see what the Greeks, in fatally presupposing opposition between thought and existence, cannot see—which is that to live by the law of contradiction is to suffer contradiction in total ignorance of it. The law of contradiction and otherness—the love of neighbor—are utterly opposed to each other. But this opposition is represented in the Greek tradition as ignorance and in the biblical tradition as knowledge (revelation). The contradictory opposition between the law of contradiction and otherness—the notion that the one who is other than or opposite you is opposed to you as your contradiction and not related to you as your neighbor—is reflected in Socrates, and in the Greeks, generally, as passive ignorance (it cannot be known); for all wrong is done in ignorance of the good. But the fact that the law of contradiction is opposed to otherness as contradictory is paradoxically revealed in the biblical tradition as passive error, that is, as passionately embraced evil or sin, which must be known (acknowledged) in order to be actively (lovingly, rationally) overcome. Socrates cannot imagine the active engagement of passionately loving the neighbor as himself. He cannot think—it is inconceivable to him—that, instead either of suffering wrong (done to him by others) or of doing wrong (to others), both of which are equally done in ignorance of the good, it is infinitely better to know the good—of God and neighbor—by doing unto others what you would have them do unto you. For not only to know that one is contradicted (by what one does not know as other) but also, infinitely more significantly, to know what (the other is that) one is contradicted by is to know, paradoxically, what one is ignorant of. It is to discover within doubt the revelation of absolute certitude (truth). It is to discover within the contradictory affects of the natural state the absolute authority and sovereign law of thinking freely within the civil state of democracy. The transformation of the contradiction of otherness into the paradox of otherness as the mutually reciprocal relationship of God and human being, of existence and thought, is, as I have already indicated (and discuss in volume II of this study), to “fall” with Adam

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and Eve from the contradictory (natural) state of Eden into the paradoxical (civil) state of covenantal justice and charity. That Cartesian doubt, in contrast with Socratic ignorance, actively engages (creates) knowledge of the other—the otherness of existence: God—as the sole good thinkable by the self, that the Cartesian self cannot engage (the truth or idea of) its existence without thinking or knowing it as other than itself is inimitably captured by Montaigne in the famous question that I have placed at the head of this chapter: What do I know? By this question I understand Montaigne to provide a definitive refutation of skepticism (and equally of dogmatism). He does not ask whether (or if) he knows or does not know anything. Rather, he asks, in the tradition of the ontological argument, relating thought and existence: What do I know? I do know something. I possess knowledge of self, God, and things. All human beings, in the tradition of the Bible, possess knowledge of existence. The task for them is to know what it is that they know, to engage it, to doubt it, to test it, to interrogate it, to become responsible for it—truly to know it by living it, by thinking it, by essaying it actively, passionately, rationally. How do I exist in what I know (or think)? How do I think (know) my existence, that in which I exist? What I know is other than what I know. How do I relate “what” I know to the “I” that knows (it)? How do I connect (with) my thought and existence such that their otherness is not contradictory opposition but paradoxical—mutually reciprocal—relationship? In order to assess adequately the amplitude of the question posed by Montaigne—What do I know?—and thus to show how it informs our study of Spinoza and modernity, it is important to examine with some care the essay in which it is posed, “The Apology for Raimond Sebond.” The “Apology” is by far the longest essay in the three books of essays that Montaigne wrote. More important, it contains a complex structure (style) of argumentation in and through which he weaves a dense, subtle, unrelenting, and comprehensive critique, both philosophical and theological, of knowledge, in and through which, at one and the same time, he poses and articulates his response to the question: What do I know? While claiming to write an “apology” for Raimond Sebond, a fifteenth-century natural theologian, Montaigne rejects Sebond’s and thus any argument that purports to show that we can arrive at knowledge of God by beginning with natural or human being—in the tradition of Aristotelian or Neoplatonic teleology as adapted by scholastic theologians. But what concerns Montaigne, above all, in what he calls “this long and boring discourse, which would give me material without end,” is to expose as contradictory the opposed concepts of knowledge that are found in the Greek schools of philosophy, especially, Platonic and Stoic, on the one hand, and skeptical, on the other (457).5 He is critical equally of the identity of knowledge and virtue (to know the good is to be the good), in the Platonic

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(and Stoic) tradition, and of the suspension of judgment (Socratic ignorance of the good), in the skeptical tradition. Montaigne tellingly comments, as we shall see, on the piquant irony that academic skepticism emerged out of the tradition of Plato’s Academy as its very opposite. While Montaigne initiates the “Apology” by absolutely distinguishing his conception of knowledge from that of Greek philosophy, he concludes his long and boring discourse by distinguishing absolutely between Stoic virtue and Christian faith. It is particularly important to see that he arrives at his distinction between the classical and the Christian understanding of the relationship between virtue and knowledge and thus between knowledge and faith, in the last pages of the “Apology,” by way of citing three representatives of the two opposed traditions of classical philosophy. First, he summarizes the arguments of the skeptics, as found, for example, in Sextus Empiricus, whereby they claim to refute the reliability of knowledge whether based on the senses or on reason. He gives these arguments without attribution, although he cites Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, in Latin, in support of them (also without direct attribution). Second, he quotes a lengthy passage from Plutarch who, in Platonic fashion, opposes God as what is, eternal and unchanging, to everything other as that which undergoes temporal change and so is without being. Again, Montaigne cites Plutarch (in a sixteenth-century French translation) without attribution. We have to believe, surely, that Montaigne cites the skeptics and Plutarch in order to deepen our understanding of his question: What do I know? What, however, does Montaigne know? What do we know? What does Montaigne want us to know? Why does he cite the ancients? How do we know or decide whether Montaigne cites the skeptics and Plutarch in order to oppose them to his understanding of Christian faith and so to refute them or whether he cites them in support of his understanding of Christian faith? As I have already indicated, Montaigne concludes his essay by proclaiming an absolute difference between Stoic virtue and Christian faith. Indeed, immediately following the lengthy citation from Plutarch, Montaigne gives us his third representative of classical philosophy. He cites one sentence from Seneca, again without direct attribution but now with an indication that this Stoic philosopher represents the same position as Plutarch. (It would appear that Plutarch’s Platonic division between being and non-being would support the skeptical arguments against the reliability both of reason, based on the inaccessibility of being, and of the senses, based on the non-being of the flux of appearances.) What I shall now proceed to show, on the basis both of the structure of the “Apology” and of salient passages within it, is that Montaigne clearly indicates to his readers not only that he draws but also that he intends to draw an absolute distinction between Christian faith and Greek (and Roman) philoso-

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phy.6 Indeed, this master of the essay is truly modern and “secular” precisely because he knows that his question—What do I know?—is consistent with biblical faith, that is, that it articulates biblical faith in presupposing it. He also knows, therefore, that, while the question that he poses can in form appear to be the same question that skeptics, Platonists, and Stoics ask, the answer that he gives to it is essentially different from theirs. Montaigne, we shall consequently see, is fundamentally one with Descartes and Spinoza in drawing an absolute line, not between reason and the passions, not between thought and existence—in the Greek tradition—but rather between the mutual and reciprocal relationship of thought and existence, on the one hand, and their contradictory opposition, in the Greek tradition, on the other.7 Unbeknownst to himself, doubtlessly, Montaigne does not see that his question—What do I know?—presupposes, as it articulates, the ontological argument for the existence of God. For what I know, in answering this question, is that there is one thing that I cannot know, or think, without existing—which is God—and that it follows, therefore, that God does not exist outside of human knowledge (thought, concept, idea). Montaigne initiates the “Apology” with the seemingly benign observation that knowledge is a great and useful quality and that those who despise it reveal their stupidity: But yet [he continues] I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, like Herillus the philosopher [an obscure pupil of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism], who placed in it the sovereign good and held that it was in its power to make us wise and content. That I do not believe, nor what others have said, that knowledge is the mother of all virtue and that all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation. (319)

We see right from the beginning of the “Apology” that Montaigne puts us on notice that he rejects the most fundamental doctrine of Greek moral philosophy: that to know the good is to be the good. For the Greeks, knowledge of the sovereign good makes human beings wise and content. Knowledge is the principle (origin) of virtue; and vice (wrong) is done in ignorance of the good. In other words, according to the Greek philosophical principle that Montaigne rejects, whatever human beings do knowingly—from their point of view—is (the) good (for knowledge is virtue); and whatever human beings do in ignorance—from their point of view—is (the) wrong (for wrong is done in ignorance of the good). But how could one actually (or possibly) know whether one acted from knowledge or from ignorance, whether one’s action was virtuous or wrong, except that, according to my own point of view, what I do knowingly is right and that what I do ignorantly is wrong? Either knowledge is identical with virtue and so opposed to wrong. Or ignorance is identical

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with wrong and so opposed to virtue. You may well disagree that I have acted rightly or wrongly. But your point of view is opposed to my point of view as right and wrong, knowledge and ignorance, are opposed to each other. Parmenides and Heraclitus, the fathers of Greek philosophical speculation to whose contradictory inheritance their philosophical progeny are fatally and ineluctably bound, are, in their eternal opposition to each other, each right and each wrong. For Parmenides, knowledge of the one is the good opposed to ignorance of the many as the wrong. For Heraclitus, knowledge of the many is the good opposed to ignorance of the one as the wrong. The long interpretation which, as Montaigne says, is required to render true the position that all wrong is done in ignorance of the good—whether in the tradition of Parmenides or of Heraclitus—is his “Apology.” Behind (before) the “Apology” is the Bible and the infinite resources of its hermeneutical traditions, that is, the history of modernity, including its interactions with non-modern (non-historical, non-biblical traditions such as the tradition represented by Greek philosophy). The long interpretation of the position that knowledge is virtue and that ignorance is vice begins with the story of Adam and Eve. The foreparents of modern philosophy fall from the opposition between knowledge and ignorance, between good and wrong, into knowledge of good and evil, which, while they are opposed to each other, are not contradictory opposites and cannot be lived (they do not exist) or cannot be thought on the basis of the law of contradiction. Adam and Eve respond to the question—What do I know?—by showing that, within the covenant, it is in knowing God and neighbor, that is, in willing to love God above all others and their neighbor as themselves, that they can account for both the good and the evil that they do to others (including themselves) and for both the good and the evil that others (including themselves) do to them.8 The long interpretation that is modernity begins by making the other the principle not of contradiction but of paradox, not of opposition but of mutual relationship. The long interpretation of modernity is the ontological argument whose proof that God is the one thing that cannot be thought without existing involves and expresses human thought and existence no less than divine thought and existence. The image of God, the idea of God: whose image or idea is it— God’s or mine? If the idea (or image) of God is the one idea (or image) that cannot be thought (or imagined) without (unless, except) existing, whose existence is thereby proved—God’s or mine? Having initiated the “Apology” by indicating that his own concept of knowledge will be based, not on the Greek idea of otherness as contradictory but on the long interpretation of what I am calling the paradoxical relationship of thought and existence, Montaigne concretely poses his question—What do I know?—in the context of discussing Pyrrhonian skepticism. It is important to note that, while skepticism is the opposite of Stoicism or Platonism, the sus-

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pension of judgment that it effects is simply one more version of Socratic ignorance (of the good), as I have already indicated. Indeed, suspension of judgment is enacted no less in knowing the good—for to know the good is to be the good—than in not knowing (in being ignorant of) the good. Montaigne observes that the Pyrrhonians “cannot express their general conception [of reality, of what they are talking about] in any manner of speaking; for they would need a new language.” Actually, what Montaigne means is that skeptics would need, not a new language, when language is understood as a “perfect” (i.e., a complete) system of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, but a new concept of language, that of communication, in other words, a concept of otherness (as articulated in and through the ontological argument). Our language, Montaigne continues, “is wholly formed of affirmative propositions, which to them [the Pyrrhonian skeptics] are utterly repugnant; so that, when they say ‘I doubt,’ immediately you have them by the throat to make them admit that at least they know and are sure of this fact, that they doubt” (392). It is, then, in light of the fact that the Pyrrhonian skeptics cannot explain (to us) that they say what they mean or that they mean what they say—for saying and meaning are either immediately identified with each other or immediately opposed to each other in Greek philosophy—that Montaigne writes that “this idea is more firmly grasped in the form of interrogation: ‘What do I know?’—the words that I bear as a motto, inscribed over a pair of scales” (393). The question that Montaigne poses includes two striking features. First, he does not ask (in the Socratic tradition): What is knowledge? but: What do I know? How do I essay—account for or justify—what I know? Montaigne asks, to put his question in Kantian terms: given that knowledge exists, given that my knowledge is a gift, the gift of otherness—how is it possible (for me to think and to exist in and through it)? What are its possibilities? I cannot prove—outside of knowing something—that I know something as opposed to knowing nothing. I cannot prove that I exist—outside of existing—as opposed to not existing. I do not begin in a neutral position but in gear, engaged, on the way of the ontological argument demonstrating otherness as the mutual relatedness of thought and existence. If I do not know anything or if I do not exist, then I do not begin—in thought or existence. Beginnings—in thought and existence—are not hypothetical but categorical. Beginnings are not data (givens) but gifts. Thus we arrive at the second, striking feature of Montaigne’s question. Our language or, in other words, our concept of language as communication (or as community) is wholly formed of affirmative propositions. Sentences (or claims) such as “I do not know” or “I do not exist” have no meaning. They do not communicate anything (they are mere words)—except in the affirmative context of thought and existence, in the context of saying yes to the otherness of thought and existence. Ignorance or

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non-existence, in lacking thought or existence, has no meaning except insofar as it affirms knowledge (thought) and existence. I cannot even have a concept of ignorance or of non-existence except on the basis of knowledge (thought) and of existence. Ignorance and non-existence are not the contradictory opposites of knowledge and existence, as they are in Greek philosophy, but their denial (and, consequently, their affirmation). So, when (modern, not ancient) skeptics claim to doubt something (including themselves), they actually affirm, in the spirit of Descartes, their thought and existence, at least if they are engaged in their doubt, if they doubt in good faith, and do not merely mouth words so as to evade the responsibility of allowing their claims to be paradoxically revealed to them as contradictory. To ask “What do I know?” is to affirm thought and existence. It is to invoke, by articulating, the ontological argument proving the existence of God, of the other, of the neighbor. Of course, when I faithfully and rationally pose the question to myself and to others—What do I know?—I am deeply involved in a critique of my ignorance (and of the ignorance of others). I am deeply involved in an examination of what I do not know (and of what others do not know), as I affirm my thought and existence (and the thought and existence of others) in doing so. Radical New Testament versions of the idea that all communicable (including “negative”) propositions are affirmations of thought and existence would include the following: Jesus came to save not the righteous but sinners (Luke 5.32); Jesus came to bring not peace but a sword (Mat. 10.34); Jesus commanded his followers to love their enemies (Mat. 5.44); Jesus said that, in order to follow him, you have to hate your father and mother, your spouse and children, your brothers and sisters, and even yourself (Luke 14.26); Jesus said that there was one sin that could not be forgiven, and that was the sin against the Spirit (Mat. 12.31–32). That Montaigne affirms thought and existence in the context of exposing (what are from the point of view of modernity) the contradictions inherent in skeptical doubt and suspension of judgment he articulates in yet a further passage in which he discusses ancient skepticism. He notes that the academic skeptics (those following in the tradition of Plato’s Academy) accept some inclination in judgment. While they deny that human beings are capable of knowing anything or of making decisions, they do allow that some things are more probable than others. But here, Montaigne remarks, the Pyrrhonian skeptics (in denying that there is any basis for inclining more in one direction than in another) are both bolder and more plausible. For, he asks, what is this inclination towards one proposition rather than towards another if it is not the claim to recognize more truth in one proposition than in another? “If our understanding is capable of grasping the form, the lineaments, the carriage, and the face of truth,” Montaigne declares, “it would see it whole just as well

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as half there, nascent and imperfect. . . . But how can they [the academic skeptics] let themselves be inclined toward the likeness of truth, if they do not know the truth? How do they know the semblance of that whose essence they do not know? Either we can judge absolutely, or we absolutely cannot” (422).9 The distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging is the distinction between modernity and antiquity, between the Bible and the Greeks, between the ontological argument and the law of contradiction. Montaigne is surely right—from the point of view of modernity—that the Platonic middle way of inclination, of doxa or right opinion, whether skeptical or Socratic, has, as I pointed out above, absolutely no basis in thought or existence, given the divided line between the good and appearances. It is, therefore, absolutely arbitrary. The Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics of Aristotle are also founded on this middle way, for which, as he acknowledges, there is absolutely no philosophical justification and which is ultimately relative to and dependent on power (birth), which is both unjustified and unjustifiable. We can well understand, then, that, as Aristotle points out in book III of the Politics, the good man, the man who is good in himself, has no place as merely a relatively good citizen in any one of the six existing but merely relatively good political regimes—monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic, together with their corrupt opposites—whose stasis, in lacking the good, is that they fatally revolve into one another without ever altering their blind dependence on the law of contradiction. To judge absolutely, in contrast, means that there is one thing that I cannot conceive without existing. It means that I cannot doubt my existence, the existence of the other (God), without affirming both my existence (in the thought or the idea of the other) and my thought (in the existence of the other). To judge absolutely does not mean that my judgment is (finitely) complete (for then we would return to the Platonic contradiction that to know the good is to be the good—with the consequence that the separation between thought and existence would vanish). Rather, it means that, on the basis of my judgment, which is absolute, I am in a position to assess its incompleteness, its inadequacy, etc. What do I know? I know that truth is its own absolute standard, as Spinoza formulates the concept of judging absolutely in the Ethics, as we shall see. I know that I possess, that I am responsible for possessing, the absolute (Cartesian) method for distinguishing truth from error, justice from injustice. Thus, it is important to see that Montaigne’s question—What do I know?—and his response to it—the distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging—presupposes, as it articulates, the fact that, as Descartes explains in the first paragraph of his Discourse on Method, all human beings possess the absolute power of judgment (the power of absolute judgment). All human beings, he writes there, are equally endowed with reason or

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good sense, “the power of judging rightly and of distinguishing the true from the false,” which “is naturally equal in all men.” Diversity, that is, division of opinion, he points out, does not arise from the fact that some people possess a greater power of reason than others. Rather, division of opinion reflects lack of proper method. “For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices, as well of the greatest virtues” (1). (In other words, to know the good is not to be the good.) Reason, Descartes declares, “exists whole and entire in each one of us” (2). When he proceeds in part IV of the Discourse and in the Meditations to prove the existence of the soul and of God, these proofs—and they are absolute demonstrations than which no greater or more absolute can be thought to exist—articulate, as they presuppose, the absolutely democratic right of all human beings to exercise their whole and entire power of judgment in distinguishing the true from the false. What do I know? I know that the capacity of judging absolutely underlies (presupposes) both the ontological argument and democracy. We shall see that Montaigne’s distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging, between being absolutely capacitated to judge and absolutely lacking the capacity of judgment, will allow us to judge more adequately (absolutely!) the separation that Spinoza effects between the ethical few and the democratic multitudo, between mathematical demonstration and moral demonstration, between philosophy (intellect) and religion (love). Still, we already know that for Spinoza the absolute opposition is not between philosophy and religion, both of which are absolutely true (for each possesses the absolute good: knowledge of God), but between religion and superstition, between truth and error. We have now examined three critical passages in “The Apology for Raimond Sebond” in which Montaigne absolutely distinguishes between the affirmation of thought and existence, on the one hand, and the suspension (the non-existence) of judgment, on the other, and so also between absolute affirmation, on the one hand, and the identity of knowledge and virtue, on the other. For, as I continue to emphasize, Platonic opposition between consciousness and the good, between ignorance of the good and the good existing in itself, is absolutely indistinguishable from academic skepticism when carried to its logical conclusion by the Pyrrhonian skeptics. Judgment is suspended, that is, I do not exist in my judgment, either when I am ignorant of the good or when I am identical with the good. In the first case, consciousness, in lacking the existence of good (the good of existence), is ignorance. In the second case, the good of existence (the existence of the good), in lacking consciousness, is knowledge. The absolute difference, then, between Montaigne and Greek philosophers is as follows. On the one hand, Montaigne distin-

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guishes absolutely between judging—which involves and expresses the separation between thought and existence, but not their opposition—and not judging—which presupposes, by imposing, their opposition. On the other hand, Greek philosophers distinguish absolutely between—by absolutely opposing one to the other—consciousness (whose lack of existence is called ignorance) and existence (whose lack of thought is called the good). The distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging that Montaigne articulates in response to his ontological question—What do I know?—is consistent with, as it anticipates and leads to, the dramatic conclusion of the “Apology.” As I indicated above, in the final pages of his essay he cites in succession the arguments of the ancient skeptics (as we find them represented in Sextus Empiricus), Plutarch, and Seneca, without attribution, before concluding with the absolute distinction between Christian faith and Stoic virtue. Since, as we have now seen, Montaigne structures the “Apology” from beginning to end on the basis of the absolute distinction between modern and ancient, it will not be surprising to discover that he provides ample if subtle evidence that his purpose in citing three additional ancient sources, in concluding his essay, is to underline, once again, the distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging. But there is one element in the conclusion that I have not yet discussed, although I have mentioned it, an element that is present in his rejection of the identity between vice and ignorance without a long interpretation and that is central to the whole of the “Apology.” I mean his frequent invocation of the God of Christianity and of his reiterated commitment to Christian faith.10 When Montaigne indicates to us, at the very end of the “Apology,” that his concept of human being, in opposition to that of the Stoic Seneca, embodies his concept of God, his treatment of the relationship between human being and divine being is tantalizingly brief. Yet it is sufficient to allow us to see that it is consistent with the answer that he gives to his question: What do I know? To be capable of judging absolutely presupposes not the absolute opposition (or identity) between human being and divine being but their absolute separation, that is, their reciprocal relationship. It is also truly instructive to see that the concept of God that Montaigne embraces is absolutely opposed to the image of God that is found in the lengthy passage of Plutarch that he cites. The God of Plutarch is the God, not of modern philosophers (like Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza) but of ancient philosophers who are indistinguishably theo-sophers (and of their medieval followers like Maimonides).11 Indeed, we shall see that the image of God that is found in the passage cited from Plutarch is directly reflected in the image of humanity that is found in the passage cited from Seneca. Regarding the first passage, Montaigne simply reproduces the standard arguments of the ancient skeptics that the uncertainty of the senses renders all

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judgments based on them uncertain and that reason is unreliable in demanding yet another reason unto infinity. “Thus, nothing certain can be established about one thing by another, both the judging and the judged being in continual change and motion” (455). While Montaigne has already shown (from his modern point of view) that all assertions on the part of the ancients denying or suspending certain judgment rather affirm the truth of both thought and existence, he passes, without comment, from the arguments of the skeptics to the lengthy citation from Plutarch’s essay “On the Meaning of Being.” Plutarch initiates the passage cited with the declaration that “we have no communication with being.” Since “what is” is opposed to the changing, multiple appearances that uncertain opinion reflects and that cannot be grasped in thought and since time, motion, and matter have no real existence, it follows, he states, that “God alone is—not at all according to any measure of time, but according to an eternity immutable and immobile, not measured by time or subject to any decline; before whom there is nothing, nor will there be after, nor is there anything more new or more recent, but one who really is—who by one single now fills the always; and there is nothing that really is except him alone. Nor can we say: He has been; or: He will be—without beginning and without end.” (457)

Before taking up the brief comment that Montaigne makes on this passage from Plutarch, prior to his introducing the passage from Seneca, it is worth noting two significant features in the citation from Plutarch that Montaigne does not directly discuss but which, nevertheless, emerge indirectly in light of his distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging. First, Platonic language, in its apparent similarity to Christian (or biblical) language, generally, has always been powerfully seductive for thinkers in the biblical tradition, including modern, secular thinkers. When theologians, philosophers, and scholars lack a firm grasp of the ontological argument, it is very hard for them—whether in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, or in modernity—not to be seduced into reading the relationship (the difference) between God and human beings (in creation, covenant, sin, and salvation) in the opposed (dualistic) terms of Platonism: eternity and time, being and non-being, reality and appearance, soul and body. The direct result of this confusion on the part of learned commentators, which Spinoza calls superstition, as we have seen, is that they misconstrue both modern (biblical) and ancient (Greek) thought. Second, if there is no human communication with being, if human “being” (in opposition to divine being or what “is”) belongs to the realm of changing, uncertain, opinion reflecting unreal non-being, then it will follow that human beings can neither think (know) anything—either themselves or God—as existing nor exist in the thought of anything—either of themselves or of God. In

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other words, Plato’s divided line, in opposing reality and appearance, being and non-being, to each other, eliminates thought (or existence)—as non-being— from above the line and existence (or thought)—as being—from below the line. Precisely because, by the law of contradiction, all otherness is eliminated, that is, what is other can neither be thought as other nor exist as other, all thought and all existence vanish. It follows, therefore, that what Plutarch himself writes (communicates) about the fact that he cannot communicate (anything) about being is itself absolutely contradictory. In claiming that there is no communication with being, what Plutarch communicates about being is no communication at all. In other words, what he communicates is absolutely contradictory, both true and false, and neither true nor false, simultaneously. Whereas there is solely affirmation (of thought and existence) in biblical speech, there is solely ignorance (of thought and existence) in the speech of Plutarch. If what he says is true, then it (his meaning) is false. If what he says is false, then it (his meaning) is true. He cannot meaningfully communicate— with us or with himself—while denying that he can communicate (mean) what he says. Neither Plutarch, nor Socrates, nor any Greek author can think or exist—meaningfully—within the law of contradiction (a fitting representation of which is Plato’s divided line). For the law of contradiction eternally (and no less temporally!) opposes as the incommunicable other both thought and existence. If we (moderns) should ask what Plutarch intends to communicate in this passage, if we ask why (or for what reason) he writes, there are, strictly speaking, solely two responses that we can give and solely two responses that we must give to this question. The first response reflects his ancient world. The second response reveals our modern (biblical) world. 1. From the point of view of Plutarch’s world, the notion of intention is subject to the law of contradiction in precisely the same way as are all notions of human agency: seeking, desiring, acting, willing, etc. In intending (in seeking) to communicate, in having the intention of communicating, Plutarch is (and demonstrates that he is) ignorant of that of which he communicates, of what communication is. There is no communication with being. There is no communication of what is. What Plutarch “intends” to communicate is purely the fact that he does not communicate, the fact that there is no communication with being. He communicates (says, thinks) nothing existing at all. Solely being (God) is; and communication is not. Plutarch (like his ancient audience)—he shows—is absolutely ignorant of that (being or God) about which he writes. The absolute contradiction here is that “what is” cannot be thought (to exist) and does not exist (in thought). It is absolutely unknowable and unthinkable—except in itself as

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thought thinking itself, that is, except in words that we, with Aristotle, can repeat but that have no meaning: no existence or thought. 2. From our modern (biblical) point of view, we, like Montaigne, can see through, grasp, and comprehend the contradiction that is inherent in Plutarch’s communication that there is no communication with being. The law of contradictory otherness can be grasped—as incommunicable or meaningless—solely from the point of view of paradoxical otherness, which is that of the ontological argument positing, and affirming, the absolute relatedness of thought and existence. The other is meaningful as that which can be thought solely as existing and that which exists solely as thought (intended, communicated, willed, desired, loved). What do I know? I know that it is solely on the paradoxical basis of judging (or communicating) absolutely, or affirmatively, that I can grasp— see through—the contradiction of absolutely not judging (or communicating) affirmatively. After citing Plutarch, Montaigne begins to add commentary, for the first time, as he proceeds to give us one sentence from Seneca, still without attribution, but now within quotation marks: To this most religious conclusion of a pagan [i.e., Plutarch] I want to join only this word of a witness of the same [i.e., pagan] condition . . . : “O what a vile and abject thing is man,” he says, “if he does not raise himself above humanity!” Here is a good word and a useful desire but equally absurd. For to make the handful bigger than the hand, the armful bigger than the arm, and to hope to straddle more than the reach of our legs is impossible and monstrous. Nor can man raise himself above himself and humanity; for he can see only with his eyes and seize only with his grasp. He will rise [he will be raised, he will raise himself], if God extraordinarily lends him a hand; he will rise, abandoning and renouncing his own means and letting himself be raised and uplifted by purely celestial means. It is for our Christian faith, not for his [i.e., Seneca’s] Stoic virtue, to claim (pretender à) this divine and miraculous metamorphosis. (457)

Thus Montaigne concludes “The Apology for Raimond Sebond” as he absolutely distinguishes Christian faith from pagan (Stoic) virtue, consistent with the overall structure of his essay, in which, as we have seen, he affirms the modern (biblical) tradition of judging absolutely in opposition to the ancient tradition of absolutely not judging. It is clear that he rejects Seneca’s concept of humanity as being contradictorily other than itself, in being opposed to itself. What perhaps is not so clear is how he understands (1) the relationship between Seneca and Plutarch and (2) the relationship between his own concept of “man” and the God of Christian faith.

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Seneca’s idea of humanity, as being other than itself in being the very contradiction of itself, is consistent with the ancient (Greek and Roman) tradition of identifying virtue with knowledge that Montaigne opposes from the very beginning of the “Apology,” as we saw earlier. If, Seneca holds, human beings remain in the “human” realm of appearance, then they will forever be ignorant of the good, of virtue. For, as Socrates demonstrates over and over again in Platonic dialogue, virtue cannot be taught to or by human beings. Virtue cannot be known or thought by human beings. Virtue does not exist in the human realm. To seek virtue is to demonstrate your human ignorance of virtue (which does not “exist” in human thought or knowledge). To know virtue, that is, to be virtuous or to be one with virtue, is to demonstrate your divine identity with virtue (of which you then have no consciousness). In either case, if you seek virtue in ignorance of it or if you know virtue in identity with it, virtue can be neither taught nor learned, neither known nor thought. If, however, Seneca holds, human beings raise themselves above their vile, abject selves, then they will be identical with virtue. Thus, we see that the concept of human being held by Seneca (and by the Stoics, generally) is absolutely contradictory. Seneca can be himself only by being other than or opposed to himself, by showing himself to be absolutely contradictory. If he is himself, then he is not himself. If he is not himself, then he is himself. It is precisely this contradictory attempt on the part of human beings to be other than themselves, to jump out of or to transcend their own skins, that Montaigne opposes so relentlessly, both in the “Apology” and throughout his three books of essays. Seneca’s idea of humanity—that it must be other than (i.e., in contradiction with) itself in order to be itself—is the contradictory reflection of the idea of God that Plutarch presents in the passage cited prior to that of Seneca. Only “what is” (God) escapes the contradictions of being human. To raise yourself above humanity—in identifying virtue with knowledge—is precisely to claim the status of the gods. (When Greek tragedy depicts this contradictory stance in religious festivals, it celebrates the destruction of human heroes, as other than themselves, by the gods, who, as identical with themselves, cannot be thought or known by human beings as existing and do not exist as thought or known by human beings.) Once we see that Plutarch’s image of God and Seneca’s image of humanity are the contradictory reflections of each other as either other than what can exist (in thought) or other than what can be thought (to exist), we are in a position to savor the irony of Montaigne’s presentation of them. The pagan Plutarch’s conclusion is “religious” in precisely the same sense that the pagan Seneca’s claim that “man” is a vile and abject thing if he does not raise himself above humanity is good, useful, but pareillement absurde. Seneca’s claim about humanity is equally absurd as the “religious” conclusion of Plutarch. From Montaigne’s

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modern (biblical) perspective, both Plutarch and Seneca—together with the skeptics—falsify the human, together with the divine, condition. Just as we can make use of the distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging to help us see that, for Montaigne, the skeptics, Plutarch, and Seneca absolutely lack reasonable judgment, so Montaigne makes use of Seneca’s concept of humanity as other than what is (the identity of knowledge and virtue), when reflected in Plutarch’s idea of God as other than humanity (the ignorance of virtue), to help him present, by contrast, his own conception of the human, together with the divine, condition. It is striking to see that, from Montaigne’s (Christian) perspective, human beings can be raised, uplifted, and transformed solely on the basis of two conditions: first, if they are and remain themselves and do not attempt to raise themselves above themselves and humanity; and second, if the means by which they are raised are not human but purely celestial, divine, and miraculous. While Montaigne leaves the paradoxical Christian rhetoric that he uses here largely unexplicated, his meaning, I think, is clear enough, especially given the contrast that he establishes between his own position and that of Seneca and his fellow ancients. To be uplifted by God—miraculously—is not to be raised above yourself. It is not to become other than your human self. It is not to become God. Rather, it is to become (as Nietzsche would say about the Übermensch) the person you truly are, who is other than yourself—not in contradictory opposition to yourself but in paradoxical relationship with yourself. Montaigne here maintains the separation between human beings and God that is consistent with the paradoxical tradition of modernity and the Bible (and so with Spinoza)—such that human beings and God are not opposed to, as the contradiction of, each other, as we find in the ancient tradition of Seneca, Plutarch, and Socrates. The paradox of otherness in the modern (biblical) tradition is that I am commanded to affirm or to love the other—as myself. What do I know? I know that there is one thing that I cannot affirm or love without (except, unless) existing—and that is the other who, as God and neighbor, represents (bears) my relationship to myself. The contradiction of otherness in the ancient (pagan) tradition is that, if I affirm or love the other, I lack the other. I contradict and am contradicted by the other. (If I am the other—the God knowable solely in itself: thought thinking itself—then my love vanishes into the contradictory identity of self and other.) We have now seen that to read “The Apology for Raimond Sebond,” in light of both the overall structure of the essay and passages that are central to its structure, is to make the momentous discovery that to ask with Montaigne— What do I know?—is to distinguish between modernity and antiquity as the

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absolute difference between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging. Montaigne allows us to see that to judge absolutely is to affirm thought and existence consistent with the ontological argument that there is one thing that cannot be thought without (unless, except) existing—which is God. But Montaigne also allows us to see that, because what I know is (not found outside of) what I know, it no less follows that God does not exist outside of human thought. There is no fundamental, that is, no contradictory, opposition between knowledge and faith, for each embodies the sovereign authority and right of judging absolutely, of affirming thought and existence that are no less human than they are divine. Consequently, Montaigne helps us discern the critical difference between paradox and the law of contradiction, between two absolutely different judgments about the other, about otherness. The biblical tradition of modernity affirms the other—God and neighbor—as the paradoxical truth of the self. The ancient tradition of the Greeks and the Romans, Montaigne shows us, is ignorant of the other as that to which and by which, according to the law of contradiction, the human self is opposed. It is important to see that ancient thinkers do not “deny” the (thought and existence of the) other. For, as Montaigne makes clear in his critique of the skeptics, all our (modern) claims about thought and existence, even when doubting or denying them, affirm their reality. To deny the thought and existence of the human self no less than of God—in the tradition of the fool of the Psalms or of Milton’s Satan—expresses not ignorance but perversion (sin), what Spinoza, as we saw, calls superstition. The opposite of affirmation, in the biblical tradition, is not ignorance but idolatry: active, affirmative, willful (Satanic) denial of the truth. Montaigne shows us that in asking “What do I know?” I cannot not know something, I cannot not affirm, at one and the same time, the existence of my thought and the thought of my existence. The question, then, is not whether I possess or lack knowledge but, rather, what I know—whether my knowledge (my concept) is adequate to the existence of myself (to my “I”) and whether my “I,” my existence, is adequate to my knowledge. We shall now proceed to see that in the Ethics Spinoza continues to uphold, consistent with Montaigne and also Descartes, the critical distinction between judging absolutely, in the biblical tradition of modernity, and absolutely not judging, in the Socratic tradition of antiquity. He shows us that the ontological argument proving the existence of God provides the absolute judgment in and by which human beings affirm not only the existence of God as the standard of their thought but also their thought (idea or concept) of God as the standard of divine existence. What do I know? I know that the ontological argument proving the existence of God is the absolute judgment (affirmation) of modernity.

