Abstract
Spinoza occupies a central place in the development of modern Jewish thought.1 But even today, over 300 years after his death, the question still remains what kind of Jew was Spinoza. What was the relation between Spinoza and Judaism or, to speak more precisely, how did he transform the Jewish tradition? As Genviève Brykman has said in her excellent study La judéité de Spinoza, one must distinguish between the fact of being Jewish and the manner in which one is a Jew.2 It is the manner of Spinoza’s Judaism, what she calls Spinoza’s judéité, his relation to received Jewish values and institutions, that is of interest to us here.
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References
I have discussed this issue at length in Spinoza,Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (New Haven: Yale University Pres, 1997).
Genviève Brykman, La judéité de Spinoza (Paris: J. Vrin, 1972) p. 13.
Manuel Jöel, Spinozas Theologisch-Politischer Traktat auf seine Quellen geprüft (Breslau: Skutsch, 1870); Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934).
Cited in Yirmihau Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) 1:3.
Pierre Bayle, “Spinoza,” Historical and Critical Dictionary, trans. Richard Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991) pp. 292–93.
Johannes Colerus, “The Life of B. de Spinosa,” in Frederick Pollock’s Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1899) p. 389.
The best account of the Marrano underground at the time of Spinoza is Yosef Kaplan, From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro, trans. Raphael Lowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); see also Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 1:40–84.
English translations of the Tractatus are from Edwin Curley’s as yet unpublished edition of the work. All other cited words are from The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), vol. 1; references follow the standard pattern.
Hermann Cohen, “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum,” JüdischeSchriften, ed. Bruno Strauss (Berlin: Schwetscheke, 1924) vol. 3, pp. 298, 360, 361, 371.
Emmanuel Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Séan Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1990) p. 108.
Jacob Gordin, “Benedictus ou maledictus: le cas Spinoza,” Les cahiers juifs 14 (1935):104–115; reprinted in Écrits: le renouveau de la penséejuive en France (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995) p. 147.
or the denial that Spinoza writes with any specific Jewish animus, see Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken, 1965) pp. 19–20; Shlomo Pines, “Spinoza’s `Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus,’ Maimonides, and Kant,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 20 (1968): 3–54.
See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955) chap. 33; the influence of La Peyrère’s Prae-Adamitae on Spinoza has been demonstrated by Richard Popkin, “Spinoza and La Peyrère,” Spinoza: New Perspectives, eds. J.I. Biro and Robert W. Shahan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978) pp. 177–95; see also Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, pp. 64–85; Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism,and the Question of Jewish Identity, pp. 56–59.
For Maimonides’ prophetology see The Guide of the Perplexed, 2:32–48; see also Smith, Spinoza,Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, pp. 89–103.
Ethics 2P40S2.
Brykman, La judéité de Spinoza, p. 63.
For many readers of the Tractatus Spinoza’s strategy of knowingly demeaning Judaism before Christianity has been unforgivable. His appeal to certain anti-Jewish prejudices and stereotypes has been marked down to political sycophancy and a desire to curry favor with the Christian authorities whose approval he sought. And yet it is also possible that Spinoza’s manner of writing was not grounded in any anti-Jewish animus but was rather part of a rhetorical and political strategy of “accommodating” his writings to the understanding of his audience. This accommodation was intended to gain a hearing for his larger project of promoting a liberal state, that is, a state that is neutral to the distinction between Jews and Christians and where Jews can share in the benefits of citizenship and civil rights along with their non-Jewish neighbors. Leo Strauss has gone so far as to suggest that Spinoza was even animated by a profound sense of “sympathy” for his people. To be sure, this is not to
Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. 21.
The Correspondence, p. 206.
For a comprehensive account of the Dutch theological situation, see Leszek Kolakowski’s Chrétiens sans église: la conscience religieuse et le lien confessional au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1969); see also the older study by Madelaine Frances, Spinoza dans le pays néerlandais de la seconde moitié du XVlle siècle (Paris: Alcan, 1937).
Ethics, 3P59S.
The place of Spinoza in the making of Zionism has been treated by Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 1:190–93; Elhanan Yakira, “Spinoza et les Sionistes,” Spinoza au XXe siècle, ed. Olivier Block (Paris: PUF, 1993) pp. 445–58.
See Yosef H. Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Intermindable (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) p. 10; Isaac Deutscher, “The Non-Jewish Jew,” The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) pp. 25–41; Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, pp. 13–22, 197–205.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, “The Spirit of Jewishness,” The Hasidim: Paintings, Etchings, and Drawings by Ira Moskowitz (New York: Crown, 1973) pp. 10–11.
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Smith, S.B. (1999). How Jewish Was Spinoza?. In: Bagley, P.J. (eds) Piety, Peace, and the Freedom to Philosophize. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 47. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2672-6_9
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