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The Ontological Argument and the Relationship between Thought and Existence: Ethics, Parts I and II In parts I and II of the Ethics, entitled, respectively, “Concerning God” and “Concerning the Nature and Origin of the Mind,” Spinoza lays the groundwork of his conception of ethics as the relationship between God and the mind, as the relationship between thought and existence. At the end of part II he sketches what he calls the “use” of his doctrine, in both personal and social terms, while indicating that what is most important in it he will present in the last and fifth part of his work on the power of the human intellect or on human freedom. He also indicates near the end of part II that, having set out what he calls the three kinds of human knowledge—imagination (sense experience), reason (common notions), and intuition (knowledge of the essence of existing individuals)—he will take up in part V the third kind of knowledge, which, he says, human beings can deduce from their understanding that all things are in God and are conceived through God. Thus we see that Spinoza conceives of the Ethics as a whole, that what he writes about God and the mind and their relationship, in parts I and II, not only serves to prepare for what is to follow in the rest of the work but also will be completed (and in that sense rendered comprehensible) solely in and through the three succeeding parts, above all, part V. The ontological argument proving the existence of God—as that which cannot be conceived (by human beings) unless existing (as other than human beings)—is not just given once and for all in definition I of part I or just simply elaborated with finality in the earlier propositions of part I. Rather, in constituting and being constituted by the necessary relationship between thought and existence—at once human and divine—the ontological argument will shape what Spinoza understands by ethics from the beginning to the end of his work (including, ultimately, politics as both individual and social). As with any great text—whether philosophic or literary12—its truth (concept) is implicitly present in its opening lines (in the Ethics: in the definition of the cause of itself). As is the case, too, with any great text, its truth (concept) is present solely as explicated in and through the whole of the text, as we move from its beginning to its end. We understand in the end that we have arrived at our true beginning, at the truth of our beginning. In the end we arrive at beginning, one more time, to understand both the text and ourselves. At the end of the Ethics it is the sapient individual who—as the one who is conscious of self, God and things by a certain, eternal necessity; who never ceases to be; and who always possesses true acquiescence of mind—has truly grasped that the ethical life begins with, that the principle of the ethical life is, the cause of itself as that which cannot be conceived without existing and cannot exist

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without being conceived. All texts create their own readers (all readers create their own texts). The Ethics creates as its own adequate readers those who in the end understand that they sapiently begin with the cause of itself. Just as in the ontological argument there is no transition (passage) to existence from non-existence (from a position outside of existence) but only from existence to existence, so there is no transition, in the Ethics, to the cause of itself from a position outside of it, but only from the cause of itself to the cause of itself. It would follow, then, that, while sapient readers would certainly not believe that in the end they had gone further than (or beyond) beginning with the cause of itself, they would surely believe that, in not standing still, they had at least gotten so far. It is no accident that the two key images in the final lines of the Ethics—via and salus—are deeply rooted in biblical theology. The way of God is salvation, and salvation is the way of God. The way cannot be conceived as existing outside of salvation; and salvation cannot exist outside of the concept of the way. For Spinoza, to comprehend God as the cause of itself—as that which cannot be thought (by human beings) without existing and which cannot exist (in human life) without being thought—is the way of salvation. But salvation is also the way. We begin with an adequate idea of God—as the cause of itself. We begin (again) as conatus, as the transition from passive to active affects, from inadequate to adequate ideas. The cause of itself is both freedom (salvation) and the way or transition from bondage to freedom. We cannot begin outside of freedom, for there is no transition or way to freedom from a (neutral or suspended) position outside of it. (This is why Spinoza resolutely rejects free will while championing freedom.) But to begin in or with freedom— in and with freedom as its own standard, the standard both of itself and of bondage—is to be confronted with one’s bondage to the affects (with what is called sin or idolatry in the biblical tradition). Since God is salvation only as the way of salvation, it is fitting that the one passage from Scripture on which Spinoza explicitly comments in the Ethics and to which, in fact, he devotes a proposition (in part IV), is the story of Adam and Eve. Salvation is inconceivable and does not exist outside of the way, and the way of salvation involves and expresses knowledge of good and evil. Salvation is not identity with the good. Salvation is not identity with God. It is not true, as we saw Montaigne indicate at the beginning of “The Apology for Raimond Sebond,” that knowledge of God is salvation (that to know God is to be God) or that vice is done in ignorance of God. Or, if it is, he adds, then “it is subject to a long interpretation.” The creation of human thought and existence as Lo!—very good—by God who, Spinoza says in part I of the Ethics, is, consistent with Montaigne, absolute affirmation, without negation, is to constitute the cause of itself as the standard than which no greater (or other) can be

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conceived as existing. The good of creation, the cause of itself, is not found outside of the way of knowing good and evil. The good of creation is the affirmation of good as its own standard, the standard both of itself and of evil. The good of creation is the cause of itself that brings conatus into existence—and that conatus brings into existence—as the perseverance in effecting the transition from passive affects (bondage to the inadequate idea that good and evil are contradictory opposites) to active affects (liberation in and through the adequate idea that good is the paradoxical standard by which evil is revealed as that which is to be confronted and overcome). But it is also important to keep in mind that there is a fundamental sense in which Spinoza, in conceiving of all natural beings (modes), including human beings, in terms of affect, desire, and power—conatus—begins the Ethics anew in part III, as I indicated above in my introductory comments. That conatus—as “the actual essence” by and through which each thing perseveres (necessarily) in its existence—involves and expresses the ontological argument makes the ethics of thought and existence truly dramatic and dynamic. It will thus turn out that, for human beings, in part V, to deduce the third kind of knowledge from their understanding that all things are in God and are conceived through God will be to conceive of conatus as constituting their very essence (existence). While Spinoza’s summary of the three kinds of knowledge near the end of part II is famously terse, what he understands by the third kind of knowledge will be made dramatic in and through the concept of conatus that he presents in part III. In expressing the transition from passive to active affects, conatus will ultimately involve the transition from the first kind of knowledge to the third kind of knowledge, from partial or inadequate knowledge of individual things to knowledge of individual things conceived as wholly and necessarily existing in and through God. Consequently, while it is critically important to view parts I–V of the Ethics as constituting a whole, it is no less essential to recognize that the work contains, in reality, two beginnings. It begins, first, with the cause of itself (in part I) and begins, yet again, with conatus (in part III). The double beginning of the Ethics is mirrored in the two beginnings of the Theologico-Political Treatise, the theological or hermeneutical beginning (in chapter 1) and the political, that is, the democratic beginning (in chapter 16). Just as the cause of itself and conatus presuppose each other, so hermeneutics and democracy presuppose each other. Since Spinoza’s two major works mirror each other in structure by beginning twice, it is fruitful to treat the two beginnings of each work in relationship to each other—ontology with hermeneutics and ethics with politics. Indeed, it is only when we understand that ontology is hermeneutical (and vice versa) that we shall be in a position to understand how central ontology together with hermeneutics (and theology) is to Spinoza’s conception

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not only of ethics but also of politics. It is precisely because ethics, no less than politics, is hermeneutical in structure that it is critically important to treat hermeneutics and ontology together. This is why, as I indicated in the preface, I treat hermeneutics and ontology in volume I of my study and politics and ethics in volume II. What I think is most striking about parts I and II of the Ethics, on God and the human mind, and what has always proved most difficult for readers to comprehend, to render comprehensible to themselves, is precisely the relation between these two parts, between God and the mind. On the one hand, in part I, Spinoza makes use of pairs of opposed terms to present his ontology—God and individual things, substance and modes, the cause of itself and the effect in and through another, in itself and in another, infinite and finite, eternity and duration, natura naturans (God as effective or producing nature) and natura naturata (nature as effected or produced in and through the common order of nature). On the other hand, not only does Spinoza conclude part II with the ringing declaration that all human beings know God’s infinite and eternal essence (with the consequence that all human beings are philosophers?). But he also simply declares in the first sentence of the scholium of proposition 1 of part II that the proposition (that thought is an attribute of God) is patent since we are able to conceive of an infinite thinking being. I raised the question earlier how that which is a finite mode (i.e., a human being) can know the cause of itself as that whose essence necessarily and eternally involves and expresses infinite existence. How can that which is in itself (infinite substance or God) be known by that which is in another (finite modes or human beings)? Still, the surprising answer to this question is to be found in the paradoxical (reciprocal) status of the phrase “in another.” The first axiom of part I states that “all things that are are either in itself (in se) [also: “in themselves”] or in another.” All things that are, it seems obvious, are infinite substance (God), which is in itself, and finite modes (individual beings, including human beings), which are in another. But what is surprising to discover is that, while (because) finite modes or things are not (each) “in itself ” and therefore must be “in another,” to be in alio is, however, to be in God. (Where else could finite modes be since they are not in themselves?) We read, consequently, in proposition 15 of part I that “whatever is is in God and nothing can be or be conceived without God.” It thus turns out that to be “in another” describes both the individual, finite mode and God as infinite substance (the cause of itself). How it is that finite modes (human beings) can know God as infinite substance is the open secret—the revelation to those who have eyes to see—of the ontological argument, of the very nature of demonstration (in modernity), as I shall show (that Spinoza is constantly showing us). The ontological argument

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both constitutes and is constituted by the relationship between thought and existence. When readers consider axiom 1 of part I—”All things that are are either in itself or in another”—they have to ask what this axiom means, that is, where they stand with regard to or within it. They have to ask with Montaigne: What do we know, in knowing that all things are either in themselves (in itself) or in another? They have to see that the axiom clearly describes them—as finite modes. They equally have to see that the axiom demands that—as finite modes—they comprehend the difference between infinite substance and finite modes, between “in itself ” and “in another.” If they did not know (comprehend, think through) this difference or distinction, they would not know themselves as finite modes. In other words, the axiom would be meaningless—mere words having no bearing on either (their) existence or (their) thought. When, however, readers comprehend the axiom and its fundamental distinction between infinite substance and finite modes, then they know that to know themselves as finite modes, that is, to know what finite modes are, is to know that finite modes cannot exist or be conceived outside of God as infinite substance. To know finite modes is to comprehend God as the cause of itself. To know finite modes as that which is in another—in alio—is to know what they are in themselves—in se. Readers of Hegel, that other great master of infinity in modernity, in addition to Spinoza,13 will remember his simple yet magisterial demonstration that the finite is contradictory.14 The finite is contradictory, Hegel shows us, because we cannot know or conceive of the finite without consciously recognizing (or acknowledging) that what the finite is, in itself, is that it is incomplete, partial, and inadequate, that it not the cause of itself. To be finite is always to be in another. But to be in another, as we have now learned from Spinoza, involves and expresses what is necessarily and eternally infinite in itself. Hegel, too, knows that the ontological argument constitutes his philosophy, that existence is not found outside of its thought (concept) and that to think is always to think something existing. The fact that Spinoza, together with Hegel, recognizes that the finite cannot exist or be conceived without (outside of) the infinite is to invoke, with Montaigne, the distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging, between knowing God as infinite and being ignorant of God as finite, between the modern world of Spinoza and Hegel and the ancient world of Socrates. Precisely because, in the Greek world, the finite is what is perfect, unchanging, identical with its end, and knowable only in itself (it is not that through which all things exist and are known to exist), the contradiction is that the finite as contradictory cannot be known as finite or contradictory. Rather, the finite as contradictory shows that all thought and existence, because they lack the finite in the very fatality of their desire to be and to know the finite, are ab-

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solutely contradictory. All thought and existence in the ancient world are “infinite.” They lack and thus are blindly and fatally moved by their finite, contradictory end, which, like Alcibiades, in his contradictor relationship to Socrates, they do not move or know. In the modern world of Spinoza and Hegel, in contrast, the demonstration that the finite is contradictory, that is, the demonstration that, because the finite is not in itself, it cannot exist and cannot be conceived without (outside of) the infinite, involves and expresses the reciprocal relationship of thought and existence. In the Greek world, thought and existence are blindly opposed to each other as contradictories. What is thought cannot be thought or known (outside of contradiction) to exist; and what exists cannot exist as thought or known (outside of contradiction, for to know the good is to be the good). In the modern world, by contrast, the contradictory opposition between thought and existence is replaced by their reciprocal or paradoxical relationship. What is thought cannot be thought or known without (unless) existing; and what exists cannot exist without being (unless it is) thought or known. The open secret, then, of the ontological argument is the paradoxical revelation of the covenant. Just as God is that which cannot be conceived—by human beings—without existing (in the covenant), so God does not exist outside of human thought or knowledge (of the covenant). The paradox here is that existence is and must be known (thought); for it is limited to thought (knowledge), to what is conceivable. It is equally paradoxical that thought (knowledge) is and must be limited to existence; for nothing is conceivable without (unless) existing. The absolute difference, then, between ancient contradiction and modern paradox is this. In antiquity, thought and existence, in their contradictory opposition, are each limited to and by the finite contradiction of the other. In modernity, thought and existence, in their reciprocal relationship, are each limited to and by the infinite paradox of the other. There is a fundamental sense, then, in which the “thought” (conception or knowledge) that is implied in the first definition of part I of the Ethics is then explicated in part II on mind. Just as the necessary existence of the cause of itself (substance, God) is that than which nothing greater (or other) can be conceived to exist, so mind or human intellect (understanding) cannot think or know anything outside of (without) the existence of God. Thus, while Spinoza states in proposition 15 of part I, as we have seen, that whatever is is in God and cannot exist or be conceived without God, he then states in proposition 32 of part II that “all ideas, insofar as they are referred to God [by human beings], are true.” The difference between these two propositions is the difference that the ontological argument makes. There is nothing in God, of which we are conscious, which is not in relationship to God, which does not bear the relationship of thought and existence. So thus we have in support of proposition 11 of

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part II—“the first thing that constitutes the actual existence (esse) of the human mind is nothing other than the idea of a singular thing actually existing”—the striking corollary of that proposition in which Spinoza writes that “hence it follows that the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God.” What this means, he goes on to say, is that the human mind perceives this or that thing “insofar as God is explicated through the nature of the human mind or insofar as God constitutes the essence of the human mind . . .” Before pursuing further the reciprocal relationship of God and human being, of thought and existence, especially in part II, I shall, first, summarize the chief components of part I and then, second, comment upon the role that they play in advancing the ontological argument.15 We are now in a position to comprehend the fact that the pairs of opposed terms that Spinoza uses to articulate his philosophy presuppose (as they constitute) the reciprocal relationship between thought and existence and thus between divine being and human being. He begins in proposition 1 with the (seemingly traditional) claim that substance (God) is prior in nature to its (finite) modes, and as proof for this claim he simply cites definitions 3 (on substance) and 5 (on modes) to signal the difference between “in itself ” and “in another.” But we have already seen that, because the distinction between substance (as in itself) and mode (as in another) does not exist outside of my thought, substance itself cannot and does not exist prior to my thought but only in relationship to it. In subsequent propositions Spinoza proceeds to demonstrate that there is only one substance, that it is of the nature of substance to exist, that substance is infinite and that, unlike finite existence, it is absolute affirmation without negation. He demonstrates further that substance is indivisible, that its existence is its power and perfection, and that something exists unless something prevents it from existing. Indeed, the fact that “we [human beings] exist” also demonstrates the existence of substance. Although Spinoza calls this last proof a posteriori—for we (appear to) begin with finite human existence and proceed to substance as infinite existence—the classical difference between what is prior and what is posterior is rendered nugatory yet again by the reciprocal relationship between thought and existence and thus between human being and divine being that constitutes and is constituted by the ontological argument. Spinoza proceeds to demonstrate yet further that, because God acts from the laws of his own nature and alone is a free cause, there follow infinite things from his infinite, eternal essence. Indeed, because God produces all things from his infinite nature, it follows that he could not have produced things otherwise than he did and that all things have been produced by God with the highest perfection. Here Spinoza criticizes those who hold that God could have acted (created or decreed) otherwise than he did or that he possesses a will separate from his intellect. Because, according to definition 7, “that thing

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is said to be free that exists from the sole necessity of its nature and is determined to act by itself alone,” Spinoza writes in the second scholium of proposition 33 that “it follows of course from God’s perfection alone that God can never decree or never would have been able to decree anything different and that God was not before his decrees and cannot be without them.” He remarks that those who view freedom in terms of what they call free will—that God could act other than from the sole necessity of his nature (and, as we have already noted, Spinoza says the same thing about human beings)—fail to understand freedom as “absolute will.” But if people will carefully consider his series of demonstrations, he adds, “they will plainly reject the freedom that they bestow upon God not only as nugatory but [also] as a great obstacle to science.” While his opponents argue that he restricts God’s power—since he denies that God could act otherwise than according to his eternal nature— Spinoza declares that it is absurd to hold that God could will (act) otherwise than he understands things. So he turns the argument of his opponents about divine power against them with the following chain of argumentation: all things depend on God’s power; in order for things to be different, God would also have to be different; since everything that God decrees follows from his perfection, his will cannot be different; therefore, things also cannot be different. Still, Spinoza remarks that his opponents, in claiming to subject things to what they call the indifferent will or the good pleasure of God, stray less far from the truth than those who hold that God does all things by reason of the good. For they seem to posit something outside of God which does not depend on God but to which God, in bringing about things (in operando), attends as to an exemplar or aims as at a certain end. This is simply nothing other than to subject God to fate, than which nothing more absurd can be maintained about God, whom we have shown to be the first and unique free cause as much of the essence of all things as of their existence.

Consistent with his critique of divine free will as indifference (God could have willed otherwise than he did) or as subjection to fate (God is impotently dependent on a good end outside of himself), Spinoza concludes part I of the Ethics with three extraordinary propositions explicating further his concept of divine power: • Proposition 34: The power of God is his essence itself. From the necessity alone of the essence of God it follows that God is the cause of itself and of all things. “Therefore, the power of God, by which he and all things are and act, is his essence itself.” • Proposition 35: Whatever we conceive to exist in the power of God exists necessarily.

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• Proposition 36: Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow. For something to exist is to express the nature, essence, or power of God (in a certain or determinate mode). There remain three additional propositions that it is important to summarize, before undertaking a review of the overall significance of part I; for in them Spinoza expounds further his concept of God as the first, unique, free, and all-powerful cause of all things. In proposition 18 he writes that God is the immanent, not the transient, cause of all things. That Spinoza views “transient” causation as external and “immanent” causation as embodying his own basic position that God is that in and through which all things exist and are conceived he articulates in proposition 25, where he writes that God is the efficient cause not only of the existence but also of the essence of things. In the demonstration of proposition 25 he does not, however, use the term “efficient.” In the scholium to proposition 25 Spinoza observes that, when the divine nature is given, both the essence and the existence of things must necessarily be deduced (concludi) “and, so that I may say it in a word, in the same sense in which God is called the cause of itself he is also to be called the cause of all things . . .” In order, Spinoza says, to make his meaning yet clearer, he adds in the corollary of proposition 25 that particular things are nothing except the modes of the divine attributes, that is, modes in which the attributes of God are expressed in a certain and determinate manner. “The demonstration is clear from proposition 15 [“Whatever is is in God and nothing can be or be conceived without God”] and definition 5 [a mode of substance is that which is in another through which it is also conceived].” Finally, in proposition 24 Spinoza states that the essence of things that are produced by God does not involve their existence. This, he writes, patently follows from definition 1 where the cause of itself is that whose essence involves existence. He adds in the corollary to proposition 24 that God is the cause whereby things not only begin to exist but also persevere in existing. For the essence of things, he states, is not the cause of either their duration or their existence but only God to whose essence it alone pertains to exist. I suspect that most (first) readers of part I of the Ethics have an initial response to the text, which is then quickly followed by a second, opposed response to it. I suspect also that these opposed responses track the two standard yet opposed readings—pantheism and atheism—that have typically been given to Spinoza’s philosophy.16 In more recent times the grand struggle over God in Spinoza—does he reduce everything to God, or does he eliminate God by reducing everything to (human) nature?—has often dwindled to the curt dismissal of the ontological argument (together with its God) as true or even interesting and then to a debate whether Spinoza is a humanist or an anti-

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humanist (does he affirm or deny human freedom?). Surely, the first impression that one receives from reading part I of the Ethics is of the overwhelming presence of God. All the grand attributes bestowed upon God in the history of biblical theology are there: omnipotence, infinity, necessary existence, perfection, absolute affirmation, eternity, uniqueness, creativity (infinite things flow infinitely from the infinitely eternal nature of God; and nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow)—all summarized by or concentrated in the cause of itself and all distinguishing God, substance, or natura naturans, from the finite things or modes (natura naturata) that can exist and be conceived only in and through God, who alone is the cause both of their essence and of their existence. The cause of itself (causa sui)? I am sure that most readers pause here. Spinoza writes, we saw, that in the same sense in which God is called the cause of itself (himself) he (it) is also to be called the cause of all things. But what is the sense in which God is called the cause of itself? How is God as the cause of itself the cause of all things? Spinoza tells us that God is not a transient but an immanent cause. He is not a first cause, a final cause, or even an efficient cause within a finite sequence of events. For within the absolute infinity of God the first will be last and the last will be first; and from the necessity of the divine, eternal essence alone infinite things infinitely follow. The essence or fundamental nature of the cause of itself, we have learned, is to exist, necessarily. In definition 8 of part I Spinoza states that “through eternity I understand existence itself ” without regard to duration or time. In definition 7 he states, as we have seen, that “that thing is said to be necessarily free which exists from the necessity alone of its nature and which is determined to act by itself alone.” But the existence of God is also said by Spinoza to involve and express his power. We read in proposition 34 that from the necessity alone of the essence of God it follows that God is the cause of itself and of all things. “Therefore, the power of God, by which he and all things are and act, is his essence itself.” We know, however, that “the necessity alone of the essence of God”—whence it follows that God is the cause of itself and of all things—is that God exists. We read in proposition 35 that whatever we conceive to exist in the power of God exists necessarily. In proposition 36 we learn that to exist involves and expresses effectuality (productivity), that is, to exist is to express the power or essence, in other words, the necessary existence, of God. The nexus here of necessity, power, existence, and the cause of itself is extraordinary. (I shall take up freedom later.) What Spinoza is telling us, simply, is that the cause of itself—as that which cannot be conceived without (unless, except) existing, necessarily—that is, existence, simply, is the cause of existence. God is the cause of all things as he is causa sui, but as causa sui he is that whose essence involves and expresses existence or that whose essence cannot

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be conceived unless existing, necessarily. But what kind of proof, then, do we have here? What is the ontological proof demonstrating the existence of God? Why, indeed, if God exists necessarily, is a proof of his existence necessary (or even possible)? Do we, in fact, have a proof here? In other words, what is demonstration? What does it mean to demonstrate (the existence of) something? It is here, I think, that readers, having paused at the cause of itself, begin to suspect that the ontological argument, together with its God, is a relic of an earlier era that collapses once its inner logic is exposed. If the ontological argument simply shows or, indeed, merely purports to show, that existence is the cause of existence, that to exist is simply to exist, then, as a demonstration, surely, it is merely circular, redundant, banal, misleading, and, ultimately, false. It is circular, redundant, or banal in the sense that it merely presupposes— divine and so also human existence as—what it purports to prove. It is misleading in the sense that its elaborate metaphysics of divine necessity mystifies existence, whether natural or human. It is false because, in claiming to bind necessity and existence together, it commits a category mistake. Necessity is a category of logic (indicating what must follow from given premises); and existence is a category of reality (indicating what is given). If necessity does not involve or express existence—divine or human—and if existence—divine or human—is not endowed with necessity, it follows not only that the concept of divine existence is not necessary but also that the concept of human existence is not necessary. But if human existence cannot be conceived as necessary, does it then follow, logically, that human existence is, tout court, unnecessary? Historically, readers have suspected that the cause of itself and the metaphysics of the ontological argument proving, geometrically, the existence of God, and thus the existence of all things (including human beings), was an elaborate façade behind which Spinoza championed the independence of (human) nature from God. Their conclusion was that Spinozism, as a philosophy of naturalism, was indistinguishable from atheism.17 Logically and historically, then, it has often been argued and it still continues to be argued today that, since God is not necessary and since necessity is not divine, that is, since existence and necessity bear no intrinsic relationship to each other, it follows that God is unnecessary and so, as irrelevant to or, rather, as a mystification of human existence, is dispensable and must be dispensed with. What follows, then, from the circularity, redundancy, banality, misleading nature, and, ultimately, falsehood of the ontological argument, from, in other words, the lack or absence of divine necessity, is, at one and the same time, modern humanism—human existence is independent of God— and (post)modern anti-humanism—human existence is unnecessary. Atheism as the common result of logic and history, together with its opposed re-

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sults of humanism and anti-humanism, is welcomed or not welcomed by readers, depending on their intellectual orientation.18 Readers will surely be conscious, however, that the one element of the ontological argument, on which hitherto I have put such stress, has been noticeably absent from my outline of the concerns that demand consideration if my argument that the ontological argument constitutes and is constituted by modernity is to have validity. I refer to the relationship between existence and thought, that is, to my claim that, according to the ontological argument, God does not exist outside of human thought and that human beings do not think outside of divine existence. Necessity, it turns out, belongs to the relationship of thought and existence. Thought is not given outside of existence, and existence is not given outside of thought. Necessity is a category neither of thought (logic) nor of existence (reality) but rather of their relationship. Necessity, in fact, is freedom; for to be free, Spinoza writes, as we saw above, is to exist from the necessity alone of one’s nature, that is, to be determined to act by oneself alone. But now, we realize, part I of the Ethics on God presupposes, as it is presupposed by, the succeeding parts of the work. Indeed, we begin to realize that the ontological argument is fundamentally ethical, for the one thing that you cannot think without existing is the other—God or the neighbor—and the one thing that cannot exist without being thought (by you) is the other—God or the neighbor. Thus, in order to see that the ontological argument proving the existence of God, necessarily, bears the structure of the golden rule, we shall be required to engage part II—where the mind is shown to be central to the concept of existence (of God). (I show in volume II of my study how the ontological argument involves and expresses both affect or conatus and human freedom, including the freedom of the democratic multitudo.) But, first, I want to comment briefly on the very essence of demonstration, on the kind of demonstration that is constituted by the ontological argument. To prove the existence of God, and so of the existence of things, is not to begin outside of existence (in free will) and then to arrive, in inexplicable fashion, at existence. No, the proof embodied in the ontological argument operates by my understanding that in order to exist—meaningfully—I have to think through (by way of what Spinoza will call adequate ideas and active affects) my existence, the existence of all (things). Existence is not given outside of my thought, outside of my affect—whether passive or active. It is equally the case that my thought (or my affect) is not given outside of my existence. Thus we return to Montaigne’s question: What do I know? What do I think? There is but one subject of my knowledge or thought—which is existence. The question is—my task in life is to determine—whether or not existence, my existence, is adequate to my thought (affect) and whether (my) thought (action) is adequate to (my) existence. The ontological argument possesses the very

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structure of demonstration—than which there is none greater or other (i.e., all demonstration rests on the necessary relationship of thought and existence): the demonstration that existence is not given outside of my active (or passive) engagement with it and that thought (action) is not given outside of my adequate (or inadequate) existence. The demonstration that is the ontological argument is primordially (originally) ethical. It describes our human (divine) relationships. It describes, as I show in volume II of my study, what Spinoza, in his political philosophy, understands as the reciprocal relationship of power and right: that power is not given outside of right and that right is not given outside of power. The demonstration that is the ontological argument is not, primarily, an objective (neutral) description of nature. For, as Kant, like Spinoza, so profoundly grasps, the very “possibility” of the productive science of nature that we actually possess rests on practical reason, on the ethics of the ontological argument demonstrating the necessary relationship between thought and existence.19 It is important to see that the ontological argument, when understood as constituting the very basis of demonstrative proof, embodies the structure of paradox, as understood by its modern master nonpareil, Kierkegaard. I showed in chapter 1 that modernity itself bears the structure of paradox. We moderns cannot (and do not) endeavor to go further than Abraham, further than being faithful individuals. Still, we do not want to be understood as standing still in getting at least as far as Abraham in demonstrating, anew that there are two things that cannot be thought without existing—God (the neighbor) and I myself (the individual human being)—and that there are two things that cannot exist without being thought—God (the neighbor) and I myself (the individual human being). Precisely because existence—the existence of God, the existence of the faithful (ethical) individual—is not given outside of my thought (enactment) and because my thought, in order to exist, must engage existence faithfully (thoughtfully), it is the task of all individuals (and so also of the community of individuals) to enact, anew, in every generation, the ontological argument. It is the task of all human beings—individually and collectively—to bring their thought and their existence into necessary, that is, free, relationship. Fear and Trembling possesses an extraordinary formulation of paradox that is inherent in the ontological argument. We are told there, as we have already seen, that if faith has always existed (eternally)—as the universal20 without regard to the thought and existence of the individual—then Abraham as the single individual is lost. For, if faith has always existed (eternally)—without regard to the thought and existence of the faithful individual—then faith has never existed— with regard to his thought and existence. In other words, if God has always existed (eternally)—outside of or without regard to my thought and existence—

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then God has never existed—in relationship to my thought and existence. If God has always been thought—outside of my thought and existence—then he has never been thought—in relationship to my thought and existence. The paradox of the (necessary) relationship between thought and existence is that each is given (freely) only in and through the other. The very paradox, the very demonstration that is the ontological argument is that we do not begin in existence and then arrive at thought and that we do not begin in thought and then arrive at existence. We begin, rather, with each in relationship to the other. This is why (how) the relationship between thought and existence, between self and other (the neighbor), itself embodies the relationship between the individual (Abraham as the knight of faith) and God. There is one thing that cannot be thought—one thing that the faithful individual cannot think—without (unless) existing—which is God (and it is equally true, therefore, that the one thing that cannot exist without being thought is God). The paradox of the ontological argument is that God does not exist outside of my thought—outside of being thought, passionately, in fear and trembling, by me—and that my thinking is not given outside of engaging existence—the existence of God. That the cause of itself is the paradox that I think and exist in another—for I can think and exist in another solely as that which is in itself the cause of itself—Spinoza pursues with extraordinary poise and aplomb in part II of the Ethics entitled “Concerning the Nature and Origin of the Mind.” In the brief introduction of part II he indicates that he will now explicate those things that necessarily follow from the essence of God, not, indeed, all things, because infinite things follow from the necessary existence of God, “but solely those that are able to lead us, as if by the hand, to knowledge of the human mind and its supreme beatitude.” The paradoxical relationship between substance as the cause of itself and modes, between what is in itself and what is in another, Spinoza now explicates in terms of his conception of the separation of and thus the relationship (“union”) between mind and body, which gives him the basis of critically distinguishing between adequate and inadequate ideas. On the one hand, there would be no inadequate (partial or confused) knowledge if the mind were not what he calls the idea of the body. The idea of the body and the body, Spinoza holds, are one and the same thing, for mind involves and expresses the infinite attribute of divine thought; and body involves and expresses the infinite attribute of divine extension. The body exists as the mind is aware of it. On the other hand, the idea of the mind, in being united to the mind as the mind (as the idea of the body) is united to the body, and the mind are one and the same thing. For the idea of the mind is the idea of the idea, that self-conscious recognition on the part of the mind that, as soon as it knows something, at the same time it knows that it knows it. In other words, we human beings, in knowing what we know, possess adequate knowledge.

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Thus, Spinoza in part II of the Ethics undertakes to explain the nature and origin of the mind in and through its paradoxical relationship to the body. There is no knowledge, on the part of the mind, outside of its body. For the mind and its body are one and the same thing as each expresses, separately, the infinite attributes of God: mind, the divine attribute of thought; and body, the divine attribute of extension. Yet knowledge on the part of the mind does not directly arise from knowledge of the body. For, while the mind is the idea of the body, it is also, as its own idea (the idea of itself), the idea of the idea. Spinoza gives us, therefore, a version of the Kantian paradox: while all knowledge begins in (empirical or bodily) experience, not all knowledge arises from experience. The mind is at one and the same time “in another,” in its body, and “in itself,” as the idea of itself. Indeed, for the mind to know that it is in another is to know that it is in itself. Knowledge on the part of the mind that it is in another does not lead to knowledge that it is in itself. Rather, knowledge that it is in another—whence inadequate knowledge—depends on knowledge that it is in itself, that it is its own idea, just as knowledge that the finite (or the body) is contradictory depends on knowledge of the infinite, as we have already seen. That “inadequate” (or merely bodily or confused) knowledge does not lead to but rather itself rests on the demonstration of adequate knowledge—that to know that one is in another is to recognize what it means to be in itself— Spinoza superbly represents in the juxtaposition of axioms 1 and 2 of part II of the Ethics. In axiom 1 he reiterates his familiar claim that the essence of “man” does not involve necessary existence. For from the common order of nature (what is in another)—in which the mind as the idea of the body does not at the same time recognize that, as mind, it is also the idea of the mind, that is, the idea of the idea—it equally follows that an individual “man” exists or does not exist. Yet, according to axiom 2: “man thinks” (homo cogitat). To think—as Anselm and Descartes had already shown—is to engage the ontological argument proving the necessary existence of both the self and God. Consequently, what Spinoza shows us by the stark juxtaposition of axioms 1 and 2 is what it means to know (to account for the fact) that the mind is the idea of the body, that we are embodied beings, that we belong to the common order of nature, that we are finite modes, or that the essence of “man” does not involve necessary existence. We can (and therefore must) know that we are “in another”—that is, we can (and therefore must) doubt (interrogate) all (finite things) that can be thought to exist and can exist in thought—solely on the basis of thinking and existing in the other as that which cannot be thought without existing and which cannot exist without being thought—necessarily. That the mind is at once the (inadequate) idea of the body and yet, as the idea of the idea, the (adequate) idea of itself Spinoza presents dramatically in

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the sequence of propositions 30–32. In proposition 30 he states that we have only inadequate knowledge of the temporal duration of our body—and equally, we assume, only inadequate knowledge of the temporal duration of our mind. For the mind, as the idea of the body, and the body are one and the same thing, we recall. The body does not exist separately from the mind, and the mind is the idea of the body. The duration of our body, Spinoza states, is given neither through its essence (for the essence of singular things does not involve or express their necessary existence) nor through the essence of God (for the necessary existence of God does not entail the necessary existence of any particular, singular thing). “Therefore, the duration of our body depends on the common order of nature and the constitution of things.” In the common order of nature each thing is the effect of another cause, which is itself the effect of another cause, and so on to infinity (as the endless multiplication of the finite). Consequently, Spinoza continues in proposition 31, “we can have no knowledge except the most inadequate of the duration of singular things that are beyond (outside of) us.” But then in proposition 32 he states that “all ideas, insofar as they are referred to God, are true.” He observes in the demonstration of proposition 36 that “all ideas are in God (through proposition 15 of part I) and insofar as they are referred to God are true (through proposition 32) and . . . adequate.21 And, therefore, there are no inadequate and confused ideas except insofar as they are referred to the single mind of someone.” Thus Spinoza reveals to us yet again the paradox that we are both in another and in itself. All things are in God as they are in another—through the common order of nature. Yet precisely because human beings know that they are in another—that the mind is the idea of the body—they consequently know that they are in itself—that the mind, as the idea of the idea, refers all that it knows to God, to what Spinoza will soon call in part II truth as its own standard. We cannot have inadequate knowledge or false ideas without knowing that our knowledge is inadequate or that our ideas are false, that is, without possessing adequate knowledge or true ideas. Paradoxically, the very concept of an inadequate or a false idea is itself adequate (or true). Indeed, Spinoza writes in proposition 43 that “he who has a true idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea; nor can he doubt about the truth of the thing.” This is so, he states, because “an idea true in us is that which is adequate in God insofar as he is explained through the nature of the human mind.”22 How it is that the mind is at one and the same time the idea of the body— and so in possession of inadequate knowledge—and the idea of the idea— and so in possession of adequate knowledge—how it is, in other words, that the mind, in knowing that it belongs to the common order of nature, where it is but the effect of external causes ad infinitum, knows that it thereby explains what is adequate in God we can examine further through the dramatic

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juxtaposition of propositions 11 and 45. In proposition 11 Spinoza writes that “the first thing that constitutes the actual existence (esse) of the human mind is nothing other than the idea of some singular thing actually existing.” This we already know to be an individual body, of which the mind is the idea. In proposition 45 Spinoza writes that “every idea of some body, or of a singular thing actually existing, necessarily involves the eternal and infinite essence of God.” Once again, we see Spinoza argue that to have an (inadequate) idea of an individual, existing body is in fact to possess (adequate) knowledge of God. But, as always, it is important to see that, according to Spinoza, we do not infer (or deduce) knowledge of God from knowledge of individual, existing things. Rather, knowledge of individual, existing things, as inadequate, is possible only as expressing and involving the infinite essence of God, which is that he exists necessarily. In the demonstration of proposition 45 Spinoza notes that to have an idea of a singular, existing thing is to have knowledge of both its essence and its existence. But we now recognize the paradox of knowing the essence and existence of individual things. On the one hand, that knowledge is inadequate, for the essence of individual things does not involve and express their necessary existence. For the mind is the idea of the body. On the other hand, to know that it is not the essence of individual things to exist necessarily is to possess adequate knowledge of the essence of God as that which involves and expresses necessary existence. For the idea of the mind and the mind are one and the same thing; and the idea of the mind is the idea of the idea, which is what it is that the mind knows adequately: the necessary existence of God. What it then means for the mind to know the existence of individual, existing things Spinoza explicates further in the extraordinary scholium of proposition 45. Here, he states, he does not understand existentia as temporal duration, that is, he does not understand existence either abstractè or in terms of quantity: For [now] I speak [he declares] about the nature itself of existence that is attributed to singular things. . . . I speak, I say, about the existence itself of singular things insofar as they are in God. For, even if each thing is determined by another singular thing to exist in a certain mode [in the common order of nature], the force, nevertheless, by which each thing perseveres in existing follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God.

Spinoza refers the reader to the corollary of proposition 24 of part I, where, having demonstrated that the essence of things produced by God does not involve their existence, he indicates that the cause of the existence and duration of things is not their essence but God, to whose essence it alone pertains to exist. But the main point that Spinoza emphasizes in this corollary, which is

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what connects it with the scholium of proposition 45 in part II, is that God is the cause not only that things begin to exist but also that they persevere in existing. What does Spinoza mean by “the nature [essence] itself of existence which is attributed to singular things” or by “the existence itself of singular things insofar as they are in God”—as distinguished, now, from duration, that is, from what he calls abstract or quantitative concerns? Not only had he not previously distinguished existence from duration, but he now goes on to indicate that, even if singular things are determined, in the common order of nature, by another singular thing—that is, if they are “in another”—still, the force “by which each thing perseveres in existing follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God.” Earlier, we saw Spinoza indicate that the existence, that is, the temporal (abstract, quantitative) duration, of things is not known (adequately) in God but rather is known (inadequately) only in the common order of nature. Now, however, he distinguishes the nature, in other words, the essence of existence itself from quantitative, abstract duration. He equally identifies the force by which each thing perseveres in existing with the eternal necessity of the nature or, in other words, with the essence of God and not with the common order of nature. Spinoza surely intends us here to understand that the essence of the existence of a singular thing, as distinguished from its abstract, temporal, quantitative duration, is that it exists necessarily. Surely also, in connecting the force with which a thing perseveres in existence with the essence of God—given that the essence of God involves and expresses necessary existence—he intends us to understand that the force with which a singular thing perseveres in existing involves and expresses necessity. It is important to remember that the scholium that we are discussing belongs to the proposition (II.45) in which it is said that the idea of any singular thing actually existing involves the eternal and infinite essence of God. Existence is not given outside of my idea (or thought). Both the distinction between existence itself and abstract, quantitative duration and the distinction between the force (which follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God) by which each thing perseveres in existing and determination by another singular thing are consistent with the distinction between the mind as the idea of the body and the mind whose idea is itself (the idea of the idea), that is, with the distinction between “in another” and “in itself.” The existence of individual things themselves, without regard to their duration, together with the force whereby individual things persevere in existence, becomes, in part III, conatus and thus the cause of itself as human freedom, as I show in volume II of this study. While Spinoza never directly attributes the cause of itself to existing singular things, it is clear that, insofar as singular things express the force of persevering in existence (which follows from the essence of God),

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they involve the cause of itself. Here in part II he will indicate, as we shall now see, that “the nature itself of existence, which is attributed to singular things,” pertains to what he calls the third kind of knowledge. It is significant that Spinoza does not, in the tradition of ancient philosophy, divide knowledge into the two opposing domains of the senses (the body: experience) and of reason (the mind or soul: logic). Rather, his division of knowledge into three kinds—imagination (opinion), reason, and intuition (intuitive knowledge)—constitutes and is constituted by his conception of mind as at one and the same time the idea of the body (the body and the idea of the body are one and the same thing) and the idea of the mind (the mind and the idea of the mind—the idea of the idea—are one and the same thing). Precisely because the body, as an individual existing thing, is the first thing constituting the idea of the mind, the mind is involved in the drama of transforming its idea of the body into the idea of the mind, in transforming inadequate knowledge into adequate knowledge. Inadequate knowledge or falsity, Spinoza makes clear in proposition 35, is neither absolute privation (for it is minds, not bodies, that err or are deceived) nor ignorance (for to be ignorant and to err are different). Adequate and inadequate knowledge are not opposed to each other as knowledge and ignorance—soul and body, form and appearance, the one and the many, the finite and the in-finite—are opposed to each other in Socrates precisely because existence and thought are not opposed to each other. In the ancient world of Socrates, as we have seen, I know that I am ignorant. But I do not know what I am ignorant of; for what I am ignorant of exists in itself (as the forms) outside of my thought (to know the good is to be the good). I am eternally contradicted by what I do not know. What I do not know is contradictory: what I do not know is in itself the law of contradiction. In the modern world of Spinoza I know (or at the least I have the power of knowing) that my inadequate knowledge is not ignorance of the truth but revelation of the truth. For the very basis on which I know that I possess inadequate knowledge—on which I know what my inadequate knowledge is—is adequate knowledge or truth as its own standard, the standard of both the true and the false. But what if I fail to see (i.e., if I evade seeing) that I have inadequate knowledge and persist in viewing it as adequate? Spinoza addresses this issue, which constitutes the fundamental problematic of both modern ethics and modern politics and which is absent from ancient ethics and politics, in terms of his distinction between passive and active affects in part III of the Ethics, as I show in volume II of my study. The distinction between knowing what my inadequate knowledge is and knowing that I am ignorant (of what I know not) is the distinction between, to recall Montaigne, judging absolutely and absolutely not judging. It is the distinction between truth as its own paradox-

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ical standard of relationship and truth as contradictory opposition knowable only in itself. To judge absolutely is, for Spinoza, to see that every idea of every body (i.e., of every singular thing actually existing) necessarily involves and expresses the eternal, infinite essence of God, that is, necessary existence. The distinction between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging is the distinction between the necessary (free) relationship of thought and existence in modernity and their necessary (fatal) opposition in antiquity. As I now undertake to review Spinoza’s brief presentation of the three kinds of knowledge in the second scholium of proposition 40, I want to indicate in advance that its most salient feature is the complex relationship that the third kind of knowledge has to each of the first and the second kinds of knowledge. On the one hand, both the first and the third kinds of knowledge involve singular things—as distinct from the common notions of the second kind of knowledge. On the other hand, while the first kind of knowledge is inadequate, both the second and the third kinds of knowledge are adequate. We can anticipate, therefore, that singular things either are not known (adequately) or are known (adequately) to exist necessarily (in and through the eternal essence of God). Spinoza describes the first kind of knowledge, which he associates with imagination (and opinion), as involving random, mutilated, or confused perceptions; that is, the first kind of knowledge is experience without rational order.23 While he then refers us to the corollary of proposition 29, what he writes in the scholium of that corollary is more useful in helping us to understand imagination as the first kind of knowledge: “I say expressly that the [human] mind has, not an adequate but only a confused [and mutilated] knowledge of itself, of its own body, and of external bodies so long as it perceives things from the common order of nature, that is, so long as it is determined externally, namely, from fortuitous encounters with things, to regard this or that thing . . .” It is clear, then, that in “imagining” things we view them “in another,” that is, as determined by yet other singular things, in the common order of nature, unto infinity. We do not (yet) realize that to be “in another” is to be “in itself,” that is, in God and so to be referred to God as the standard of truth. However, when Spinoza then writes in proposition 41 that “knowledge of the first kind is the unique cause of falsity” (while knowledge of the second and third kinds is necessarily true), it is important to place his claim that imagination is the cause of error or falsity in the context of what he writes about the imagination in earlier propositions. There he shows how closely the mind is bound to the body, together with other external things. Indeed, it is important for us to recall, always, that the mind is, first (and last!), the idea of the body. Spinoza writes in proposition 14, for example, that the human mind is capable (apta) of perceiving a great many things and is the more capable the

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more its body can be disposed in a great many ways. (I shall simply cite here, without discussing, proposition 39 of part V: “The one who has a body capable [aptum] of a great many things has a mind whose greatest part is eternal.”) Spinoza then proceeds to indicate in the scholium of proposition 17 that, when the mind represents the affections of the body, together with those of other external things, as images, that is, when the mind is merely determined by those images, then we say that the mind “imagines” (rather than knows) the things by which it is affected. Spinoza is careful, however, to add that “the imaginations of the mind, considered in themselves, contain no error,” that is, “the mind does not err from the fact that it imagines.” For example, the mind errs only if it does not know that those things that it imagines to be present do not exist. “For if the mind, while it imagined nonexistent things as present to itself, knew at the same that those things truly did not exist, it would of course attribute this power of imagining to a strength (virtus), not to a weakness (vitium), of its nature, especially if this faculty of imagining depended on its own nature alone, that is (through definition 7 of part I), if the mind’s faculty of imagining were free.” The magisterial definition to which Spinoza here refers states, as we know, that to be free is to exist from the necessity alone of one’s own nature, that is, to be determined to act from oneself alone. What we learn, then, about the imagination is that it is not the “cause” of error or falsity insofar as the mind contains imaginations, that is, insofar as the mind imagines (or is a faculty of imagination). Imaginations (images) in themselves contain no error. Indeed, the mind, as the idea of the body, would not exist without images. (Again, we recall that the body and the mind as the idea of the body are one and the same thing as they respectively involve and express the infinite attributes of extension and thought.) That is, the mind exists only in and through its images (its embodiments). The question, then, is how it exists in and through them—whether adequately or inadequately, truly or falsely, freely or dependently. Not only error or falsity but also truth arise solely from the relationship that the mind has to its body (to its embodiment in nature). Is the mind externally determined by its images? Or does the mind freely determine its images from itself alone? In other words, the second and the third kinds of knowledge represent the free determination, on the part of the mind, of its relationship to the body, to nature, to images. The second and the third kinds of knowledge represent the truth of images, the adequacy of imagination. Spinoza characterizes the second kind of knowledge, that of reason, in terms of what he calls the common notions of the properties of things that we possess. Common notions are those (according to propositions 37f) that are common to all things and that are equally found in the part and in the whole. Common notions do not, however, Spinoza points out, give us knowledge of

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the essence of singular things. As for the third kind of knowledge, which Spinoza calls scientia intuitiva, intuitive science, and which he says he will discuss later (i.e., in part V of the Ethics), he states that it “proceeds from the adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to adequate knowledge of the essence of things” (II.40S2).24 In thus distinguishing between reason, as the second kind of knowledge, and (what I shall simply call) intuition, as the third kind of knowledge, Spinoza again makes it clear that reason, while it gives us knowledge of the common properties of things through the infinite attributes of thought and extension, does not provide us with knowledge of the essence of singular things. Rather, it is intuition, the third kind of knowledge, which gives us knowledge of the essence of singular things. What, however, is the essence of singular things? On the one hand, we know that the essence of singular things does not involve and express their necessary existence. Singular things, as passive or external effects, belong to the common order of nature in which they are caused (determined) by yet other singular things unto infinity. We also know that the common order of nature describes the domain of the imagination, the first kind of knowledge. On the other hand, intuition, in giving us knowledge of the essence of things, surely involves knowing things, not as belonging to the common order of nature, but as existing necessarily or eternally, that is, as involving and expressing the very essence of God, which itself involves and expresses necessary existence. We can now understand why, in the scholium of proposition 45, Spinoza distinguishes, as we saw, the essence of existence itself from temporal duration when understood abstractly or quantitatively, that is, from the common order of nature. Before rejoining that discussion, however, it is important, first, to summarize additional elements that Spinoza views as central to the second and the third kinds of knowledge (and that he presents in propositions 42–44). To possess the second and the third kinds of knowledge, Spinoza indicates, is to be able to distinguish the true from the false. Indeed, for one to have a true idea is to know oneself at the same time to have a true idea and to be unable to doubt it. “An idea true in us,” he writes in proposition 43, as we have already seen, “is that which is adequate in God insofar as he is explained through the nature of the human mind.” Surely, then, to explain God through the human mind is to think (to conceive of) the one thing that cannot be thought without existing. In the scholium to proposition 43 Spinoza notes that, while he has already explained what the idea of an idea is (and again, surely, the idea of an idea is one that cannot be thought without existing), proposition 43 is manifestly clear in itself. No one who has a true idea can ignore that it involves the highest certitude. For to have a true idea is to know a thing perfectly or in the best way. To doubt this would mean that one conceived of an idea as something

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mute, like a picture on a tablet, and not as a mode of thinking, namely, what to understand (intelligere) means: And I ask [Spinoza continues], who can know himself to understand (intelligere) some thing unless he first understands the thing? That is, who can know himself to be certain of some thing unless he first is certain of that thing?25 Further, what can be given more clearly and more certainly than a true idea so that it is the standard (norma) of truth? Of course, just as light manifests (manifestat) both itself and darkness, thus truth is the standard [both] of itself and of the false. . . . Add to these [points] that our mind, insofar as it truly perceives things, is part of the infinite intellect of God; and thus it is as necessary that the clear and distinct ideas of the mind be true as that the ideas of God be true.

Before commenting in detail on this extraordinary suite of ideas—indicating, fundamentally, that to begin knowing, to begin judging absolutely, is to begin with the understanding that what I understand is the idea of the idea, truth as its own standard: the essence of God as involving and expressing necessary existence—it is important, first, to see how Spinoza understands the relationship between reason and eternity. He states in proposition 44 that reason regards things, not as contingent, but as necessary, that is, as they are in themselves. In contrast, the imagination regards things as contingent with respect to both the past and the future. In the second corollary of proposition 44 Spinoza adds that, since the necessity of things is the very necessity of the eternal nature of God,“it is the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain kind of eternity.” Further, since the foundations of reason are notions that explain those things that are common to all and since they do not explain the essence of singular things, they must be conceived under a certain kind of eternity without any relationship of time. What is interesting, before all, in the contrast that Spinoza establishes in the above claims between the first and the second kinds of knowledge—between imagination and reason, between contingency and necessity, and between time and eternity—is his silence on the relationship (that is, the difference) between the second and the third kinds of knowledge and thus on the relationship (and not only the difference) between the first and the third kinds of knowledge. While reason explains things as necessary and eternal and not as contingent and temporal—yet it does not explain the essence of singular things—how, then, are we to understand intuition, as the third kind of knowledge, which, Spinoza holds, as we saw, gives us knowledge of the essence of things? What we shall see, in fact, is that intuition provides Spinoza with a concept of necessity and eternity, which, instead of simply being opposed to contingency and temporality (duration), will allow him to conceive of singular or individual things (that is, of human beings) as existing necessarily (eter-

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nally). This is the reason that in the scholium of proposition 45 of part II, to which we now return, Spinoza (for the first time in the Ethics, as I indicated earlier) discusses existence without regard to time understood as (abstract or quantitative) duration. He speaks, he says there, we may recall, of “the nature [or essence] itself of existence that is attributed to singular things” and of “the existence itself of singular things.” The essence of individual things—when understood as expressing necessary existence—involves a concept of eternity that is compatible with (and not merely opposed to) temporality and a concept of necessity that is compatible with (and not merely opposed to) contingency. As I indicated before, the fact that Spinoza conceives of, beyond imagination and reason, a third kind of knowledge—as the intuition of the essence of individual things—allows him to overcome the (ancient) opposition between time and eternity, between contingency and necessity, in and through a concept of “necessary existence” (i.e., of what we could also call, no less paradoxically, “eternal time” and “necessary contingency”). It goes without saying (anything more at present) that the third kind of knowledge constitutes and is constituted by the ontological argument, as it involves and expresses the necessary (free) relationship between thought and existence and not merely their opposition. Spinoza has only a few more consequences to draw from his doctrine of the three kinds of knowledge—whereby the third overcomes (appropriates) the opposition between the first two—before completing part II of the Ethics. Having shown in proposition 45 that the idea of each body, that is, of each individual existing thing, necessarily involves the eternal, infinite essence of God, as we have seen, he then proceeds to demonstrate in proposition 46 that “the knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God, which each idea involves, is adequate and perfect.” What this means he explicates in the breathtaking proposition 47: “the human mind has adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God.” His demonstration of this proposition amounts to an articulation of the other (or alternative) version of the ontological argument, of, that is, Descartes’ version of it. Because, as Spinoza has already shown us, the human mind has ideas of itself, of its own body, and of actually existing external bodies, he concludes that “therefore, it has adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God”—which is that God cannot be thought without existing (and cannot exist unless thought). The scholium of proposition 47 is no less breathtaking: Hence we see [Spinoza observes] that the infinite essence of God and his eternity are known to all [human beings]. However, since all things are in God and are conceived through God, it follows that we can deduce (deducere) from this knowledge a great many things (plurima), which we may know adequately, and

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that, therefore, we can form that third kind of knowledge, about which we spoke in scholium 2 of proposition 40 of this part and about whose excellence and utility there will be a place for us to speak in the fifth part.

That Spinoza has now demonstrated that all human beings have adequate knowledge of the essence of God, which is the absolute necessity, eternity, and infinity of existence (at once divine and human, ultimately, as we shall see), indicates that he has completed the trajectory of parts I and II of the Ethics on God and the human mind that begins with his definition of the cause of itself (substance). He has demonstrated that the sharp opposition between infinite substance and finite mode constitutes and is constituted by the necessary relationship of thought and existence. He has also indicated that we shall discover (in part V), as I show in volume II of my study, that the third kind of knowledge will overcome, as it appropriates, the opposition between time and eternity, once he has explicated the dynamic relationship between passive and active affects (in parts III and IV). For there is one thing that cannot be thought or known (by human beings) without existing—which is God—and there is one thing that cannot exist without being thought or known (by God)—which is the individual human being. (One can substitute “God” or “the individual human being” in any of the places in the preceding sentence containing either “God” or “the individual human being.”) Thought, whether divine or human, is not found outside of but only in necessary relationship to existence; and existence, whether divine or human, is equally not found outside of but only in necessary relationship to thought. The necessity of existence (substance) is no less the necessity of thought: “man thinks” (to recall axiom 2 of part II). As if to acknowledge both the boldness of his enterprise in parts I and II and the difficulty of the arduous way that still lies before him, Spinoza adds an extended scholium to the final proposition of part II in which he discusses a diversity of topics and concludes with a summary of what, in his view, his doctrine confers ad usum vitae—to the benefit of (human) life. I shall comment briefly on just two of the topics that he raises—on what an “idea” is and whether human beings have the power of suspending their judgment—before reviewing the benefit that, he holds, his doctrine confers on life. First, he points out that it is important not to confuse ideas either with the images of things or with words. Ideas, he declares, are not mute pictures but concepts of thought: affirmations or negations. Second, as part of his general critique of free will (whether divine or human) as failing to account for the infinite power of nature, Spinoza denies that we have the free power of suspending our judgment. To say that we suspend our judgment, he observes, is simply to say that we do not perceive something adequately. He acknowledges, once again, that

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we are not deceived insofar as we perceive something. In other words, imaginations of the mind do not in themselves involve error. Still, to perceive something is always to express an idea, whether adequate or inadequate, since we are ultimately affirming or denying something in existence. For example, if we perceive, that is, affirm, the existence of something that does not exist, then we have not suspended our judgment but committed an error (even if we do not know or even deny that what we have perceived, that is, affirmed, does not exist). The analysis that Spinoza gives here of both an idea and suspended judgment is consistent with the dynamic concept of ethical life that he describes in parts III and IV of the Ethics as involving the transition from passive to active affects, as I show in volume II of my study. Since ideas are acts of the mind and freedom (unlike free will) is the power of acting from one’s nature alone, we human beings are never in a neutral position of suspended judgment: we are either in se (as the cause of itself) or in alio (as the common order of nature). That is, we are in both. As I showed above, to be in one is (knowingly, thoughtfully) to be in the other. The question, then, is how (not why) we are, at one and the same time, in one and in the other. Our life is not suspended between the cause of itself and the common order of nature. Rather, our life involves and expresses the suspense created by the fact that we belong to both and can never (want to) escape from either. Both God (the exemplar of life as necessary existence, as freely determined in and through the cause of itself) and nature (the fact that singular things are unfreely determined by yet other singular things unto infinity) place inexorable demands on us. The question, then, is: What do we know? If we human beings do not know that we are “in itself ” (in God, as the cause of itself), then we shall have no way of accounting for the fact that we are “in another” (in the common order of nature) and so determined (externally) by others. The ethical (and political) challenge of life is to transform passive bondage to the other into active knowledge of the other, into what Spinoza calls acquiescentia animi, the active, free acceptance of the necessary relationship between in se and in alio. Acquiescentia animi involves and expresses the necessary, because free, relationship between thought and existence. When Spinoza then proceeds to conclude part II of the Ethics with a review of the use or benefit that, he says, his doctrine—on the relationship between God and the mind—confers on human life, it is important to see that he anticipates, quite systematically, the ethical and political consequences of his philosophy as a whole. He divides the benefit into four areas—from participating in the divine nature to freely living the best life in “common society.” Still, what he reveals to us in this brief presentation (of less than a page in the Latin text) is a conception of thought and existence in which all of its diverse

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elements—divine and human, personal and social, ethical and political—are profoundly integrated with each other. Spinoza begins with the observation that his doctrine teaches us that “the more perfect the actions are that we do and the more and more we understand God the more we act from the command (nutu) alone of God and are participants in the divine nature.” Consequently, he says, his doctrine not only gives us a quiet mind (animum quietum) but also shows us that our supreme happiness or blessedness consists in the knowledge alone of God, “from which we are led to do only those things that love and piety counsel.” What we learn, thereby, Spinoza continues, is that God does not reward us for our virtue, since virtue and the service (servitus) of God are themselves happiness and the highest freedom. (This is the precise teaching of the final proposition of part V!) His doctrine thus teaches us, he says, how to bear calmly both good and bad fortune, in other words, the things that, since they are not in our power, do not follow from our nature. Spinoza points out, however, that “all things follow from the eternal decree of God with the same necessity as it follows from the essence of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles.” Notwithstanding his penchant for geometrical (mathematical) analogies,26 Spinoza knows, like Descartes (who was a great mathematician, unlike Spinoza), that the essence (or definition) of a triangle, unlike the essence (or definition) of the cause of itself or God, does not involve and express necessary existence. It is, consequently, one thing for Spinoza to invoke his favored analogy of a triangle in order to impress upon his readers the importance of grasping the “necessity” that existence involves and expresses. He wants them to know, it is evident, that existence bears a logic of necessity (that is, freedom) that undermines any notion of free will as neutral indifference or suspended judgment. It is, however, quite another thing for him to claim that all things follow necessarily from the eternal decree of God according to geometrical analogy without also reminding his readers of the suspense that living, at one and the same time, in se and in alio, in both freedom and bondage, involves and expresses. For what counts, as Spinoza himself shows us in this review of the benefit that his doctrine confers on human life, is to think through and thus truly to exist in the difference between two opposed concepts of necessity: (1) necessity understood as the freedom of acting from one’s own nature or essence alone—which is that it freely involves and expresses necessary existence; and (2) necessity understood as bondage—which is the non-essential determination by another to exist (in the common order of nature). Having thus summarized the relationship between God and the mind, Spinoza next indicates that his doctrine also contributes to “social life” insofar as it teaches us (1) to hate no one and so not to have contempt for, to laugh

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at, to be angry with, or to envy any one; (2) to be content with our own things; and (3) to be helpful to our neighbor (from the guidance alone of reason, as the time and matter demand, and not from effeminate compassion, partiality, or superstition). He then concludes with the observation that his doctrine makes no small contribution to “common society” by teaching “how citizens are to be governed and led, namely, not that they be enslaved (serviant) but that they freely do the things that are best.” It is striking that Spinoza completes what I call the trajectory of parts I and II of the Ethics on the relationship of God and the mind by giving us a sketch, although tantalizingly brief, of how we are ultimately to understand that the doctrine conferring benefit on human life is the ontological argument with its demonstration of the necessary relationship between thought and existence. He dramatically relates knowledge of God—which is the one thing that cannot be thought by human beings without (unless) existing necessarily—both to “social life,” in which human beings enjoy decent, respectful, and caring relations with their neighbor, and to “common society,” in which citizens freely do the things that are best. Indeed, in concluding his brief comments with the observation that it is in common society that citizens can freely pursue the best things, Spinoza directly connects optimal communal life with his initial claim that for human beings to perfect their actions and to gain ever greater knowledge of God is increasingly to act from the command alone of God and to be participants in the divine nature. How we are to understand that participation in the divine nature is expressed in freely doing the best things in a shared, common society or that the service of God, in expressing the blessed life of supreme happiness and freedom, involves our participation in social life Spinoza does nothing more here than adumbrate. Still, I think two things are evident in what Spinoza advocates ad usum vitae. First, he points to the program that lies ahead, as he himself indicates. As I discuss in volume II of my study, he shows in parts III and IV of the Ethics how conatus, in embodying the actual essence of things to persevere in existence, effects the transition from passive affects to active affects, from determination “in another” (involving bondage to the common order of nature) to determination “in itself ” (expressing the freedom of existing from the necessity of one’s essence alone). To exist freely from the necessity of one’s own essence alone is to involve and express necessary existence as the cause of itself. In part V Spinoza shows that, because the third kind of knowledge comprehends the essence of singular things, human beings know their existence to be necessary, that is, eternal. Since the program that lies ahead involves not only the ethical but also the political thought and existence of human beings, as Spinoza has now patently signaled to us, it will also be important to see that his concepts of democratic freedom and of the sovereign right and authority

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of the multitudo, through which the existence of the other is thought as necessary, no less embody the ontological argument. The second thing that Spinoza makes evident in adumbrating the relationship between divine participation and social and political participation is that the program that lies ahead rests on his demonstration in and through the ontological argument, in parts I and II of the Ethics, of the necessary relationship between thought and existence. Participation in the divine essence means nothing less (or more) than knowing, with certitude, that the essence of human beings involves and expresses necessary existence. Participation in social life and common society means nothing less (or more) than that there is one thing that cannot be thought (loved) without (unless) existing, which is the neighbor, the other, whom one is commanded to love as oneself. Still, the program of delineating the ethical and political dimensions of the ontological argument that lies ahead, as I show in volume II of my study, rests squarely on the foundation that Spinoza establishes for it as the relationship between God and the human mind. Therefore, it is important to summarize the trajectory that takes us from the cause of itself at the beginning of part I of the Ethics to human knowledge of the absolute essence of God as necessary existence in the concluding propositions of part II. The reason that parts I and II of the Ethics constitute the foundation of the ontological argument as ultimately ethical and political, as articulating what is essential in the thought and existence of human beings, is that in them Spinoza demonstrates, as we have seen, that God and the human mind can be thought to exist only in and through their mutual relationship. While Spinoza appears to begin abruptly and mysteriously (even arbitrarily) with the cause of itself, what he shows us is that, because the cause of itself is that which cannot be thought without existing, God, in all his eternity, does not exist outside of the thought of human beings and that human beings, in all their temporality, do not think outside of divine existence. I introduced the paradoxical formulation of the ontological argument from Fear and Trembling in order to dramatize the dynamic relationship of thought and existence. If God has always existed (eternally)—without regard to my thought—then God has never existed (temporally)—with regard to my thought. If the thought (idea) of God has always been given (eternally)—without regard to my existence—then the thought (idea) of God has never been given (temporally)—with regard to my existence. When we come to realize that what characterizes the absolutely infinite, necessary, and eternal essence of God is that, as the cause of himself, God cannot and does not exist without being thought by human beings, then we also begin to understand the importance of the fact that Spinoza formulates a third kind of knowledge—that of the essence of individual things—beyond

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the opposition between imagination and reason, temporality (duration) and eternity, contingency and necessity, and human being and divine being. As always in Spinoza, essence is either that which is necessarily determined (caused) by another or that which freely determines itself as the necessary cause of its own existence. The essence of an individual, existing thing is either in another or in itself. Either it does not or it does involve and express necessary existence. What is always so important to descry in Spinoza, we constantly discover, is that the pairs of opposed terms in and through which he advances his argumentation—here, the opposition between non-essential and essential existence involving two kinds of necessity: in another and in itself— have to be reconstituted in and through the necessary (free) relationship of thought and existence. In formulating a third kind of knowledge whereby human beings grasp the essence of individual things, surely what Spinoza intends to show us is that it overcomes the opposition between the first two kinds of knowledge by demonstrating their mutual relationship (although the demonstration of this relationship awaits part V). What he surely means for us to understand by the third kind of knowledge is that, in comprehending the essence of individually existing things, we know them to exist necessarily. The basis of my claim about how to understand the third kind of knowledge is at this point twofold. First, according to Spinoza, to know the essence of an individual, existing thing always means to grasp its existence as necessary. Second, the third kind of knowledge is clearly distinct from both the first kind of knowledge (which does not grasp individually existing things as necessary) and the second kind of knowledge (which does not grasp the necessity of individually existing things). “Necessary existence” is a concept (idea) neither of experience (the first kind of knowledge) nor of the science of experience (the second kind of knowledge). If necessity has always existed, then it has never existed. If existence has always been necessary, then it has never been necessary. Implicit in the concept of necessary existence is also the concept of necessary thought: “man thinks” (cogito, ergo sum). Existence is given necessarily only as I think (enact) it. Thought is given necessarily only as I exist in and through it. The paradox of necessary existence (and of necessary thought) is that thought is not given outside of existence and that existence is not given outside of thought. Thought expresses the necessity of existence, and existence involves the necessity of thought. Thought is bound—freely—to existence, and existence is bound—freely—to thought. But if one always existed or if one (were) always thought, then one would never exist and would never think or be thought (and we would be back in the world of the ancients with their opposition between the ignorance of existence and the absence of thought: to know the good is to be the good). I do not begin with either existence or necessity (i.e., with either of the first two kinds of knowledge) and then arrive

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(inductively or deductively, empirically or logically) at the other. I have to begin with both, that is, I have to begin with the third kind of knowledge in comprehending the essence of individual things as involving and expressing their necessary (freely thought) existence. I am confident that readers will have felt the strangeness of the presentation on the part of Spinoza that human beings (are to) gain more and more knowledge of God as necessary existence, as that which they cannot think without existing (and as that which cannot exist except as they think it). While we begin with the cause of itself as necessarily existing, it is the paradox of necessary existence that we must continue to think—to exist in—it. We must continuously keep discovering the necessity of existence and the existence of necessity—in and through encountering them. We must persevere continually in demonstrating that existence is necessary and that necessity exists. Existence and necessity are given together only in their relationship; and it is that relationship that we must continually advance as the very content of both our thought and our existence. Just as the concept of necessary existence as the cause of itself is not given once and for all in the initial definition of part I of the Ethics, so human beings also have the task of eternally making the transition from the mind as the idea of the body to the mind as the idea of itself, to the idea of the idea as the idea that truth is its own standard. The mind does not exist and cannot think outside of its body, outside of its many and diverse embodiments in nature. The mind is first and last the idea of the body. It has become evident that to know that we think and to exist in alio indicates to us that we do not comprehend necessary existence solely by knowing that we essentially think and exist in se. It has equally become evident that the mind cannot even know that it is the idea of the body, that is, that the mind and the body are one and the same thing— in expressing the infinitely divine attributes of thought and extension— without knowing that, in se, the mind is the cause of itself as the idea of the idea. The paradox of the relationship between thought and existence is that I cannot know that I am an embodied being unless I separate—while never opposing to each other in contradictory fashion—mind and body, thought and existence, God and human being. What do I know? I know that, while I begin in alio, in the body, with imagination, I cannot know or conceive of that beginning without knowing that my true beginning is in and through the cause of itself as that whose essence, in se, involves and expresses necessary existence. The concept of necessary existence has been so hard for us moderns (not to mention our predecessors in the biblical tradition) to grasp, with the exception of our greatest thinkers, literary authors, and artists, because we constantly fail to see that it expresses a third category of knowledge, that of individual things whose essence necessarily involves and expresses existence.

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What we have now seen Spinoza demonstrate in parts I and II of the Ethics is that the ontological argument, by bringing thought and existence together in necessary relationship, gives us a concept of necessary existence whose idea of the eternal involves temporality and whose idea of the temporal expresses eternity. As I show in volume II of this study, he has prepared us for his dramatic presentation, in parts III and IV of the Ethics, of conatus as effecting a transition, in time, yet this transition is also necessary (liberating), for it is a transition from passive to active affects, from bondage to freedom. This notion of transition, as at once temporal and necessary or eternal, is essential to linking parts I and II of the Ethics with the exposition in part V of the third kind of knowledge as the comprehension on the part of human beings that their essence involves and expresses necessary, that is, eternal existence. (Spinoza famously calls this knowledge the intellectual love of God.) In other words, what counts here is that we come to understand that the concept of necessary existence is one with the concept of transition, the transition not from temporality to eternity but from the opposition between temporality and eternity (in the first two kinds of knowledge) to their necessary relationship (in the third kind of knowledge). The transition is at once temporal and eternal, for it involves our thought and existence in their necessarily free relationship.

Conclusion: What Do I Know? When Montaigne asks—What do I know?—he affirms the necessary or, in other words, the free, the paradoxical, the absolute relationship of thought and existence as the very principle of modernity. At the same time he exposes, for us moderns, the contradictory ignorance on the part of ancient philosophers. Either I judge absolutely—I think, therefore I am—or I absolutely do not and cannot judge—I know that I am ignorant, but I do not know what I am ignorant of. As I have shown in this chapter, that of which Socrates, the exemplar of ancient thinkers (whether philosophers, poets, historians, or political writers), is ignorant is the law of contradiction (together with, it is understood, its sister laws of logic as formulated by Aristotle: the laws of identity and of the excluded middle). In not asking, in the ancient mode of Socrates—What is knowledge? What is wisdom? What is truth? What is virtue? What is justice?—but rather in asking, in the modern mode of Abraham, the biblical Cartesian—What do I KNOW?—Montaigne shows that, once the difference between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging has been revealed in the world as the covenantal relationship between God and human beings, there is no choice between the absolute judgment

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bringing thought and existence into necessary relationship and the absolute absence of judgment reflecting ignorance of the necessary relationship of thought and existence. The paradox in the biblical tradition of modernity that Montaigne inimitably captures in his question is that I necessarily do know something necessary. It is necessary for me to know (to think or to love) something necessary. I cannot not know something. Ignorance on my part in the presence of the other—God, the neighbor, the self (conscience)— is no excuse. Not to love the other—God and neighbor—as myself, not to love myself as God and neighbor, not to do unto the other as I would want the other to do unto me does not reflect (passive, suspended) ignorance, in the ancient tradition, but rather reveals (passionately engaged, suspenseful) sin, idolatry, evil . . . in the modern (biblical) tradition. The difference between judging absolutely and absolutely not judging is the difference between (the) paradox and (the law of) contradiction, which is precisely the difference between knowledge (love) of the other and ignorance (love) of the other. In the Greek world, to love, to desire, the other—as Alcibiades loves (desires) Socrates—is to reflect the eternal fact that you lack, that you are ignorant of, that which you love or desire. We remember that philosophia—the love of wisdom—means, precisely, the lack or ignorance of wisdom, as Socrates through Diotima instructs his fellow banqueters in the Symposium. The gods, who are wise, are not philosophers: they do not love wisdom. Seneca, in the passage cited by Montaigne at the end of “The Apology for Raimond Sebond,” indicates that man can be wise (knowing) only insofar as he raises himself above humanity, as he contradicts, as he opposes his own very humanity, that is, insofar as he becomes other than a human being, the very opposite of himself, in other words, a god. Does Seneca, in the passage cited by Montaigne, exist? Does he think? The trivial answers to these trivial questions are yes, of course. . . . Seneca was a Stoic philosopher who, cited by Montaigne, lived and wrote in Rome. . . . But it is patent that Montaigne does not cite Seneca, any more than he cites Plutarch or the skeptics, for trivial reasons. What Seneca writes, which is precisely the opposite of what Plutarch writes in stating that there is no communication with “what is,” is, Montaigne declares, “equally absurd.” What Seneca writes is no less absurd than what Plutarch writes (or than what either the Pyrrhonian skeptics write, in claiming to doubt everything, to suspend their judgment, to be ignorant of everything, or the academic skeptics write, in claiming to incline more in one direction than in another while professing ignorance of any truthful or absolute basis for inclining any more in one direction than in another direction). Seneca is absurd—or contradictory—from Montaigne’s point of view because his speech (his thought) is opposed to or contradicts his existence, while his existence is opposed to or contradicts his

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speech (thought). It is absurd or contradictory (from Montaigne’s and our modern perspective) for Seneca to claim that he can think and exist only if he is not himself, only if he is opposed to or is the opposite of his thinking, existing self. But who, we ask, following Montaigne, is this “he,” this man, Seneca, when he tells us that man—including Seneca and his reader—is not himself (man) if he is himself (man) and that he is himself (man) if he is not himself (man)? Because Seneca shows (us) that he is opposed to, in being the opposite or the contradiction of, himself, we ask yet again: Does he exist? Does he think? If we answer non-trivially with Montaigne, then we learn how important it is to distinguish, absolutely with him, our modern (biblical) concepts of thought and existence from those of the ancients. In adhering to the law of contradiction, that is, in being ignorant of the law of contradiction, the ancients know (think) either that they exist or that they do not exist. According to the law of contradiction, either something exists (identical with itself—by either excluding from or including within itself all that is other than itself), or it does not exist. But there is no way of knowing (thinking), according to the law of contradiction, whether something exists or whether it does not exist. For, as Seneca shows us, I cannot exist and I cannot think (know) what my existence is except insofar as I am other than what I think and insofar as I think other than what I am. To be ignorant of the law of contradiction—to be ignorant that I contradict myself in saying that, in order to be myself, I must be other than myself or that, in being myself, I have no communication with “what is”—is to know that I live and think by the law of contradiction, as by the law of the Delphic oracle, according to which what I think (my thought) contradicts my existence (what I am) and what I am (my existence) contradicts my thought (what I think). I know that my life is contradictory, that I am ignorant of all that is, that what I think (and say) is absolutely contradictory. But I absolutely do not know what the law of contradiction is.27 To know, however, what the law of contradiction is is to know, with Montaigne, the paradox of knowing, of thinking, of loving the other, not as what is opposed to or contradicts my thought and existence but as what constitutes my thought and existence. The paradox of otherness in the biblical tradition of modernity is that I must be other than myself and think myself as other than myself in order to be and to think (know) myself. Here otherness expresses relationship (mutuality), not opposition. I am commanded by the other to love the other as myself, to do unto the other that which I want the other to do unto me. The absolute judgment of the other constitutes my thought and existence, precisely as my absolute judgment constitutes the thought and existence of the other. All judgments are absolute, consistent with Montaigne, because in them

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I have to account for both my thought and my existence in relationship both to your thought and to your existence (and vice versa). What do I know? I know that my self, like all human selves, is constituted by the paradoxical relationship of thought and existence. I can and do (constantly) subvert this relationship—the Bible calls this subversion sin—by reducing my thought (of the other) to my (actual) existence and by reducing my existence (in and through the other) to my (actual) thought. (There are, it is clear, infinite versions of this subversive reductionism.) But because, as Spinoza would say, by way of Hegel, the actual is (the absolute judgment of) the rational and the rational is (the absolute judgment of) the actual, the contradiction of thought by existence and the contradiction of existence by thought are not hidden but known. We are not and cannot be ignorant of contradiction. For the absolute judgment of the other is known in the world of thought and existence (as the revelation of God). It is the status (position) of the other that absolutely distinguishes modern (biblical) from ancient thought, as Montaigne, together with Descartes and Spinoza, clearly shows. In ancient thought, so well articulated by Seneca as exposed by Montaigne, especially when juxtaposed with Plutarch’s conception of incommunicable being (“what is”), the other is my opposite, not my relationship. I am other than myself in the sense of being ignorant of myself. I am opposed to (I contradict) myself just as I am opposed to (and contradict) all others (and just as all others are opposed both to themselves and to all others, including me). In modern (biblical) thought, in contrast to ancient thought, I am other than myself. But here I know (think) myself as the other precisely as I exist (think) in and through the other. I love (desire) the other, not as lack or ignorance of the other, but as I want the other to love (desire) me. The reason that I know (that I must with absolute necessity know) the other is that it is only in knowing (loving) the other that I can know (and love) myself. The other is myself, not in being opposed to myself but in being the very revelation of myself, in being the absolutely necessary truth of my thought and existence. Thus, when Montaigne counters Seneca’s absurdly contradictory concept of thought and existence with his own biblical (modern) concept of the self, he indicates, in closely adhering to the paradoxical rhetoric of Christianity (which is so easily reducible to the contradictory rhetoric of ancient thought), that the human being, when raised by God, in his sovereign otherness, does not rise above his humanity. We would say, rather, that the human being is revealed—through the love (grace, forgiveness, sacrifice) of God—to be the person that in truth he is, which is to be other than himself. The paradox of otherness is that I can know myself—I can think my existence—only in and through the thought and existence of the other, just as the other (God, the neighbor, my own very self) can be known and can exist only in and

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through my thought and existence. Either I know (and love) the other as the truth of my thought and existence. Or I am ignorant of (and so, in loving, lack) the other as the truth of my thought and existence. The paradoxical knowledge of the thought and existence of the other constitutes (in the biblical tradition) the absolute judgment of modernity. The contradictory ignorance of the thought and existence of the other constitutes (in the biblical tradition) the absolute lack of ancient judgment. I have taken the time to draw out the implications of Montaigne’s question— What do I know?—for two closely interrelated reasons. First, just as it is a revelation to Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme to discover that he is speaking prose, so I suspect that it is a revelation for readers of Montaigne to discover that, in absolutely distinguishing biblical (modern) thought from ancient thought, he articulates the ontological argument. Second, in thus seeing that the ontological argument is the absolute judgment on modernity (as biblical)—and on antiquity as absolutely without judgment—it is my hope that readers of Spinoza will be able to comprehend ever more deeply the ontological argument as the absolute crux of modernity (as biblical and not as ancient). There is a sense in which parts I and II of the Ethics serve as an explication of Montaigne’s “Apology” and, in particular, of its extraordinarily compressed, concentrated conclusion, in which Montaigne brings his essay to a resolute close by absolutely distinguishing his concepts of human being and of God from those of the ancients. What Spinoza shows us, as we have seen, is that God is the otherness of human beings. Just as God constitutes the thought (conception) and existence of human beings as other than themselves, so human beings constitute the existence and thought of God as other than himself. While human beings do not know (what) God (is) in himself—for in himself (without otherness, without relationship, without creation) God cannot be thought to exist and cannot exist as thought—human beings know (and love) God as the revelation, as the idea (thought or concept) of their otherness, of what they are, not in themselves but in the absolutely necessary relationship of their thought and existence. Human beings know God. Human beings, Spinoza writes, have knowledge of the absolutely infinite and eternal essence (nature) of God precisely because (or insofar as) they think, that is, because their knowledge of themselves, the relationship of their thought and existence, is other than themselves. That God does not exist outside of (without) the thought of human beings and that human beings do not think outside of (without) the existence of God (and vice versa) I represent here in my study as the necessary relationship of thought and existence (at once divine and human), tout court. The relationship of thought and existence is necessary in precisely the same sense in which Spinoza argues that it is of the essence of God (substance)—as the cause of itself—to exist necessarily. Because God is the one thing that

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human beings cannot think without (outside of) necessarily existing, God (necessarily!) does not exist outside of (without) human thought. The paradox here is that the concept of necessity binding together God and human being, thought and existence—in the covenant of relationship—is absolutely different from (or other than) the concept of necessity in whose fatal otherness the ancients find their thought and existence reflected as contradictory ignorance. Once again, to know necessity, to know that necessity involves and expresses the otherness of my thought and existence, is freedom or (in theological terms) salvation. In contrast, to be ignorant of necessity, that is, not to know necessity as the relationship of my thought and existence, is to experience necessity as chance, as the absolutely contradictory flux of the many (whether in the guise of, for example, the appearances of Plato or the atoms of Democritus and Epicurus). Human beings in the ancient tradition are consequently rendered ignorant of and blinded by, because moved by, the unmovable necessity of their unknowable and unthinkable fate (thought thinking itself). It is also important to recognize that to know the absolutely infinite existence of God as necessary is to know what it means to be in alio, to be a part of nature and consequently to be subject to external causes as found in the common order of nature (and which Spinoza in part III of the Ethics associates with passive affects, as I show in volume II of my study). For human beings to know that they are in another, as a part of nature, is, according to Montaigne, to eschew all pretense of jumping out of their human skins with the Stoics in an attempt to attain what “is impossible and monstrous” by making “the handful bigger than the hand, the armful bigger than the arm, and to hope to straddle more than the reach of our legs . . .” Just as Montaigne then proceeds to connect the human (finite) reach of the hands, arms, and legs with divine (infinite) metamorphosis, when understood as the elevation (liberation and salvation) of the other, so Spinoza shows us that, for human beings to know that they are in alio, they know, unlike the Stoics, that they do not thereby reach beyond, that they do not exceed or escape the human estate. Rather, together with Montaigne, they know that to know that they are in alio, as finite modes of nature, is necessarily to know that they exist and think in se, which, as the absolutely infinite cause of itself, is that which cannot be thought without (outside of) existing necessarily and which cannot exist without (outside of) being necessarily thought. Human beings know that they cannot know (think) themselves as finite modes and so as subject to the external causation of yet other finite modes ad infinitum, in the common order of nature, without at the same time knowing God as the necessary substance of their thought and existence, as that whose essence cannot be conceived by them without existing necessarily (and vice versa). Necessary existence—the neces-

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sary relationship of thought and existence—is the revelation of otherness, at once divine and human. Because necessary existence involves and expresses relationship—the relationship of necessity and existence, of thought and existence, of human beings and God, of human beings with each other, of the self with itself— the demonstration or proof that is the ontological argument of the existence of God does not begin, first, with God as infinite substance and then proceed, second, to nature, creation, finite modes, or human beings. Nor does it begin, first, with nature, creation, finite modes, or human beings and then proceed, second, to God as infinite substance. The ontological argument is not a priori as opposed to a posteriori, to recall the scholastic classification of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. Rather, it is, to invoke the radically transformed, scholastic language of Kant, synthetic a priori. The ontological argument is at once posterior (synthetic) and prior. (I have in mind here, not the ontological argument whose logic Kant explicitly demonstrates in the Critique of Pure Reason to be vacuous but rather the ontological argument whose logic he implicitly invokes in the Critique of Practical Reason as the rational practice of necessarily or categorically loving the other—God and neighbor—as oneself.)28 Just as the ontological argument is both posterior and prior, it is also both temporal and eternal. Since, however, what is posterior and temporal and what is prior and eternal do not take precedence over each other, they are found in that mutuality of relationship that Hegel and Kierkegaard know as the temporality of history. I shall have more to say about history in light of Spinoza’s hermeneutics, as discussed in the previous chapter, in the final, concluding chapter of my study. (The temporality of what Spinoza calls the transition from passive to active affects, from inadequate to adequate ideas, in parts III–V of the Ethics is also a key topic of volume II of my study.) Suffice it to observe here that the temporality of the ontological argument—of the relationship of thought and existence, both divine and human—is historical. The paradox of the ontological argument, one of the many expressions of the paradox, is that to know that I begin in time—in alio—external to myself is to know that I begin in eternity—in se—as the cause of itself. Paradoxically, the ontological argument, in proving the existence of God as that which cannot be thought by human beings without (outside of) necessarily existing, presupposes that human beings are in alio, that they belong to the common order of nature, that, in Spinoza’s inimitable formulation, the mind is the idea of the body. The concept of necessary existence, the concept of the necessary relationship of thought and existence, at once divine and human, is not found, with Seneca, outside of (or in opposition to) human being. In other words, it is not found in God, as the other, outside of (without) the necessary

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thought (concept, idea, or mind) of human beings (and vice versa). Precisely what characterizes the biblical tradition of modernity is the paradox that, while human beings live in the world of nature—they die—they do not live of it. In knowing that they die, they live with Job, not without suffering, not without fear and trembling, it is true, yet eternally blessed. While the mind is the idea of the body—it is in alio—the knowledge (or self-consciousness) that the mind possesses in knowing that it is the idea of the body constitutes what Spinoza calls the idea of the mind as the idea of the idea: the idea of the necessary existence of God as that which, the cause of itself, is in se. Since the ontological argument eliminates all ideas equally of supernaturalism—of what is in se (in the divine state) in itself—and of naturalism—what is in alio (in the natural state) in itself—the concept of necessary existence is neither supernatural nor natural. Rather, the concept of necessary existence describes the relationship of the free (liberated) mind to itself—the idea of the idea—or, in other words, the relationship of human beings to the other, which is at once God, the neighbor, and the self. The paradox that human beings are both in God and in nature—that they can be in God, in se, so long as, following Montaigne, they do not monstrously and absurdly, in self-contradiction, attempt to reach beyond themselves in denying their natural or finite embodiment in alio—is also articulated by Spinoza in his conception of knowledge as involving a tripartite division. The paradox here, as I explained earlier, is constituted by the fact that the third kind of knowledge, whereby humans know the essence of (human) individuals as existing necessarily, overcomes the opposition, in the tradition of the ancients, between the first two kinds of knowledge, between opinion and reason, between time and eternity, between contingency and necessity (the “what is” of Plutarch), between the many and the one, between chance and fate. The contradiction in ancient thought is that “nature” is at one and the same time contingent (appearance) and necessary (form)—whence, for example, the interminable opposition between Epicureans and Stoics, reflecting the primordial opposition between Heraclitus (“all is flux”) and Parmenides (“one is”). It is, consequently, never possible for the ancients to know what nature is, for nature, including their own human nature, is eternally, and also temporally, opposed to itself, always other than as the contradiction of itself. In contrast to the ancients, the biblical tradition of modernity posits (creates) a third concept of nature or essence, which, because it involves and expresses, as the cause of itself, the necessary relationship of thought and existence, cannot be thought without necessarily existing and cannot exist without being necessarily thought. What do I know? I know that I know something existing as necessary and that, in knowing this necessary existent, I know that necessity describes my thinking no less than my existence: I think,

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therefore I am. What is necessary is that I cannot think outside of (without) existing necessarily and that I cannot exist outside of (without) thinking necessarily. While what I think is separate from the I that thinks it, “what” I think and the “I” that possesses this thought or idea are not opposed to (they do not contradict) each other, since the subject of thought and the subject of existence are one and the same subject. The thinking subject and the existing subject are the same subject, united necessarily (freely, absolutely). Yet, the thinking subject and the existing subject—the subject of existence and the subject of thinking—are distinct and separate from each other (so long as the subject does not fall into the idolatry of reducing its thought to its existence or its existence to its thought). The subject—who is at once the subject of thinking and the subject of existence—is, consequently, always the other of itself, precisely as the other of the subject, the subject’s other, is at once both God and the neighbor. Each, the other of itself, is the other of the other. In responding to Montaigne’s question—What do I know?—I know that I am neither supernatural (in the tradition of the Stoics’ self-identification with nature as that which is opposed to human passion) nor natural (in the tradition of the Epicureans’ self-identification with nature as that which is identical with human passion). Rather, I know that I can know myself as an individual only in and through the revelation of the other, that I am called to think—to know, to love—the other as I want the other to think (to know, to love) me. But here we link up with the hermeneutical character of the ontological argument, the discussion of which, in the next chapter, will allow me to conclude this study on hermeneutics and ontology.

Notes 1. I take basic textual data on Montaigne’s essays from Frame’s introduction. The first two books of Essays, including the “Apology,” were published in 1580. The first edition of the three books of Essays, including many additions and changes to the essays in books I–II, was published in 1588. The first complete (and yet again very considerably modified and enlarged) edition of the three books of Essays was published posthumously in 1595, three years after Montaigne’s death. 2. In volume II of my study I analyze parts III–V of the Ethics, together with the appendix of part I. Here Spinoza focuses on conatus as the movement from passive affects (human bondage) to active affects (freedom as expressed in and through what he calls the dictates of reason). I conclude my discussion of the Ethics by showing how and why for Spinoza human freedom, the subject of part V, involves and expresses knowledge of God. I also include in volume II a discussion of the politics of Spinoza (as found in the TPT, chapters 16–20, and in the PT) in order to analyze how the relationship between ethics and politics, between the ethical individual and the political

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multitudo, involves God as sovereign, the individual as sovereign, and the democratic people as sovereign. 3. Kierkegaard writes as follows in Works of Love: “And what is the ugly? It is the neighbor, whom one shall love. One shall love him; that simple wise man [i.e., Socrates] knew nothing at all about this. He did not know that the neighbor existed and that one should love him; when he spoke about loving the ugly, it was only teasing” (373; emphasis in the original). Earlier, Kierkegaard states that “ultimately, love for God is the decisive factor; from this originates love for the neighbor—but paganism had no inkling of this” (57). (Also see 44 and 53 for similar statements.) 4. Again, Epicurus, in reducing reason to the senses (the passions), reverses and thus does not fundamentally alter the opposition between reason and the passions. 5. I cite Frame’s excellent translation, modified, as appropriate, in light of Rat’s French text. 6. Since my treatment of the “Apology” is limited to exposing its basic structure and content, I omit much in it, and also in other essays of Montaigne, that would be relevant to my discussion. 7. While the concept of the “passions” that Descartes holds is woefully inadequate, he is always clear that the passions (together with the whole of the content of the mind: all human affects) belong to the soul as a thinking thing (not to the body as an extended thing). 8. These expressions are awkward. But it is important to keep in play (to account for) the following three points: (1) the “other” is not only your social self as distinct from my social self but also my personal self as distinct from itself; (2) I am in relation both to you and to myself; and (3) every individual self, in constituting an I-you relationship, is also a social self. 9. Just previous to this passage Montaigne writes that “man is as capable of all things as he is of any. And if he confesses, as Theophrastus says, ignorance of first causes and principles, let him boldly give up all the rest of his knowledge. If his foundation is lacking, his argument is flat on the ground. Discussion and inquiry have no other aim and limit but principles; if this terminus does not stop their course, they fling themselves into infinite irresolution” (421). 10. Montaigne also makes good faith (as the critique of hypocrisy) central to his essay “Of Repentance,” just as he makes life as the gift of God, which is to be cultivated, or essayed, with the fullness of one’s soul (as distinct from regretting its loss in merely passing the time), central to his essay “Of Experience.” 11. Epicurus, while denying to the gods a teleological role in human life, does not deny their existence. Rather, in denying that human beings know the gods, that is, that there is anything knowable beyond the immediacy of human perception (outside of the senses), Epicurus simply reinstates the divided line (of Plato) between the one (which is contradictorily many) and the many (which is contradictorily one). The atoms of Democritus, to which Epicurus is heir, are unchanging in themselves (they are multiply one). Yet they are constantly changing in their multiple configurations in and by which they constitute both our thought (perception) and our existence. As one, each atom is divine, immortal, and unchanging. But, as always in Greek thought, the one (god) appears in multiple, changing, unknown, and unknowable forms to human

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beings. In identifying existence with the changing, multiple perceptions of atoms, Epicurus does not escape the contradictory fate of the gods. Indeed, he reduces human existence to their appearance as arbitrary chance. 12. This is equally true of a painting or a sculpture. Whether or not we can or want to take in the whole of its immediate content (a painting might be entitled “View of Lake Geneva” or “Color Field No. 3” and a sculpture “The Hand of God”), the challenge before us is to create a narrative of (our experience with) the work such that its parts constitute and are constituted by the whole. Our challenge is to move from part to whole and from whole to part. 13. Other modern masters of the infinite include Descartes, Pascal, and Kierkegaard. The late medieval and early modern magistri of the infinite are William of Ockham, Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno (who was burned at the stake in 1600 for his provocative ideas), and Jakob Böhme. 14. Hegel writes in the Encyclopaedia Logic that the finite is “its own sublation [contradiction or over-coming].” He states further: “The finite sublates itself because it contradicts itself inwardly.” “For we know that, instead of being fixed and ultimate, everything finite is alterable and perishable . . .” (128–30). At the end of the introduction of The Philosophy of Mind [Spirit] Hegel writes as follows: “It is only the reality of mind that is itself ideality, and it is therefore only in mind that we find absolute unity of Notion [concept] and reality, and hence true infinitude. The very fact that we know a [finite] limitation is evidence that we are beyond it, evidence of our freedom from [finite] limitation. Natural objects are finite simply because their limitation does not exist for the objects themselves, but only for us who compare them with one another. We make ourselves finite by receiving an Other into our consciousness; but in the very fact of our knowing this Other we have transcended this limitation. Only he who does not know [e.g., Socrates] is limited [finite]; for he does not know his limitation; whereas he who knows the limitation knows it, not as a limitation of his knowing, but as something known, as something belonging to his knowledge; only the unknown would be a limitation of knowledge, whereas the known limitation, on the contrary, is not; therefore to know one’s [finite] limitation means to know of one’s unlimitedness [infinitude]” (23–24). 15. I shall make no attempt to provide a summary of the contents of all the propositions of part I or of part II of the Ethics. 16. See note 2, chapter 2. 17. I omit here from my account the fact that, while readers of the Ethics in the first century after its publication typically viewed the work’s lack of a supernatural or teleological theology as revealing its author to be a detestable atheist, post-Enlightenment readers of the Ethics often viewed its apparent independence of biblical theology as revealing its author to be a fellow pantheist. I also omit from consideration here the fact that the critique of supernaturalism that Spinoza developed in the TPT, together with his equation of superstition with the reduction of divine truth to biblical error, was typically viewed as representing, earlier, atheism and, later, pantheism. 18. I want to point out that “theism” can be equally humanist and anti-humanist. 19. One of the great ironies in the history of modern philosophy is that Kant, while naming and demolishing the ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason (as

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he reveals, following Hume, the antinomy between logical necessity and the objects of contingent experience), reinstates it as practical reason (the necessary existence of the subject of practice), consistent with Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza. See my study “The Ontological Argument for Existence.” 20. It is critically important to bear in mind that in Fear and Trembling the “universal” and the “ethical” (terms that are used interchangeably) are rigorously distinguished from the “religious” (as the absolute) and that they are to be no less rigorously distinguished from what Kant understands by universal and ethical (moral). The universal and the ethical of Fear and Trembling represent what Kant calls heteronomy, while his concept of the universal and the ethical as autonomy is compatible with the religious of Fear and Trembling. 21. Spinoza refers here to II.7C. I shall not be concerned with what I view to be merely a technical distinction between true ideas and adequate ideas. 22. In II.11C Spinoza equates the phrases “insofar as God is explained through the nature of the human mind” and “insofar as God constitutes the nature of the human mind.” In subsequent propositions he frequently cites proposition 11, together with its corollary. 23. Spinoza also includes signs, which are gathered from what we have read or heard and on the basis of which we imagine things, in the first kind of knowledge. 24. The analogy with arithmetical proportions that Spinoza uses to exemplify the third kind of knowledge is famously obscure (or even misleading), and I omit it. 25. I have translated this passage quite literally in order to capture the self-reflexive character of Spinoza’s formulations. 26. In volume II of my study I discuss Spinoza’s claim to demonstrate the propositions of the Ethics geometrically in light of his observation at the end of the preface of part III that “I shall treat the nature and strengths of the affects and the power of the mind over them according to the same method that I used in the preceding parts concerning God and the mind; and, consequently, I shall consider human actions and appetites as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies.” 27. I restrict my commentary here on the law of contradiction to drawing out from the “Apology” the basis of Montaigne’s critique, condemnation, and dismissal of ancient philosophy. I examine the law of contradiction systematically in my various studies of Greek thought, including, for example, an analysis of the argument of Aristotle in the Metaphysics that the law of contradiction, which he views as the fundamental principle of demonstration, cannot itself be demonstrated. Montaigne would surely also characterize as no less “equally absurd” the argument that the principle of demonstration, that is, the truth of judging absolutely, is based on the ignorance of absolutely not judging. 28. See note 19.

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4 Conclusion: Hermeneutics and Ontology

It is said that the Holy Scriptures should be treated like the writings of profane authors. One can do this with regard to what concerns the merely historical, the finite and external. But for the rest, it is a matter of comprehension by the Spirit; the profane [aspect] is not the attestation of the Spirit. (III.331) . . . The witness of spirit is thought. (III.346) Thought requires to know why it is necessary that God is. This necessity lies in the fact that in thought the object is taken not as having being, not just in its simple determinacy, its pure relation to itself, but essentially in relation to an other, so that it is essentially a relation of distinct elements. We call something “necessary” when, if one [element] exists, the other is thereby posited. The first only exists determinately insofar as the second exists, and vice versa. (I.406) . . . To the extent that I assuredly know that God is, the knowledge is my own being, is the coherence of myself with this content. As certainly as I am, so certainly God is, too. (I.408) . . . Religion exists only within selfconsciousness; outside that it exists nowhere. (I.412) . . . [R]eligion is our relation to God. We have said that this relation is found in thinking. (I.448) . . . The principle by which God is defined for human beings is also the principle for how humanity defines itself inwardly, or for humanity in its own spirit. (II.515) What we call God’s attributes—these characteristics of God in relation to the world and to the creatures—are God’s determinacies. . . . [S]ince we already saw God’s particularizing or self-determining, and saw this as the — 211 —

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creation of the world . . . , then the attributes of God are God’s relation to the world. . . . [I]t is a misguided expression if it means that we only know about this relation of God to the world but know nothing about God. Instead that relation is God’s very own determinateness, and hence God’s own attributes. (II.674) Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 18271 HE CHALLENGE OF SPINOZA TO MODERNITY

is at once hermeneutical and ontological. I shall first take up his hermeneutical challenge and subsequently relate it to the ontological argument with which he challenges us moderns to recognize, as Hegel indicates in the passage cited at the head of this chapter, that “to the extent that I assuredly know that God is, the knowledge is my own being . . .” While it is universally acknowledged that Spinoza is one of the founders of modern biblical criticism, it is not commonly recognized that, in sharply distinguishing his own principles of biblical critique, of hermeneutics, from both the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides and the skeptical fideism of Alfakhar, he establishes the modern principles of not only biblical but also, more generally, textual interpretation. In explicitly indicating that, in providing a critical evaluation of the Bible, of the Bible’s truth and authority, in the Theologico-Political Treatise, his principal aim is to separate philosophy from theology, he raises the question, for us, his modern readers, whether the Bible is to be read like any profane or secular text or whether, rather, any text, profane or secular, is to be read like the Bible. All readers of the Bible, from the beginning, have always acknowledged that the biblical text contains, if not evident errors, at least multiple anomalies, incongruities, contradictions, lapses, lacunae, etc. For example, one of the famous problems, duly noted early, was how Torah, the five books of Moses, in reporting his death, could have been (literally) written by him. Christians, later, not only had to deal with the text of the Hebrew Bible, now compounded by its complex relationship to the New Testament. But they also, for example, had to account for the four different, canonical versions of the life of Christ— often cannily similar, yet not infrequently uncannily dissimilar—not to mention Paul’s accounts of Christ, which predate the Gospel texts. Precisely because the Bible represents, for its readers, the truth and the authority of God, the apparent discrepancies of the holy Word demand, over the centuries, the most assiduous, the most fervent attention on the part of its readers. Exegetical practice demands hermeneutical principles, the principles of interpretation, which in turn are disciplined by and shaped and reshaped by the demands of exegesis, the demands of actually reading and making sense of the text. The paradox with which the biblical text confronts the reader—and with which the reader confronts the biblical text—is that the truth and the author-

T

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ity of God are written in, as, and through the biblical text: the book, Torah, law, Scripture, the word (of God). Not only, however, is the exalted Word of God written human law but also the commandment that “this book of the law” contains, Moses tells his people, “is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear and do it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” (Deut. 30.12–14)2

The paradox of the truth and the authority of God is that they are written not only in the book of the law but also in the heart of its hearers—“so that you can do it.” Hearing and reading, orality and literacy, are not to be viewed here as opposed to each other in the sense of being in principle different from each other. To read the Bible is to hear its commandment, and to hear its commandment is to go and do likewise: to love your neighbor as yourself. “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God,” Paul writes, “but the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom. 2.13 ).3 The paradox of the Bible is that, as the Word, the commandment, and the law of God, it is the word, the commandment, and the law of human beings, the word that they are to hear so as to be able to do it, to live it as the divine covenant of charity and justice in their human relationships. The paradox of the Bible is that its Word, its commandment, its law are at once divine and human. It would seem easy if the Bible could simply be viewed as divine revelation passing directly from God (actively) to human beings (passively), if the divine law could be viewed as simply for human beings. However, since human beings, as hearers of the law, are not merely passive recipients but, rather, active doers of it, they enact the word, the command, the law of God for God, before God. In this sense, then, the Bible passes from human beings to God—as they reveal the law of God in loving their neighbor as themselves. Because the readers of the Bible hear the Word of God as the covenant, that is, because the divine law that they do involves and expresses their covenantal relationships, the exegetical practice and the hermeneutical principles that readers bring to the Bible themselves bear the absolute paradox. The Word of God is not heard—done—outside of (without) the covenant (human relations); and human relations are not lived outside of (without) hearing, that is, doing, the Word of God, the divine commandment to do unto others as you would have others do unto you. God does not exist and cannot be conceived outside of (without) the covenant of charity and justice among human beings; and human thought and existence are not found outside of (without) the

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covenant of God. While it is evident, consequently, that the interpretive practice of biblical exegesis involves and expresses the ontological argument—and vice versa—there are yet additional elements of the hermeneutical paradox that I want to review here before going on to discuss the relationship of hermeneutics to ontology. Since the Word of God is human law—what human beings are to do—and since human law is the commandment of God—what human beings are to do—the issue of how the readers, the hearers, and the doers of the law correctly, that is, charitably and justly, interpret the Word of God, which is the law that they read, hear, and do, is of supreme importance in their lives. For the hermeneutical question is: where is the Word of God to be found? It is clearly found in God. But it is also found in Scripture. Indeed, Scripture is the Word of God. But this means that God is found in Scripture (just as he dwells in his temple or in the hearts of men and women?). Yet, as the ancient rabbis acknowledged, Scripture is written in the words of men (whence the characterization of the biblical text as equivocal or contradictory on the part of Maimonides, which induced him to write his guide for the philosophically perplexed).4 At the same time, however, the Word of God is found in the hearts of the readers and the doers of Scripture, as Moses, in the passage cited from Deuteronomy above, indicates. Can God be found outside of (without) his Word? Can God, the Word of God, be found outside of (without) his Scripture? What is the relationship between Scripture and scriptura or writing, between the Word of God and human words?5 Can human beings exist and think outside of (without) the Word of God, outside of (without) his Scripture, outside of (without) scriptura or writing? We see, then, that the principal hermeneutical question centers on the very nature of the Word, of words, of the text, of texuality, of writing. Writing (Word, text) is to be understood, not literally as graphical but rather as covenantal, as communication (whose action is both verbal, at once oral and written, and non-verbal), as the relationship of God and his people, as the relationship of the people in their diverse associations with each other, and as the relationship of individuals with themselves in their multiple self-affiliations. It is clear that Scripture, as the Word of covenant, is not found outside of (without) the covenant and that the covenant is not found outside of (without) its Word, the commandment to its hearers to be covenantal doers of charity and justice—before God, neighbor, and self (conscience). But what is it, then, that makes the Word of God true and authoritative? What are the truth and the authority of Scripture? Scripture itself makes clear, as we have now seen, that its truth and authority are to be found in its doing, not in the Word itself, not merely in the heard or the written word, and not, as we have also seen Spinoza indicate, in any particular (contingent or historical) collection of words (in-

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cluding, consequently, that particular collection of words that we know as the canonical Bible, which, by the way, differs both as between Jews and Christians and as among Christians). Indeed, Spinoza points out, as we also saw, that the bodies of Jews and of Christians that gathered in the early centuries of the common era to determine (to close) their respective biblical canons had to decide upon the truth and authority of the books that they admitted and that they omitted on the basis of criteria that were not internal to these books. They had to use their judgment in deciding whether the books that they examined contained the truth and authority of God. Yet it is Spinoza who argues, famously, that the Bible is to be read from itself alone. But it is also Spinoza who points out that readers must determine (from themselves alone) whether the biblical text, as determined historically, is true and authoritative. In other words, readers of Scripture must also be doers of Scripture. At the same time, however, Spinoza shows that Scripture, because it contains the commandments of charity and justice, is divine and unerring, notwithstanding the errors of both commission and omission with which it is replete, not to mention the fact that its original documents, for example, as brought down to earth by Moses from God atop Mt. Sinai, vanished long ago. But it also Spinoza who, when discussing what it is that constitutes the divine character of Scripture, observes that, if its readers, as hearers of the Word, fail to make true use of it, as doers of the Word, and let it fall into desuetude, then the Bible loses its divinity. The Bible, we see, is not true, sacred, or divine in itself but solely in terms of its “use,” its “doing” by its readers in living the scriptural commandments of charity and justice in and through the covenant. The Bible as the Word of God is not found outside of (without) its people, whose covenantal relations with God constitute the very story of the Bible. Again, it is clear that we broach the ontological argument. In doing the Word of God the people of the Book know God as the way of the covenant, the way of charity and justice. Indeed, it is fitting to recall here that the Bible as the Word of God, whose story demonstrates that truth (the covenant) is its own standard, the standard both of what is sacred and of what is idolatrous, is itself, paradoxically, the unique and the universal origin of idolatry in the world. For when the hearers of Scripture abuse their neighbor and undo their covenantal relations by treating others as they would not will to be treated by them, then the Bible and its God becomes idols in whose name crimes than which no greater can be conceived are committed. Suffice it to recall here the bitter anguish that the prophets evince in condemning the idolatry of their people, God’s chosen (as related in the Book of God), and the indignant consternation that Spinoza expresses in condemning the sectarian strife and hatred that result from the superstitious abuse of Scripture.

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What it is that determines whether anything, including Scripture as the Word of God, is sacred or rather profane or impure, as Spinoza points out in chapter 12 of the Theologico-Political Treatise with characteristic terseness, is nothing outside of (without) the mind—extra mentem—but only in respect of it. As I indicated in chapter 2, Spinoza does not directly tell us whose “mind” it is in respect of which, or in relation to which, Scripture, together with anything else in the world, including the neighbor, is used (truly) or abused (falsely). But in light of his general conception of the Bible—and of the hermeneutics that it demands—and also in light of the ontological argument (about which more shortly)—it is patent, I believe, that by “mind” Spinoza means the mind of God, the mind of Scripture, the mind of the reader, the mind of the people of the covenant, consistent with Hegel’s concept of Spirit as found in the passages from the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion cited at the head of this chapter. We can say that we are either mindful or mindless in how we read Scripture or treat the neighbor. But to be “mindless” is not to be outside of (or without) mind, except in the colloquial sense of being out of our mind. For mind is its own standard, the standard both of what is mindful and of what is mindless. “Mind”—whether the mind of God, Scripture, the reader, or the community—is not an object or a thing (notwithstanding Descartes’ definition of the mind or soul as a “thinking thing”). Rather, “mind” characterizes, that is, determines, our multiple relationships (and misrelationships). The mind of Scripture is its doctrine or teaching of charity and justice, of doing the Word of God. But mind is also, consequently, the principle of hermeneutics or interpretation by which we determine whether the biblical text (in whole and in part) is sacred, truthful, and authoritative. It is important, consequently, to see that the “mind,” in respect of which truth is determined, is not simply my mind as opposed to your mind. For it is precisely my mind in relationship to your mind—the relationship of our minds—that determines whether I and/or you are mindful or mindless. In itself, the mind cannot be said to exist or to be either mindful or mindless, just as the concepts of God in himself or of the Bible in itself are purely vacuous (except insofar as we view them as idols supporting superstitious reading of Scripture, whose result is superstitious doing). That it is in respect of the mind—and not extra mentem—that it is determined whether Scripture and thus any text or thing is sacred or rather profane or impure raises uncannily the further question about the scope or reach of Scripture as the holy book or writing. Is the Bible a text like any text? Can it be treated or read like any text? But what, then, is a text? Can a text be treated or read except insofar as it is like the Bible? In the passage cited at the head of this chapter Hegel states that the Holy Scriptures should be treated like the writings of profane authors, insofar as we are concerned with what

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he calls “the merely historical, the finite and the external. But for the rest,” he adds, “it is a matter of comprehension by the Spirit; the profane [aspect] is not the attestation of the Spirit.” What Hegel understands by the comprehension of the Spirit is surely, as I have already indicated, what Spinoza understands by “mind.” But what does Hegel mean here by “profane”? Does “profane” describe any text that is (literally) non-biblical, any text that it not the Bible? But when is a text not biblical? Does Hegel understand by “profane” what Spinoza calls impure (idolatrous, superstitious, false, untrue . . .)? Or by “profane” does he mean what is secular (rational) as distinct from what is religious (faithful)? Does Hegel include within the category of profane texts those that are extra-biblical, that is, texts that do not belong to the biblical tradition and that we conventionally call pagan, for example, the texts of ancient Greek and Roman authors, including those discussed in this study: the skeptics, Plutarch, Seneca, and Plato? My primary concern here, as I am sure is evident, is not with Hegel but with issues that consideration of his claim allows me to raise in light of my examination of Spinoza’s biblical hermeneutics. Clearly, readers would hold that the comprehensive treatment or reading of any text, which is a text, would involve and express what Hegel calls the attestation, or witness, of the Spirit—both the spirit of the text and their own spirit. While Hegel does not here raise the further question of how texts other than Scripture—whether nonbiblical, idolatrous, secular, or pagan (extra-biblical)—are to be treated or read, he would doubtless have expected his own text, his lectures on the philosophy of religion, to be heard by his students, that is, to be treated or read by them consistent with the witness of the Spirit, with Spirit comprehended as both the spirit of the lectures and the spirit of those attending (to) them. That his own lectures bear witness to the Spirit seems especially evident when Hegel, both in them and in his other magisterial works, consistently attests to the congruence of reason and (biblical) revelation, of (his own) philosophy and (biblical) religion. He does not recognize or countenance any division (or opposition) between reason and revelation.6 But, then, for Hegel is Spirit secular or religious, philosophical or theological, rational or faithful? In holding, like Hegel, that we cannot bear witness to the Spirit of Scripture extra mentem, it is clear that in the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza agrees with him that Scripture cannot be read like any profane text, that is, like any text that is lacking in spirit or mind. But the paradox here, as I have already noted, is that, while Spinoza argues that the Bible is to be read from itself alone, he also holds that its sacred or truthful authority can be determined, not extra mentem but solely with respect to the mind. So I ask with regard to Spinoza the questions that I have raised in the context of Hegel. What for Spinoza is the scope or reach of his principle of biblical hermeneutics and thus

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the scope or reach of Scripture? On the one hand, Spinoza would appear to be concerned with formulating a hermeneutical theory that is simply applicable to the Bible. Scripture is to be interpreted from itself alone. On the other hand, however, the standard by which we determine whether Scripture, like any text or thing, is sacred or rather profane or impure is by reference to or in relationship to the mind and not extra mentem. Is, then, Scripture the standard of the mind, or is the mind the standard of Scripture? Is the Bible like any text (that is a text), or is any text (that is a text) like the Bible? It is noteworthy that Spinoza himself does not explicitly or self-consciously pose this question, just as we saw, in chapter 2, that he does not indicate explicitly how it is that, while Scripture is to be read (faithfully) from itself alone, it must at the same time be read (rationally)—as I put it—from the reader alone. For Spinoza holds that it is solely on the basis of what he calls the natural light (of reason) that the reader judges or determines the truth or authority of Scripture. We have seen that the way in which Spinoza undertakes to establish his own concept of hermeneutics, including his understanding of the relationship of reason and faith, is to distinguish it from each of the opposed concepts of biblical interpretation that he associates with, respectively, Alfakhar and Maimonides. He agrees with Alfakhar that the Bible is to be read faithfully— internally—from itself alone. He agrees with Maimonides that the Bible is to be read rationally—externally—from the reader alone. But he shows that, insofar as these two positions are opposed to each other as internal and external, then each is false. While Alfakhar demonstrates lack of faith in his reason—and consequently also lack of faith in the biblical text—so Maimonides demonstrates lack of faith in the biblical text—and consequently also lack of faith in his reason. Spinoza’s own concept of hermeneutics is, consequently, doubly ironic. Not only does he indicate that he can overcome the contradiction inherent in both the skeptical fideism of Alfakhar and the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides by showing the position of each to be in itself at once contradictorily right and contradictorily wrong. But he also undertakes his hermeneutical critique in the name of what he calls the separation of philosophy from theology. He thus makes clear to us, indirectly, to be sure, that the separation of philosophy from theology, of reason from faith, cannot be understood in terms of the opposition between reason and faith that renders the hermeneutical principles of Maimonides and Alfakhar absolutely contradictory, the result of which, Spinoza finds, is the most fearsome superstition. Indeed, he holds that philosophy or reason and theology or faith, since they each involve and express charity and justice, share identical and thus universal content, although he continues to insist that their sources are fundamentally different (universal nature, in the first case, and historically conditioned language, in the second).

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In separating philosophy from religion what Spinoza undertakes to demonstrate is that each is the standard, or criterion, of the other, so long as their separation is understood to involve and express, paradoxically, the truth and authority, the sovereignty, of each and not the hierarchical subordination of one to the other in the tradition of the medieval scholasticism as represented by Maimonides and Alfakhar. Spinoza thus conceives of the relation of philosophy and theology, or of reason and faith, in precisely the same terms in which he conceives of the relationship between reading the Bible from itself alone and determining the truth and authority of the Bible, not extra mentem but solely in relationship to the mind. Spinoza holds that I have to separate the text of the Bible from my judgment of it as a reader just as I have to separate faith from reason, for only then can I determine (enact) their profound unity. I have to hear or read the text of the Bible, separate from myself, for only then shall I be in a position neither to impose myself directly on the text as merely passive (in the tradition of Maimonides) nor to have the text impose itself directly on me as merely passive (in the tradition of Alfakhar). In discovering, continually (historically), that, in order to be a true hearer or reader of the biblical text, I must also be a doer, its doer, I realize at the same time that the Bible, in demanding that I be a responsible hearer of the text as its doer, no less demands that I view it as responsibly demanding a hearing that is an active reading or doing and not merely a hearing that reflects a passive, hierarchical (and so uncritical, superstitious) dependency on it. Since it thus turns out that to be a faithful reader of the text is to be a rational doer—and to be a rational reader of the text is to be a faithful doer— we begin to see that the Bible is like any particular text insofar as any particular text is like the Bible. We see, further, that the scope and reach of the Bible are such that it comprehends all texts that are created in the image of the Bible and that the scope and reach of all texts are such that they comprehend the Bible as created in their image. The paradox of the biblical canon—at once Jewish and Christian—is that, in being closed (it contains this text and not that text), it is open (to containing this text and not that text). What, then, Spinoza points out, as we know, with his exquisite laconism is that, when Jews and Christians “closed” their respective biblical canons by including this text and excluding that text, they could have determined whether this text or that text did or did not contain the truth and sacred authority of God, not simply by reading the texts from themselves alone but, rather, solely in respect of the mind and not extra mentem. In other words, as Spinoza remarks, the Bible is truthful and sacred not because it includes (or excludes) this book or that book or because it is written in this language and not in that language, etc. Paradoxically, the Bible, which can be read solely from itself alone, is not contained within a certain number of finite books. For what constitutes the Bible

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is determined in respect of and not outside of (without) the mind. The Bible is closed, in the literal (certain, immediate, finite) sense, in that (for Jews and for Christians) it contains these certain books and not those certain books— like any text (which contains these certain chapters and not those certain chapters, etc.). But the Bible is infinitely open—it is continuously being heard, read, done (enacted), and so also written (created)—in the sense that it includes all texts that are not extra mentem and that it excludes all texts that are extra mentem, consistent with the original determination of the biblical canon. As Spinoza would remind us, while we can always and frequently do err in determining, in this or that time and place, whether this book or that book is canonical or not canonical, the principle of canonicity—that we not merely hear or read but also do the law of charity and justice—is inerrant. For if the principle of doing unto the neighbor what we would want the neighbor to do unto us were itself false or deceptive, we would have returned to the pagan world of Socratic ignorance, in which the canon of truthful or sacred authority is unknown as the other. What constitutes canonical authority consists of what Montaigne calls judging absolutely, that is, of being subject to the absolute judgment of the other (Scripture, God, neighbor, the self). What do I know? I know that, just as this text or that text is truthful, sacred, and authoritative insofar as it absolutely relates to and respects the mind of the reader as other, so the mind of the reader is truthful, sacred, and authoritative insofar as it absolutely relates to and respects the mind of the text as other. Neither the mind of the reader as other nor the mind of the text as other is extra mentem, for together they constitute the relationship of mind as otherness. Having now seen that the Bible is to be read like this text or that text, insofar as this text or that text is to be read like the Bible, we can return to the question, posed earlier, of how we are to understand what Hegel means by a “profane” text in contrast with Scripture. Spinoza, we have noted, is more precise than Hegel in indicating that by profane he means “impure” (false or idolatrous). In other words, the difference constituted by Spinoza’s concept of hermeneutics between the sacred (what is truthful and authoritative) and the profane (or what is impure) is not to be understood as the difference between God and human being, between theology and philosophy, between faith and reason, or, consequently, between the religious and the secular. For it is precisely the Bible that is rendered profane and impure, that is, idolatrous, like any text, by hearers or readers who repeat its words but do not do its divine law of loving others as themselves. But then it no less follows that, insofar as hearers or readers determine any particular text to be, not extra mentem, but in respect of their mind, they reveal it to be pure and sacred, like the Bible. For what Spinoza means by the relationship of mind is precisely what Moses and

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Paul, in the passages from Deuteronomy and Romans cited earlier, understand by doing the word of the law that is in the heart. The Bible is at once inclusive and exclusive.7 It includes all texts—whether divine or human—that are not extra mentem; and it excludes all texts, whether divine or human, that are extra mentem. It is also true that all texts—whether divine or human—are at once inclusive and exclusive. They include all texts that are not extra mentem within the Bible; and they exclude all texts that are extra mentem from the Bible. The consequence of rigorously thinking through Spinoza’s argument that the standard of what is “profane or impure” is not outside of (without) but solely in respect of or in relationship to the mind is arresting. On the one hand, what is conventionally viewed as religious, for example, Scripture, can be and often is rendered profane or impure, that is, idolatrous. On the other hand, what is conventionally viewed as secular, for example, the plays of Shakespeare, can be found to be sacred, religious, and divine. It is precisely in light of Scripture that nonbiblical texts are revealed to be sacred, just as it is in light of nonbiblical texts, which are not, however, outside of (without) the mind of the Bible, that Scripture is revealed to be a secular text. For Scripture, like any text or thing, is either true (at once sacred and secular) or idolatrous depending on its (loving) use or its (uncharitable) abuse by human beings. The paradox thus exposed by Spinoza is that the only distinction that counts, the only distinction for which we can account, is that between truth and idolatry, between being (true) doers of the word and (false) hearers of the word. He undertakes to separate philosophy from theology in order to show that it is precisely the distinction between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, between human being and divine being, between the human mind and the divine mind that allows us to account for, that requires us to account for, the distinction between truth (as at once human and divine) and idols (as, again, both human and divine). If we confuse philosophy with theology, the human with the divine (and vice versa), then the catastrophic result is superstition. For the distinction between good and evil, between truth and idol, is not that between the divine and the human, between the religious and the secular. The paradox of the Bible is that it renders all that is worldly—what is human or secular—divine (sacred), that is, creative (blessed). But the biblical paradox is doubled when we realize at the same time that all texts (all created things) render the Bible—what is divine or sacred—worldly, human, and secular, that is, covenantal (blessed). It thus turns out that, just as the divine is not found outside of (without) the secular mind of human beings, so the human or secular is not found outside of (without) the mind of God. The hermeneutical relationship continuously reveals itself, we keep discovering, in the reciprocal (dialectical) terms of the ontological argument.

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Another way of putting the biblical paradox is, as I noted earlier, that it is solely that which is sacred or true (at once divine and human, religious and secular) that can be falsified or undone (by faithless reading that results in irrational doing). It is ineluctably the truth, which is at once divine and human and to which we come bearing witness, that portends our greatest risk: God’s creation of human beings in his image and the creation on the part of human beings of God in their image, that is, in the image of the neighbor, in the image of the covenantal (or incarnational) other, whom one is commanded to love as oneself. In continuing for the present to restrict ourselves to hermeneutics and not to take up the relationship between hermeneutics and the ontological argument, we see that texts are their own standard, the standard of texts both as truly not extra mentem and as not truly and so falsely extra mentem. But, as Spinoza makes so very clear, false or inadequate texts reveal themselves to be false or inadequate precisely insofar as they purport to be truly adequate texts. We can know or judge something to be outside of (without) the mind, not on the basis of what is extra mentem but solely in relationship to it. What, however, are we to think of texts that are ignorant of themselves as texts, that are extra mentem or extra scripturam, that, having suspended their mind as having no basis in writing, reveal no knowledge of either human being or divine being, no knowledge of the other? I refer, for example, to the texts of the ancients that Montaigne interrogates in the “Apology for Raimond Sebond”: those of the skeptics, Plutarch, and Seneca, to which we can add the Socratic texts of Plato. Suffice it to note here that texts that are extra mentem and extra scripturam are not sacred as distinct from what is profane or impure (idolatrous). Nor are they sacred as distinct from what is secular. I want to add here that, in my judgment, consistent with both Montaigne and Spinoza, it is not fruitful to view Montaigne’s devastating critique of ancient texts as applying directly to them. For we know that the texts of the ancients, in their ignorance of the law of contradiction, cannot make and do not make any errors. (Socrates persistently demonstrates, consistent with the law of contradiction, that all error is done in ignorance of the good.) Rather, Montaigne’s critique of ancient thinkers is more fittingly to be understood as applying to those moderns (in the biblical tradition) who, as Spinoza writes, as we saw, in the preface of the Theologico-Political Treatise, accommodated Scripture to the speculations of the ancients “so that they would not appear to follow the pagans (gentiles). It was not enough for them to rave (insanire) with the Greeks, but they wanted the prophets to share in their delirium (cum iisdem deliravisse)” (5). Montaigne, like Spinoza, exposes the modern idolatry of insanely accommodating biblical knowledge to pagan ignorance. The focus of his devastating critique is not directly ancient paganism, in whose tradition thinkers persistently evince ignorance of both human and divine being. Rather, he fo-

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cuses his critique on thinkers in the modern (prophetic) tradition. When modern thinkers confound the covenantal knowledge of God and human beings with the claims of ancient philosophers to be ignorant of both gods and men in their contradictory opposition to each other, they reduce the scriptural authority of knowing absolutely to idolatrous ignorance and elevate the ignorance of absolutely not knowing to the authority of Scripture. In demonstrating that to read Scripture from itself alone is to reveal its truth and sacred authority to be determined, not extra mentem but solely in respect of the mind, what Spinoza shows us at the same time is that, just as Scripture is not found outside of (without) the mind, so the mind is not found outside of (without) Scripture. The mind of scripture is the writing of the mind (and heart), and the scripture of mind is the mind of writing. Mind, we recall, in being the mind of the covenant—and so the mind of both God and human beings—contains and enacts the commandment not merely to hear and to read but actually to do the Word of God, to live mindfully, at once rationally and faithfully. Thus, it turns out that, just as the truth and authority of Scripture are determined not extra mentem but solely in respect of the mind, so the truth and authority of every text is determined, not extra scripturam but solely in respect of Scripture. The mind of Scripture cannot be known outside of (without) the mind of all texts; and the mind of all texts cannot be known outside of (without) the mind of Scripture. Complete within itself and readable solely from itself alone, the canon of Scripture is determinable, not extra mentem but solely in respect of the mind of all texts. The canonicity of all texts, which are complete within themselves and readable solely from themselves alone, is determinable, not extra scripturam but solely in respect of Scripture. Because the canon of Scripture is not found outside of (without) the mind of its readers and doers, as members of the covenant, and because the mind of readers and doers, as members of the covenant, is not found outside of (without) the canon of Scripture, both Scripture, as comprehending all texts (as scripture), and all texts, as comprehending Scripture (as writing), are—freely, undecidedly, necessarily, miraculously, equally—divine and human, religious and secular, faithful and rational, and theological and philosophical. Spinoza separates philosophy from theology, reason from faith, the reader from the text, the standard of mind (as truthful authority) from the methodology of reading Scripture (historically) from itself alone precisely as he separates God from human being in the ontological argument, as we saw in the previous chapter. But as I have emphasized throughout my study, the way in which Spinoza conceives of the separation of the divine from the human is totally other than the way in which Maimonides and Alfakhar, in their contradictory opposition to each other, conceive of it. While the separation of reason and

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faith, as found in Maimonides and Alfakhar, involves their hierarchical (contradictory) opposition to each other such that the truth of one falsifies the other, what Spinoza shows us is that it is solely his conception of the separation of philosophy from theology, of human being from God, that authorizes us to account for the truth and the error of each. The separation of the divine from the human is not to be understood in terms of the opposition between truth and error. Indeed, it is solely the separation of philosophy from theology, such that one is not opposed to the other as truth and error are opposed to each other, that allows us to see that truth and error are at one and the same time divine and human, scriptural and textual, faithful and rational, religious and secular. Consistent with the ineluctable invocation of the ontological argument in the above paragraphs, it has become ever more evident in my study, surely, that the hermeneutical relationship between Scripture and mind, between text and reader, between faith and reason, between theology and philosophy, and between the religious and the secular is precisely the relationship between God and the human person (both individual and communal) that is articulated in the ontological argument proving the necessary existence of God (and of human being). Just as God is not known, and does not exist, in himself—in se— but only as he is conceived by human beings, so human beings do not know themselves and do not exist in themselves, as finite modes—in alio—but only as they conceive of themselves as existing in and through God. For human beings to be in alio, that is, to know that they are in alio, is, as I showed in chapter 3, to exist and to know that they exist in se. For God to exist as the cause of himself in se is to be known by human beings as existing in alio. That nothing exists or is known in itself—neither divine being nor human being—but only in and through, as, the other in the necessary relationship of thought and existence is the hermeneutical truth of the ontological argument and the ontological truth of hermeneutics. Still, it is hardly surprising that hermeneutics is ontological and that the ontological argument is hermeneutical once we see that each is covenantal (incarnational). The covenant, the necessary relation of thought and existence, at once divine and human, does not exist and cannot be thought outside of (without) God; and God does not exist and cannot be thought outside of (without) the covenant. But it is also the case that the covenant does not exist outside of (without) Scripture—the Word of God. Yet we have also now learned that the truth and authority of the divine Word exist and can be thought, not extra mentem but solely in relationship to the mind. But the paradox here is, to repeat, that the mind is the mind of God, the mind of Scripture, and the mind of human beings (called the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition). When Spinoza writes axiomatically, in all apparent simplicity, that “man thinks,” what he shows us is that, in responding to the question of Montaigne

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which is at once hermeneutical and ontological—What do I know?—I do think, I must think something necessarily existing, with necessary existence qualifying two existing subjects, both the subject “I” (thinking) and the subject (thought). These two subjects are one and the same subject; yet at the same time the subject is always other than itself. So Hegel writes in the passage cited at the head of this chapter, in the context of hermeneutics, that “the witness of spirit is thought.” That thinking embodies the spirit of bearing witness—to the truth (authority) of the other—in response to Pilate’s Socratic question (What is truth?), when understood in the modern (biblical) terms of Montaigne (What do I know? To what do I bear witness?), shows us that God does not and cannot exist outside of (without) the thought (mind) of human beings and that human beings do not and cannot think (or bear witness to the truth) outside of (without) the existence of God (and vice versa). The necessary relationship of thought and existence, to which God and human beings bear mutual witness in the covenant, shows us that we cannot think (or know) ourselves (as existing) without thinking (or knowing) the other (as existing) and that we cannot think (or know) the other (as existing) without thinking (or knowing) ourselves (as existing). It is little wonder, then, that Jesus articulates the covenantal law as loving God above all others and your neighbor as yourself. Just as love involves and expresses relationship, so does thought (or knowledge). Indeed, when Spinoza writes that truth is its own standard, the standard both of the truth and of what is not the truth, the truth in which we know ourselves to exist—in response to the question: What truth do I know? (What is the truth that I know?)—cannot exist and does not exist in itself and cannot be known and is not known in itself. It is precisely the other—God, the neighbor, and the self (as at one and the same time God and neighbor)—that is the standard of truth. It is only in relationship to the truth—of the other—that I can think and exist. Thus, we can see that the concept of truth as its own standard is but the articulation of the cause of itself and so of the ontological argument, tout court. The cause of itself as involving and expressing truth as its own standard—to whose necessary existence, in thinking, I bear witness—is that which cannot and does not exist outside of (without) being thought and which cannot be and is not thought outside of (without) existing. The fact that proof or demonstration is at one and the same time the hermeneutical articulation and the ontological explication of the necessary relationship of thought and existence, both divine and human, the fact that we do not begin our proof or demonstration without (always) already having begun to think—the other as existing as the cause of itself, as God, as the neighbor—is but one more expression of the paradox. We cannot begin to think without (always) already having begun to think. But we cannot have

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(eternally) begun to think without beginning—now, freely—to think. (“To exist” bears the same structure of paradox as “to think”.) We recall, in fear and trembling, Kierkegaard’s formidable articulation of the paradox. If the beginning is always eternal, then it has never begun (for me). Still, if I begin with no recognition (or self-consciousness) of the fact that I begin in relationship to the other—God, neighbor, and self—if I do not recognize that, in bearing witness to the truth, I acknowledge my creation in and through the other— then I make no beginning at all. For there is no beginning outside of (without) the relationship to beginning. There is no beginning outside of (without) beginning in relation—to existing and thinking—in and through the other. In beginning to think and to exist, I do not create the other (as the cause of itself) from myself alone (or in itself alone). In beginning to think and to exist, I recognize the other as that in and through which I necessarily (eternally and freely) think and exist. But I also recognize that the other does not (begin to) exist and cannot be thought (as beginning) outside of (without) beginning in and through my existence and thought. In order to begin—with the question: What do I know?—I know that I begin with the necessary (free) thought and existence of the other. But I also know that, in order for the other to exist and to be thought, I must necessarily (freely) begin. As Hegel writes rather dryly in the passage cited at the head of this chapter: “We call something ‘necessary’ when, if one [element] exists, the other is thereby posited.” The paradox that the eternity of the other begins with my thought and existence and that, in beginning with the thought and existence of the other, I begin eternally articulates the structure of history. History is the paradox of temporality that, in order to begin (to exist and to think), I begin—in and through, as, the other— both eternally and temporally. I begin (and end) in the necessary, that is, in the historical relationship of eternity and time and not in their contradictory opposition to each other. The paradox of history is captured by what we found called in Fear and Trembling “another explanation.” When, in responding to the question—What do I know?—I bear witness to the other as that in and through which my thought and existence come into necessary relationship, I have another explanation, a hermeneutical and an ontological explanation, of my thought and existence. I do not believe that I can go or that I do go further than Abraham, further than the other, further than being a faithful and a rational human being. In not simply hearing and reading but in actually doing the Word of God, I do not go beyond Abraham in loving God above all others and my neighbor as myself. Yet, in bearing witness to the necessary otherness of my thought and existence, that is, in putting my whole life in the love of the other and in putting the love of the other in the whole of my life, I do believe that, in not standing still and so in getting at least as far as Abraham, I have another

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explanation of my life, an explanation the necessity of which is at once historical and paradoxical. The paradox of history involves my relationship to the other. (My relationship to the other expresses the history of the paradox.) In beginning with the necessary thought and existence of the other, I find that the other already (eternally and necessarily) exists. Yet, I also find—in hearing and reading the other from itself alone—that I can determine the truth and authority of our relationship, not extra mentem, but solely in relation to it. In other words, the thought and existence of the other come into existence in and through my thought and existence. History is the paradox that, while the relationship of thought and existence is necessary and eternal, it must freely come into thought and existence with every individual, with every generation. If my relationship with the other were always eternal, then it would never be(come) eternal. If my relationship with the other were always temporal (contingent), then it would never be(come) temporal. The paradox of history, as the necessary (free) relationship of time and eternity, is that, as soon as I am (temporal), God and neighbor, as the other, must (always, eternally, already, and necessarily) have been in relationship to me and that, as soon as others exist as thought and are thought as existing in and through their (temporal) relation with me, I must always have been eternal and necessary.8 It is important not to confuse history, when understood as the paradoxical relationship of thought and existence, at once divine and human, both eternal and temporal, with history, when understood as finite, external, and profane and to which, as Hegel indicates in the passage cited at the head of this chapter, Spirit does not bear thoughtful witness. While Hegel is rightly celebrated for his comprehensive concept of history as the infinite story of Spirit (for his concept of infinite Spirit as historical), which I invoked in chapter 2, he does not directly link history as the paradoxical relationship of time and eternity with either hermeneutics or the ontological argument. I appeal to Hegel here in order to draw attention to the fact that Spinoza, too, makes use of two fundamentally different concepts of history. Typically, Spinoza draws a sharp contrast between history as finite, external, and contingent (if not profane!) and eternity as infinite, in se, and necessary. But, as we have learned to see, the duality of opposing terms that we find in Spinoza—temporal and eternal, human and divine, in alio and in se, finite and infinite, etc.—is rendered paradoxical (and consequently not contradictory) in and through the necessary relationship of thought and existence as that which constitutes for him the ontological argument. The human cannot be viewed as merely temporal (or finite) and the divine cannot be viewed as simply eternal (or infinite) when we come to see, both hermeneutically and ontologically, that each, as the other’s other, constitutes in and through the other the paradoxical relationship of history. Furthermore, while Spinoza in the Theologico-Political Treatise, advocates

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a critically historical methodology, which remains fundamental to modern scholarship, in reading Scripture from itself alone, he also makes it clear that we can overcome the contradictory opposition between the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides and the skeptical fideism of Alfakhar solely when the truth of Scripture is determined, not historically or extra mentem but rather in historical relationship to the mind. That truth is its own historical standard, the standard both of what is truly historical and of what is not truly historical Spinoza articulates through his remarkably subtle understanding of the dialectic of truth and falsity in Scripture, as we saw in chapter 2. While Scripture is replete with historical errors, due to both the erosion of time and the perversity of human beings, whether intended or unintended, its covenantal doctrines of charity and justice expressing the relationships of God and human beings involve the truth of history. That the doctrines of charity and justice cannot be falsified by human beings, in the name of God, no matter how heinous their crimes, without the perversity of their actions being at once exposed by charity and justice as their standard, indicates that charity and justice are not finitely historical but truthfully historical. Indeed, Spinoza exposes the paradox of history with the insight that, although over (through) time much of Scripture has been lost or corrupted, it is precisely the transmission of Scripture historically—from person to person, from community to community, and from generation to generation in their covenantal relationships—that testifies to the sacred and eternal, that is, to the human truth of its authority. In other words, human beings cannot and do not (completely) distort or corrupt history without being exposed thereby. If history were so totally distorted or corrupted that men and women were simply ignorant of it, then all knowledge that history was distorted or corrupted would vanish into the total ignorance of history. The paradox, as always, is that it is only when history is known as truthful, only when human beings know the truth of history, that they can account for the corruptions of history, whether due to the erosion of time or to human perversity. That there is an exact analogy between history and language is hardly surprising, given that language (as communication) is central to historical transmission, to the transmission of history. While language, like history, is subject to the distortions of time and the corruptions of human beings, still, it is only on the basis of linguistic communication (the covenant) as its own standard that we can account for its distortions and corruptions. As Spinoza points out, as we have seen, if I set out to corrupt language, I must also at the same time paradoxically uphold its truth. Otherwise, I would be no less ignorant of the truth than the other whose position I intended to corrupt through my corruption of his but not my own language. The paradox here is that, in undertaking to contradict

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the other by perverting language, that is, by perverting his but not my own language, I simply end up contradicting myself. In holding up the truth of language in my contradiction of it, it is I who am thereby revealed as contradictory. It is instructive here to invoke the distinction that Kant makes between truth (the moral law) and lying and so also (indirectly) between paradox and contradiction. He points out that, although lying is universal (all human beings are sinners), lying is not and cannot be made into a universal law.9 Put differently, although all human beings, as sinners, constantly lie both to others and to themselves—they contra-dict others and themselves by lying—the law of contradiction is not and cannot be made into a universal principle (of modernity). For, if contradiction were a universal law or principle, then all knowledge of contradiction would vanish into contradictory ignorance. We would not and could not know that we lie; for, as Socrates demonstrates, on the basis of the law of contradiction, all lying, sin, or perversion is done in ignorance, in unknowing contradiction, of the truth. We may recall Spinoza’s canny observation that, while nobody can undertake to change (to pervert) the universal (that is, the historical) meaning of a word—for then the usage of that word would have to be expunged from the historical record—individual words and passages (texts), for example, words and passages in Scripture, can be corrupted by the learned. But the fact that individual words or texts can be corrupted once again demonstrates the inviolable divinity (and humanity!) of Scripture and so also of language (writing) itself as covenantal. That historical and linguistic usage (communication) demonstrates the uninfringeable doctrine that the human members of the covenant are not merely hearers and readers but principally doers of the Word of God is also reflected in the avowal on the part of Spinoza that Scripture is historically necessary. Although he acknowledges that the truth of prophetic revelation, the doctrine of charity and justice for all, is identical with the universal truth of the natural light of reason, he also concedes that reason itself cannot explain (demonstrate) that the Bible contains this truth. In other words, Spinoza admits that reason cannot deduce the historical existence of Scripture (revelation) from first principles that are universal in human nature. That his argument is, consequently, under considerable strain here Spinoza himself acknowledges, as I showed in chapter 2. Since he claims to separate philosophy (reason) from theology (revelation), he grants that he is consequently obligated to explain why and how the reader makes use of his reason in consenting to the revealed truth of Scripture, that is, in judging historical Scripture to be universally truthful. I shall summarize in the following six points the chief elements that emerge in the argumentation that Spinoza uses in his strained attempt to explain the

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relationship of universal reason and of historical faith (revelation), that is, of universal necessity and of historical necessity: 1. He upholds two different concepts of necessity, one universal and the other historical. Or we can say that he upholds two different concepts of universality, one based on nature and the other based on history. But Spinoza does not tell us how the two concepts are related to each other or how both can be true. In other words, he does not explain how necessity is both universal and historical or how universality is both natural (“innate”) and historical. 2. The claim of Spinoza that reason is universal is essentially nullified with his acknowledgment that there is one thing that reason cannot explain on its own terms: the historical necessity of Scripture. 3. Spinoza fails to acknowledge the link that manifestly exists between the historical necessity of Scripture and the fact that Scripture has reached us—that it has been historically transmitted or communicated to us— whole, complete, true, and original, notwithstanding the fact that it is partial, mutilated, and full of errors and that its original has been irretrievably lost. 4. In holding that, because God is equally gracious to all peoples, he would not have chosen the ancient Israelites above others, Spinoza claims that God sent prophets not only to his chosen people (as we know from Scripture) but also to all extra-scriptural peoples (of which Scripture gives no evidence). But, as I pointed out in chapter 2, it is noteworthy that Spinoza does not, then, undertake to educe any evidence from pagan (extra-scriptural) texts for this claim. Nor does he ever suggest that the prophetic doctrines of charity and justice for all are to be found in Platonic, Aristotelian, or Stoic texts. 5. Spinoza does not indicate how we might understand the relationship between the “reason” that the reader of Scripture exercises in following the scriptural demand to be not merely a hearer but first and foremost a doer of the Word of God and the “mind” outside of (without) which there is no determination of the truth and authority of Scripture. 6. It is also significant that Spinoza, while holding that reason is universal in human nature, does not, in the tradition of the high medieval scholasticism as represented, for example, by Maimonides, Aquinas, and Dante, cite Greek or Roman thinkers in support of this claim. Indeed, all the direct evidence to be found in the three works of Spinoza under consideration both in this volume and in volume II of my study, which are his three principal writings, indicates that he would agree with Montaigne

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that the concept of reason that is found in ancient philosophers is “equally absurd” or contradictory. While this direct evidence is limited (although persuasive), the indirect evidence found in his writings is overwhelming (and compelling). This indirect evidence is of two kinds. First, silence. Spinoza does not claim, in the tradition of high medieval scholasticism, that the ancients—for example, Aristotle, as viewed by Maimonides and Aquinas, or Virgil, as viewed by Dante (in the Divine Comedy)—have a concept of universal human reason (yet, a concept of reason that, as the ancilla of faith, leads human beings, in transparent contradiction of the prophets, from nature to the grace of revelation). Second, affirmation. In separating philosophy from theology, Spinoza demonstrates, and intends to demonstrate, that both reason and faith proclaim the human love and knowledge of God and neighbor. This proclamation is unknown in the pagan world of the ancient Greeks and Romans. While the points outlined in the above paragraph reflect the very considerable strain in the argumentation that Spinoza uses in attempting to explain the relationship between universal reason and historical faith, both of which are necessary, still they also reveal his exemplary, intellectual probity in committing no fundamental errors in presenting them. He does not compromise the truth of the prophets—as at once historical and universal—although he cannot yet explain how what is historically necessary is universally true and how what is universally necessary is historically true. What is significant, above all, however, is his demonstration that it is precisely the historical transmission (communication) of Scripture that confirms (guarantees) its universal truth and authority. Indeed, the fact that all members of the covenant universally transmit and communicate the truth (of Scripture) historically to others as they would want others universally to transmit and to communicate the truth (of Scripture) historically to them constitutes the very demonstration that love of neighbor is equally universal and historical and so necessary. The truth of the other is necessarily both historical and universal, at once hermeneutical and ontological. In demonstrating that, in light of Montaigne’s question—What do I know?—I respond, I must respond, with the absolute judgment that there is one thing that I cannot think (love) without existing necessarily—God, the neighbor, the self—Spinoza shows us that the hermeneutical relationship of reader and Scripture embodies precisely the same relationship of human being and God as found in the ontological argument. Both the hermeneutical relationship and the ontological relationship entail the necessary relationship of thought and existence, which are at once human and divine. Indeed, just as the truth and authority of Scripture are known, not extra mentem but solely in relation to the mind of the reader, so the necessary existence of God as the cause of itself in the ontological argument is known, not extra mentem but

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solely in relation to the mind of the human being. Or we can say that, just as the truth and authority of the reader are known, not extra scripturam but solely in relation to its command not merely to hear and to read but actually to do the Word of God in loving your neighbor as yourself, so the truth and authority of human beings are known, not outside of (without) the thought and existence of God but solely in necessary (free) relationship to them. But the paradox here is that, while the ontological argument articulates the relationship of human beings and God in terms that are essentially scriptural or prophetic, the hermeneutics of biblical interpretation articulates the relationship of human beings and God in the very terms of the ontological argument. We—thinkers in the philosophical tradition of the ontological argument and readers in the scriptural tradition of hermeneutics—find ourselves, in reflecting upon our reading of Spinoza, positioned between philosophy and religion, to invoke the general heading in terms of which the issues central to this study are engaged. While Spinoza undertakes to separate philosophy from theology, what he shows us, as we have seen, is that we can overcome their contradictory opposition, as found in the opposed hermeneutics of Maimonides and Alfakhar, solely in comprehending each as the—separate, independent, necessary, paradoxical—truth of the other. If we oppose reason to faith, or faith to reason, then we lose the truth of both. If we oppose God and human beings to each other as truth and error are opposed to each other, if we do not see that truth as its own standard is at once divine and human, both faithful and rational, then we shall give up truth to error and error to truth, than which no greater injustice, whether to God or to the neighbor, can be conceived to exist. It is evident, consequently, that the ontological argument does not take us further than Abraham. Indeed, it is the central claim of the ontological argument that, while human beings do not go beyond God, they discover that, in being tested by God as the other, they do not stand still but at least get as far as knowing that God is the one thing that they cannot conceive without necessarily existing. But no less central to the ontological argument is the claim that God does not go beyond human beings. For God, Spinoza shows us, can exist and be thought, not extra mentem but solely in relationship to the mind of the members of the covenant. As Hegel writes in the passage cited at the head of this chapter, “What we call God’s attributes—these characteristics of God in relation to the world and to the creatures—are . . . God’s relation to the world. . . . [I]t is a misguided expression if it means that we only know about this relation of God to the world but know nothing about God.” Indeed, all that we know and can know about God—all that God knows and can know about himself—is his creation, his relationship to those singular creatures of his who are created in the image of divine relationship. Just as God does not

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exist and cannot be known in himself but solely in relation to the other, so human beings do not exist and cannot be known in themselves but solely in relation to the other. Human beings and God are each the—historical, universal, and paradoxical—truth of the other in the necessary relationship of their thought and existence. The ultimate paradox, then, of what the examination of Spinoza in this study has revealed to us is that we can understand his thought as modern only insofar as we understand it to be biblical and that we can understand it as biblical only insofar as we understand it to be modern. Indeed, what Spinoza shows us, once we see that his thought can be comprehended beyond contradiction solely when grasped as at once biblical and modern and so positioned historically between philosophy and religion, is that the Bible, in bringing hermeneutics and the ontological argument into historical (creative) existence, is modern from the beginning and that modernity, in creating and being created historically by the ontological argument and the hermeneutics of Scripture, is biblical unto the end. As Hegel writes in the passage cited at the head of this chapter, “Religion exists only within self-consciousness; outside that it exists nowhere. . . . [R]eligion is our relation to God.” But it is equally the case that, because nothing exists or can be thought outside of (without) self-consciousness and because self-consciousness constitutes the necessary relationship of thought and existence, self-consciousness does not exist outside of (without) the necessary thought and existence of the other: God, neighbor, and self. The fact that the Bible is modern from the beginning indicates that in the end we cannot and do not go further than Abraham. The fact that modernity is biblical unto the end testifies to the fact that, in not standing still in the beginning and so in getting at least as far as the scriptural father of philosophy in knowing the other as the cause of itself, in and through which everything is conceived and exists, we have, in the end, another explanation of our beginning. That explanation is the ontological argument when understood as biblical hermeneutics; and it is the hermeneutics of the Bible when understood as the ontological argument. Just as the biblical canon creates all texts in and through the necessary relationship of thought and existence and just as the ontological argument creates the thought and existence of all human beings in and through the scriptural necessity of not just hearing or reading but actually doing the Word of God, so the Bible is to be understood as secular from the beginning and modernity is to be understood as religious unto the end. To comprehend the thought of Spinoza is to comprehend the necessary, the historically necessary, relationship of biblical hermeneutics and the ontological argument. To comprehend the historically necessary relationship of biblical hermeneutics and the ontological argument is to comprehend modernity

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as thinkable, not extra scripturam but solely in relationship to Scripture, and the Bible as thinkable, not extra mentem but solely in relationship to mind. As we comprehend the thought of Spinoza, so we comprehend modernity as constituted by and constituting the relationship of biblical hermeneutics and the ontological argument. As we comprehend the relationship of biblical hermeneutics and the ontological argument as constituting and constituted by modernity, so we comprehend the thought of Spinoza as modern insofar as it is biblical and as biblical insofar as it is modern. To comprehend modernity as biblical and the Bible as modern is the hermeneutical and ontological challenge that Spinoza offers to the heirs of Abraham.

Notes 1. The emphasis is in the original. The whole words in square brackets were added by the editor. 2. Alter comments on Deut. 30.12–13 as follows: “The Deuteronomist, having given God’s teaching a local place and habitation in a text available to all, proceeds to reject the older mythological notion of the secrets or wisdom of the gods. It is the daring hero of the pagan epic who, unlike ordinary men, makes bold to climb the sky or cross the great sea to bring back the hidden treasures of the divine realm—as Gilgamesh crosses the sea in an effort to bring back the secret of immortality. This mythological and heroic era, the Deuteronomist now proclaims, is at an end, for God’s word, inscribed in a book, has become the intimate property of every person” (1029). 3. James writes: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing” (2.22–25). 4. Maimonides notes in the Guide of the Perplexed that the Sages, that is, the rabbis of the Talmud, observe that “The Torah speaks in the language of the sons of man . . .” (vol. I, 140. Emphasis in the original. See also vol. I, 100.) 5. Derrida’s concept of writing as the deconstruction of ontological presence (i.e., of the repression of the trace of otherness) is relevant here. See my article “Tragedy Is—Scription Contra-Diction.” 6. I am not concerned here with Hegel’s further (and, in itself, untrue) claim that philosophy, in attesting to the true spirit of religion (Christianity), renders rationally self-conscious what remains unselfcomprehending in revealed faith. 7. Buber writes in I and Thou that “in the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one” (127; also see 148). What he does not state explicitly yet implicitly presupposes with his concept of the two-fold relation of I-You and I-It is that, in terms of my discussion here, when texts idolatrously con-

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flate the unconditional I-You with the conditional I-It or when texts are contradictorily ignorant of the distinction between the unconditional I-You and the conditional I-It, such texts are excluded by texts in the scriptural tradition (i.e., those bearing the hermeneutical and ontological relatedness of I-You) as not truly texts, as not truly inclusive or exclusive in their relation to the other. Or we could say that such texts are included by texts in the scriptural tradition only when they forsake the chains by which they are contradictorily bound to the opposition between excluding and including the other. 8. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, in the context of indicating that he takes up once again the issue that was central to Philosophical Fragments—that an eternal happiness is based upon something historical—Kierkegaard writes (pseudonymously) that when the individual, who was not eternal, now becomes eternal and so becomes what he was not, he “becomes something that has the dialectic [which here is identified with Christianity] that as soon as it is it must have been, because this is the dialectic of the eternal.––What is inaccessible to all thinking [i.e., to thinking that is not dialectical or paradoxical but is based on the law of contradiction] is: that one can become eternal [historically in time] although one was not eternal” (573). 9. Kant writes in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that, when I ask myself whether I could bring lying into conformity with duty, “I soon become aware that I could indeed will the lie, but by no means a universal law to lie; for in accordance with such a law there would properly be no promises at all, since it would be futile to avow my will with regard to my future actions to others who would not believe this avowal or, if they rashly did so, would pay me back in like coin; and thus my maxim, as soon as it were made a universal law, would have to destroy itself [i.e., reveal itself as contradictory]” (57).

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Appendix 1 Critical Commentary on Works Relating to Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity

OR REASONS OF BOTH ECONOMY AND UTILITY, I have gathered together here in

F

a critical commentary my general remarks on the works of scholars and thinkers that are relevant to both volumes I and II of my study. I discuss these works in four sections. In section 1, I comment broadly on works relating to Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity. In section 2, I cite works critical of Strauss’ approach to Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise and also indicate my agreement with the formulations of key ideas of Spinoza in one of these studies (by Harris). Additionally, I show that Fackenheim, while following Strauss in his dismissal of Spinoza as a biblical thinker, concludes his book by associating, apparently unbeknownst to himself, the future of Jewish thought with the ontological argument, which, as the lynchpin of Spinoza’s philosophy, is at once biblical and modern. In section 3, I comment on scholars’ views of two elemental constituents of Scripture that are critical to understanding Spinoza (together with the Bible and modernity): the concept of creation and the Garden of Eden story. In section 4, I discuss the approach that scholars take to democracy, given its central role in Spinoza.

Section 1 For scholars and thinkers who uncritically presuppose in Spinoza a fundamental dualism between philosophy and religion, between naturalism and supernaturalism, between immanence and transcendence, between the human and the divine, or between the finite and the infinite and thus typically claim — 237 —

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that Spinoza rejects or compromises biblical religion (and its concepts of creation and revelation) for what is secular and naturalistic see Allison, Bennett, Curley, Donagan, Fackenheim, Gatens and Lloyd, Israel, Levinas, Levy, Marion, Nadler, Popkin, Preus, Smith, Strauss, Yaffe (“Interpretive Essay,” as found in his translation of the Theologico-Political Treatise), Yovel, and Zac. For fruitful readings of Spinoza that are not dualistic or reductionist see Balibar, Goodman, Harris, Lagrée, Levene (Spinoza’s Revelation), Lloyd, Macherey, and Mason. Spinoza has generally not been viewed as central to the history of modern thought—philosophical, religious, political, and/or ethical—precisely because he so fundamentally contests the standard dualisms of the secular (the human) and the religious (the divine) in terms of which that history is conventionally written. He challenges any account that reduces modernity to ideas and practices that are secular, naturalist, scientific, or materialist when dualistically opposed to ideas and practices that are religious, transcendental, ontological, or spiritual. Still, from time to time he does find champions among those whose grounding in radical political thought and psychology leads them to question traditional accounts of modernity. But few, indeed, are the radical thinkers who are prepared to follow Spinoza in founding politics (democracy) on the Seven Dogmas of Faith or ethics on the ontological argument, not to mention founding faith on politics or the ontological argument on ethics. This is where the learned study of Israel goes so badly astray. Consider also two recent books, one by Hardt and Negri and the other by Damasio. They challenge mainline accounts of, respectively, global politics and the relationship between the brain and the emotions (i.e., ethics). The reader may be helped in determining whether these studies are true to Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity—and whether they can be true to one if they are not true to all three simultaneously—in light of the reviews of these studies by, respectively, Fukuyama and Hacking. While focusing on how Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine advance Spinoza’s conception of Enlightenment and modernity, Goetschel writes: “One of the endemic problems in discussing Spinoza has always been how and where to situate him within the narrative of the history of philosophy. . . . The very problem of placing him thus poses a principal question, and how one answers this question determines the understanding and interpretation of his philosophy [i.e., of his separation of philosophy from religion]. . . . Spinoza’s is the only modern philosophy that makes religion possible for modern consciousness” (257–58, 264). Norris, in contrast, fails to see that the critical values that are central to modernity are the very ones that Spinoza himself knows and shows to be biblical. While Taylor recognizes that the fundamental values creating the modern self are what he calls Judaeo-Christian, he does not deal with

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Spinoza. See also Zˇizˇek, whose Hegelian understanding of key elements of Christianity—including God, Christ, and the Messianic; the relationship between God and man and between the eternal and the temporal; the concepts of the absolute, omnipotence, creation, salvation, and revelation; and (above all) the story of the Fall—is excellent. Like Hegel, he clearly understands the importance of absolutely distinguishing the principles of Christianity from those of (what he calls) paganism. Still, in following Hegel, Zˇizˇek remains uncritical in two key areas. He continues to view Spinoza as a “monist,” whose basic doctrine is that of “the pure positivity of Being” (see 24 and 141), and to conceive of Christianity as the realization (fulfillment) of Judaism. I want to add that Stark, in his two profoundly engaging books, shows that religious reform (pluralism), natural science, principled opposition to slavery as sin against God, but also witchcraft are all to be understood, and can only be understood, as the deductions, initiated by medieval, scholastic thinkers critical of Aristotelianism, of the rationality (human freedom) inherent in the absolutely One True God of biblical revelation. He writes that “monotheism may well have been the single most significant innovation in history. . . . The overall purpose of this book [For the Glory of God] is to show how ideas about God have shaped the history and culture of the West, and therefore of the world—including both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consequences” (1–2). Stark writes further: “Indeed, theological assumptions unique to Christianity explain why science was born only in Christian Europe” (3). Again: “Christian theology was essential for the rise of science” (123). As Stark shows, Christianity originally entered a world in which slavery and magic were universal. Modernity, we can say, articulates the rationality of biblical revelation whereby the practice of both slavery and magic is (slowly, painfully . . .) replaced by (pluralistic) concepts of practice that are at once truly democratic and truly religious. (Monotheistic religion is the critique of magic. Magic is not religion.) But the true path to salvation (liberation) never did run straight. For the rational (religious) path of science can also deviate into witchcraft, in which the will of human beings, properly made in the creative image of God, is demonically reduced to the Satanic. It is important to note that Murdoch, while truly holding that the ontological argument is an argument from morality, fails to see that it involves the concept of necessary existence and is biblical in origin. In attributing the ontological argument to Plato, she claims that the necessary cannot exist and that existence cannot be necessary.1 God does not exist. (Do human beings also, then, not exist?) Hauerwas, in accepting Murdoch’s claim that the ontological argument is incompatible with the existence of God, signals his agreement with Aquinas’ rejection of it. Thus, while Murdoch assimilates the ontological argument to Plato, Hauerwas rejects the ontological argument in his

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embrace of the Aristotelian teleology of Aquinas. In other words, while Murdoch sacrifices existence to necessity, Hauerwas gives up necessity for existence. But what he, together with Murdoch (and Aquinas), fails to see is that it is the ontological argument, with its concept of causa sui (the cause of itself), and not any teleological argument involving first or final causes, that truly articulates the biblical concept of creation ex nihilo. Consequently, he does not see that, as Spinoza demonstrates, the concept of freedom, which is at once divine and human, involves and expresses the concept of “necessity” that is central to the ontological argument (as distinct from any concept of either contingency or free will). It is worth pointing out that Eco, in Kant and the Platypus, the first chapter of which is entitled, surprisingly, “On Being,” reveals himself to be a contemporary philosopher who embraces the ontological argument. He states that the philosophy of language is concerned not only with the question of what we refer to when we talk and how reliably but also with the question: “What makes us talk?” (13). “But who talks of being?”—he asks further. “We do, and often as if being were outside us. But evidently, if there is Something, we are part of it. The result is that by opening ourselves to being, we also open ourselves to ourselves. We categorize the entity, and at the same time we realize ourselves in the I think” (36). When, Eco observes, we ask about the existence of God—as He who has made all this being and sustains it—this “follows the act of recognizing the evidence that there is something, an evidence so well known that it strikes us as being already organized within the cohort of the entities. . . . Being is even before it is talked about” (20). Being, then, is not just the effect of language. Indeed, there is no definition for being. Eco further notes, however, that “we become aware of it [being] only through speech. As it is thinkable, being manifests itself to us right from the outset as an effect of language. The moment it appears before us, being arouses interpretation; the moment we can speak of it, it is already interpreted. There is no help for us. Not even Parmenides escaped this circle” (22). Eco points out that Pascal observes that we cannot even undertake to define being without already using the language of “being.” He also notes that Leibniz’ question—Why is there something rather than nothing?—indicates, in articulating the ontological argument, that nothing depends on being (not being on nothing). He observes that “Aristotle himself, and with him the entire Greek philosophical tradition, never posed” Leibniz’ question and that “in Aristotle (and in the Aristotelian scholastic tradition) this question does not appear” (15–17). Central to Eco’s notion of being is what he calls grain, continuum, resistances, and limits (limitations), that is, what we would properly call history. Human beings cannot just think or say anything: they are limited (historically,

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actually, by and to the other, we would say). So Eco also notes that, while Aquinas holds that God could spiritually restore to a virgin her lost virginity (by replacing sin with grace) and that God could physically restore to a virgin her lost virginity (by a miracle), God could not eliminate the grain, the resistances, and the continuum of history: what has been, what is, and what will be. God, too, is limited by (and to) existence—by and to our thought (interpretation) of existence. In other words, we can interpret something only because there is a limit to being and thought: we cannot do and say everything— except historically. Eco does not acknowledge, however, that the Bible is the origin (the creation) of the paradox that we can interpret only what is limited, that is, only what exists in thought and is thought to exist. Precisely because we are limited to and by the historical text—we cannot change the text at will, although, as Spinoza observes, the text, while eternally true and unchanging, is replete with errors, like the human beings whose thought and existence it relates—the text is known to exist only in and through (as) our interpretation (thought) of it. Indeed, the Bible itself is, from the beginning, interpretation as it reveals to us, unto the end, the golden rule of interpretation: love of neighbor. So Eco makes what he calls the principle of charity (together with the concepts of contract and negotiation) central to his philosophy of language and his concept of hermeneutics. Let me indicate, finally, that, consistent with the ontological argument, Eco embraces the claim of Peirce (who thus shows himself to be in agreement with Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel) that “we have no conception of the absolutely incognizable” (33). To claim that a fact is absolutely inexplicable is not explicable. Thus, Eco eliminates all varieties of Neoplatonism (negative theology). In other words, he recognizes the dialectic of thought and existence to constitute the very substance of the ontological argument—that thought is not found outside of (without) existence and that existence is not found outside of (without) thought. Nussbaum is typical of those scholars who fail to see that it is not Greek but biblical ontology that is truly modern and that modernity is truly biblical. That both she and Murdoch are silent on Spinoza—that is, that they do not see that his major concepts have nothing to do with Greek ontology but are consistent with the biblical vision of the covenantal relationship between God and human beings—is noteworthy. The perspective of Ferry is completely different. He recognizes that modern humanism is biblical and not Greek in its fundamental values centered on love. Also see the studies of the present author (Polka) for a demonstration of the relationship between ontology and hermeneutics as biblical and not Greek. While Novak does see that rights and duties emerge from the biblical understanding of the relationship between God and human beings, his claim that God is superior to human beings, etc.,

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lacks the philosophical sophistication of Spinoza with his profound commitment to the ontological argument, hermeneutics, and democracy. De Vries shows that what he calls “the religious tradition” remains an important source for contemporary theorizing, but his conception of religion is unhistorical and in that sense uncritical. It is also worthy of note that Seigel in The Idea of the Self does not undertake to establish any basis for evaluating the concept of modernity in terms of its classical (ancient) and biblical origins, in addition to the fact that he does not discuss Spinoza (not to mention Machiavelli, Luther, Montaigne, Pascal, Kierkegaard, or Marx among other pre-twentieth-century thinkers). Just as he does not examine the role that the central biblical idea of loving the other (God and neighbor) as yourself plays in modernity, so he dismisses Descartes’ ontological proof of the existence of God with the comment that it “will convince few people these days” (58). Thus, while Seigel aptly points out that Hegel models his concept of self on the God of Christianity and explicitly distinguishes his concepts of self and society as modern (biblical) from those of the ancients,2 he gives no indication whether this Hegelian perspective has broader significance for understanding the modernity of the self and its history.

Section 2 Regarding the approach of Strauss to Spinoza’s conception of religion, see the articles of Havers and Levene in which they provide a critique of Strauss’ reading of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise and thus also of scholars such as Israel, Preus, and Yovel (Spinoza and Other Heretics) who follow Strauss. Also see Levene (Spinoza’s Revelation, 10–12, 157–58) and Moreau (367–68). The demonstration by Harris that it is Strauss, not Spinoza, who is contradictory is unassailable and definitive. (Chapter 9 of Harris’ book is entitled “Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus?”) Bagley discusses Harris’ critique of Strauss in two articles. He raises legitimate questions about how the reader is to deal with Spinoza’s complex (and certainly, to begin with, puzzling, if not, in fact, contradictory) claims in the Theologico-Political Treatise about the relationship between reason and faith (prophecy), between philosophy and revelation (the Bible), and thus between the philosopher and the people (vulgus) and between ethics and (democratic) politics. But when Bagley concludes that “Spinoza’s form of enlightenment is more akin to that described by Plato than to that advocated by Kant” he shows us that he has examined Spinoza’s argumentation on entirely too narrow or technical grounds (“Spinoza, Biblical Criticism, and the Enlightenment,” 149). We have to remember that Spinoza writes in support of

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the democratic sovereignty of the multitudo. He does not advocate, consistent with Plato, a noble lie (myth) in terms of which those who are born superior to others will rule over them in their ignorance. The principles of charity and justice, on which, Spinoza makes clear, both reason and faith rest, support the ethics and politics of democracy, not the rule of the philosopher king in which philosophy and tyranny, according to Socrates’ advocacy of a contradictory “one change,” are identified with each other (following the fragments of Heraclitus that, because “war is the father of all and king of all,” “right is strife”) (Kirk and Raven, nos. 215 and 214). It is only when we learn to see that Spinoza separates philosophy from theology—in order (1) to show that both are true and thus (2) to deny to either any hierarchical (esoteric, contradictory) right to rule over the other—that we are then in a position to penetrate to the non-contradictory depths of Spinoza’s thought. It should be noted, therefore, how very esoteric (contradictory) it is on the part of Bagley to defend a Straussian perspective by imputing a Platonic (as distinct from a Kantian, that is, a biblical) motive to Spinoza. Strauss shows correctly, as I indicate in appendix II, that it is the doctrine of creation that absolutely distinguishes the biblical conception of reality from that of Greek philosophy (including Plato). Because of this fundamental difference between Greek philosophy and the Bible, no reconciliation between them, he holds, is possible. Strauss attacks Spinoza, together with all modern philosophers, including Kant, for dismissing (denying) this most fundamental of biblical concepts. But he views Spinoza as following in the footsteps of Epicurus (and also of Averroes and Machiavelli), not of Plato! Yet, as Harris clearly indicates, it is precisely Spinoza’s concept of substance, understood as the cause of itself, which underlies the ethics and the politics of modern democracy. I show in volume I of my study that Spinoza, in articulating the cause of itself as the ontological argument, which is consistent with the doctrine of creation and with the principles of charity and justice, brings (human) thought and (divine) existence into a paradoxical (reciprocal, democratic) relationship with each other (in perfect accord with Kant’s concept of practical reason as willing the kingdom of ends, in which all human beings are equal in their dignity and worth). In Greek philosophy, in contrast, because thought and existence are immediately opposed to each other, in the realm of appearances, and immediately identified with each other, in the realm of forms, thought cannot exist and existence cannot be thought. Let me add that Harris shows in his book, more generally, that the metaphysics of Spinoza is profoundly consistent and consistently profound and that the reading of Spinoza found in philosophers like Bennett (A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics) and Curley (Spinoza’s Metaphysics) cannot be sustained. (In his later Behind the Geometrical Method Curley indicates that he remains committed to

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“the fundamental soundness of the interpretation of Spinoza’s metaphysics offered in my first book [of 1969] on Spinoza” [xv]). In the two volumes of my study it is evident that I agree with Harris’ formulations of key ideas of Spinoza, including the following: 1. The fact that the human mind possesses adequate knowledge of the infinite, eternal essence of God reveals the mind to be self-reflexive and self-conscious and vice-versa. (As I show in volume I of my study, it is the relationship of the human mind and God that constitutes the ontological argument.) 2. Finite modes (as human beings), in “relating” to (in knowing) the infinite in and through conatus, explicate what is implicit in the infinite idea of God (substance or causa sui). Human beings cannot know that they are finite except from a position that is not finite but infinite. In other words, they can have inadequate (i.e., confused, mutilated, or false) knowledge solely on the basis of possessing adequate (true) knowledge (of God as absolutely infinite and eternal). 3. While all knowledge revealed to human beings, whether through reason or through faith (Scripture), is divine (i.e., all human knowledge involves and expresses knowledge of God), this knowledge is not supernatural. 4. The “dual nature of human beings” involves two different (yet dialectically related) concepts of nature (108). The distinction that is critical here is not that between finite and infinite (or between human mode and divine substance) but rather that between passive and active affects (or between inadequate and adequate ideas). 5. Knowledge and action, based on conatus, are dialectical, that is, they are progressive (insofar as, I would add, they are not regressive). 6. While idea, as the self-reflexivity of the body, transcends the spatialtemporal limits of the body (i.e., while the mind, as the idea of the body, is not limited to and by the natural space and time of the body), the eternity of the mind is not found beyond (outside of) the body. It is neither prior to the “life” of the body nor posterior to the “death” of the body. “It [the eternity of the mind] is a quality of being and knowing” (66). I also want to point out that, while Harris astutely shows that Spinoza’s ideas are consistent with not only Hegelian dialectic but also modern conceptions of both scientific and historical methodology, he does not address the interrelationship of Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity. I note further that the uncritical acceptance of the Straussian perspective by Fackenheim undermines his engagement with the most profound philosophi-

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cal and theological issues in modernity. He does not see that the TheologicoPolitical Treatise is philosophical solely insofar as Spinoza is true to the Bible (both Hebrew and Christian) and that the Guide of the Perplexed is not philosophical (although Aristotelian) insofar as its author Maimonides simply is not true to the Bible (while remaining orthodox). Fackenheim holds that Spinoza rejects the fundamentally biblical concepts of creation and revelation and that his concept of eternity is outside of history. But he provides no analysis of the concepts of creation, revelation, eternity, or history—or even of God as transcendental or “wholly other.” Furthermore, he does not see that with the concept of substance as the cause of itself Spinoza grounds—articulates—his most fundamental claim, consistent with the prophets and Jesus, that all human beings know the absolutely eternal and infinite essence of God. Consequently, Fackenheim fails to see that causa sui represents Spinoza’s “philosophical” articulation of creation (God is dependent on nothing outside of—without— himself). Nor does he grasp the fact that Spinoza, with his concept of hermeneutics (as the reciprocal relationship of reader and text), articulates the concept of revelation (human beings know nothing outside of—without— God). It is not Spinoza who rejects the authority of revelation, as Fackenheim contends. Rather, it is Spinoza who upholds, together with the authority of the reader, the authority of the Bible (God) against those theologians and philosophers who subordinate biblical values to the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, Spinoza shows that one cannot uphold the authority of either the reader (reason) or the Bible (faith) without upholding the authority of both simultaneously. It is also telling that Fackenheim, as a philosopher who is concerned with the future of Jewish thought, does not engage the ontological argument (as central to Spinoza, the Bible, and modernity). He does not see that it is the ontological argument that supports (upholds) the incommensurability (a Kierkegaardian concept used by Fackenheim) of the human and the divine, of the secular and the religious—in their covenantal relatedness. It is, then, ironically instructive to see that Fackenheim makes (it would appear unknowingly!) the ontological argument the absolute center of his conception of Jewish thought and its future—in two distinct ways: 1. He states that “the explorations of this work [To Mend the World] may all be said to have concerned a single theme—Teshuva for the Jewish people in our time [in which, for Fackenheim, the Holocaust and the state of Israel are central]” (317). By Teshuva Fackenheim understands what he calls “a divine-human moving- (or turning-) toward-each-other.” Indeed, he says that Tikkun (the mending of the world) “is a form of Teshuva in response to extremity” (320). Thus, we see that for Fackenheim the future

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of Jewish thought involves the mending of the world, which further involves the moving or turning of God and man towards each other. (He points out that for Rosenzweig a philosophy can be truly Jewish only if it adequately accounts for God, man, and world.) In other words, there is one thing that cannot be thought—by human beings—without existing, which is God. That is, God does not exist outside of (without) the thought, the commitment, the love . . . of human beings. 2. Fackenheim concludes his work by citing two Midrashim, which, in embodying, we can say, the Tikkun of Teshuva, express the very essence of the ontological argument: “As long as the nation of Israel abides, God will be named the God of Israel. But if Israel is uprooted, whose God will He be named?” (330) “You are My witnesses, says the Lord [to the nation of Israel]—that is, if you are My witnesses, I am God, and if you are not My witnesses, I am, as it were, not God.” (331)

Just as man does not exist outside of (without) God, so God (as creator, revealer, sustainer, and savior) does not exist outside of (without) man (as that which is created, revealed, sustained, and saved). It is important to see that, notwithstanding the conventional rhetoric distinguishing the creator from the created, etc., these Midrashim, together with the ontological argument, envision the relationship of God and man to be one of covenantal reciprocity, not one of hierarchy (whether that of an idolatrous religiosity subordinating man to God or that of a reductive secularism subordinating God to man). Section 3 Both Goodman and Seeskin discuss the place of creation in Spinoza’s thought. While Goodman recognizes that Spinoza’s concept of causa sui is compatible with the creative power of God, neither scholar discusses the relationship between the concept of creation and the ontological argument, which Spinoza makes central to his thinking and which Maimonides, like Aquinas, opposes in the name of the Aristotelian teleology of first and final causes. Consequently, they do not grasp the fundamental difference between Spinoza and Maimonides. While Spinoza holds, consistent with the prophets, that God is truly (freely) knowable to human beings, Maimonides, following Aristotle, argues that human beings do not and cannot know God. The irony here is that the “rationalism” embodied in Spinoza’s concept of knowledge is true to or

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consistent with biblical revelation (faith), while the “rationalism” underlying Maimonides’ concept of knowledge is true to or consistent with Aristotle, not the prophets. (The notion that God, according to the ontological argument, is the one thing that cannot be thought without existing means that God does not exist outside of—without—human thought, as I argue in volume I of my study.) Thus, I show that the concept of creation grounds (entails) the critical distinction that Spinoza makes between two concepts of nature: between, on the one hand, the common order of nature and, on the other hand, human (and divine) nature, that is, thought and existence, which are at once divine and human. Further, neither Goodman nor Seeskin takes into account the studies of Foster, who shows that the biblical idea of creation underlies the modern concept of scientific nature, consistent with the distinction that Kant makes between (empirical) nature and (divine and human) freedom, that is, between the phenomenal world (of the natural sciences) and the noumenal world (of practical reason). Levene states in Spinoza’s Revelation that “not only is Spinoza’s a biblical God, with a biblical concept of creation; Spinoza’s God is in fact far closer to biblical theology and philosophy than many, perhaps most, Jewish theological positions through the ages, and not simply because he avoids the rabbinic readings that transform the Bible. His ultimate debate is with philosophy, not the rabbis” (240). Unlike Seeskin, I hold that Kant’s distinction between knowing (objects of nature) and thinking (human subjects), between nature and freedom, is consistent with Spinoza’s concept of the ontological argument as fundamentally ethical (to know God is to love your neighbor as yourself), not with Maimonides’ contradictory claim that God is unknown by and unknowable to human beings. In other words, while Kant demonstrates that God cannot be known as a thing in itself, that is, as an object of nature (or as a first or final cause), he does show that God is thought (willed) by human beings as their highest good, consistent with Spinoza. Kass presents an engaging interpretation of the Garden of Eden story in arguing that (like Hegel) “the ‘punishment’ for trying to rise above childishness and animality is to be forced to live like a human being. . . . This analysis leads me to believe that the so-called punishment is not really a newly instituted condition introduced by a willful God against the human grain. It is rather a making clear of just what it means to have chosen enlightenment and freedom, just what it means to be a rational being. The punishment, if punishment it is, consists mainly in the acute foreknowledge of our natural [sic] destiny to live out our humanity under the human condition” (94–95). Still, in undertaking to offer “a philosophic reading” of Genesis to modern men and women who are “wisdom-seeking” and “wisdom-loving,” in what he calls the tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Kass fails to see that the Garden of Eden story, together with Genesis and the Bible more generally, presupposes

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(embodies) a concept of philosophy (of wisdom and reason) as the knowledge of God that is central no less to Spinoza than to the prophets (but not to the Greeks) (1). In other words, he does not appear to see that the concept of reason that is truly modern, because it is in truth philosophical, is first and last biblical (theological). Although Kass does observe that “the wisdom of Jerusalem is not the wisdom of Athens,” it is not at all clear whether he views the wisdom (philosophy, reason, thought) of modernity as biblical or Greek (4). It is additionally worth noting that Kass, while making considerable use of Rousseau in explicating the story of Adam and Eve and also while referring to Hobbes and Locke, does not mention Spinoza.

Section 4 Prokhovnik finds a significant theoretical difference or divergence between the earlier and the later political treatises of Spinoza. She argues that, in expressing a preference for aristocracy “in his mature work in the TP (Political Treatise),” Spinoza abandons his commitment to democracy as found in his earlier Theologico-Political Treatise (236). I show, however, that such an argument cannot be sustained in light of the evidence that I provide in volume II of my study. (But I also want to note that in her study Prokhovnik provides a useful discussion of a wide range of scholarship.) Matheron shows in his exacting study that it is the relationship of substance (causa sui) and human beings (conatus)—which, as I argue in volume I of my study, constitutes the structure of the ontological argument—that serves as the basis for Spinoza’s demonstration that both ethics and politics are founded on the reciprocal relationship of individual and community. Thus, he argues for the essential congruence between the Theologico-Political Treatise and the Political Treatise and between the two treatises and the Ethics. Levene points out, in Spinoza’s Revelation, that, while Spinoza in the Theologico-Political Treatise provides an explicit argument for democracy as the best (freest, most natural, and only noncontradictory) state, in the Political Treatise he argues that the power of the state belongs to the multitude whose existence is foundational: “In the TP [Political Treatise], democracy is not only the ideal state, but the immanent condition of all other states, and thus the very existence of nondemocratic states is something that requires an explanation” (142). In claiming to distinguish between democratization and westernization and in holding that “western” democracy begins in Athens, Sen ignores the central role of the Bible and its traditions in the creation of modern democracy. In contrast, see Walzer. It is noteworthy that Rawls, while acknowledging that Kant’s moral philosophy is rooted in Augustinian Christianity, fails to re-

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late the values that are central to democracy to the Bible. It is also worthy of note that he has no place for Spinoza in his history of moral philosophy. See my study of Rawls’ Lectures. Barber properly argues that democracy finds no support in Socrates. He writes: “Socratic discourse neither yields nor wills truth: it discovers or discerns or reveals [sic] truth, already-made by some other means. Will simply does not come into it, and so common [democratic] willing has no relevance” (“Misreading Democracy,” 371). Barber also writes: “Socrates was indisputably an educator, but just as indisputably, he was himself essentially ineducable, and thus immune to democracy. Others may need his dialectical help, but he knows his truths up front. Socrates has nothing to learn from others or the democratic process they fashion to steer themselves through what they regard as an opaque world of shadows and uncertainty [in the Platonic Cave]” (370). Barber fails, however, to note that you cannot be an educator (except in form) unless you learn from others, unless, that is, you will (democratically) in common with others, as he observes in the first passage cited above. Strangely, Barber, in his assault on what he calls foundationalism (also see his “Foundationalism and Democracy”), reduces metaphysics and truth to certainty, while insisting that democracy must always contend with what is uncertain in human affairs. He does not see that the common will of democracy embodies the metaphysics of what Spinoza calls sovereignty (and Rousseau the general will and Kant the kingdom of ends as the creation of practical reason). Surely, it is not uncertainty but the lack of truthfulness (lying, dishonesty, evasion, deception, self-deception, cover-ups) with which we moderns constantly have to struggle in our democratic lives, both personal and public. It is important for us, consequently, to learn to distinguish between certainty (Spinoza’s second kind of knowledge and Kant’s concept of scientific knowledge) and truth (Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge and Kant’s concept of reason as the practice of willing and thinking truthfully). It is solely the distinction between certainty and truth that allows us to understand that (biblical) revelation, as Spinoza shows us, is truthful only insofar as it is distinguished from certainty (idolatry). The distinction between certainty and truth is precisely the distinction that Spinoza makes between the literal sensus of a biblical passage and its (divine) spirit or significance. Because Barber, as a pragmatist, is strongly opposed to what he calls metaphysics and truth, he is not prepared to acknowledge that there is no politics without metaphysics and no metaphysics without politics. He does not see that it is not only Socrates but also, more generally, Greek metaphysics that, in having no concept of the common will, does not support democracy. He equally does not see that democracy, in embodying the metaphysics of the common will (of the sovereign people, that is, the sovereign multitudo of

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Spinoza’s Political Treatise), is at once modern and biblical, as Spinoza makes clear to us. That Barber misreads both democracy and metaphysics is clear when he writes as follows: “Democracy is government without metaphysics: the Greeks who established democratic institutions had the good fortune to live before metaphysics [as developed by Socrates and Plato?]. We [modern democrats] have the good fortune to live after metaphysics; political judgment and not abstract reason are our means to solving common problems” (“Misreading Democracy,” 373).

Notes Information on authors cited is found in the bibliography. 1. Because he also attributes the ontological argument to Plato, Flew, like Murdoch, does not see that the concept of necessary existence is biblical. But, unlike Murdoch, he dismisses the ontological argument as “a luminously illegitimate attempt to deduce actual existence from the mere definition of a word” (89). See my study “Philosophy without God? God without Philosophy? Critical Reflections on Flew’s God and Philosophy.” 2. Seigel writes that the “history of God’s relations with the world provided [Hegel] not just an example of self-constituting, self-reflecting selfhood, but most of the famous terms of Hegel’s philosophy” (395). He also observes that much of chapter VI of The Phenomenology of Spirit, on Spirit, “was concerned to show why such recognition [of the self as at once individual and universal] was excluded from ancient institutions and the consciousness that animated them, and how it became possible under modern conditions. A major goal of Hegel’s political theory, given its most mature expression in The Philosophy of Right in the 1820s, was to demonstrate the same point” (404).

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Appendix 2 Strauss on the Bible, Philosophy, and Modernity

STRAUSS MAKES WHAT HE PROPERLY SHOWS TO BE the absolute difference between the Bible and Greek philosophy, between the biblical God and the God of Aristotle, central to our understanding of modernity. In articulating this difference in three pieces found in the 1997 collection of his essays and lectures edited by Green,1 he focuses, with regard to the (Hebrew) Bible, on two key elements: the doctrine of creation (together with the attendant notions of the omnipotence, the oneness, and the freedom of God, plus the concepts of divine revelation and miracle) and the story of (what he calls) the Fall of man. While much of what Strauss writes about the Bible is compatible with the approach that I take to it in my study, it is his conception of the relationship among the Bible, philosophy (e.g., that of Spinoza), and modernity that I contest in my study as contradictory (and that I show Spinoza utterly rejects).2 Strauss is true neither to modern science nor to modern philosophy when he conflates them with, or rather reduces them to, merely instrumental reason. Thus, he writes that “fundamentally, Spinoza’s procedure is that of modern science according to its original conception—to make the universe a completely clear and distinct, a completely mathematizable, unit.” Further, in identifying modern philosophy with what he views as the claim of natural theology to eliminate the incomprehensibility of God, along with the concepts of divine revelation and miracle, Strauss writes that “there was one man who tried to force the issue by denying the incomprehensibility of God’s essence, and that man was Spinoza”3 (130). While Strauss’ critique of modern philosophy is relevant to those lesser thinkers who, as Kant indicates, constantly fall into the dualisms of empiricism and rationalism (or

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of skepticism and dogmatism), it altogether misses its mark with regard to the greatest European philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (at their best). Strauss constantly argues that modern philosophy fails in undertaking to seek or rather in claiming to attain complete knowledge of the whole, that is, in making the reason of man identical with the whole (with God). The point that he makes (correctly) is that philosophy cannot use the resources of (what should be understood as instrumental) rationalism (based on the false claim of being able to argue from complete, comprehensible knowledge of the whole) to refute the existence of God or the truth of revelation. He is also right that the resources of empiricism (historical and scientific) equally cannot serve philosophy in this end. But Strauss is candid, too, in acknowledging that it no less follows that theology cannot refute philosophy. In either case, he notes, the denial or the acceptance of revelation is presupposed from the beginning. He observes yet further, again correctly, that because philosophy cannot attain knowledge of the whole, it presupposes a value orientation, that is, faith, in whatever critical position it adopts. However, when he discusses revelation (theology, faith), Strauss insists that the God of the Bible (of theology) is incomprehensible, mysterious, free, and often (at least in appearance) contradictory. Yet, he also acknowledges that man can and does trust in the reliability of God’s words, actions, and promises (e.g., Abraham, even when asked to sacrifice his beloved son). In other terms, God’s words, actions, and promises are not simply arbitrary (contradictory); and man’s covenantal obedience is free (not arbitrarily imposed). Thus, Strauss finds himself compelled to acknowledge (not very clearly or openly, it is true) that human beings must use their judgment, that is, their reason, in determining the truth or falsity of revelation. Consequently, it is important to see that what primarily constitutes for Strauss “the serious argument in favor of revelation” is the one based, not on objective but on subjective evidence, on what he calls “the experience, the personal experience, of man’s encounter with God” (123–4). He also mentions, secondarily, what he calls “the negative proof of the inadequacy of any nonbelieving position.” It is, however, only the primary argument supporting revelation, that based on subjectivity—on subjective, personal experience— which is clearly and properly “serious” for Strauss. The argument based on subjectivity raises, however, the question of how we understand the relationship between God and man, that is, between revelation (faith) and reason. For, as Strauss observes, when we (truly) base revelation solely on subjective experience, then we have to face the issue of distinguishing between the authoritative experience of the prophets (the Call or Presence of God) and what they said, between, in other words, the revealed Word of God and what is merely “a

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‘human interpretation’ of God’s action. It is no longer God’s action itself. The human interpretation cannot be authoritative.” Still, Strauss acknowledges that the issue of what is God’s and what is man’s entails the following question: “is not every specific meaning attached to God’s Call or to God’s Presence a human interpretation?” He observes that believers of different persuasions interpret their encounter with God “in radically different manners. . . . Yet only one interpretation can be the true one. There is, therefore, a need for argument between the various believers in revelation, an argument which cannot help but allude somehow to objectivity” (124; emphasis added). Unhappily, disappointingly, and shockingly Strauss, however, provides no further (substantial) discussion of this most critical of all issues—the fact that all revelation (faith) involves interpretation and that all interpretation involves human judgment or reason, whose basis, as Spinoza demonstrates in his discussion of biblical hermeneutics, is love of neighbor (respect for the other), as I show in volume I of my study. Ultimately, it is Strauss who remains completely unclear as to what constitutes revelation (and so also miracles), while it is Spinoza who demonstrates systematically (and does not merely allude “somehow”) that, precisely because revelation is subjective, that is, because subjectivity is based on revelation (knowledge of God), human subjects must use their reason in judging revelation.4 They must argue (reason) together objectively, that is, lovingly (in the democratic, civil state). I want to add that Strauss is clearly aware that the issue of what constitutes the subjective (human) truth of (divine) revelation is constantly raised in the Bible itself through the challenge posed by false prophets (idols). For example, the author of I John warns his readers of antichrists (2.18f), of idols (5.21), and of false spirits and prophets: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (4.1). But the (Pauline) distinction between trusting in the flesh and trusting in the spirit, which Strauss invokes in allowing us to differentiate between false and true prophets, is not very helpful, since he does not attach it directly to the principles of charity and justice (consistent with both Paul and Spinoza) (see 401). In other words, just as philosophy presupposes faith, so theology (biblical revelation) presupposes reason, what Spinoza calls our rational judgment, in determining the truth or falsity of revelation. Otherwise, we would remain trapped in the interminably contradictory opposition between what Spinoza calls the dogmatic rationalism of Maimonides (the subordination of the Bible and its revelations to human reason) and the skeptical fideism of his opponents (the subordination of human reason to the Bible and its revelations). Consequently, while Strauss correctly discerns and assesses the fundamental incompatibility between the Bible and Greek philosophy, he fails to see that

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both modern philosophy and modern science, when truly conceived, are not only compatible with but presuppose the biblical concept of creation. In other words, he does not see that Spinoza “separates” philosophy from theology in order to overcome the contradictory opposition between them, together with the hierarchical claim of each to be superior to the other, which characterizes so much (although not the best) of medieval thinking and which remains true of so much (although not the best) of modern thinking. Strauss does not see that our modern concept of reason, as Spinoza shows us, is fundamentally biblical and has nothing to do with notions central to the Greek conception of reason such as finite perfection, finite end, and finite hierarchy. Indeed, Strauss fails altogether to distinguish between the infinite God of Spinoza and the finite God of Aristotle. The God of Spinoza is absolutely infinite, one, omnipotent, and free. The concepts of creation, revelation, and miracle that Spinoza opposes are those that are indistinguishable from finite idols and that he associates with the finite teleology of Greek metaphysics and ultimately with atheism. In other words, all that Spinoza asks (of his readers) is that their concepts of creation, miracle, and revelation be compatible with the omnipotence of God and thus with human freedom. Otherwise, the concepts of creation, miracle, and revelation, in impugning divine power and freedom, merely reflect human impotence, slavery, and ignorance. Strauss correctly sees that the concepts of creation, revelation, divine omnipotence, and monotheism (only one God can be omnipotent) mutually entail each other. He would also consent to having “miracle” included among these critical, biblical concepts, for, as he points out, the ultimate miracle is creation ex nihilo. While Strauss attacks Spinoza for rejecting the concepts of creation, revelation, and miracle, he does not ask how it would be possible for any thinker to conceive of God as absolutely and infinitely one and omnipotent (as Spinoza clearly does) and yet to deny to that God the powers of creation, revelation, and miracle. That Spinoza does not fall into such a blatant contradiction is clear with regard to his discussion of, for example, miracles, as I show in volume I of my study. What he resolutely opposes are not biblical miracles but the superstitious impiety of those theologians and philosophers who foist upon miracles the finite concepts of Plato and Aristotle. For Spinoza, such impious misreadings of miracles simply falsify the Bible (faith), together with (I would add) Greek philosophy. In believing that Spinoza, because he holds that all human beings possess knowledge of the absolutely infinite essence of God, claims that human beings attain totally comprehensive (comprehensible) and complete knowledge of God, Strauss once again fails to take into account the fundamental distinction, so important to Spinoza (as to all thinkers who are truly modern and thus biblical), between infinite and finite, between (infinite) truth and (finite) cer-

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tainty. Just as Descartes indicates in the third Meditation that, while he cannot grasp (within the confines of certainty) the infinite essence or perfection of God, he can (truly) understand the infinite and reach it in his thought (32 and 35), so Spinoza is careful to distinguish complete (finite, certain) knowledge of God from (infinitely) true knowledge of God (on the part of human beings, including the prophets). The distinction between finite and infinite is that which Kant presupposes in differentiating between the certainty of knowing the objects of possible experience (empirical nature) and the truthfulness of thinking the human subjects of practical reason within the kingdom of ends (constituting ethical and political freedom). This is also the distinction that Spinoza makes between the second kind of knowledge (which involves the universal laws of empirical nature) and the third kind of knowledge (which expresses the essence of individual things as existing necessarily, that is, freely). This is also the same distinction that Hegel, consistent with Kant, makes between (finite) understanding and (infinite) reason. At the end of the introductory section of The Encyclopaedia Logic Hegel is happy to associate his notion of reason as speculative, that is, as unconditioned or as containing its determinacy within itself, with the “mystical” (or mystery). “In this sense,” he writes, “we know about the rational above all, because we know about God, and we know him as [the one] who is utterly self-determined” (132). (The concepts of the unconditioned and self-determination bear the same meaning as Spinoza’s concept of the cause of itself—the idea that God is utterly, freely, absolutely, and infinitely omnipotent and creative, that is, self-determining, without dependence on prior conditions.) Hegel notes that the concept of speculative reason is what in earlier times was “called ‘mystical,’ especially with regard to the religious consciousness and its content,” while today, however, the mystical is simply considered to be mysterious (mystifying) and incomprehensible. But what this means, he points out, is that “‘the mystical’ is certainly something mysterious, but only for the understanding,” that is, for those human beings who claim to grasp the infinite in finite terms. But the fact that everything that is truly rational can properly be called mystical, Hegel observes, “only amounts to saying that it transcends the understanding,” not that it “must be considered inaccessible to thinking and incomprehensible” (133). Thus, we see that to hold that content (e.g., the content of divine revelation or of the essence of God, which, for Spinoza, is our knowledge that God necessarily exists) is accessible to thinking and comprehensible does not mean that such knowledge is finite, certain, and complete. But it does mean for Hegel, as for Spinoza, that to respond to God truthfully, rationally, faithfully, and obediently involves and expresses a concept of faith seeking understanding (or of reason seeking faithfully), to recall the famous phrase of St. Anselm.

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It was Anselm who launched the ontological argument, which was then systematically developed by Descartes, Spinoza, Kant (in his concept of reason as thoughtful, faithful practice), and Hegel. In this context it is useful to recall that Hegel distinguishes the God of Christianity (together with Judaism, I would add) from all previous gods as being manifest, revealed, and known in the world as spirit, which, for Hegel, represents the true miracle. Ignorance of God, ignorance of good and evil, is no longer an option for human beings, precisely as the prophets tirelessly perseverate in recalling to their people. The spirit of human being is the revelation of God. “Here for the first time,” Hegel observes, “spirit is as such the object, the content of religion, and spirit is only for spirit” (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, III, 251). Just as Strauss acknowledges that faith in the God of creation, revelation, and miracles not only is compatible with but altogether entails the free use on the part of human beings of their rational (loving) judgment, so he also recognizes that the Fall of man is not and cannot be simply a story condemning the knowledge of good and evil. It is true that he writes that man, in the garden, enjoyed perfect existence in his childlike obedience to God and that, in disobeying God, he placed what Strauss calls autonomous (merely human) knowledge of good and evil above submission to its divine prohibition. Thus, he declares that “the Bible intends to teach that man was meant to live in simplicity, without knowledge of good and evil.” However, Strauss then proceeds to point out that the narrator of the Garden of Eden story appears to understand that, in order for man to be forbidden knowledge of good and evil, that is, for him to know that the knowledge of good and evil is evil, he “necessarily possesses such knowledge.” Consequently, Strauss reinstates what I call the paradox of the first man. Still, he initially observes that man, in wishing to live without knowledge of good and evil, was given the opportunity of enjoying such a life and cannot, therefore, blame God for the evil (and, I would add, also the good) that he suffers in gaining this knowledge. Nevertheless, Strauss then goes on to indicate, in writing the following, that God did not intend man to remain in the garden in his ignorance of good and evil: By giving man that opportunity [of knowing good and evil] God convinces him that his deepest wish cannot be fulfilled. The story of the fall is the first part of the story of God’s education of man. This story partakes of the unfathomable character of God. Man has to live with the knowledge of good and evil and with the sufferings inflicted on him because of that knowledge or its acquisition. Human goodness or badness presupposes that knowledge and its concomitants. (387)

Strauss provides yet another version of the paradox of the first man when he indicates that, because man’s life span was much longer before than after

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the Flood, “man’s antediluvian longevity was a relic of his original condition. Man originally lived in the garden of Eden, where he could have eaten of the tree of life and thus have become immortal” (388). Because the longevity of antediluvian man reflects this lost chance, the transition from antediluvian to postdiluvian man can in that sense be considered a decline. Consistent with the notion of decline is also the fact that the mighty men of ancient renown sprang from the union of the antediluvian sons of God with the daughters of man. “On the other hand,” Strauss continues, “the fall of our first parents made possible or necessary in due time God’s revelation of His Torah [the covenant]. . . . In this respect the transition from antediluvian to postdiluvian mankind is a progress.”5 What Strauss calls “the ambiguity regarding the Fall”—the fact that as a sin it was evitable yet inevitable—“is reflected in the ambiguity regarding the status of antediluvian mankind” (389). Thus, Strauss joins the “progressive” thinkers of the Bible from St. Augustine and St. Anselm through Descartes, Pascal, Milton, and Spinoza to Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and even Nietzsche (as I show in volume II of my study), not to mention Wallace Stevens (as indicated in the passages of his poetry cited at head of the final chapter of volume II of my study). Just as Augustine observes that without the Fall (sin) of the first man there would have been no Christ, so Strauss points out, as we have now seen, that without the Fall of Adam and Eve there would have been no Torah, no covenant, no Bible, no human education. The “happy sin” of the Fall is what Descartes calls in the fourth Meditation on truth and falsity “man’s greatest and most important perfection,” the fact that through “attentive and repeated meditation” human beings “thus get into the habit of avoiding error” (43). In Descartes’ dialogue on The Search for Truth, Polyander (Everyman) tells Eudoxus (the Cartesian man of good faith) that, in first believing that he knew his body better than his mind (soul), “it was a happy mistake I made, since, thanks to it, I [now] know very well that what I am, in so far as I am doubting, is certainly not what I call my body” (412).6 Strauss articulates what in fact are the mutually contradictory consequences of his claim that philosophy depends on faith and that religion depends on reason in the following three tenets that I extract from his 1965 preface to the English translation of his 1930 book, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion: 1. Modern philosophy is fundamentally biblical in its morality. But Strauss recalls Nietzsche’s trenchant observation that there is no (biblical) morality without (the biblical) God. 2. Philosophy (atheism), like religion (theism), presupposes what is nonevident, that is, an act of will or faith. Consequently, philosophy collapses as claiming to be based on (autonomous, human-centered) reason.

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3. “The victory of orthodoxy through the self-destruction of rational philosophy was not an unmitigated blessing, for it was a victory, not of Jewish orthodoxy, but of any orthodoxy, and Jewish orthodoxy based its claim to superiority to other religions from the beginning on its superior rationality (Deut. 4.6)” (256). Thus, in his 1965 preface Strauss ends in the following contradictions (as we remember that he correctly shows in his three 1997 pieces that there is a fundamental, unbridgeable difference between classical [pagan] philosophy and the Bible): • Modern (biblical) philosophy is irrational, since it does not depend on a concept of classical (pagan) reason. • (Pre-modern) biblical religion is rational, since it depends on a concept of classical (pagan) reason. What Strauss fails to see, consequently, is that the only way out of the contradictory impasse to which he reduces both philosophy and religion—he holds, on the one hand, that (modern) biblical philosophy is irrational because it does not depend on classical, pagan reason, and, on the other hand, that (pre-modern) biblical religion is rational because it depends on classical, pagan reason—is by means of the paradoxical insight provided by Spinoza: • The concept of reason that is central to modern philosophy is biblical (and not Greek or pagan). • The concept of reason that is central to the Bible is philosophical and modern (and not Greek or pagan). In sum, while Strauss truly discerns the absolute difference between the Bible and Greek philosophy and properly sees that the story of the Fall involves the “progressive” knowledge of good and evil on the part of human beings in their covenant with God, he fails to understand that modernity, together with its philosophy and science, is fundamentally biblical. He himself, however, is compelled to acknowledge, as we saw, that human beings, in order to assent to divine revelation, must use their reason, their rational judgment. For, otherwise, God would be unknowable and his revelations purely mystifying, while human beings would not be free, faithful, rational subjects but ignorant, dependent slaves. Strauss additionally acknowledges that the story of Adam and Eve is paradoxical. Human beings must be expelled from the garden of Eden in order to receive the revelation of the covenant as the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge that it is only in loving God above all

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others and their neighbor as themselves that they are in a position to overcome the idols of sin, including the idol of the garden as representing human perfection. Still, what Strauss fails to see is that modernity, including modern philosophy, of which Spinoza is so profound an exponent, as I show in my study, is biblical and that the Bible is modern. Modernity, as Spinoza demonstrates, involves the separation of philosophy from religion, of reason from faith, such that both are equally and reciprocally true. Not to claim to go beyond Abraham, yet, in not standing still, to get at least as far as Abraham is, consequently, to embrace the Abrahamic paradox that philosophy (reason) is biblical and that the Bible (faith) is modern.

Note on Pangle’s Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham It is both ironic and instructive to see that the only way in which Thomas L. Pangle, in Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham, can, in following Strauss, maintain the separation of the Bible (theology) from modern (liberal) philosophy is to argue for the essential compatibility of Scripture with the tradition that he calls classical rationalism, whose inspiration he finds in Socrates and whose most complete representative he sees as Maimonides. The undertaking of Pangle is ironic in the sense that, while he argues for obedience to the authority of the God of Scripture, he ends up making our understanding of Scripture and its God depend on what he calls Socratic reason. His undertaking is instructive in that what it ends up showing us is that the only way in which we moderns can be true both to the Bible and to philosophy (modern and so also ancient) is by way of what Spinoza calls the separation of philosophy (reason) from theology (faith). As I emphasize in my study, Spinoza demonstrates that the sole alternative either to subordinating reason (irrationally) to faith or faith (faithlessly) to reason (in the scholastic tradition of Maimonides, Aquinas, and Averroes) or to embracing in contradictory fashion reason as Socratic and faith as biblical (in the tradition of Pangle) is to see that both reason and faith, in their very separation from each other, are founded on, as they together promote and demand, love of God and neighbor. The ambiguity of the position for which Pangle argues appears with stark clarity in the brief summary to his book. He writes there that to take Scripture seriously is to ask with Socrates [while using a formulation of Kant!]: How ought I to live? “If the Bible is true,” Pangle writes, “then what is called for above all is obedience to the biblical God as simply authoritative” (183). As if to acknowledge, however, that obedience and authority cannot simply entail either blind faith or blind reason, he goes on to state that philosophy, when

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true to itself, “cannot wholly surrender to such obedience, but . . . can strive to understand what it might mean to do so” and so bring its own independent legitimacy into question and “thereby seriously entertain the possibility of such surrender” (183). Outside of the fact that Pangle does not consider the alternative that philosophy might very well decide that the only rational (and faithful) thing for it to do would be to call into question the authority of God as purely arbitrary and authoritarian, it is important to note that he does not recall here what he writes earlier in his book. There he states that the Bible teaches “that God vindicates a concept of justice known to man, apart from— though of course indurated and clarified by—the fiat of God. This justice that man knows independently of revelation, this justice that is presupposed by revelation, man can humbly call upon God to uphold” (155). The claim that justice is known outside of (without) divine revelation (and creation) is consistent with Pangle’s (Socratic) conception of the (biblical) good. He writes that the good is not “good because it is commanded [by God] but rather, what is commanded [by God] is good if and inasmuch as it conforms to what is known to be good, independently of the command”7 (89). Pangle does not show, however, how philosophical knowledge of the good, which, he claims, human beings possess, can be independent of God except by mysterious invocation of Socrates, a Socrates who, in my judgment, does not properly represent the Socrates whom we actually find in Plato’s dialogues (or in the writings of Xenophon and Aristophanes).8 While Pangle holds that modern philosophy puts human reason above divine authority, what we see, rather, is that it is he who makes the authority of the biblical God depend on a concept of human reason or philosophy. In contrast to Pangle and in accord with the Bible’s concepts of authority and obedience, it is Spinoza, rather, who holds that human beings cannot know the good or justice outside of (without) knowing and loving God. Otherwise, God would impotently depend on a concept of human good and justice outside of himself (outside of, in the language of theology, creation and revelation). I want to make four additional points regarding the claim of Pangle to defend obedience to scriptural and divine authority in opposition to what he calls the subversion of this authority in modern philosophy: 1. While Pangle claims to write in support of the authority of Scripture and of obedience to its God, even as he makes knowledge of Scripture and its God depend on a concept of philosophical (Socratic) reason, he does not indicate whose Scripture this is. Furthermore, he holds that the covenant that God established with Abraham was monarchical and not democratic, that is, that it depended solely on God’s command and not on the mutual agreement (or acknowledgement) between God and his crea-

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tures (who are made in his image).9 In other words, Pangle is concerned to deny that the early modern concept of the democratic compact, as found in Spinoza and Rousseau, among others, has its origins in the biblical covenant. However, in addition to the fact that Pangle does not show how the covenant can depend solely on God’s command, given that he holds that the good that this covenant commands is, like philosophic reason, outside of God, he remains silent on the relationship between the covenant and the concept of love of neighbor as found in, for example, Leviticus, the prophets, and the New Testament (both Gospels and Epistles). It is Spinoza, in contrast, who shows that the prophetic concepts of charity and justice, in founding the covenant, constitute the fundamental teaching of Scripture (both Hebrew and Christian). Indeed, Spinoza makes it clear that he agrees with Paul that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13.10) and with I John that “we know him [Christ], if we keep his commandments. He who says ‘I know him’ but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (2.3–4). 2. Pangle writes that for Spinoza “freedom or free will means acting in order to maximize one’s own mental and physical security. Why, we may ask Spinoza, should we assume that there is no conceivable alternative to an intelligent being’s acting with a view to its own benefit or pleasure? Is not Spinoza overlooking or disregarding what is human in man (‘man, like any other individual in nature, strives as much as he can to preserve his being’)? Does not the Bible presume, more commonsensically, that an intelligent human being acts not only with a view to its own benefit and pleasure, but also with a view to what is right or noble simply; and that the simply right or noble is not identical with—that it is, in the crucial cases, sometimes contrary to—the beneficial or pleasant for oneself?” (97; emphasis in original). Putting aside the fact that Spinoza is a strong champion of freedom (both divine and human), although a determined opponent of free will (as suspended judgment), and the fact that “nobility” reflects a conflation of biblical morality with Greek virtue, Pangle fails to indicate that Spinoza, in all three of his major works, shows that the conatus of seeking one’s own good or advantage creates the very contradictions, in both politics and ethics, that solely love of God and neighbor can and must overcome. What Spinoza calls the dictates of reason he explicitly founds on the golden rule of doing unto others what you would have others do unto you. The resolution of self-contradiction in light of the “command” of the golden rule of loving your neighbor as yourself could properly be understood as the “sacrifice” of self to others (including God).

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3. Because Spinoza holds that love of God and neighbor is the basis of both revelation and reason, of both religion (the Bible) and philosophy, it is wholly misleading on the part of Pangle to claim that what defines modern philosophy, in being founded on what he calls its commitment to human-centered rationalism, is its “peculiarly modern dedication to the project of the rational enlightenment of all mankind on the basis and by means of the intelligible lawfulness of things as discovered by mathematical and natural science” (31). It is simply not true that Spinoza’s concept of God as the absolutely free, infinite, eternal substance whose essence cannot be conceived (by human beings) without existing—following the ontological argument—is based on a concept of reason that is naturally or finitely mathematical. It is also not true that Kant’s concept of reason is based on mathematics and nature. Rather, it is Kant who systematically distinguishes between knowledge (of empirical objects in the space and time of nature) and practical reason (thinking, will, desire). Reason, he shows us, is fundamentally ethical (and political) practice, the categorical practice of bringing into existence the kingdom of ends in which all human beings are free and equal (under God). 4. Consistent with the failure on the part of Pangle to see that the concept of reason, which is fundamental to modern philosophy (as found, for example, in Spinoza and Kant), is consonant with, because based on, the Bible’s concept of practice is the Socratic (i.e., the pre-modern, and so not biblical but Greek) distinction that he makes between politics and thought. While acknowledging that “a reversal of the sociopolitical achievement of liberation and reconstruction effected by the Enlightenment” is both unlikely and deleterious, he writes that “on the level of serious and meditative thought and for the sake of authentic selfunderstanding,” we must, in accepting the challenge of biblical revelation, “win our way back to the truest and fullest dialogue between political philosophy and biblical revelation” as “nothing less than a provisional escape, on the level of thought, from the apparently successful modern cultural revolution” (11–12; emphasis in the original). But surely it is altogether Socratic (Platonic) and not biblical to separate covenantal life from thought and so to conceive of political philosophy as pure thought and not as the covenantal practice of loving God above all others and your neighbor as yourself. In sum, careful consideration of the fundamental claims made by Pangle indicates that they are not consistent, either ontologically or historically, with the Bible, with Socrates (the Greeks), or with modern philosophy (e.g., Spinoza and Kant, and also Kierkegaard as I point out in note 8).

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Notes The reader will see that I have attached a note on Pangle’s Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham to the end of appendix 2. Information on authors cited is found in the bibliography. 1. “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization” (including “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy”); “On the Interpretation of Genesis”; and “Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections.” 2. It is worth observing that Strauss, while referring to the ideas of Maimonides from time to time in “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization,” does not, in any of these three pieces, base his argument on or directly cite or analyze passages from The Guide of the Perplexed. (The notes for the first two pieces are provided solely by the editor.) 3. Strauss continues parenthetically: “(May I say this in passing, that I have leaned very heavily in my analysis of these things on Spinoza.)” (130). The essence of God is truly comprehensible to human beings as their knowledge (according to the ontological argument) of the necessary existence of God. 4. Spinoza argues in the TPT, as I indicate in volume I of my study, that prophetic revelations are (morally) true chiefly, not because the prophets had brilliant visions or received conclusive signs but because they had their minds exclusively directed to what was right and good (i.e., to God as commanding the covenantal principles of charity and justice). 5. That Strauss uses “progress” here is astonishing for two reasons. First, it truly reflects our common (i.e., biblical) understanding that education—the cultivation of (self-) consciousness, at once personal and communal—is historical, that is, gradual or progressive: it involves and takes—fulfills—time (eternally). Second, it is precisely this understanding of “progress” that Strauss cavalierly ignores in “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization.” In this piece he reduces “modernity” to a caricature of progress understood merely as what is technologically and quantitatively human, to which he polemically opposes the “return” to divine obedience. 6. Eudoxus tells Polyander a little later on in their conversation that “it was a fortunate error you made when your answer went beyond the bounds of my question [What are you?]. For it makes it easy for you to get to know what you are: all you need do is to separate from yourself and reject everything which you clearly see does not belong to you, and admit only what necessarily belongs to you—so necessarily that you are as certain of it as you are of your existing and doubting” (414). 7. Pangle writes earlier in his book that we have to see “whether the Bible supports the Platonic Socrates’ contention that experience of divinity is inseparable from a conception of divinity as loving what is pious because it is pious, because it participates in the idea of piety, which is in turn inseparable from the idea of justice (Euthyphro)” (80). It is important to recall, however, that what Socrates demonstrates in the Euthryphro is that something is loved, by human beings and the gods, because it is pious

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(it is not pious because it is loved by them). In other words, Socrates demonstrates that what is pious is unknown to both human beings and the gods, just as he demonstrates in subsequent Platonic dialogues that justice, wisdom, and the other virtues cannot be taught, learned, or known by human beings (or the gods). The term “participation” is thus misleading when it is not recalled that, according to the divided line as found in Republic VI, the Forms (of the good, etc.) and the appearances (of the good, etc.) are opposed to each other as the one and the many, the immortal and the mortal, the unchanging and the changing, the finite and the in-finite, the perfect and the imperfect, etc., are opposed to each other. 8. In taking up what he calls Kierkegaard’s challenge (in Fear and Trembling) to his own reading of Genesis 22 (the binding of Isaac), Pangle indicates that, if Kierkegaard’s reading can be sustained, then his own position is untenable. What is at stake here, then, is the conception that we find in Fear and Trembling, not only of Abraham, as the knight of faith, but also of Socrates, as the (intellectual) tragic hero. Pangle ultimately dismisses Kierkegaard’s reading of Abraham by assimilating the knight of faith to the Socratic “understanding of faith in terms of ‘infinite resignation’ or tragic heroism,” in complete contradiction of the text (of both Fear and Trembling and Genesis 22) (181). It is not surprising, then, that Pangle writes that in Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard “shows a deep misunderstanding of what Socrates was about . . .” (178). Pangle, however, does not discuss the richly intense engagement with Socrates that we find in many other works of Kierkegaard, for example, The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and Works of Love. What Pangle does not see is that Kierkegaard stands with Spinoza and Kant (and also with Hegel) in showing that Socratic reason is not biblical and that the concept of reason (thought) that is true to human beings is that founded on the biblical practice of love of neighbor. 9. Pangle acknowledges, however, that the ancient Hebrew monarchy was a monarchy like no other (i.e., it was not modeled on the concept of divine kingship as found in Egypt and elsewhere). This is why the prophets made clear that kings, like all members of the covenant, were subject to the covenant and its God. Thus, as I show in my study, Spinoza indicates that the civil state of the ancient Hebrews was a theocracy and that covenantal theocracy, in which all human beings, including kings, were subject to the covenant and its God, was ultimately democratic.

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———. Spinoza’s Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Levinas, Emmanuel. Of God Who Comes to Mind, tr. Bettina Rergo. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. ———. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Tr. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Levy, Ze’ev. Baruch or Benedict: On Some Aspects of Spinoza’s Philosophy. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Lloyd, Genevieve. Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza’s “Ethics.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. Macherey, Pierre. “From Action to Production of Effects: Observations on the Ethical Significance of Ethics I.” In Yirmiyahu Yovel, ed., God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics—Papers Presented at the First Jerusalem Conference (Ethica I). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. Marion, Jean-Luc. “Aporias and the Origins of Spinoza’s Theory of Adequate Ideas.” In Yirmiyahu Yovel, ed., Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind: Papers Presented at the Second Jerusalem Conference (Ethica II). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994. ———. Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999. ———. “The Coherence of Spinoza’s Definitions of God in Ethics I, Proposition 11.” In in Yirmiyahu Yovel, ed., God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Papers Presented at the First Jerusalem Conference (Ethica I). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. ———. “In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of ‘Negative Theology’” [includes a response by Jacques Derrida and a further comment by Marion]. In John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., God, the Gift, and Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Mason, Richard. The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Matheron, Alexandre. Individu et Communauté chez Spinoza. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969. Moreau, Pierre-François. Spinoza: L’Expérience et L’Éternité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994. Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992. ———. Spinoza’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Norris, Christopher. Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Critical Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Novak, David. Covenantal Rights: A Study in Jewish Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, revised ed. 2001. Pangle, Thomas L. Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Polka, Brayton. Depth Psychology, Interpretation, and the Bible: An Ontological Essay on Freud. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.

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Abraham (of the Book of Genesis), 1–4, 10, 13, 16, 18, 25f, 32, 40, 46, 99, 108, 124, 134, 180–81, 199, 226, 232–34, 252, 259–60, 264n8 See also Kierkegaard Adam (and Eve). See Garden of Eden Alfakhar, Jehuda, 78f, 95, 97–99, 117, 123, 128f, 139n35, 212, 218–19, 223–24, 232 Allison, Henry E., 238 Alter, Robert, 234n2 St. Anselm, x, 11, 13, 16–17, 22n9, 34, 135n8, 144, 147, 161, 182, 209–10n19, 255–57 St. Thomas Aquinas, 3, 12, 40, 124, 230–31, 239–41, 246, 259 Aristotle, 9, 39f, 52, 81f, 112, 118, 139n36, 150, 159, 164, 199, 210n27, 230, 240, 245–47, 254 St. Augustine, 22n9, 257 Bagley, Paul J., 242–43 Balibar, Étienne, 238 Barber, Benjamin R., 249–50 Bennett, Jonathan, 238, 243

The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), 4 Buber, Martin, 234n7 contradiction (law of), 159, 163, 167, 199, 201, 210n27, 229 See also Aristotle; paradox (concept of) creation (biblical), 8f, 82, 137n27, 237–38, 243, 245–47, 251, 254, 260 Curley, Edwin M., 238, 243–44 Cusa, Nicholas of, 17, 209n13 Damasio, Antonio, 238 Descartes, René, 10f, 22n10, 25, 34, 125–26, 135n8, chapter 3 passim, 216, 242, 252, 255–57 The Search for Truth, 141n50, 257, 263n6 Deuteronomy (Book of), 8, 55, 213–14, 221, 234n2 Donagan, Alan, 238 Eco, Umberto, 240–41 Epicurus/Epicureans, 149, 204, 206–7, 208n4, 208–9n11, 243

— 273 —

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Fackenheim, Emil F., 237–38, 244–46 the Fall. See the Garden of Eden Ferry, Luc, 241 Flew, Antony, 250n1 Foster, M. B., 247 Fukuyama, Francis, 238 the Garden of Eden (Adam and Eve/the Fall), 6f, 22n6, 108, 127, 152–53, 156, 169, 237, 239, 247–48, 251, 256–59 Gatens, Moira, 238 Goetschel, Willi, 238 Goodman, Lenn E., 238, 246–47 Hacking, Ian, 238 Hamlet (of Shakespeare’s play), 63, 137n24 Hardt, Michael, 238 Harris, Errol E., 237–38, 242–44 Hauerwas, Stanley, 239–40 Havers, Grant, 242 Hegel, G. H. F., 4, 11, 89, 94–95, 139n39, 150, 202, 205, 234n6, 239, 241, 244, 247, 250, 252, 257 Encyclopaedia Logic, 255 on infinity, 172, 209n14, 250n2, 255, 264n8 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 211–12, 216–17, 220, 225–27, 232–33, 256 The Phenomenology of Spirit, 140n41, 250n2 Heraclitus, 149–51, 156, 206, 243 Hosea (Book of), 6f Hume, David, 139n39, 209–10n19 Israel, Jonathan, 238, 242 James (Book of), 119–20, 234n3 Jeremiah (Book of), 6f, 102, 115, 126 Job (in the Book of), 6f, 16f, 206 I John (Book of), 115, 120, 127, 253, 261 Joseph, Rabbi, 39f, 136n10

Kant, Immanuel, 10f, 19, 79, 95–96, 140n40, 145, 157, 180, 205, 210n20, 241–43, 247–49, 251–52, 255–57, 259, 262, 264n8 The Conflict of the Faculties, 23, 69–70 Critique of Pure Reason, 11, 136n15, 205, 209–10n19 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 235n9 Kantian paradox, 182 on the ontological argument, ix, 10–11, 209–10n19 (see also the ontological argument; Spinoza) on the universal law, 229 Kass, Leon R., 247–48 Kierkegaard, Søren, 89, 95, 150, 180, 205, 209n13, 226, 242, 252, 257, 262 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 235n8 Fear and Trembling, 1f, 10, 13, 18, 180–81, 196, 210n20, 226, 264n8 (see also Abraham) on miracles, 4f Works of Love, 138n29, 208n3 Lagrée, Jacqueline, 238 Levene, Nancy K., 238, 242, 247–48 Levinas, Emmanuel, 238 Levy, Ze’ev, 238 Lloyd, Genevieve, 238 Macherey, Pierre, 238 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 36, 60, 108, 242–43 Maimonides, 16–17, 25f, 38f, 53–54, 62, 68, 78, 80f, 95, 97–99, 114, 116–18, 123, 128f, 136n17, 139n35, 139n36, 212, 214, 218–19, 223–24, 230–32, 246–47, 253, 259 The Guide of the Perplexed, 9, 81f, 234n4, 245, 263n2 Marion, Jean-Luc, 238 Marx, Karl, 89, 242 Mason, Richard, 238

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Matheron, Alexandre, 248 Matthew (Book of), 8, 127, 138n33 modernity (concept of), 2, chapter 3 passim, appendix 2 passim Montaigne, 109, chapter 3 passim, 220, 222, 224–25, 230–31, 242 Moreau, Pierre-François, 242 Murdoch, Iris, 239–41, 250n1 Nadler, Steven, 238 Negri, Antonio, 238 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 19, 22n12, 166, 252, 257 Norris, Christopher, 238 Novak, David, 241–42 Nussbaum, Martha C., 241 Ockham, William of, 17, 209n13 the ontological argument, 10f, 126, 231–34, 237, 239–40, 242, 244–48, 250n1, 262 See also Kant; Spinoza Pangle, Thomas L., 259–62, 263n7, 264nn8–9 Paradise Lost (Milton), 108 paradox (concept of), 167, 180, 201 See also contradiction (law of) Parmenides, 150, 156, 206, 240 St. Paul, 9–10, 127, 213, 221, 251, 261 See also Spinoza Plato, 118, 150f, 204, 208n11, 217, 239, 242–43, 245, 247, 250, 254 Platonic philosophy (Platonism), 153–56, 159–60, 162f Republic, 149–50, 263–64n7 See also Socrates (Socratic) Plutarch, 143, 154, 161f, 200, 202, 206, 217, 222 Popkin, Richard H., 238 Preus, James S., 238, 242 Prokhovnik, Raia, 248 Rawls, John, 248–49

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Scruton, Roger, 134n2 Seeskin, Kenneth, 246–47 Seigel, Jerrold, 242, 250n2 Sen, Amartya, 248 Seneca, 143, 154, 161f, 200–202, 205, 217, 222 See also Stoics/Stoicism Shirley, Samuel, 135n3 skeptics/skepticism (ancient), 143, 149, 153f, 200, 217, 222 Smith, Steven B., 238 Socrates (Socratic), 14, 22n9, 22n11, chapter 3 passim, 220, 222, 225, 229, 247, 249, 259–60, 262, 263n7 See also Plato Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de) on accommodation (concept of), 4, 50–52, 62, 71–72, 89, 112–13, 117, 125, 128f, 139n37 on Christ, 33–36, 38, 45–46, 105–6, 121, 127 Ethics, viii–xi, 2, 10f, 18f, 42, 74, 101, 116, 124–27, 133–34, 135n3, chapter 3 passim, 248 on the ancient Hebrews, 52f hermeneutics, ix–xi, 15f, 21, chapter 2 passim, chapter 4 passim, 253 on history (narrative, tradition), 36f, 52f, 72f, 88f, 109f, 131f, 227f on Joshua (Book of), 6f, 49–50, 66 on language (use of words), 73–75, 102, 131–32, 228–29 on miracles, 4–5, 41f, 63f, 112, 137n25, 138n28, 254 on Moses, 31–32, 36, 39, 45, 73, 103, 115, 127, 140n46 on the ontological argument, ix–xi, 10f, 21, 30, 133–34, 137n26, chapter 3 passim, chapter 4 passim, 238, 243, 246 (see also Kant on the ontological argument) on St. Paul, 28, 34 (see also St. Paul) Political Treatise, viii–ix, xi, 2, 15, 248

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on prophecy/prophets, 4, 41f, 105–6, 117, 137n24, 230–31, 246–47, 263 on revelation, 42f, 77, 88f, 91f, 113f, 132–33, 140n43, 238, 245, 247, 249, 253–54, 262 on the separation of philosophy from theology, 24, 27–28, 41, 51, 53, 62, 88, 90f, 99f, 10, 116–17, 119, 122, 125, 127f, 139n38, 140n44, 212, 218–19, 221, 223–24, 232, 243, 254, 259 on the Seven Dogmas of Faith, 118f, 133, 238 on superstition, 4, 25, 42, 47, 64–65, 67–68, 129, 131–32, 162, 167, 215 Theologico-Political Treatise, viii–xi, 2f, 14–15, 21, chapter 2 passim, 170, 212, chapter 4 passim, 237–38, 242, 245, 248, 263n4

Index

on the three kinds of knowledge, 168, 170, 186–92, 196–99, 206, 249, 255 Stark, Rodney, 239 Stoics/Stoicism, 118, 149, 153, 155–56, 204, 206–7, 230 See also Seneca Strauss, Leo, viii, 25, 141n52, 237–38, 242–43, appendix 2 passim, 263nn2–3, 263n5 Taylor, Charles, 238–39 Tremellius, John Immanuel, 135n6 de Vries, Hent, 242 Walzer, Michael, 248 Yaffe, Martin D., 141n52, 238 Yovel, Yirmiyahu, 238, 242 Zac, Sylvain, 238 Žižek, Slavoj, 239

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About the Author

Brayton Polka is Professor Emeritus of Humanities and of Social and Political Thought and Senior Scholar at York University in Toronto. He is the author of, in addition to numerous studies on hermeneutics and ontology, three previous books: Depth Psychology, Interpretation, and the Bible: An Ontological Essay on Freud (2001); The Dialectic of Biblical Critique: Interpretation and Existence (1986); and Truth and Interpretation: An Essay in Thinking (1990).

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